For me this is the hardest day because I made that difficult decision to end the fight. A doctor walked in to Kevin's room that I never met. He was polite, concerned and kind. He proceeded to tell me that they had tried to wake up Kevin to start taking him off the vent but there was no response. The doctor then told me we could start shutting machines off slowly. Well, Kevin never wanted to be on the vent to begin with, so the only thing I could do was have them shut everything down at once. We decided to do that in the morning. The only thing I ask them was to allow me to be there when they turned the machines off. Once the decision was made I had to get the whole family there, but I could not get a hold of anyone. I left a lot of messages to call me back. I sat there a long time by myself talking to Kevin, dealing with my decision. One of the techs walked in and told me how strong he thought I was for making the decision to turn everything off at once. He gave me a hug and left.
The boys got there first with my parents and the strangest thing happened, Kevin sat up and then laid back down. The doctor and nurse came in and I realized that was his way of saying goodbye to the boys. The decision was made to shut the machines off that night.
Kevin's sisters and brothers got to the hospital, all 4 of our boys were there, nieces and nephews and close friends came to say their goodbyes. It was time. I stood next to Kevin and held his hand as they shut off each machine. I could not let him be alone, I was strong for him and for me. The family came back in, we stood around him waiting, but it is not like tv, it takes awhile. We played music for him, sat and talked and waited. At about 2:30am I fell asleep next to Kevin. He always said he wanted to die sleeping next to me. At 3am he took his last breath just the way he wanted, sleeping next to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment