Life is like a roller coaster, there are plenty of thrills and twists and turns… And of course, plenty of ups and downs to enjoy as well. Each part of the ride is a unique experience, and as such, can be felt in many different ways. Today, I’ll be discussing some of the recent ups and downs of my own life, and my thoughts on them. This will be laid out similar to an actual “journal” kind of post. Huge kudos to you if you read it until the end!
My Life on Wednesday, January 19, 2022
This was definitely an “up” day. Thankfully, it was quite a relaxing day for me, and for Jeff, as all we did was to take my brother, Daniel, to dialysis. Jeff actually volunteered to do this. While he did, I was able to stay at home and clean up the house some.
Mainly, dishes and also some last minute dinner for us to enjoy. It’ was Jeff’s birthday (as well as my Grandmothers’), and so it was super chill. He’s not big on doing much for his birthday in regards to celebrating it, and so we finished the night with watching some TV.
My Life on Thursday, January 20, 2022
Thursday was mostly spent driving. Once we got downstate to the Detroit area, we unloading our stuff and talked with Jeff’s parents for a little before doing a corporate photo shoot at Ford Field. We had a lot of fun while at Ford Field. We got to be on the field, in the locker rooms, and all kinds of cool stuff! Definitely an up day, with no expectations of anything other than happiness while working.
My Life on Friday, January 21, 2022
Ahhh… Our 10th Wedding Anniversary! What a wonderful day. We didn’t do much on this day, other than to go out to eat at Pegasus in Downtown Detroit. It was sooooo tasty! We knew we would have to leave on Saturday after uploading the photos we took the night prior to an online gallery, but we put it out of our minds while we enjoyed some amazing food.
My Life on Saturday, January 22, 2022
This day was a little concerning. We were concerned about Jeff’s father, Paul, as he was having constipation issues. But all in all, we thought everything would be fine, and we weren’t rushing to leave. The photo upload took longer than we thought it would originally, and so we told Jeff’s folks that we’d be staying another night. They were happy to hear it! The following gif is how I felt while uploading the photos, lol!
My Life on Sunday, January 23, 2022
After waking up, it started snowing, quite a lot. My original plan for Sunday, was to leave pretty much right away after waking up, so we could clean up the house when we got home before we started the next week of dialysis runs and work.
However, things shifted once Jeff’s father, Paul, came downstairs and joined us for a little bit of coffee. He looked absolutely terrible and was breathing heavily. His robe slipped open a little and on his chest was a huge lump that should not have been there. We were instantly concerned.
He kind of brushed it off, but went into the living room to watch Three Stooges. We finally convinced him to go to the ER, and he went into the guest bedroom on that same floor to get changed into normal clothes instead of his pajamas for the trip.
He closed the door, and moments later, the next thing we all hear, is him falling to the floor. This is still so hard for me to write and to even acknowledge having happened. But, we all went into crazy-dealing-with-an-emergency mode. I was instantly on the phone with 911, and Jeff and Darlene (Jeff’s mother) were trying to turn Paul over, since he fell face first.
The EMTs arrived within two whole minutes. (Maybe 5 real minutes, but felt like 2.) As soon as they arrived, Paul stopped breathing and his heart wasn’t beating. (Both were happening while I was on the phone with 911, so we didn’t perform any CPR on him, but the EMTs had to do life saving techniques on him.
They got his heart beating again, and moved him to the ambulance, and on-wards to the Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital. Once we arrived there, we were told that while on the way to the hospital, his heart had stopped again, and the EMTs got it going again. However, there in the hospital, his heart was slowing once more.
Once we got into the room, we talked to him for a few minutes, until his heart stopped for the last time. It was all so sudden, that we were too shocked to even cope with it all. The rest of the day was spent with us all in utter shock, disbelief, sorrow, and God-only-knows what other emotions.
Even now, I can’t believe that he’s gone. I want to apologize too, for any humor you may find in the imagery used above… But, it’s my way of coping with telling of this very tough day. I tried to pick the gifs that are most relevant to that part of the story…
My Life on Monday, January 24, 2022
Thankfully, my brother Daniel came down with us for this trip, because we had scheduled his dialysis at a location in the Downriver area for the 21st, since we knew we wouldn’t be leaving the corporate gig at Ford Field until 10pm or later. (It takes 3.5 hours to get from Jeff’s parents house, to our own.)
And as such, we were able to take him back to that same location on this day for dialysis, due to the emergency we were dealing with.
Unfortunately however, the downs of life weren’t done yet. On this day, Dan’s catheter he has for dialysis right now, decided it would be the perfect time to stop running. And the earliest we could get him in anywhere to get it replaced, wasn’t until Wednesday, the 26th.
So, with that added worry, we stayed with Jeff’s mother Darlene until the following afternoon. Tuesday was simply a day of driving while dealing with shock and disbelief.
My Life on Wednesday, January 26, 2022
This was an up day! Dan and I went to Saginaw to get his catheter replaced at the Access Center there. After that was finished, we had time between that appointment, and his dialysis appointment that was miraculously scheduled there as well, for some lunch. So we got our grub on at a local diner, with the same name as the nickname our father is known for: Fuzzy’s.
After dialysis, we went home. Both of us tired, but happy things worked out for what felt like the first time in a very long time. Yes, I know it’s all relative, but after all that stress and worry, I was simply relieved it was a more “normal” day.
My Life on Thursday, January 27, 2022
Jeff took Daniel to Flint for a surgery he had had scheduled. They were going to see about placing a new Hero Graft in his left arm, near the armpit, to use for dialysis instead of the catheter he had been needing.
While they were there, I took this time to do a deep clean on the house, needing to stay in motion in order to keep my thoughts off of all the bad that had just happened in less than a week. I cleaned, I shoveled the driveway, I cooked dinner, and I kept busy.
Unfortunately though, I got the news from Jeff and Dan that the surgery was unsuccessful. His arteries are too small/narrow in that arm to be used for a Hero Graft. So, he was still stuck with using a catheter.
My Life on Friday, January 28, 2022
Friday, I took Daniel to Alpena for his dialysis treatment. Unfortunately, his newly placed catheter wasn’t working already. I wasn’t informed of this until around 2:30pm. Which, wouldn’t be a big deal except for a few things.
- The closest Access Center for dialysis patients where we live, is in Saginaw. That’s 2.5 hours away, if there’s no traffic or snow or whatever to hinder the drive time.
- The soonest I would be able to get him to the access center was by the time I left Alpena, would have been 4:45pm. (Took some time to get gas for the trip.)
- Dan called them and asked if they would still see him, knowing they would be closing for the day at 5pm. They said no.
- This means, that he would not have dialysis again until Monday at the earliest, if at all, due to if/when they could replace the catheter that wasn’t working.
- His dialysis center in Alpena suggested that we take him to the University of Michigan Emergency Room, to get the catheter replaced, and to get some dialysis, considering he only had 1 “dose” or “run” of dialysis all week.
So, that’s what we did. We got home, packed up our things, and headed back to Jeff’s mothers’ house to stay with her. Thankfully we had already planned on visiting her that weekend, but we did not plan on the nightmare of UofM.
My Life on Saturday, January 29, 2022
This day wasn’t too eventful. Jeff and I both took Dan to the UofM ER, and dropped him off. Jeff had a little spat with the valet guy there who approached us with quite an attitude, but considering how stressed we both were, he handled himself well enough.
After we dropped Dan off at UofM, we met up with my parents for lunch at a Pub in downtown Ann Arbor, called Ashley’s. My mom liked that name a lot, due to it being a family name of ours. We enjoyed the lunch, and afterwards, said goodbye to my folks before finding a Biggby Coffee shop to stay at for a bit.
Since the shop closed at 5pm that day, we decided to head back to Darlene’s, since we knew it wouldn’t be until Monday that they would be doing anything for him. They did do lab work and all that nonsense to make sure that he would be okay until Monday for dialysis and the surgery.
I almost forgot to mention that for a bit there, they were thinking of simply sending Dan back to Saginaw on Monday, versus keeping him and doing the surgery/dialysis themselves. They called around 10:30pm and asked if I was on my way to get him. I wasn’t, but I lied and said I was cause I knew I could be on my way that instant.
That nurse said they were going to discharge him from the ER and to be at the Taubman Center to pick him up. So we drove, got there, parked, and got a call from Dan. We talked to him and it was then decided for him to remain there, and to have the surgery for a new catheter and to have a dialysis treatment there as well, on the following Monday. So that was fun. Lol!
My Life on Monday, January 31, 2022
Monday arrives, and we know that Dan is already waiting for his surgery to get a new catheter. He wasn’t able to eat beforehand, and that detail will become important later on in this story. However, Jeff and I were simply using the time to comfort Darlene and to enjoy her company.
We were all praying for Dan’s surgery, and also, hoping that he would be released no later than Tuesday, as Michigan was expecting a huge snowstorm to start up on Wednesday of that week. However, when we didn’t hear anything at all from my brother all day, we started to wonder what was up. I messaged him a few times, and got nothing back.
Figuring that he must still be sleeping or that his phone might be dead, I decided to call the hospital number he was given, so I could connect to his room directly. However, I was going to experience yet another down.
I called up there, and the operator of the hospital asked for his name and date of birth, which of course I gave to her. However, she couldn’t find him in her system. At all. I’m bewildered, because I know he didn’t just up and leave. He doesn’t drive, he lives with me, and is pretty dependent upon Jeff and I.
So after talking to her to no avail, I asked her to forward me to the ER portion of the hospital. The reasoning for this was that maybe something happened during surgery that required him to be there, and he wasn’t in their system yet because he had just been transferred.
Unfortunately, the ER lady didn’t have him in his system either. I was obviously freaked out by this point, considering all that we had been through up until this point! I spelled his name out, and when I got to his last time (“Striker”, is his last name by the way) she even asked “is that spelled with a ‘T’ or a ‘D’?”
Never have I ever been so upset. However, I do have to give myself some credit. I kept my cool (thought I wouldn’t lol), and let her go and thanked her for her help. I even told her, that I wasn’t upset at her at all, just upset because it seemed like the hospital had literally lost my younger brother.
Anyhow, I called my mother, cause I was completely out of ideas of what to do, other than to file a missing persons report with the police. She let me go and called the hospital herself. Thankfully she got someone knowledgeable there, and they told her that Dan was likely in a procedure, and that if that’s the case, that would be why he’s not in the system. (What kind of dumb sh!t is that?!)
And thankfully that was the case! However, because they pulled him out of their system while he was getting the surgery and dialysis, he wasn’t able to order any food at all. Until 10pm, when the cafeteria was closed and all that was offered was cold stuff, like Frosted Flakes cereal. (He had not eaten anything all day due to needing the surgery, remember.)
He finally contacted us, told us what all had happened, and let us know they were keeping him until Tuesday. Tuesday came and went, and we made it home safely. Wednesday came and went, and dialysis for him went smoothly. Thursday came and went, and we all relaxed at home, needing a much needed break from literally everything.
My Life on Friday, February 4, 2022
Oh, did you think my nightmare of the past two weeks was finished? HAH!
I took Dan to dialysis in Alpena again, and didn’t hear anything until around 2pm or so. Basically, his catheter was working at half capacity for dialysis. At this point, I’m not only worried about my brother, but feeling defeated, because if he cannot receive dialysis, he’ll die. And if he can’t use a catheter like he has been, he has no where else to get an access point for dialysis to happen.
Thank God they were able to give him a full treatment!!! Dialysis for Dan ran slow and sluggish, because the catheter is being blocked by a Fibrin Sheath, which is a fancy term for a huge stringy blood clot forming around the catheter itself, and preventing proper flow for the dialysis to happen.
Unfortunately, this means that I’ll be taking him back to Saginaw tomorrow for a new catheter to be placed yet again. And I have to pray that they will be finished in time for me to race to Alpena (2.5 hours away) for him to run dialysis. Since there will be no guarantee that Tuesday, the Fibrin Sheath won’t have already formed yet again.
My Life on Sunday, February 6, 2022, Today
Phew. If you made it this far… I give you all the kudos of the world. I cannot believe all this that has happened, nor how long this post has turned into… But as you can tell, I’ve been through a roller coaster ride of the year.
Today, is Jeff’s fathers’ birthday. Well, as you heard, his father passed away two weeks ago. So today is a tough day for Jeff and I. (I’m sure for Darlene too.) Most of the day, we all lounged about (except Jeff, he’s been working a lot, as it helps keep his mind off all this). I spent the day dreading an online appearance I wanted/needed to make (prayer video for my brother, which can be found in this group), and now writing this article.
I never expected all of this, as no one ever expects these things of course. But, I wanted to share them with you all. There are countless times where I felt like giving up. On what? Not sure, but just wanted to break down and say “no more.”
But, thankfully, God has been with me. God kept Jeff, Dan, and I all down state with Darlene, when Paul passed away. Even Dan wasn’t going to be there until a last minute opening in a Downriver dialysis clinic. Then, the photo upload taking longer than needed, kept us there another night. Then, that fateful morning, the snow ruined any plans I had had of rushing out the door to get home.
God has been gracious unto me, helping me to stay strong for everyone in my family, updating everyone of the circumstances surrounding both Paul’s passing, and Daniel’s struggles. His helping my own strength, has helped to comfort those around me. And I am grateful for this.
In Closing
I’m not sure what else needs to be said. Simply, that even though life has it’s ups and downs, never expect either, for the opposite may occur. And also, always rely on God to get you through even the worst of times. Because He will happily do so. Thank you for reading all of this, and I hope that by discussing my own struggles, it may help you or someone you know, to be comforted in some form or manner.
And I also want to take this time as well, to thank each and every single soul out there who took time out of their day to send us well wishes, prayers, and support in other ways too. I never knew my “tribe” was so kind and giving until just recently. Thank you and God bless you all!
God Bless you and keep you!
♥ Jess ♥
Excellent post!