John Borst has posted the final chapter of "I was terminally ill, and you...."08/13/2011 - 12:53 amBlinkIt is now August 12th and I am going to try to finish the story I posted on July 13. But first a correction to the 2:06 p.m. post. I got the dates wrong. Suzanne was admitted the Monday before the Monday I posted, specifically June 18th not 25th so the ordeal lasted a week longer.On July 19th at about 2:35 pm Suzanne breathed her last breath. A few seconds later her heart stopped and she was declared deceased. If you go back to my 2:06 post I wrote:She is still critical and anything can happen very fast and optimistically at the rate we are going I can expect another week of ICU if not life support.And at 6:24 pm I added:The situation is still critical but each visit brings tiny specs of evidence of progress.A meeting had been scheduled with the doctors and support team but another trauma crisis has delayed it until tomorrow.That meeting, never really happened. Instead the doctor spoke to just me in the open space between the central doctors station and the ICU rooms. He floored me when he told me there were indeed signs of improvement.Improvement did continue; in fact, by Wednesday 13th Suzanne had been moved off life-support and had begun to respond to us and the doctors. Words cannot describe the feeling I had when she opened her eyes even a little when I called out her name. By the next day with the tubes removed she could whisper a few very hoarse words like, I love you!On Friday she was moved off the 24 hour dialysis machine with a plan to begin a regular machine on the Saturday. The doctors had also stemmed the two instances of internal bleeding and without micro-surgery removed the IV which was the cause of one instance of the bleeding. This was no easy feat. The thinness of Suzannes blood was off the chart. Normal is one, a person taking one or two 81 mg. aspirins plus Plavix is at a 2 or a 3. Sue was at 17. Over the course of the period on life support she received 33 blood transfusions of different types.Besides successfully tolerating a regular dialysis session, the high point of Saturday was in retrospect the high point of the entire ordeal. As I said goodnight to her that evening I placed the back of my hand on her left cheek and she snuggled into it very deliberately and I just held it there. I then leaned forward and kissed her firmly on her lips and she kissed firmly back, not once but twice. Obviously, I was delighted. I knew our life would never be the same, but I looked forward to it continuing.Sunday appeared to be the same and the doctors were now discussing moving her to IMCU, a stage before going back to the Renal Ward but less intensive than ICU. None-the-less the day ended on a down note because when I placed my hand on her cheek as I had done on Saturday I got no response. Similarly, when I kissed her I got no response. I told myself she was just tired.Monday continued the downward and final spiral. After just twenty minutes on dialysis the nurse was frantically trying to keep her blood press up but with little success. After withdrawing only one cup of fluid they had to stop and only continued to withdraw potassium and urine. That afternoon the doctors called us in and told us she was not responding to them and asked us what we wanted to do. I said I did not want her back on life support and the ICU doctor said, Good because had I thought there was a chance, I would have put her on 20 minutes ago.He then explained that he did not know what was happening but his theory was that there was internal bleeding in either her heart or brain and that if true there was nothing they could do.He did however, confirm that the lab work had isolated the cause to polyarteritis nodosa (PAN) one of 15 different types of vasculitis, a disease of unknown cause where, in this case, an autoimmune system breakdown caused both the medium and small arteries to be inflamed plus have nodules growing on them. See http://www.vasculitis.ca/ or http://www.vasculitisfoundation.org/ for more detail.As you know Commonweals final story is entitled The Last Word and Suzannes last words were spoken to me on Tuesday morning the day of her death.For a few years, as a teacher, Suzanne worked with some of the most profoundly involved intellectually challenged human beings imaginable. In the process I absorbed a little knowledge about non-verbal forms of communication. As a result that morning I had the presence of mind to say to her, Sue, if you can hear me blink your eyes! and she did, very clearly, very immediately. When I told the doctor, it was obvious he didnt believe me.And with that blink she had The Last Word. And now rests in peace.