Helping the Buskirk Family

TL;DR My family has lost my grandmother, father, and mother in the last 14 months, putting a significant strain on us.

My name is Cody Buskirk, and my last 14 months have been a nightmare. The lives of my family have been devastated these past few months. Starting the week before Christmas 2020, we lost my grandmother. She was having some trouble living at home, and it was decided to have her moved to a nursing home temporarily while her health improved. While she was there, she was entirely isolated from her family due to covid. Unfortunately, this meant that she was going to die alone as she passed after a few months of being there. As my grandparents were a big staple of our small family, this devastated us, including my mom. A few months had passed, and we were attempting to put our lives together when my father needed to go to the hospital. He was struggling to have bowel movements and it was determined that he had a small bowel obstruction. Rather than preform surgery to remove the obstruction, the doctors urged him to instead let them pump him with more laxatives as they were positive this would resolve the issue. It did not, however, it did put a large strain on his heart. He had already been taking laxatives at home before he went to the hospital and with what they gave him, he well exceeded the safety limits. When it became clear that laxatives were not going to solve his issues, they decided to perform the surgery. We had been initially informed that they had missed a small hole during surgery, and they had to go back in to fix it. During this time, bowel material had leaked into his abdominal cavity, and he had become septic. Our father was the bread winner for our family. My mom has been disabled for a large part of her life and struggled with mobility even in small distances. My father had been her only source of income for years. Anything that disabilities didn’t cover, he would have to. She hasn’t been able to purchase one thing for herself in at least 10 years. Everything she has is from my dad, my sisters, or myself. So, when my dad passed, it left her financially struggling. She would cry for hours out of the day for months and months. At just under six months after my dads passing, almost exactly one year after my grandmothers passing, my mom caught covid. She has had complications with her breathing for most of her life, so this was extremely dangerous for her. After about a week and a half of her not improving but not worsening, her condition suddenly just dropped over night. She was rushed to hospital, the same one that my father passed at. We come to find out that she had developed pneumonia and pancreatitis. Also, she had become ileus, which essentially means her bowels had stopped working. We were informed that over the next 48 hours she had become critical twice. But after some time, she started to recover. Things were rough and there were a lot of ups and downs but eventually she had recovered to a decent state. An issue had occurred though. As she had already had issues with mobility, being bed ridden for over a month, she had next near no ability to move herself. She couldn’t stand, walk, or even roll herself in bed. So, it was decided that she would need physical therapy. So, she was moved to a nursing home in Parma. When she arrived there, she had started complaining about some abdominal pain. The attending nurse took a look at her and informed us that it was no big deal. This issue persisted for days, and I personally had to make several different phone calls to the facility trying to persuade them to take a look at her. She would call us at all hours crying in pain. This went on for several days. The nurses did do blood work, but with her having been ileus before arriving I personally asked them to check for bowel issues. The nurse I talked to informed me that they already had and there were no bowel issues once so ever. Well, she then began sending us random text messages, completely incoherent, practically gibberish at times. This was very alarming to us so of course we once again contacted them explaining what she was doing. We explained the messages and told them that when she would call, she was entirely out of it. I had asked if she had been placed on morphine or some drug. They told me that she was fine that she was not on any drug. They told me that they were just in there and she could answer yes or no questions and that was good enough for them not to be concerned. Over the next three days we had several family members and friends go to visit her, but she was not all there. Everyone pleaded with the nurses, including my aunt who is an ex-nurse. But their answer was always the same. On the night of Wednesday, the 16th my mom had a fall. I was notified the next morning at 7:01 am that she had attempted to leave her bed to go to the restroom and on her way she fell. This struck me as odd as she has been unable to move herself for weeks. They told me that besides a small bump on her foot she was uninjured. At 7:29 am I received another call from them. They told me that the night before they decided to investigate whether she was ileus and the test had implied that she could be and that there could be a small bowel obstruction. The told me that they were sending her back to the hospital. At 9:20, nearly two hours later, I receive a phone call from the hospital notifying me that she never made it to them. She had died before even reaching them. There is only a 1.3-mile drive from the nursing home to the ER. Its four minutes if I drive it myself let alone an emergency vehicle. There was a nearly 2 hour gap between the decision to send her, and her actually arriving at the hospital. She went into cardiac arrest as they moved her into the ambulance. She passed seven months after my dad.

These back to back deaths and complications have resulted in an intense about of strain on my family. I had to dropped out of my classes in order to work enough to cover all the bills. We had to hire two lawyers to assist us. There are a lot of complications and we are trying our best to work around them. Here is a quick break down of what the funds would be used for:

Paying back the borrowed money for the two cremations.

Paying the lawyers to deal with my dads' assets.

Paying the lawyers to deal with my moms' assets.

Paying bills that would interfere with transferring my moms' house into my name

Any debts that can't be extinguished

I don't like asking for help, but anything you can donate would be appreciated. However, I do not want someone to put themselves in financial struggles just to help us, so please only donate if you are able.