Many people know Mr. Russ as a strong, sweet, loving, kind, independent, hard-working, family-oriented man. For the past 2 years or so, he has been in and out of the hospital with CO-related breathing issues. Not long ago, we found out he also had a bad heart with only 20% of it working.

Mr. Russ ended up back in the hospital about 3 weeks ago with what we thought was just going to be his routine CO level stay, but this time he had a lot of fluid on his body. This time around was so much different, so much worse! We found out his body had taken a real beating; to add to the bad heart, his kidneys and liver were giving up on him also. Last Tuesday, he went into cardiac arrest twice. Once for 6 minutes, then for 2 minutes. They ended up bringing him back, but he had to be intubated. They also had him going through dialysis to try to help his kidneys.

Yesterday, on December 19th, they took out his breathing tube. We all went up to see him. He couldn’t talk, but he was communicating with us the best he could. He looked SOOOO GOOD. Then, about 10 pm last night, we got a call from the hospital telling us he was getting agitated and his numbers were all over the place. A few minutes later, another call came through telling us he was gone. They tried everything they could to save him; his body was just too weak to beat it this time.

If you can find it in your heart to donate to a man that always went above and beyond to help anyone he could, please help us put the man that tried to give us the world a proper resting. Our lives are now forever turned upside down, and it is going to take a long time, if ever, to get the turn back right. Thank you in advance to anyone who can help. Every little bit helps!!