Horacio De Jesus Rivas was my father, who endured many health struggles over his last few years of life. He was a hard worker who migrated from Nicaragua with our mother, in hopes to give his family better opportunities in the United States. Throughout his struggles, whether from his hard childhood to his health problems, he had that will to keep going and never give up, until his health issues vastly grew too complex.

In 2008, my dad was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes, and he went in for an emergency amputation on his left foot, due to an infection that was manifesting. He had cut it close, as the infection almost spread throughout his blood system. He survived.

In 2010, he was hospitalized again on his amputation site because of an infection. He acquired MRSA, but he survived.

In 2011, he went into diabetic shock where his blood sugar dropped to critical levels. Through another hospital visit, he survived, once again. He was such a fighter.

As the years went on, due to the diabetes worsening, he lost most of his vision and his blood circulation was uneven throughout his body. He also became fragile, so he could not walk for long periods of time without becoming exhausted.

2015 was the worst of his years. Early this summer, he was diagnosed with kidney failure and was hospitalized TWICE in the summer. The first time, I took him in because he could not keep any food down, and he complained about a burning feeling in his chest/stomach. The second time, he was rushed in because he had evidence of a minor stroke, which left him partially paralyzed on the left side of his body. His ultimate goal was to receive physical therapy until he was well enough to travel back to Nicaragua once more. The struggle was trying to get him started on the dialysis that he needed to keep going.

In August after his 2nd hospitalization, he finally accepted dialysis, but for those who do not know, dialysis is a stressful medical process on the body that is done, due to the kidneys not being able to perform its job anymore of cleaning out the entire blood system. It was quite a difficult process for our father to endure.

Through complications and tough decisions he made, he suffered a heart attack on 12/17. From dialysis, he was brought to the AZ Heart Hospital and was not completely coherent. From there, he also suffered two strokes - one on each side of the brain - which unfortunately caused major damage to both hemispheres of the brain. After being off sedation for almost 72 hours, he no longer woke up and had very little brain activity left. As a family, we allowed him to go peacefully on December 21st, 2015, as he has previously told us he wanted if he ever got to that point.



My sister, brother, and I are currently trying to raise money to help cremate our dad and hold memorial services for his loved ones. My dad's final dying wish was to be cremated so each of his kids could have a part of his ashes in memory. Since he was unable to make it to Nicaragua to pass away, we want to make this final wish come true for him.

We will be ever so thankful if you can help us fulfill this. We understand this may be a rough time to donate since it is the holidays, but if we could have any gift for Christmas, it would be to help our dad go the way he wanted to. He endured such a rough 63 years of life... he completely deserves to have his wish come true. Please help him and his family reach his goal.