In Memory of Don: Assist His Family

Story

I'm Jami. My dad is Don. On March 15th my dad had a fall and broke his humerus bone. He was outside with my 10 year old daughter trying to fix a privacy fence that the wind had broken. While he was trying to fix it the wind blew the fence into him and he flew back at least 10 feet onto his arm. The next night he had another fall due to the broken arm and not being able to use it. My brother was able to get him up with my oldest sons help and he was acting different. So, they took him to the ER where they found a bleed on his brain. It was a severe bleed ( my dad was on blood thinners as well) they went in on March 17th and did the 1st craniotomy. Then again on March 18th he had a 2nd craniotomy. Things from there got much worse. He had severe seizures lasting 6 to 7 minutes continously for over 36 hours. Then he developed many infections in his lungs the worst being MRSA pneumonia. He had clots that traveled from his legs into his lungs and they became infected. He had an empyema. They did a thoracentesis and again they had to go back in for another thoracentesis and put in a chest tube at that time. They then told us he had been on the oral ventilator for too long that we had to switch him to a tracheostomy with ventilator and a j-tube. After that we saw a great decline in my dad. I tried speaking with a neurologist for 2 weeks and could never get anyone to get back with me. Finally, I was able to get trauma to get neurology to do another EEG on my dad and then they made a day where we had the family meet with trauma and neurology. At that meeting they said the seizures had caused severe and irreversible brain damage. They gave him a 5 % chance of waking up but, with no quality of life. They then moved him to a small hospital where he continued to decline and we had to make the choice to compassionately wean him off the ventilator. We did that yesterday April 25th at 2p and he breathed on his own for 12 hours and passed away at 1:59a. My dad was the best grandpa and dad anyone could ever ask for. He was well liked in our community. A great man all around. It's so expensive for after life care. My dad was on social security and had no life insurance. My brother and I just don't have the money we need to progress on the next steps of his after life. I hate asking for help but, in this case we desperately need it. Thank you so much.