The fact that the brothers can be together for the rest of the week. They are all in their 50s and haven't lived in the same state for over 25 years. Sometimes they were all able to get in for the same holidays, but not always, because everyone had in-laws, too. They have always been close, so I hope they get to enjoy the time together, though it will be stressful. The auction to sell their parents' farm, business, and all their belongings is this week. They had to put their mother in a memory care facility last month, and between getting the autopsy/hospital report back, the sale of where they called home, and most of their parents' things, and now this wreck has been very stressful on them.
Being a good kind of tired. Got up early and went all day. It sure is better than being exhausted lying around the house like last week.
The weather has been so fallish for a few days. It is so nice. Of course, it will go back up soon, but it has been lovely. I love fall!
The nephews finally got the autopsy, and the hospital reports that pretty much pieced together all the strangeness and mystery of my BILs last three days before he was found unresponsive and taken to the hospital and put on life support for days before they decided that he was brain dead and suggested that the plug be pulled. Since I shared all the weirdness then, I will share what they found if anyone is interested. If not stop now. It seems that it was a perfect storm of events.
A few months before the accident, he had been having trouble with his blood sugar going wildly high, though he was on several diabetic meds and insulin. He was put on high doses of Ozempic to bring his sugar down. It had started working too well and had caused him to go low a few times already, but he had not told the doctors, so he stayed on the same dose. Having more frequent lows. He and my husband both can tell when they are going low, even when asleep, and take glucose or drink juice. Then they usually take something to stabilize them after getting back in the normal range.
He had been alone for a week because his son, who is a nurse, picked up Mom to spend a week at their house so they could take her to a specialist because she was having memory issues. They suspected early dementia or Alzheimer's. Dad refused to go because he said he had too much to do. While she was gone, three days before he was found unresponsive, he had fallen out of the back of a truck trying to load a lawnmower up a ramp into the truck. It had come back out of the truck partially on top of him. He couldn't get up. A neighbor heard him yelling and took him to the hospital, where they strapped his broken ribs and gave him muscle relaxers and pain relievers, and sent him home. He didn't tell anyone in the family about the fall.
He had been on OxyContin for years from an incident at St Thomas Hospital in Nashville, where they had some tainted steroids that they had put into his back for back pain. He ended up with a brain and spinal infection and was in the ICU for three months. He was the second one that lived out of dozens that died. It was in the news for weeks. He had terrible nerve pain after and would often have to take OxyContin for it.
The son brought his mother back home in the afternoon, stayed awhile, and had to leave to get back home so he and his wife could work the next day. Still, Dad told no one about his fall or his ribs, just said he wasn't feeling well later on, took his meds, and went to bed. Just a normal night. His wife said she heard something in the early hours of the morning and checked on him when he didn't get up because we become attuned to them going low at night, both he and my husband frequently go low about 2-5 AM when adjusting new meds. It has always awakened them, and it usually awakens us wives because sometimes they are too weak to get up and get juice or glucose for themselves. When she checked on him, he didn't answer her; he was cold and clammy as they are when they go low, but she couldn't wake him up. She called the neighbor because she didn't know what to do. She was still mostly lucid, but sometimes things would set her off, usually stress, and she would just be lost. The neighbor came over, calling 911 on the way. He said he tried to do CPR but didn't really know how. It was 15 minutes from the time the neighbor got the call from her until the ambulance got there. They managed to get his heart beating again and took him to the hospital. The tests they made when he got there said he had all his regular meds, all the diabetic meds, Ozempic, the muscle relaxer, and OxyContin. Evidently, he was hurting enough that he took the Oxy instead of the pain meds the hospital had prescribed him. They think that the Ozempic and all the other diabetic drugs caused his blood sugar to go low, the muscle relaxer and OxyContin together had made him sleep so soundly that he didn't wake when he started going low. He was unresponsive for at least 15 minutes before EMTs got his heartbeat back.
The rural hospital where he lived ran tests on him and found all the medications that he had taken and found that he had also had a stroke and that part of his brain was damaged but although they said it wasn't a vital area and the rest was most likely alright he was still in a coma so they deemed him too severe for their hospital and sent him to Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, over an hour away.
When he arrived in Nashville, he had a fever and tested positive for a virus. They administered antiviral meds until he no longer ran a fever and no longer tested positive. When they were finally ready to do a more intense brain scan, a few days later, they said he had had another stroke and none of his brain was alive. They pulled the plug. The biggest trouble was that neither of the hospitals wanted to tell the family anything at the time. With two nurses in the family and an engineer, I am sure that someone was intelligent enough to understand if they had told them. They were in the dark about all of these things and had to piece them together after recently getting the hospital report from both ER visits and both hospital stays as well as the autopsy and talking to the neighbor. It was sure a wild and crazy ride for everyone involved.
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