This Was One of the Worst Days of My LIfe

My heart sank as I heard my Mama's voice on the phone, "Heather come to the hospital, your Uncle Bear quit breathing, his blood pressure bottomed out and his pulse is not good, but they got him breathing again. Get here!" All I could do was start praying, it felt as though my feet were going to fall out from under me as I ran down the hallway at school, hallways that got longer and longer the faster I tried to run. I got to my classroom and I couldn't find my keys, I found them and then I couldn't find my phone, in trying to find my phone I lost my keys again. When I found my keys the second time, I forgot all about the lost phone until I got to my car and then I had to back in the building and look for the freakin' phone. I found it! By this time I was shaking so hard I thought I would fall over but I managed to pull it together enough to drive to the hospital, get a prayer chain started, and call Joey, oh yeah and cry, scream, beg and plead with God to save my Uncle Bear's life!



Let me go back a bit, Uncle Bear has not felt really good for about two weeks. He had started having uncontrollable nose bleeds. He has had an infection in his foot that has been going on for months and months (he has nueropathy where the nerve endings die and had already had the other leg amputated from the same type of infection) about Thursday of last week he started feeling really bad and had quit eating, was really shaky, and his infected leg which had been really red and inflamed just passed his ankle was now like that up to his knee with white splotches. All of last weekend everyone tried to get him to go the doctor/emergency room with no luck. I went by this morning to check on him and he was in the shower, before that Mom had gone by and tried to make him eat a little bit, I don't know if he did or not, and one of my aunts said he had begun to haluconate(sp). He continually refused to go to the doctor until this morning. Thank God someone drove him to the doctor! On the way to the doctor this morning is when he quit breathing from my understanding so they went on to the hospital here in Tipton Co. They put the respirator on him, got him stabilzed and sent him to a better equipped hospital in Memphis.



So, the doctor has told us that the infection from his leg has gotten into his blood stream and was septic. It has gone to all parts of his body including his brain and if he comes out of this the doctor cannot garauntee(sp) he won't have some brain damage. He said he may not, but he can't say he will not. Doctors told us tonight that we need to discuss whether he would want to donate his organs and as a family if we would want him kept on life support or to be ressuitated(sp) in the event that it is needed.



Right now machines are keeping him alive because that is the course of treatment. The antibiotics the docs are giving him are so stringint that if given in a vein the vein would explode so it is given in a central line. The medicine will also make him much sicker before he gets any better, which scares all of us beyond belief.



This picture says it all. My Uncle Bear is so funny, the life of the party. He can always make you laugh as you can see. Uncle Bear is our touch stone, he holds us together and loves all of us unconditionally. I told him and Aunt Linda I was pregnant before I told Mama and Daddy. They were the first people to come see Hannah the night she was born, still on the respirator, and the first to see her after she'd come home from the hospital. My uncle is the most kind and gentle man I have ever know. I have never seen him angry, only loving, kind, and gentle. I need him in my life and Hannah adores hime too. When I was a little girl and I went somewhere with him people always thought that I was his daughter because he and I looked alike. Please say a prayer. We love him soooooo much!!!!!!!!! We need him as selfish as that is, we just need him.