Not long after I started blogging here, I wrote that my wife was ill, and could die soon. That was in 2006.
Then, for over a year, she was okay. Last month she started getting sick again, and I wrote about her again.
Update. I am flabbergasted and gratified at your reaction to this diary. This is the first time I got a diary on the rec list.
For me, daily kos is a place I can pour my heart out, on any topic. Everything relates to politics, so I have no problem connecting anything I write to progressive politics.
Read the diaries of exmearden. They are never shrill, and always moving. She writes about the death of her father. She writes about her abortion.
Anyway, thank you again. A diary on the rec list. Amazing. Nearly 900 tips. Nearly 500 comments. Amazing. Thank you again.
So, now you know I was not just acting out the role of the boy who cried wolf.
At about ten am, on Tuesday, eleventh of March, the doctor took the breathing tube out of my wife's lungs, and therefore took her off the ventilator.
They put a bi-pap machine on her, which has a mask over her nose and mouth, and pushes air in, as a milder, less forceful way of helping her breathe. A thing she could go home with. This is what had happened every time before. She had always gotten strong enough on the bi-pap machine to come home.
But this time, she was not strong enough. Her oxygen saturation went down to about 50%, and her heart stopped. They tried to start it, but she was gone.
I was not at the hospital when it happened.
This story ties in with the politics of daily kos, because I have been feeling great stress, caused by my wife's illness, for years now. I have been dealing with this stress by blogging here with you, my fellow kossacks. This place gives me a community of people to discuss my troubles with. And, as I discuss my troubles, it is easy to make the connection to politics.
For example, capitalism has no place in mental health care.
If I am feeling great stress because my wife is dying, you should not say one word to me about money I must pay out of pocket for my mental health care. That would add to my stress. Duh.
I could go on, and talk about Obama and make all connections with all things, because all things are connected. But I want to get this diary out for you to read.
By the way, I am feeling much better now. Better than I did when my wife was very ill, but still alive. Better than I did on the day she died, or the day after.
I am learning to use the phone to call people, so that I do not feel lonely.
And I am writing this to all of you, so I will not feel lonely. So, if you have read this far, please give me mojo, rec, and especially take a minute to write a little comment.
In your comment, keep in mind that I am an atheist. So, I will not agree with you if you write that she is in a better place, dancing with the angels, now that she is no longer in a wheelchair. She is dead, and she is buried in Hays, Kansas. The only thing that lives on is the ideas and habits that she taught me over the 35 years I knew her. And that is a lot.
So, big things do live on, things that came from her. Her parents, by the way, paid for everything. They buried her in their family plot.
There is so much I need to do, so many phone calls to make. And, I will soon be sorting through hundreds of plush toys my wife collected over her lifetime. I will keep a few, and get rid of the rest.
I will sell her old, 1993 Ford Econoline van, with wheelchair lift. I do not know if I will sell the lift separately or what.
Anyway, I may write about topics that come up related to my new situation. And I will connect them all to politics. Thank you, all of you, for your companionship in my time of need. It really helps.