An unexpected ending

Since I knew I would be away from home for the familial meeting in Chicago at the end of this month, I was planning on doing an article review this week for my October post and then some posts in November to cover the familial meeting. Well, plans change.

It with great sadness that I report that Mom died unexpectedly this past weekend, most likely Saturday night, October 17, 2015.

The last contact anyone had with her was when my sister Laura called her at 8:45 PM Saturday night, shortly after taking her back home after they attended a marching band competition one of Laura's sons was performing in. On Sunday morning I sent Mom some pictures of a project I was working on at home that I know she was interested in, and I became concerned when I did not get a reply. When I contacted both my sisters after lunch and they also could not contact Mom, I became concerned and went to her house to check on her. To say I had an uneasy feeling during that drive would be an understatement. I found her deceased at 2:30 PM.

I will spare you the detailed account of the rest of that day, but based on what I have been able to piece together it looks like Mom's AV fistula in her right arm started bleeding profusely while she was in the bathroom just before going to bed Saturday night. She was unable to stop the bleeding and made it back into her bedroom, presumably to call for help on her phone or with the medical alert device on the nightstand. She appears to have passed out due to the blood loss when she reached her bed. I really do not think it would have made any difference if she had called for help, given the ongoing bleeding.

The dialysis clinic recently stopped using Mom's buttonholes for dialysis access, and one of them was not healing very well. Mom was concerned about that due to the possibility of infection and was keeping an adhesive bandage over it. My speculation is that this buttonhole access was the source of the bleeding. Unbeknownst to me, these fistula bleeds are not terribly uncommon. We contacted a company to do the cleanup after the representative from funeral home came and went, and they told us they get four or five similar calls every year where a fistula has opened up. And they are aware of only one survivor among their cases in the past five years.

Here are the funeral arrangements:

Visitation will be Thursday, October 22, 6 PM - 8 PM
DeBerry Funeral Directors
2025 West University Drive
Denton, TX 76201

Funeral Service will be Friday, October 23, at 10:00 AM in the chapel at DeBerry Funeral Directors.

Burial will follow at New Hope Cemetery in Mountain Springs, Texas.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Amyloidosis Support Groups (http://amyloidosissupport.org/donations_form.html) or the charity of your choice.

That's all I will write for now, but I'm sure there will be more at some point. I will post the obituary or a link to it once it is published. I do still plan on going to the familial meeting in Chicago next week, which is going to be difficult.

=====Monthly Blog Status Update===== 

As of September 30, 2015:

Total posts: 156 (1 in September)

Total pageviews: 29,400 (~500 in August)

Email subscribers: 12 (unchanged)

Total number of countries that have viewed the blog: 105

No new countries visited the blog in September.

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