This has been a pretty difficult, emotional day. I needed to make some end of life decisions with Kendall’s medical team, and discussed in detail what it would look like having the family come to the hospital to see him.
They will probably be taking Kendall off of the ventilator tomorrow morning. Did you know that ventilators are usually only used as temporary fixes? That it is unusual for someone to be on them for more than 10-14 days? That they only put someone on a ventilator if they believe he or she will be able to come back off of it relatively soon? I didn’t before today. Kendall is on more than one life-support machine and has been for more than a week. While the hope is that off the ventilator his body will be able to breathe on his own and his various organs will be able to start working again, if things don’t go well there are not currently plans to re-intubate him.
I also had some very honest one-on-one talks with each of my children about what was happening, and about what they would want a good-bye with their dad to look like. We set up a video chat tonight with Kendall’s nurses so that the kids could get to see Kendall’s room, they explained what all of the machines in there were for, and then they got to see their dad for the first time in several weeks. I had prepped them to know to expect the different things he is hooked up to, and I felt like overall it went well. Seeing Kendall through a screen seemed like a less frightening way to get used to things, so it wouldn’t be so startling seeing him in person. While we still have hope that it won’t come to that, the doctors have been very upfront with me explaining that that’s the way things are most likely headed.
I have a jumble of different emotions that I’m not quite ready to untangle. Certainly there have been many tears. There were several times today that I was faced with situations or conversations that I have been dreading, not knowing how I was going to handle them. And yet, I did feel guided in the moment to know what to say, or to understand what Kendall would have wanted. And I’m grateful. It helps me trust that I’ll be able to face and handle whatever happens in the next few days. One step at a time.
(I just realized that it has been exactly six months ago today that Kendall had the surgery on his spine. Looking at pictures of our family that feels like such a lifetime ago. So very much has happened between then and now.)
