A Long Time

I want to apologize to everyone out there that views our blog. We have not posted any information for a long time. To catch everyone up on events: On October 18 I was talking to my dad about my mom. He said she was not doing very well (she had back surgery 7 weeks earlier and was back and forth between rehab and the hospital). On Monday 10/18 evening Tennille and I decided that we needed to all go out to Utah. We didn't fly...we drove. We packed our belongings in about 4 hours and headed to Utah on the morning of 10/19 at 2AM. We drove for about 3 hours and were exhausted so we stopped somewhere in Alabama off the side of the road for a 1 hour nap. We then resumed our journey. We drove again until just before Kansas City and had to pull over again for 2 hours. We had more energy then and continued to switch drivers (Tennille and myself) until we were in Nebraska. We found a corn field and pulled off. We were between the field and a tractor (this provided shelter form the headlights). We stayed in place for 2 more hours in that field, with a full moon shining down on us. We woke up and finished the last sprint to Utah. We arrived in Salt Lake City Wednesday (10/20) evening about 5:30PM. We saw my brother, sister and my dad. We talked for a moment and then went to see my mom in the ICU. She was on a ventilator and was being supported with two medications to keep her blood pressure up. She was also very full of fluid...21 liters in the positive. (That is 10 1/2 soda bottles of extra fluid). She was placed on dialysis due to kidney failure. She was dialyzed for that night and Thursday night. On Friday morning she had not improved other than some fluid being removed. We had met as a family and decided that we did not think mom would want to continue like this. We had tried everything and she still was not improving. Friday night we had the medicines removed and the ventilator turned off. She was given some medicine to help her relax and also to prevent air hunger. She passed away quickly and peacefully about 8:15PM on Friday 10/22. We had her funeral on 10/28. We began our drive home on 10/29 at 3PM. We arrived back in Florida on 11/1 at 1AM. Tennille has posted some of the pictures from our journey. We miss you Mom and we love you!