December 20, 2008

I've lost another young friend to an untimely death

I went to school with Michele, but did not know her well. She was 39. She was taken off the ventilator Wednesday morning and I will be attending her funeral today at noon. What happened is so odd:

On Friday at about 3:00 pm Michele was coming home from picking up (daughter) Kelon at school. She called Troy and told him she did not feel good. She was to call him when she got home. She made it to the driveway and then she passed out. Kelon ran and got the neighbor. The lady called 911 and the man did CPR until the EMS got there. When EMS arrived she had gone into full cardiac arrest and was 'gone'. They brought her back and took her to Lexington Medical. She is in ICU (4th floor) in extremely critical condition. The doctor's do not know what happened to cause this. She is in a coma and on full life support. They have not had any response out of her since. They had put her body into hypothermia and lowered her temp to 90 to try to preserve her organs and brain cells. The initial test show that her lungs, liver, kidneys are all working fine. All the other tests show nothing wrong. Everything is working fine except her brain. They have her on a medicine for the heart and they have tried to take her off of it but her heart starts racing because her brain is not telling her heart what to do. She is still on the two heart meds. They did initial brain tests to determine a base line for activity and there was nothing. They began last night raising her body temp back to normal so that they can test for brain activity. So far there has been nothing. As of 10:30 am this morning she is the same. No change. Troy said that her body is swollen but the doctors say that that is probably due to all the fluids that they are giving her. The biggest issues are... how long was she without oxygen and why did it happen to start with. They do not know the answer to either of those questions. They are waiting on the brain doctor to determine if there is any brain activity since they raised her temp to the core they needed. The doctors have given her a 10% chance.

If I hear anything new at the funeral, I will update. Please pray for her family.

Oh, by the way, her brother Frankie had died on Christmas Eve several years ago. I do not know the details. How horribly tragic for her parents and family members.

4 comments:

Tawnya said...

I am so sorry to hear about your friend... I will keep her, her family, and you in my prayers... I will be thinking of you...

Kathy said...

That is a tragic story. How sad for that family. I will pray for them and you.

Unknown said...

I am sorry to hear about your friend.

Chris/cacklinrosie101 said...

Oh my gosh, Phyllis, this has been an extremely bad month for you. I will keep all in my prayers. HUGS