What Happened
recounted by her son Justin
On Sunday Oct. 17th, 2010, Aranka went to New York for a hypnotherapy workshop. On Tuesday while there she got what she thought was food poisoning and slipped and fell rushing to the bathroom to throw up. When she fell she hurt her back pretty badly. She was rushed to a clinic in New York and they wouldn't honour her Travel Health Insurance so she was only able to afford a superficial exam and they gave her some muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatories for the pain. None of us knew what had happened because her cell phone wasn't working down there and she was bed ridden and the only way we could reach her was through email and she wasn't writing. But she managed to make the plane back and when I picked her up at the airport on Friday she looked really awful and told me what had happened. She hadn't eaten anything in a few days but she thought it was just nausea from the food poisoning and the medication for her back. I took her back to my place in Toronto and she just wanted to sleep and was in a lot of pain. I was also worried about her blood sugar levels because she is a Type 2 diabetic but she hadn't brought her blood sugar monitor with her to New York.
Saturday afternoon a friend came over and we were able to use her blood sugar monitor to test my mom's blood sugar and it was really high. We called Telehealth Canada and they insisted we rush her to the hospital. So I took her down to St. Joseph's Hospital near my house and she was rushed in to emergency. My siblings Damon and Teia met us down there. At first they thought she might be having a heart attack because her heart beat was so irregular, but x-rays showed she had a lung infection and blood tests confirmed that she had pneumonia and was in septic shock. So we had to start wearing masks to protect ourselves because pneumonia is really contagious. She was also very short of breath, constantly thirsty and in a lot of pain. Early Sunday morning they admitted her to the Intensive Care Unit. Her Blood pressure was dangerously low and she kept getting worse. Sunday afternoon they were continuing to give her lots of antibiotics to fight the pneumonia and telling us we just had to wait. Later that day she was having so much trouble breathing that she agreed to be sedated and intubated.
When I saw her knocked out with a machine doing her breathing for her I got really scared and started to worry that she was going to die and the doctors were telling us that it was very serious. I went home and read online that about 40% of all sepsis cases don't make it and was feeling really upset. Late that night I got a phone call from the hospital saying that my Mom had become really unstable and we needed to get down there right away. Damon and Teia met me down there and a surgeon talked to us. She was gathering fluid and puss between her heart and the membrane surrounding her heart. They were trying to drain it but it just kept filling up again and it was keeping the heart from beating properly. They told us that they needed to do emergency surgery to install drainage tubes to keep the fluid draining out and if they didn't act right away she would most certainly die. So we consented and an hour and a half later she came out of surgery and it had went without complications. At that point they told us again just how serious the situation was and that we just had to wait for the antibiotics to start to heal her system, and they warned us that she would probably need to be put on dialysis soon.
Monday her condition didn't improve except for a little improvement with the infection in her lungs and the surgeon told us that there was a really high chance that she wouldn't make it. But they still had hope that she would pull through and insisted we not give up hope yet because they hadn't. They did a procedure to look down her throat with a scope to see if she had gotten a hole in her esophagus from vomiting while in New York as that might explain how bacteria had gotten in to the rest of her system. But when they looked they found nothing. They then theorized that when she was vomiting and fell she may have inhaled some vomit in to her lungs and that could have caused the pneumonia, but they still felt puzzled as to how sepsis had come on so quickly and why it had effected her heart in this way.
Tuesday the infection in her lungs had improved somewhat but she was still on ten different medications for high blood sugar, heart pressure, pain, and to keep her sedated and they said that her liver and kidneys were under considerable strain and were failing but they could still potentially recover. They started her on dialysis which she was on almost constantly for the three weeks she was in the I.C.U. Her condition stabilized somewhat but she was still in critical condition and we waited and hoped to see signs of improvement.
Over the days that followed there were many little ups and downs and though there were signs of hope in her condition at times, overall she failed to make any dramatic signs of improvement. We were with her every single day as well as other members of her family and some close friends and we all showered her with love and healing energy and struggled to stay positive in spite of the serious prognosis we were hearing from her doctors.
After two weeks of being constantly sedated they took her off of sedation to ensure that there had been no neurological damage. After a few days she was able to open her eyes and respond to our questions by nodding her head yes or shaking her head no and she communicated to us that she wanted to keep fighting and trying to get better. We told her we loved her and talked to her as much as possible but she was only aware for short periods of time and would fade in and out.
During the third week that she was in the I.C.U. her condition continued to worsen including the development of a blood clot in her left hand and an infection in one of her heart valves. In spite of everything the doctors and nurses were doing to give her a fighting chance, she kept developing more infection in her system and her liver and kidneys failed to show any signs of recovery.
Early in the morning on November 19th, 2010, we were called in to the hospital because her blood pressure had started to drop dramatically and they couldn't stabilize it. We rushed to the hospital and stayed with her all morning watching her blood pressure drop lower and lower even though she was on the maximum amount of blood pressure medication that they could give her.
In spite of the doctor's best efforts they could not bring it back up again, even after removing her from dialysis, and it became clear that her body was too weak to recover from her condition, and we had to make the decision to let her go as compassionately as possible. So based on the Doctor's recommendation, and after discussing it amongst the three of us, Damon, Teia and I made the difficult choice to stop her blood pressure medications. Even with them we only could have postponed her slipping away for a few more hours at best and wanted to protect her from any unnecessary suffering. At this point her body - taking into account all of the infections and physical damage she was battling - was just too compromised. After removing her from the medications her blood pressure gently dropped to the point that her breathing and heart beat just stopped, and around 11:20am Aranka passed away peacefully surrounded by family and close friends.
A few days later Mom was privately cremated in Peterborough as per her wishes. She was very clear her whole life that she wanted to be cremated and did not want to have a typical funeral, so on Dec. 5th, 2010 we organized a well attended Celebration of Life ceremony in Peterborough to honour and remember her.
We remember the love and joy that her life brought to us and celebrate the time she spent with us. She brought love to so many in her life and will be missed. She was an important part of her community, a wonderful friend, and in many ways a mother to all. We hope that you will join us in remembering the warmth and love with which she lived her life.
With love,
Justin, Damon and Teia