By early February, 2020, I had been receiving unsettling text messages and phone calls from and about my brother Don. I learned that he had started feeling out of breath and had difficulty walking since about May 2019, but didn't tell me anything was wrong until Christmas Eve. He was so much like our dad — quiet, not wanting to bother anyone, etc. Anyway, the news kept getting worse and worse, so on Feb 20, I went to La Quinta to see what was what.
I learned fast that everything was even worse than I had thought. He was deep into congestive heart failure, but we didn't learn how deep until the angiogram on Mar 3. His cardiologist said that he had probably been having silent coronaries for at least 20 years, and the damage was so thorough that there was nothing to "fix." The only medical help would be a heart transplant. I was crushed.
Fortunately, I had been in touch with David and Stacy, and plans were already in the works for them to move their dad to Anchorage and live with David. (Stacy doesn't live very far away.) They arrived on the day after Don's angiogram and the cardiologist came in and explained everything again. All of us were crushed, and news about a heart transplant wasn't good. Stacy said, "We just want to take our dad home." And that's what they did.
I returned home on Mar 7, and the three of them flew from Los Angeles to Anchorage on Mar 8-9 (an overnight, non-stop flight). All of us were becoming more and more aware of this pandemic, and that overnight flight meant no changing planes in Seattle. Excellent move, I thought.
Don seemed to be settling in just fine at David's. Stacy took him to his first primary-care doctor's appointment on the 11th, and he made an appointment with his new cardiologist. But he developed an infection in one leg, and over the weekend of Mar 14-15, David took him to the ER. Don was admitted so the infection could be fought, but with his kidneys shutting down and his heart pumping at less than 10%, the infection spread to his bloodstream, and he passed away during the night of Mar 18.
I'm still heartbroken.
