Brain Dead Therapeutic Hyperthermia and W;t

“And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”

After midnight on October 10, 2011, about the night before

Dear Jonathan,

            I’ll start with the sad news.  We visited your Nani last night at John Muir Hospital, but I’m not sure she was really there anymore.  We should know more in 48 hours.

She’s undergoing therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest, but she’s not breathing on her own, and there isn’t any response or brain activity.  (Is it possible that there isn’t any brain activity?  How could that possibly be without her being declared dead?  That must have been a misunderstanding!)

            I had the invitations ready to give to Kathy at noon after I saw Mom today.  But I got a call from Sarah Jane, the nurse and head of Aegis Living a bit after 6:00 PM. last night. She said that mom had started choking on her food, and it was about the time that she, Sarah Jane, was going in to the dining room to visit.  Mom had removed a denture but there was clearly some food still blocking the passage, and she was having trouble breathing.  Sarah did what she could to help Mom, and they called 9-1-1.  When they got there about four minutes later, Mom had no pulse, but they were able to resuscitate her; she still couldn’t breathe.  They took her to “the nearest hospital,” John Muir.   (Kaiser is really closer, it turns out.)  I called and talked to the doctor, who told me Mom would recognize me—she wasn’t responding at all—but that I could come in.  He also said they were doing everything they could to keep her alive but needed to know her wishes, and I told him that she wanted everything possible to be done unless there was no possibility of getting well, no brain function. Kathy, Suzy and I met there last night.   We got to see her, but of course that was of no comfort to Mom—maybe to us because I feel that there’s something about the physical presence that I need in addition to all the things that can’t be touched.

            While we were waiting for them to let us see Mom, we talked, and Kathy said she’d seen Mom earlier in the day, and she’d been in pretty good spirits.  She made some comment about Kathy’s hair getting white but didn’t think Kathy’s getting it dyed purple was a good idea. 

            Suzy said that she (Suzy) had recently seen Emma Thompson in W;t and thought it was wonderful.  I told her that you and I had seen the play.  Did Mom go with us?  Did Kathy?  I know we were with them afterwards.  Was that in 1999?  Suzy remembered the line and the punctuation of the John Donne poem, “And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.”  It was just a comma, meaning that death really wasn’t such a big deal. 

            This morning, so I could tell you, I looked through W;t again.   In the play in print form, Vivian, the John Donne professor re-assessing her life, teaching,  and the meaning of John Donne, says, “And Death—capital D—shall be no more—semicolon.  Death—capital D—thou shalt die—ex-cla-mation point!”

            I’m glad you have your ticket.  My feel is that Mom’s 90^th birthday party may be her memorial service.  But you never know.  As I was crossing the Bay Bridge last night, I thought about the times I’d crossed it after being told that David might not make it.  Then he did.  I think the doctor told us that hyperthermia after cardiac arrest was to see whether, once the body was heated up again, some brain activity would come back. 

            And on the subject of David, Suzy saw him yesterday or the day before and he, without any prompting, asked when he would see Mom.  (I’ve been telling him that he will.)  We had plans to bring him to Aegis, maybe to the garden, on Mom’s actual birthday.  It makes me sad that that will probably not happen.  She’s also asked about him.