Sadness

I'm here to tell you it is possible to make a 24 hour drive cramped in the back seat of a Toyota 4 runner half the time, stopping every 2 hours to take a 5 minute walk around, and come out of it with no problems. I had to do this twice last week. The first time was when I got the call from my niece saying my sister was in the ICU in Pueblo Colorado on life support. Yes We (myself, my daughter, my son and my 2 grandchildren) rushed down there as quickly as possible. All any of us could figure was she had a syncope episode and passed out on the floor and it was at least 10 minutes before anyone found her so 10 minutes without oxygen is bad news. When paramedics got their she still had a faint heart beat (or so they say) and brought her back. She was intubated in the field and rushed to the nearest hospital. Unfortunately she had gone to long without oxygen to her brain and when we got their Saturday evening she was actually already gone (no Brain activity and no reaction to painful stimulation).We chose to remove her from life support on Sunday and my sister died peacefully in her sleep at 3:30 Tuesday morning. We are guessing she could have possibly had a stroke even though none of the CT scans showed anything, or she could have had a heart attack. A very sad time for the whole family. The next day my family and I piled back into the 4 runner for the long drive home. This time we stopped for the night after about 14 hours driving, and got an early start the next day again. We still got home at 3:30 in the morning but were at least able to sleep in. I did take an extra day off from work to recuperate, but I'm back to work now. Kind of numb but hanging in there. Guess it's not always a good thing knowing what I know in the medical field as the whole family was looking to me for answers that weren't there.