The Last Days of Tom Magrann
The day after Christmas, Dad woke up at 6am not being able to breathe, and he was coughing up blood. I took him to the ER at Placentia Linda Hospital. He was still coughing up a lot of blood so they transferred him to ICU and placed him on a ventilator. His diagnosis was COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and Bronchiectasis (extra blood vessels in his lungs). They could not find any bleeding vessels to cauterize; they are all just generally oozing into his lungs, so they have given him plasma, vitamin K, antibiotics, and steroids. He was made unconscious with drugs so he could be on a ventilator to force air into his lungs. They started a feeding tube for nourishment.
When he was awake, he was acutely distressed from the tubes and muscle and arthritis pain from laying in one position. During this time, I did what I could to keep him occupied and comfortable by massaging his legs and swabbing his mouth and talking to him. Eventually, they had to give him some more medicine (sedative and morphine) and he would go back to sleep. Among other things, they flushed his lungs with a little lidocane with epinephrine in an attempt to numb the cough reflex and constrict the blood vessels. They were afraid that if he coughed, he would rupture whatever healing had occurred.
The following Saturday, January 5, the doctor woke him up and took the tubes out so that he could talk and listen. His condition was explained to him by the doctor and Dad said he wanted the tubes to come out. Then the doctor put an oxygen mask on him, but he did not want that, either. He said "YOU put it on!" and repeated that to each person in the room. He asked for a pen and paper to write, and the first thing he wrote was "Mother" and pointed to a spot next to him, indicating that our Mom was there with him and he could see her.
He was awake and able to see and hear and understand us the whole time.
He pointed for the nurse and doctor to leave him alone; then he counted each of his children around the bedside and nodded. He seemed satisfied that we were all there and we were the only ones in the room. We asked him if we could get him anything, and he pointed to the chocolate milkshake that Rhea had brought in. We gave him the straw and he sucked up some and seemed happy.
Then he got to see his siblings and sister- in-law (Kathleen McBride), although by then he was wearing out and could not talk. However, he could still understand because he would nod briskly.
Then his grandkids showed up and got to be with him for a while. Then his nieces and nephews came and went. He had 24 visitors throughout the day, and he could see, hear, and recognize every one of them. Some of them were not sure that he could hear them, so I said, "Dad, if you understood what they just said, stick out your tongue", and BOY, he stuck his tongue all the way out of his mouth for emphasis! Then I told him "Now stand on your head", and he smiled.
The visits were pretty much over by 4pm, and then we just stayed in the room with him and chatted to him while he rested. He had a morphine drip and seemed fairly comfortable although each breath was a struggle. At 5pm the nurse asked us to step out for a moment so they could change his sheets, but as soon as we left the room, his heart rate went from 100 beats per minute to 20, and then it stopped. I guess we were holding him here by accident.
The funeral for my Dad (Tom Magrann) was Wednesday, Jan 9.
The funeral service was at St. Martin's on Yorba Linda Blvd and Fairmont in Yorba Linda from 10am-11am. Then we went to the cemetary for a 30 minute burial service at Holy Sepulcher Cemetary on Santiago Canyon in Orange. Then we went back to our clubhouse where we had a catered memorial event and tribute; a nice Irish wake.
Thank you all for your prayers and letters of support.
A special thank you to all our neighbors who have been pouring food and beverages into our house so we could feed all our loved ones that came over to camp out with us.