On Sunday, Mr. Li went into shock from his infections.
On Monday, his liver and kidneys began to fail. I had to rush out of work to
pick Ying up so that she could go somewhere to cry for a while. She can't
cry at home, because that would send her mother into an emotional tailspin
from which she might not recover.
She cried for four hours. The whole time I've known her, Ying has maybe
cried for 30 minutes in my presence, up until this point. I've never seen
her so upset.
On Tuesday, since nobody in her family was in a state to drive into the
city, and they needed to be there, I volunteered my services as a driver.
It's the least I could do.
Although he was technically still alive (and still is, to the best of my
knowledge) the prognosis was sufficiently bad that we left in the middle of
the day to go procure the services of a funeral home. Also, to pick up a
picture for the memorial service, which saph is graciously re-sizing to be a
decent size.
At this point I gave up on getting any work done this week (and possibly
next) and just took off.
Ying cried for another few hours that night.
Wednesday, today, I drove them into the city again. Mrs. Li has already
given the "do not resuscitate" order, but Mr. Li is still on a respirator
and a blood-pressure medication which is keeping his heart pumping and his
lungs working. He's been sedated for a while, so he's hopefully not aware of
the pain.
Today they're going to discontinue the medication. It is likely that he will
die within a few hours of that.
The worst part of the whole medical situation is that, as I understand it,
there's nothing wrong with him except he's going to die. The leukemia was
actually successfully treated. The infections are starting to recede.
However, in the process of the treatment his organs were so badly damaged
that they're simply not functioning any more, and there's no way to treat
that.
Of course, the personal angle is no better. Ying's mother has nobody - and I
mean nobody - in the area to help her. Ying suspects she may have one
friend, but all the family that's here right now has travelled in from far
away (and mostly different "far away", so there's not even
somewhere she should move). Ying and I are in boston. Apparently the church
that Mr. Li belonged to did nothing but send over some people to pray for
him.
I don't even know what's happening in my own family any more; I haven't had
time to spend 2 hours in a row in the house since monday. When I haven't
been driving the Lis around in the city, I've been talking to my friend Mark
about this in diners, trying to vent enough that I can be Ying's
support.
There's more to say but I don't have the energy for more. I just hope that
Ying can be happy again, after this.