I don’t know where to begin, we are all so very sad and broken hearted today. We love and miss Pat tremendously, more than any mere words can even begin to express.
This is Mary, Nancy’s sister. I was with Nancy last night at the hospital and we wanted to let you all know what happened.
At 11:45pm last night, Pat’s nurse called Nancy to tell her Pat was having some problems with his heart rhythm, and said she needed to come to the hospital. She left immediately and was at Pat’s bedside within 10 mintues, by 11:55pm. Meanwhile Mom called me and Julie and we got there to be with Nancy as soon as we could. Unfortunately Nancy had to face the commotion at the hospital all alone for about 15 minutes before Julie arrived. At first she was unsure what was even happening – Pat’s usually dark room was all bright, with all the lights on, the door wide open with several people standing around his bed. Her immediate thought was that he may have already passed away and she was very scared.
She looked at the monitors, and they were still on, Pat still alive. However, the nurses and doctors were very concerned, trying to figure out why Pat’s heart was going into some irregular rhythms – A-fib and V-Tach. Julie arrived soon after, and I got there a few minutes after that.
When I arrived, I saw that Pat’s heart was back in a regular rhythm, but his blood pressure was quite low, around 80/30 – the one thing we thought might actually be a good sign in all of this was that his ICP was much lower at 15 – 18. In hind sight, we think it could have been low due to his overall low blood pressure.
The intensive care specialist was there in person, and ordered several tests to be run STAT to try to figure out what was going on. He sent Pat for a CAT scan of the brain, and of the lungs, and an echocardiogram to look at his heart. He told us that he was not really sure what may be happening – possibly Pat’s heart was traumatized in the accident and it just hadn’t shown up yet, or maybe his pneumonia was worsening, or maybe something was worse in his brain, affecting his heart.
A few minutes later the neurosurgeon came in, looked at the brain scan and came and told us that his brain was no worse, therefore it was stable and was not the cause of Pat’s symptoms. We spent a few minutes rejoicing that his brain was stable, and could still begin to improve. Around this time Chris arrived – he is one of Pat’s very best friends and is also Julie’s husband and is a doctor. Chris was able to go into Pat’s room while they were getting him settled after doing the scans – they had asked us to wait in the waiting room while they got him situated.
Chris had the unfortunate task of having to come out and tell us that they were calling a Code Blue on Pat, that his heart had stopped beating. They worked on him for a LONG time, doing CPR constantly. By this time, the cardiologist was there also – he put in a pacemaker, but that did not help either, and then Chris again had the unfortunate task of telling us that it was over, Pat was gone.