Have you ever been in a situation where you felt everything , as you knew it to exist, was about to take a drastic alteration? God chooses to test his children by having us to reach for the intangible medicines of this world. They are medicines we can’t see, touch, or even know to exist for certain. My story is about my family, our father, and a period of time in our lives where we felt the worse feeling a human being can experience. It is a feeling that brings on anxiety, frustrations, depression, panic attacks, anger, fear, loneliness and desperation. I am describing the feelings my family experienced when we were told there wasn’t anymore the doctors could do to save our father’s life. He had been ill and treated by a local hospital for several months. During all this time, we were led to believe the doctors could eventually take care of the heart problem. It was getting difficult for us to believe the doctors because each visit delivered worse news about our father’s condition. We watched as our dad was slowly losing the tug-of-war match between life and death. It was difficult to let our father lean on our strength because the many months we waited and trusted the local doctors with our dads illness, we were getting weak as well. The, “I CAN FIX IT” run around from the doctors resulted in losing a lot of valuable time in which could have been used toward the efforts of fixing the health conditions. Instead, we put trust in the diagnosis of a few local doctors who seemed to grow tired of having to provide health care for him until the next visit. Our father was in and out of the hospital for months. Each time we could see him getting worse. His last visit to the local hospital was when desperation took top priority. The words kept pounding in our heads louder and louder as we heard the doctors say there is nothing more they can do for our father. We were told to take him home and not to bring him back. One doctor even called him a tired old man. We took dad home and Hospice moved in. As we settled in for what seemed to be the longest walk in our journey of life, anger began to set in. Nights became days to us and days became lost in our world of care for our father. Our efforts were to make his last days comfortable as possible. Many nights we stayed up around a camp fire talking about this uneasiness that lingered in the air. It was a feeling that had developed after we were told to take him home to die. We understood this is an option when there is the existence of terminal illness, but dad wasn’t terminal. He had a heart condition that the doctors didn’t want to touch. They told us that he would die if they operated. However, almost with the same breath, they said take him home and get Hospice to see him through the process of letting life leave his body. We did not want to accept there weren’t more the hospitals and doctors could do for dad. Our dad believes in God but doesn’t refer to him by that title. He uses the terminology, The Law of Average, when referring to God and his beliefs. We are a very large family that grew up poor in materialistic things, but driven to do our best no matter what life handed us. So you see, the diagnosis the doctors and hospice came up with was unacceptable. Our question was, where do we go from here? During this experience we misplaced a very important survival tool we learned as a child. However, we were reminded of this one word, which got us through some very tough child hood experiences, when a doctor from the team of doctors, who had been taking care of dad, got in touch with us. This doctor was the only doctor who would not say there wasn’t anything that could be done for him. My youngest brother stayed in touch with this doctor after dad was sent home and the two of them had been working on an option to send dad to a heart specialist in a larger city. This heart specialist took the patients that smaller, local doctors gave up on. He took the cases that nobody wanted! Dad’s records had been sent to him and the wait was on to hear from him in regards to doing the surgery dad needed. The Phone Call! The phone rang and still seemed to echo in the air as my brother answered it. It is the phone call we refer to as dad’s life line. Dad’s local doctor called my brother and told him that the specialist had received his records and was looking over them as they spoke. He said the specialist would be in touch as soon as he made a decision. It was that one phone call that reminded our family of our survival tool we had lost during this experience. The local doctor told my brother he felt something proper needed to be done. What he meant was exactly what we had been feeling. You don’t send a patient home to die when there are other options available even if those options might take the life sooner. That was exactly how we were feeling. The local doctor added by saying he wanted to give a fighting man a fighting chance. My youngest brother thought of the word HOPE when the doctor was speaking. It is the one survival tool we leaned on as children to get through the difficult puberty years. The doctor told my brother to tell the family not to give up. He said dad was still alive and might get an option to see the specialist. My brother commented HOPE IS A GOOD THING. The doctor replied by saying’ “Without Hope We Have Nothing!” Hope was the one word we misplaced in this time of desperation and panic. For the next two days, life continued to leave our father’s body, but this time we clung to the hope of a phone call from the specialist. The final phone call! Dad’s sixth day home we had been up all night with him. We could tell he had very little life left in him. His dosage of morphine was at the highest it could get and his kidneys had shut down. He was on his way out. Each phone call brought a rush of excitement through the air. Finally, the phone rang and my youngest brother answered the call we had been hoping to get. The heart specialist said to get dad to his hospital as soon as possible. From that moment on, it took one, small step at a time in his recovering from death’s door. We think about dad’s fight to stay alive and wonder how many of these local doctors give up on their patients because of lack of education, lack of the latest resources, lack of technology, because of the patient’s age, and lets not forget the doctors lack in bedside manners. We learned not to settle for the opinions of the local doctors. They tend to get comfortable in their working zone and lose their medical drive to learn new techniques and procedures that are being used in these larger hospitals. These newer techniques and procedures are saving the lives of many patients who persevere for some type of HOPE! The Flood Family would like to say a warm, love felt Thank You to Dr. Salimi for his determination in saving our father’s life. So, if you are reading this we want to let you know dad made it through the surgery and is doing well. We have had him many more months than what we were told he would live at the beginning of this painful journey. It is because of your positive attitude, the willingness to take a stand against your coworkers, and your ability to spread hope that we have made new memories and many treasured moments with our dad. May God continue to use you in giving people hope and reminding them not to give up! This article is dedicated to all the people who want to give up when they have been told there is nothing more the local doctors can do to save their life. Remember, giving up is not an option.
Without hope we have nothing. HOPE IS A GOOD THING!
story provided by Jim Flood and written by Vickie Brown (Jim's sister)
if you would like to email Jim tranny01@yahoo.com or Vickie vbrown904@earthlink.com
Many of the pictures on this site are located on books
and CD's located on the Zeigler's Memorabilia page
Thanks to those who have contributed
pictures and memorabilia that is viewed on this site.
