Tracy Gray (126:24)
That's why you rack. And if you're not familiar with afib, like you have to, you have to control the arrhythmia, but you also have to control, you have to use anticoagulant therapy because in afib, your. The atrium of your heart don't function correctly. So basically the blood in the top of your heart pulls and it clots if you're not on anticoagulants. They couldn't put my mom on anticoagulant therapy because of the huge incision. They didn't want her to bleed uncontrolled if something were to happen. They were able to control the AFIB and keep our rate down, but she still ended up throwing a clot. And she had a massive stroke. And you know, my dad, she was home when it happened, in bed, and my dad didn't catch it. And it's really stupid for me, but I was really, really, really mad at my dad. And he's. He's an old man. He's not medically trained. He checked on my mom early that morning. It was like September 9th, whenever it happened, when she had the stroke. And he walked in early in the morning and checked on her and he said he thought she was mad at him because he was like, well, she wouldn't talk to me. She just mumbled. And he walked, went outside and took care of the chickens like she did every morning and came back cooked breakfast, went about his normal morning, and then, you know, a couple hours later went to check on mom because he thought she fell back asleep again. And when he went to check on her and she still didn't reply the right way, he finally went in and looked at her and realized something was really was bad, wrong. I mean, she. She had already begun to posture, which is, you know, not good at all. I'll get a phone call from my dad and he's just incoherent, you know, and I can't get any information out of him. Any, any good information. All. All I can get is mom has had a stroke and I'm like, why are you calling me? Call 91 1. We. The ambulance is here. Perfect. I'll talk to you later. I've, you know, I'm. Now I'm in paramedic mode. And it is what it is. I don't. It's weird. You shift like there's stuff that has to be done. We'll deal with the emotions later. So I hung up with my dad and I called dispatch because I, again, I worked for the company, called dispatch. Who's the truck that you sent to? My parents address. They tell me, I hang up with them. I call that paramedic on a cell phone because we're friends. And in the world of ems, there are good paramedics and there are not good paramedics. And it is what it is. And the good paramedics, you, you know, you just know how they operate, you know, to trust them. If it's not a legit emergency, no, we're not going to run lots and sirens to the hospital. If it is a legit emergency, some medics still won't run lights and sirens because it's so much more dangerous. And we can get things done in the back of the truck. This paramedic was one of those guys that. He's not running lights and sirens unless it's. They're. They're gonna die, like in. In 10 minutes, they're gonna die if we don't get there. And when he answered the phone, I could hear the sirens and I didn't even have to talk to him. And when he answered the phone, he didn't even say hello. He just said, dude, I'm so sorry. And that was a great house. I don't have time for that right now. I need to know what's going on. And he was like, it's bad. Okay. We have two hospitals in our city. And I said, are you going to St. Vincent? And he said, yeah. I said, well, I'll meet you up there. And when I got to the hospital, they were rolling her back from the ct. And the girl that was rolling her back was my wife's best friend who worked in ct. And her name's Kristen. And she was sobbing because she knew. Yeah, yeah. It was obvious. Well, after my second back surgery, I kind of petered off of I'm sorry. After my first back surgery, I quit working on the ambulance as much and started working at St. Vincent in the ER. So not only did I know the doctors and the nurses from working on the ambulance, but now they're my co workers also. So I get to the hospital and like the nurse who's over my mom, we're friends. The doctor over my mom, we're friends. And everybody is just like, you know, just solemn that everybody knows. And everybody's like, trying to sugarcoat it. I'm. I'm not ignorant, you know, to emergency medicine, you know, because that was like my favorite thing in the entire world. So when I got to see mom, you could tell it was a completed stroke. She was postured, it was a right sided stroke. So she could still talk. She was very slurred. She was somewhat coherent. She was in Trauma 4 at St. Vincent. And I knew that my parents had advanced directives and DNRs, but you don't think about it until it's time to implement one. And seeing what I saw and knowing the, like, trajectory of the next couple of days, there was no fixing that cerebral tissue. Once it's dead, it's dead. I also knew the protocol, the hospital, if we can't fix it, put them on a helicopter and send them somewhere bigger. It doesn't matter where you send them in the world, you can't fix that. So the doctor came out and talked to me and he's trying to sugarcoat it. And, you know, I was like, doc, hold on just a second. Let's get away from my siblings. My. By now all of my. My parents, bio children were there. I talked to the doc and I say, listen, I don't need your sympathy. I don't need your sadness. I don't need your sorries. I need to know the facts. Where are we? What do we have? How bad is it? And he's like, there's no blood. There's no blood flow at all. Her. The right side is completely dead. And I said, okay, she has a dnr. It will be honored because she wrote it, she filled it out, she wants it. And don't you dare fly my mom out of this, this hospital. And he's looking at me, he's like, well, we can go to, you know, ums. And I'm like, don't you dare ship my mom around and make us chase her. Just make her comfortable. And it looked like I slapped him. It looked like I reached out and slapped him. And you could tell that he didn't want to do that. He wanted to try. And it's like he wanted to try because obviously he wants the best for his patients. But there, there was something to be said about, like, we had a friendship. He knew that this was important to me. But I want to say this before I get into the next thing. My adopted siblings loved me, you know, but I was still kind of a black sheep with one of my siblings. And I'm not gonna. But she had a hard time, I think, with the way that my parents loved me. And, and it's. I think she had a hard time with how hard they loved me after I put them through everything. All of my siblings gave me tough love whenever I was putting mom and dad through the bad stuff, but they needed to, you know, And I made myself the black sheep. I. I made myself the black sheep. But whenever mom was in the hospital, there was one person calling the family. There was one person making sure everybody was okay. There was one person still talking to mom and trying to make sure that, you know, what she wanted was true. On the dnr, initially, I say one person. That was me. Everyone was looking at me, you know, like the. I don't want to say the scared little kid, because I wasn't a scared little kid anymore, but, like, the adopted kid. And that's how I felt. I felt like, oh, all of a sudden, now y' all are looking at the adopted kid, because I work in this field, and I know all these people for me to do it. And I was bitter for, you know, a little while. Stupid. But that's how I felt. Mad at my dad. I was mad at my siblings because I was like, oh, I don't get to grieve, too, you know, but in the moment, I was like, suck it up. This is their mom. Been their mom for a lot longer than she ever was yours. So, you know, I did it. I did it for my mom. It was a weird situation because she could still talk a little bit. So they brought a neurologist down, and then they brought a neurosurgeon down, and they came into the room. Of course, they, like, look at all the family members, see who's going to move toward them, talk. And I was the young one. They're looking at this old woman, my mom, and looking at the older siblings, and they just, like, point at me. And so they're like, we want to talk to your mom. Go ahead. She can talk. Don't talk to me. Talk to her. You know, and, you know, they were like, Ms. Gray, they're screaming at her because she's almost deaf, too. And she, like, opened her eyes and looked at him, and they said, do you want us to try to help, or do you want us to make you comfortable? And she held up the number two on her. On her. On her right hand. Her left side was almost completely postured by then, drawn up. And I knew that she would say that, but I didn't like that at all. You know, the selfish side of me wanted her to fight, go try something, you know? So they. They took her up to the fifth floor, which is hospice, and we started calling everybody. My dad still didn't understand how bad it Was. So we get her to the room. And it's. It sucked just because all of the nurses that I've. I developed a lot of really good friendships as an adult. Who knew how much of a piece of crap I was. I tried to really be intentional on being a good person and being a good paramedic, being a good coworker, being a good friend. And so I was able to build a lot of good friendships. And it sucked because everyone's just. Everyone needed to grieve. But right in that moment, I was like, why is everybody grieving right now? Like, let's all suck it up. Let's get through this. And so it made it more difficult that everybody, like, even when we went to the fifth floor, they're like, yeah, Tracy works for us. And now these nurses are crying. And I'm like, I didn't want to deal with it right now. I just didn't at all. So I went downstairs and I told my dad how bad it was. And, you know, they were married for 70 years. And my dad said something about, anybody can revoke a DNR at any time. And a lot of people don't know that. And he asked if there was anything they could do. And I said, no, dad, you know, it's. We have to honor what mom wants. And we. We kind of butted heads on that for just a second. But I explained it to dad and I was like, you got to come, you know, you got to go spend time with her. So we went and spent time with her. Hannah was at home with Nathan. The family started pouring in. I was calling everybody, and I don't. I'm like an object permanence person. I'm terrible about it if it's not right in front of me. I. It's not that I don't miss my family. It's not that I don't think about my family, but I'm so focused on the day to day stuff. I'm terrible about reaching out. So the family members that saw my phone number calling them, they all knew?
