Cousin Jude Passes On

I just received a phone call from my Aunt (Janet) who gave me some bad news. She informed me that Cousin Jude died last night at 8:00pm in Doctor's Hospital. He had been in ICU for three weeks now and the whole time he was in a coma.

This is how the events led to this...

Jude Kemp was working out in his yard with a gardener and they were lifting heavy things. Jude had to go to the bathroom and he filled the toilet with blood. He thought that he had an infection and that he had strained himself and pulled something inside of him. He had to go to the bathroom a few more times that day as well with the same results.

Once hearing about this his daughter Beth told him that he had to "go to the hospital." He didn't want to go; he had to be pushed.

When he was in the hospital he underwent a colonoscopy which reveled that his small intestine was filled with blood. They sent him to the Operating Room where they removed four feet from his small intestine.

He was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit after the operation so they could monitor him better. He passed more blood later and had to have another operation because they found more blood clots in his intestines.

Jude did not wake up after the second operation; he was in a coma. I visited him in ICU and did not recognize who he was because his face was so swollen from all the drugs. If it were not for Beth standing at his bedside holding his hand I would have walked by not knowing.

He had a bunch of tubes going in and out of him and had a cold blanket over his legs and stomach which was used to keep his fevers at bay. Beth said to me "Daddy doesn't like the cold." I replied jokingly that she had " better get a hot water bottle and put that on top of the blanket then." We laughed and made a few giggles at other things too. Laughter is my medicine; it helps to get by the rough patches in life.

A week and a few days later I heard from my Uncle (Godfrey) that Jude's kidneys were not working properly and that Jude had to get hooked up to a dialysis machine. His kidneys were failing him; his body was shutting down.

Two nights ago the doctor overseeing Cousin Jude called the immediate family in and asked them what they wanted to do because Jude had been on life support for a long time. The doctor asked them if they wanted to take Jude off life support and see what his body does or leave him on. They decided to leave him on. I guess God had to make this decision for them because the next night he died.