Medical and Funeral expenses for Doug Wilcox

Hello, I am Juanita-wife of Doug Wilcox.

Doug had a short illness before he graduated to heaven and is now in the loving arms of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He had emergency surgery on Tuesday October 17th. He had a ruptured colon and infection was raging through his body. On Tuesday neither of his Dr's thought he would make it (I didn't know about that until a couple of days later.)

He was on so many IV's, it was overwhelming. I counted 9 IV's and he was on a ventilator. He was on 4 medications just to help get his blood pressure up (when he went into ER, his blood pressure was in the mid 80's)

On Wednesday and Thursday, we had a glimmer of hope and he was improving and amazing his Dr's. They liked to let him come a little light on sedation so that they can measure his cognitive response. He would open his eyes, make eye contact and follow commands. On Wednesday, he opened his eyes. I told him I love You. He shook his head yes and squeezed my hand. He started getting agitated and banging his hands against the bed rails (his hands were in restraints so he couldn't pull the ventilator tube out or any of his IV's.) I held one hand and the student nurse held the other hand. He was starting to thrash around. His nurse asked if he was in pain and he shook his head no. We told him he needed to relax. We told him he couldn't bang his hands against the bed rails (he had IV's and arterial line going into his hand). The nurse said if you don't relax, I will have to give you some medicine to relax you. He shook his head hard and scrunched his face as he mouthed NO. For his safety, they had to give him the medicine to relax. That was very hard on me.

Then Friday he started going down hill. Saturday they did another CT because they thought maybe part of his gut was dying. If it was, Doug would not be ablet to survive another surgery. They found a 10 cm abscess. They couldn't drain it until they got his blood platelets up even just a needle through the skin. Then Sunday morning, when I walked in, the Dr said that Doug was worse and the family needed to sit down and talk.

The family had already all agreed earlier that if Doug couldn't recover so that he could lead a normal life, then we would let him go. That made it easier to make the final decision.

So Sunday morning, with his family beside him, we had him removed from all life support and a few minutes later, Doug was in the loving arms of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We do have hospital bills and funeral expenses to take care of. We are having him cremated and just that is almost $2k. Then the hospital bills.

Your donations will help cover these expenses.

We have a date in mind for the Celebration of life, but need to check with the Church to make sure that the Church is available at that time.

I will keep you updated on the exact date when we get it nailed down ( mid November)