Funeral Expenses For Cheryl Leean

Hi, my name is Jana Leean, Cheryl's granddaughter. I set up this fundraiser to help with Cheryl's funeral expenses and any medical bills she may have.

On December 19th, 2022 Cheryl was taken to the JRMC ER department by her daughter Roberta and brother Darryl for excruciating pain. She spent the night in the hospital and had umbilical hernia surgery on the morning of December 20th. After her surgery, they discovered she didn't have a pulse in her left arm. After further testing, it was found that she had blood clots filling her arm. She was then taken by ambulance to Bismarck, ND. They tried different medications and surgeries to try and break up the clots, but nothing worked and she had her arm amputated on December 22nd. Before her amputation, she had thrown up and aspirated so she came out of surgery intubated.

There were many attempts to get her off of sedation and intubation but she struggled and kept aspirating when not intubated. She later received a tracheotomy and g-tube so she didn't have to be fully intubated through the mouth. On January 15th she started bleeding from some surgical sites so she had a CT scan where they found a perforated bowel. They didn't know the extent of the perforations until they opened her up. It was bad. They were not able to close her stomach or stitch her bowel back together because it was dead. She came out of that surgery, unknowing to us if she was going to survive. She had an ileostomy bag after the surgery. We waited to get her stomach and bowel to heal but she battled a lot of infections. Eventually, her body just became really weak and fragile. She wasn't absorbing nutrition well, and her kidneys stopped working. She started dialysis but her body did not take to it well either.

Late at night on Friday, March 10th Roberta received a phone call that Cheryl quit breathing and needed to be bagged (we had a DNR). They got her back and breathing but she was non-responsive. She would open her eyes but she had a blank stare, wasn't able to follow a pen with her eyes, wasn't able to talk, and wasn't able to respond to touch. She had a CT scan but nothing show up on it, and we didn't do any further testing due to her fragility and nothing would be able to be done to fix her condition. Doctors believe she had a stroke. Our family was not able to get to her until Monday, March 13th due to the roads being bad or closed. After the family arrived and observed her condition, we came to the decision to start palliative care (slowly weaning her from all treatment until the end of life). On Tuesday, March 14th at 2 pm we took her off the tracheotomy support and she was only on forced oxygen so she could breathe on her own until she passed. She was kept comfortable with morphine so she wasn't in pain or suffering. She passed away on March 15th at 5:10 am. When seeing her after she passed she looked comfortable, at ease, and pain-free.

Cheryl was in the hospital for a total of 85 days. We all prayed like crazy for her to heal and come home to her family. God had other plans, but we're confident she was welcomed into heaven with wide open arms by her son-in-law, Paul Schmidt. Our family is thankful for all the continued prayers over this long period.