Help Fulfill JoAnn's Final Wish: Ocean Rest

My name is Elizabeth Evans. I’m forty-seven years old, and twenty-five years ago, I met the most unbelievable human being who later became my everything: lover, soulmate, and wife. She made my life happier and whole every second we were together. Ten years ago, I was blessed to have her marry me, and we had a lot of plans and goals we were working towards.

Regretfully, as we were both Nine Eleven First Responders, we started to get sick right around the time we got married. And in spite of our best efforts, our health issues took over a lot of our lives, and some of the goals had to be placed on hold.

On October 17, 2014, I married JoAnn Evans at the third marriage performed in Oklahoma City after the Same-Sex Marriage Law was passed. We made the news.

Shortly after that, she developed a seizure disorder. Having had her stomach removed after five bouts of cancer already and being in constant pain, we decided to return to New York to be closer to her doctor.

We traveled to Disney World twice because she had never been. My family loved her and accepted her as another daughter, so all the family trips/events included invites to us, and health permitting, we showed up.

We had some financial difficulties because she was on disability, and for the first eight years, I took care of her. I didn’t get paid, and my inheritance money was not enough. I always gave her the option of getting another worker with more experience to look after her while I went to work, but she refused. She only felt safe with me, because of which I had no income for those few years, and we regretfully ended up in a shelter.

At that point, our money went towards food, daily living expenses, and medication. I did my best to keep her hydrated and nourished, but with malabsorption, she only absorbed about thirty percent of anything she ate or drank. So if her weight ever went above 120, it was a miracle. She ate though; my queen had more of an appetite than I did (thyroid problems are the reason for my weight), and boy did she LOVE food.

JoAnn loved food and life and God. She believed in her Higher Power and believed He had brought her back (died three times in the OR, came near to death with accidents and illnesses more times than I can count, but she always came back to me) for a reason, and so she needed to complete this mission: a drug and alcohol outpatient program with holistic and alternative methods never before used together. She loved people, had no problem taking off the sweater of her back and giving it to a perfect stranger who seemed worse off than us, and she loved me. God, did she love me: from the way she smiled at me with that special smile, with the way she allowed me to hold her, make love to her, and eventually bathe her and move her on the bed, or the way she called out for me when I stepped away from the bed for a moment.

Two years ago, we decided, as I was finally getting paid as her caretaker, that we would get a camper van and move to Chicago so we could be close to family and friends and finally start our business. Being as adventurous as I am, we got an SUV in June of this year and set it up as a home so we could drive to Chicago and have our own place to live that no one would ever take from us again.

In January of this year, a technician at Lenox Hill paralyzed her from the waist down, and we now had to deal with the consequences of this little debacle as it pulled a complete one-eighty spin to our lives. She was suddenly bedridden, and because most of the time we were afraid to go out too much because of COVID, we spent a lot of time in the shelter. Initially, I would transfer her to the wheelchair when we went to the movies every two Wednesdays and pulled our all-day movie marathons after our respective pain management appointments. We each went to ours every 27 days, which had us going to Harlem every other Wednesday morning. Done by noon, we would take the bus to 96 St. and the train to Times Square. We would go to TARGET, get food and cereal for the next few days, and go to AMC Empire 25. Three movies later, we would get ourselves cleaned up and walk home to our shelter. On the weekends, I tried to make us go out to eat at least once, but truthfully, we were wiped out and exhausted and perfectly happy with our homebound routines of watching TV, planning our move to Chicago, and just laughing and enjoying each other’s company.

She hardly ever complained. For as much constant pain as she was always in, only I, who knew her as I did, could tell when the pain was excruciating. We had an agreement that I could tell her she needed to go to the hospital, and she could refuse me three times, but on the third one, she had to go get checked because I was obviously seeing something she was not, and it concerned me enough that I would go against her wishes. But somewhere between COVID and her getting paralyzed, we stopped believing in hospitals. In very many of the cases, I did more and took care of her better than nurses and even doctors did. So unless it was something serious like multiple seizures in one day, or big falls or fevers, we did phone calls to doctors and stayed home.

Still, about a month before we left for Pennsylvania on our way to Chicago, she had developed three tiny pressure sores on her lower back, less than an inch in diameter, and not deep at all. They hurt a lot though, so I took her to doctors several times and put on the ointments that were recommended. By the time we reached Pennsylvania, they hadn’t improved much but had also not worsened.

Four days after we returned to New York from the botched Chicago trip (we needed to set up medication programs for us both and were having trouble with the car), she woke up delirious, like she was having a stroke almost, so I took her to the hospital. A week later, after a diagnosis I didn’t agree with and after they refused her antibiotics even though she had bacteria and I told them she had no immune system to defend her body, so if they didn’t give them to her, she would probably be sick, we got sent back to the shelter system and ended up in a shelter we were in a few years back, and all the people knew us.

Four days of watching her be not herself, not my Joey, but trying to get used to their diagnosis of Metabolic Encephalopathy (code for no idea what is wrong with her but it is affecting her brain), I finally could not ignore my gut. On August 24, after her program during which she was borderline catatonic, I took her to Lenox Hill Hospital thinking since it’s the only hospital that allows me to be by her side, at least I can make sure she is getting the proper care.

Four days in ICU, due to a urinary tract infection that had turned into sepsis; her temperature was 90 degrees, and she had low blood pressure and all her electrolytes going crazy. After much deliberation, they placed a nasogastric tube to feed her meds and nutrition. After four days, she was more alert and talkative, although still confused and anxious and very tired. Four days in half intensive, and they felt like she was okay to be taken to the Medicine floor.

Three days later, I was put out for no reason at three AM. I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say, she was kept basically a prisoner and apparently straight-up neglected for the next three weeks. They took away her cellphone and switched her to a new room so she couldn’t get calls from any of us (mom, brother, aunt, and her older sister). They told her no one called and talked her into going to a nursing home. They scared her about eating solid food when before the hospital she ate steak, and I didn’t know even if she was alive, so I had to get attorneys and the police involved.

I won’t go into more drama, but by the time we got her to Midway Nursing Home, it was too late, but we did not know that then as she seemed to be on the mend. The sores I sent her into the hospital with were like a diaper rash; a couple of blisters and irritation but no tissue damage. When I saw her in the nursing home, I cried. The main sore covered her entire lower back, surrounding it was red and puffy skin, and the wound was so deep you could see the spine, and it was covered in slough (scar tissue). She also had four new ones on the hips about two inches in diameter and about an inch deep; she even had a sore in her poopie area. They never turned her or cleaned her.

I couldn’t even see them without weeping, but I stayed at the facility and helped out the nurses to care for my wife. Even though the nurses were very nice, they were unable to care for her properly. Forty patients to a nurse and three PCNs per shift. It was a miracle if they changed my wife’s diaper once per shift, so thrice in twenty-four hours. One nurse in particular, the night shift nurse Ms. Hall, took unbelievable care of Joey’s wound. She spent half an hour with her wound, doing the treatment given by the doctor and then some. If any healing happened in the three weeks at Midway, it was Ms. Hall who did it.

On October 11, I was in the bathroom, and Joey was sleeping, I thought. All of a sudden, she started yelling and crying for them to get me away from her because I was beating her up. I ran to her and tried to calm her down, and she wouldn’t, so I let Ms. Hall know what was happening and went to the bathroom for about half an hour. Then she woke up calling for me and saying she needed me, so I went back to her, but my Joey on the mend was not there no more. She started to look like when I took her in with the infection, but they didn’t seem worried as she was on antibiotics. Sleeping all day, which I attributed to the hot flashy-frozen night due to getting all her steroids together. I told them consistently not to.

I went out until eight PM to get her chicken soup from a Mexican place we liked a block away, came back and fed her, and even though she ate half of the soup, I was convinced that she was going to the hospital that night.

Ms. Hall came in, took one look at her, and called the ambulance. We took her to Flushing Hospital, and they said she had become severely septic and dehydrated again. They intubated her and gave her antibiotics.

Ms. Hall, when she arrived, agreed with me and went to call the ambulance. Meanwhile, I packed because I knew we were going to be gone for at least two days. Even though I had faith that we would be returning, I knew that the nursing home would give up the room. I was allowed in the ambulance and later in the room in the hospital where they worked to stabilize her for four hours before taking her up to the ICU. She was going into complete organ failure, but right before we went into the ICU, she perked up a bit, and she was able to say she loved me and me to her. But she crashed again, and at six AM in the ICU, they said it would be a few before I could see her, so for me to go to my doctor, and they’re going to call if anything.

When I got back, I was allowed to be with her for a few hours, kiss her, sing to her, tell her I love her, tell her to fight, and that she still had a mission. At two AM, she started to crash again, so I was asked to get out, and at four-thirty AM, I was told she was dead. The woman who always came back from the worst odds did not this time.

I don’t think it has sunk in yet, but I know I need to fulfill her last wish: to be spread in the ocean.

Please help. The government isn’t, I don’t have the resources to pay for the cremation, and I would hate to have her go buried in Potter’s Field.

It’s five hundred for the simple cremation, plus the funeral home costs and the four death certificates.

It is due by Monday, or she gets sent to Potter’s Field, so HELP, please, I BEG YOU, don’t let me fail in fulfilling JoAnn’s final wish.

Any little bit, to be fair, is enough. Thank you.