Dear Sarge and Family,
May the peace of our Lord be with you and your family during this incomprehensibly difficult time.
When Kenny brought this topic to the front, I read it this year for the first time. Reading the article took me back to a very difficult time in my life, not because I lived in the destruction zone, but because on August 29, 2005 I watched Katrina slam into the Gulf Coast from a Cape Corral, FL hospital where my father lied dying. In fact as I flew down to see him we landed in Ft. Meyers on the tail end of Katrina.
My father served in the U.S. Navy from 1943 (joined at 18 years of age) to the duration (I think he was discharged in 1945 but it may have been 1946) on a destroyer escort. Prior to this, he had worked in the Philadelphia ship yard. His first ship after boot camp was a newly commissioned one leaving NY across the North Atlantic where it also encountered a Hurricane and 90 ft. seas. The ship ended up with a cracked hull and went into dry-dock in Liverpool, England. That was the last of the Atlantic for him, and the rest of his service was in the South Pacific. The rest of his life was typical of the era and hence I am a product of the baby boom.
The man had been fighting heart disease successfully for 30 years. Up until March of 2005 he walked five miles a day, but began complaining of shortness of breath. His walks began to get shorter and shorter. After several months of complaining to his Drs., they attributed his shortness of breath to blockage of at least one of his coronary arteries. He turned 80 on August 8, 2005, and the next week he had a stint put into one of his coronary arteries. When recovering from the procedure, he was expected to begin to feel better, and his symptoms (shortness of breath) were expected to subside. But they got worse. When he got home, he needed to go on O2, and within a week it was not enough. His blood pO2 had become critical and I immediately flew to FL.
So for me, the 29th of August is memorable not because of Katrina, but because the doctors came into the room and explained to my father that he had a lung tumor (found it when they did a CT Scan to inspect the stint), his lung had collapsed as a result of the needle biopsy they had performed to diagnose the tumor, did not get enough tissue to diagnose the tumor, could not operate because of the Plavix they had him on due to the stint and that there was nothing they could do to arrest his deteriorating lung function. Dad then proceeded to put in place a DNR order as his pO2 was dropping rapidly. Dad died on August 31,2005 at 0945 at the age of 80.
His life was full and lived it fully up until his last month or so. Mom has moved north and lives in my town presently. We have just begun to be able to fully celebrate his life as the pain is still sharp, but we have begun. It is my hope and prayer, Sarge, that you too will be able to celebrate Johnny's life. Thank you so much for sharing with us his picture and his story with us. I know that my, as well as all of ours, thoughts and prayers are with you.
Walt