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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 1008585" data-attributes="member: 3649">*sniff* I'd like to thank you all, really. It means a lot to me. I have some family friends that are helping with all the paperwork, dealing with the arrangements and everything. One of the guys from my D&D group came over tonight and we just chatted and talked, discussing everything in the world from the basic motivations of our characters in the current world, what we were reading and recommending.. all normal stuff. It really made me feel more.. grounded.Mom has been sick for some years now, and the last month she's really taken a bad turn. In 1999, she developed full-blown emphysema from 60 years of smoking, then had a breathing crisis during which her prednisone dosage was so high that it damaged her pancreas, giving her Type II diabetes. In January of 2002, she came up with colon cancer. She wasn't expected to survive the intubation, since she only had 1/3 of her lung capacity left, but she did fantastically well and she didn't even need chemo or anything afterwards. She was good there for about 18 months, then we found out that her heart was severly damaged. She was in the hospital, then out again. A week later she was back in, then a week ago she was in once more for observation.She did well for about a week, and it looked like she was getting a lot better. She went out to eat, something we hadn't done in over a month, and she got her hair fixed. Then we went out to eat again Sautrday. Sunday she started feeling much worse and became almost unresponsive late Sunday night. Monday morning we went for the emergency room where they said she was severely anemic, and they were going to admit her and give her whole blood and plasma. We went up to see her last night when they'd let us in ICU and she knew us, and she was responding well but we could see the monitors she could not: it was obvious that her blood pressure wasn't good. She wasn't much better at all. She told me she loved me and didn't want me to come up early in the morning, so I could get some sleep. Then this morning the doctor woke me up, saying she'd gotten worse during the night. As I got out of the shower, the pastor called and said she'd taken a turn for the much worse and I should get there as quick as I could. I wasn't quick enough. She died at 9:12 this morning while I was in transit. I've been preparing myself for this for some time now. I lost my father to smoking-related heart disease when I was 11, so I'd been through this before. All of my blood relatives save one are dead from strokes, heart disease or some hideous unknown consumptive thing. (I'm adopted, so I don't have the Ligon 'don't live past 60' gene, I hope). Especially after we found out about her heart condition, we knew it was just a matter of time, then. Her lung condition prevented her from having the (actually quite easy) surgery that would have more than likely not only saved her life, but improved the quality of it considerably.But all the preparation can't make you think of the reality of it until it happens. Both my parents are gone, and I'm alone. It still really hasn't sunk in. But it will. I've gone on too long, given you a lot of background you probably didn't want to sit through <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> But I think you. This is one reason that this is one of the few message boards I read, much less post to: we're a community. We share things. 'Shared pain is lessened pain.' Thank you for the shoulder. Wayne</blockquote>

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