DEATH INTERRUPTED BY LOVE

AVAILABLE IN STORE SOON

A TRUE STORY

Death Interrupted by Love

Written By: Anessa L. Haney


CHAPTER ONE- NO RESPONSE


“I’m so sad Serena that I have to tell you this; Daddy isn’t feeling good honey, so we have to take him to the hospital when we get back from the Magic Kingdom; that means we can’t stay too long. We’ll take some pictures together and we’ll ride some rides and we’ll even get some candy and souvenirs, but after that we have to come back and bring Daddy to a doctor.”
Ed was getting headaches; they were coming and going and he seemed to have an ear infection because there was clear liquid slowly draining from his right ear. I called one of Eddie’s family members who was a nurse; she said “It’s probably allergies”; I feared it was much worse and truth is, I really had no idea what was going on with his ear; I just wasn’t comfortable with his condition.
His speech was much more slurred than usual; it was hard to understand him. The tumor started to complicate his speech over the past couple of months, but I had never heard him slur this much; the last time he slurred badly was the day I called his doctor and told him I thought the tumor was growing, in the summer of 2006. So, when his speech was slurred in 2007 at the start of our family vacation I grew very worried.
To kill his pain he asked me to pick him up some Advil. And he started taking four milligrams of steroids; two milligrams more than usual. His doctor gave him the go ahead back in Connecticut to take the steroids as needed; the problem this time was that we weren’t aware that he was displaying signs of an impending stroke.
Earlier that morning while Serena and I were eating breakfast at the hotel restaurant I asked our waitress for directions to the nearest hospital in Kissimmee and I wrote them on a napkin. We had just arrived in Florida two days before and it was only three weeks earlier that The Dream Foundation answered a dying wish for Eddie; a wish to make sure that before he died, Serena be given a trip to Disney; he wanted to give his baby something special because he loved her so much; she was daddy’s little girl for sure.
More than to show her that he loved her, I believe it was his way of saying he was sorry for dying and leaving her without him to protect her. I knew it was my duty to ensure that Ed’s “wish” for Serena came true; we both knew that if we ended up in the hospital before the trip to the Magic Kingdom, that the whole trip would have been a failure for our baby girl. We made the choice to give our daughter the chance to go to Disney; if we ended up at the hospital first, Serena wouldn’t have had any good memories of Disney; all she would have remembered about her trip to Florida would have been traumatic.
After breakfast we walked back to our room; I sat down next to my husband and said “Babe, when we get back you must go to the hospital because I’m worried about you honey. I’ll take Serena to Disney but we won’t be gone long. I’ll be back in three hours.” “Yes, you better take that baby! This is for her Nessa, for her! Go and have fun for me, I love you.” Sometimes I think that he held out on dying until he knew Serena was in a happier place; a “magical” place.
We gathered up our purses and for a moment we snuggled up to Eddie and kissed him good-bye. But leaving him was extremely hard to do because I was worried that he was going to die from some complication surrounding his tumor; the journey to Disney on that day, to me, was not a journey of fun but one of duty.
I was in such a rush to get through as much of the Magic Kingdom as we could. I wanted Serena to see everything in just three hours; obviously not a likely goal but I was feeling so guilty that she was going to miss out on her dream vacation. I took some photos of Serena for her to take back to Connecticut to show her second grade classmates; but my worries were deep, so there was no way I could enjoy myself. I put on a fake smile for my daughter’s sake; inside I was so anxious and I couldn’t stop thinking about my husband and I was scared to death that “today’s the day” and my overwhelming instincts told me to get ready for the worst; one could say that I was already mentally prepared to find him at the hotel either dead or near it.
I waited until we were through with the Magic Kingdom before I told Serena my fears. She was always well informed about her father’s condition because I felt if she had any voids of information she wouldn’t be able to grow into a healthy adult. And please believe me when I say this, I wish I could have spared her the reality of her father’s eminent death but I just couldn’t because we were all in it together; by no means is cancer a personal disease.
I had to tell her my fears so I said “Serena, I am telling you this not to scare you but to prepare you sweetheart because I just need you to be ready; when we get back to the hotel I need you to be brave because I think in my heart that there is a chance Daddy could be dying”.
Nearly three hours after we had left him; we pulled into to our assigned parking spot at our Resort Hotel in Kissimmee, FL. I helped Serena out of the car and I took her hand and we walked into the room; the curtains were closed and the room was dark. I turned on the lights and I said “Hi honey, we’re back”. I saw Eddie sleeping in the bed and I could hear him snoring very loudly so I walked over to his side of the bed and I pulled the blanket off of him.
His eyes were wide open so I thought he was awake looking at me when I said his name; I didn’t get any reaction from him. I said “Ed, Ed?” But still, there was no movement, not even a blink; instantly, I was panicked! From the corner of my eye, I noticed some ice water in a cup on his end table. I dipped my fingers in it and I started to flick the cold water in his face so I could get some sort of reaction; after three tries he still didn’t respond.
Meanwhile, Serena was watching me frantically try to wake her father with the ice water, with no luck. When that didn’t work I ran over to the other side of the king size bed and I picked up the phone and called 911. As I was on the phone with dispatch, I could see Serena at Ed’s side of the bed; she was copying me and splashing her daddy with water to wake him.
It was so painful to watch.
In what seemed only seconds, the fire and emergency rescue arrived to the first, worst, scene of my life. One of the rescue crew members escorted Serena out of the room and stayed with her on the side walk. I was answering all of the questions about Ed’s health. I explained that he had a tumor on his brain stem and that he was acting unusual for the past 24 hours.
On the inside I was so scared and I felt so much guilt for leaving him that morning! No one could wake Eddie. The rescue workers tried for about ten minutes but still they couldn’t; he was put up on a stretcher and placed in an ambulance and then he was transported to “Celebrity” (the name has been slightly changed- to avoid some controversy) Hospital in Kissimmee, Florida. I gathered up my baby and we got in the car and followed the ambulance to the hospital.