thank you!

I just wanted to tell everyone thank you for the e-mails and cards which have been sent to express sympathy over the passing of Kaylee. I have received both from people I have never met and wanted to let you know I appreciate your thoughts and the effort you have put out to let me know you care.

This has been a difficult time for me and I am still trying to sort out a lot of thoughts and feelings in order to come to peace with what happened.

Kaylee ran a high fever on Saturday night, the 13th. Sunday morning she was not acting very well, but after doing several things I would normally do with my children, she was doing better and took a bottle. Over the next two days she wasn't able to hold very much down and acted like most children do when they have the flu, she just didn't feel good, wanted to be held all of the time and didn't have much of an appetite. Tuesday morning, I knew she was getting dehydrated - normally, under these circumstances, I would do some herbal tea enemas to help hydrate her, but due to her heart condition and her tumor, I decided it might be better to let the "experts" handle it, so I took her to a local hospital. I told them about her heart condition and the tumor. I then asked them if they could handle giving her some I.V. fluids or if I needed to take her to Salt Lake City to the Childrens Hospital. They assured me they could handle it and told me I would be surprised at how fast she perked up after she was hydrated. She was still throwing up some clear fluid, so they gave her some anti-nausea medication through her I.V.

They ran some blood tests, which came back negative for bacterial infections. They confirmed she had some kind of viral flu. After two rounds of fluids, she still hadn't perked up like they wanted her to, so they suggested we spend the night and let them observe her to make sure she was fully hydrated. She was miserable all night, drawing her little knees up and moaning with the discomfort. The pediatrician came in at midnight and told me it was just the flu moving into her intestines causing some cramping and discomfort. During the night, they gave her some medicine for gas and bloating.

In the morning, when the doctor came back in, he told me if I could open up her rectum, she would probably blow out a massive amount of diarrhea and then be fine. He said he had adjusted her nausea medication to a more weight-appropriate amount. I asked him what he meant by that and he told me they had given her a massive amount in the E.R. I told him I was concerned about her breathing and her pain, but he told me she just needed to have a good BM.

After he left, I filled the sink with warm water and put her in it. I put my little finger up past the tumor, but nothing came out. While she was in the sink, she kept looking past me. I tried to get her to focus on me, but she wouldn't. It was as though she was looking at someone I couldn't see - that's when I knew I was losing her. I took her out of the sink and started massaging her with oils. She started throwing up again, but this time there was blood, so I called for the nurses. They put a tube up her nose and into her stomach. They, then proceeded to pump out a massive amount of dark bloody fluid. As they were pumping I thought, "Oh, my gosh, the only way she had to eliminate the toxins was to throw it up - when they stopped her from doing that, it began to eat her from the inside out."

When they were finished, I knew she was gone (even though the monitors were still registering her vital signs), so I picked her up and sat in the rocking chair rocking her. A few minutes later, the nurse came in with the phone and told me the doctor wanted to talk to me. I took the phone and he said, "I understand things are not going well. Do you want me to come down or do you want to transport to Primarys?"

I said, "It's too late." He said, "What do you mean?" I replied, "The monitors may still be going, but she's gone." He said he would be right down. About 10 minutes later, the alarms went off, indicating respiratory and heart failure. I sat there rocking her for the next 5 hours trying to take in what had happened.

I don't want to go into my thoughts and feelings about this yet because there is still too much I am trying to sort out, but I wanted all of you who cared about her to know what happened. Tweet