Nadia

oh my, where has the time gone? it has been, oh quite a while since i last blogged about my ventures in the funeral world. i have found that this has been a very helpful venue for me to vent about my very dreary classes and my wonderful (yes, wonderful) experiences in the funeral home thus far. i've shared with you my heart about my dad and his life. now i want to share with you, Nadia!

i didn't know Nadia very long or very well for that matter. but what i did know about her was that she was the kind of spirit that would light up the room whenever she entered it. she was the kind of girl that you wanted to get to know, simply so you could say that she was your friend.

Nadia was 21 years old and full of life. no one expected what happened and still when i think about it, it makes me shake my head to know that something could have been done to prevent it.

about a month ago, Nadia was having some pains in her back. no big deal, right? after a few days of the pain persisting and intensifying, she went to the walk-in clinic and was told to take some tylenol (a walk-in docs miracle tonic for all things that ail you). from what i know, Nadia was a little bit of a worry-wart, but still she just thought it was a bad case of lumbago. a few days later, with back pains so intense that she couldn't breathe, her sister finally took her to the hospital (keep in mind that she thought she had a sore back).

within a few days, Nadia was on a ventilator and her sister was told that she possibly wouldn't make it through the night! all this from a sore back! it turns out that Nadia had developed a staff infection in her knee and it had spread rapidly through her blood into her organs and her heart was now working on just one valve (our heart has 4 valves and 4 chambers... Nadia just had one valve working)!

Nadia was in the hospital for about 3 weeks in the ICU. she was on a ventilator and heavily sedated so that she wouldn't pull out the tube that was breathing for her. she was somewhat responsive but it just seemed that she was stable, not getting better. the doctors finally discovered that one of the reasons that the staff infection got to the point that it was at was because her blood never produced any white blood cells to fight off the infection which is why she never even really knew that she was sick. when we get sick with an infection, our bodies produce WBC to attack the infections. Nadia's never did. she never knew she was sick. for weeks, her body was being attacked by this infection with no way to fight it off.

during the last week, Nadia's kidneys failed, her heart was barely working and her brain started to bleed. it's hard to imagine that this all started with a pain in her back.

Nadia died december 14th, 2009.

i work with Nadia's sister. when we talked about Nadia in the week before she died, all she could do was hope. she said that she had to have hope that she would recover, but that if she was going to die, she didn't want to have hope at all. hope can be a curse and a blessing, she said. i guess to some degree i agree. but at the same time, if i loose hope then i'm doomed to a life dominated by doubt. even if things don't work the way i believe they will, i can't loose hope. i definitely can't loose my hope and faith in God, no matter how many times things don't turn out the way i plan or pray they do.

when i talked to Nadia's sister, it was all she could do not to cry.

"there is a sacredness in tears. they are not the mark of weakness, but of power. they speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. they are messengers of overwhelming grief... and unspeakable love" ~ washington irving