Lana J. Thompson’s Illness
In late January 2007 Lana became weak for no apparent reason. Earlier she had had a bout of shingles but it seemed to go away with medication. On February 3, 2007 we went to Home Depot and bought 12 sheets of ¼ inch thick leuan plywood to install under our new bamboo flooring. I put it in the bathroom which is just outside our bedroom door. The next morning Lana became very ill.
I took her to the local doctor who takes care of the run-of-the-mill doctoring in the community. By coincidence on that day all of his other patients were coming down with the flu. Lana’s treatment was the same. She did not respond. A day or two later we returned and he ordered a blood test. When the results came later in the afternoon he asked her to come in. She could barely walk. When he discovered that she had a very low hemoglobin level he immediately sent her to an oncologist. An ambulance was called and Lana was rushed to the Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas. She needed two units of whole blood. They kept her for three days to try and evaluate what might have caused her to suddenly loose red blood cells. They couldn’t find anything then. The oncologist called her condition myeloproliferative disorder, as her white blood cell count was very high, as high as 234. While she was at Seton they did a bone marrow biopsy and it did not show any abnormal activity at that time.
The high white blood cell count caused numerous problems with her body. The fatty tissue behind her right eyeball became so inflamed one night that her eye protruded ½ inch and was immovable. We immediately went to an eye surgeon who ordered an MRI of her head. For the following year Lana’s eye problems were monitored by the most prestigious team of eye surgeons in Austin, Texas. The next thing affected by the raging inflammation in her body was her thyroid glands. They both had tumors. We found a specialist in College Station, Texas who informed her that her thyroid glands were the victim of whatever was causing her problem.
The next thing was that all of her joints were becoming inflamed and very painful. An infectious disease specialist was called and by this time we had four months of weekly blood tests. He asked Lana a hundred questions, carefully examined all of the blood tests and made several phone calls. His conclusion at this time was that Lana did not have cancer or leukemia but she did have one of four non-lupoid autoimmune disorders which he could not immediately determine.
For the next eighteen months Lana began seeing a rheumatologist in College Station. Her condition seemed to stabilize and only occasionally did she need blood. In the beginning her platelet count was in the 600 range. That is very high. Normal is 130 – 400. All the while her red blood count remained on the low side. Then for some unexplained reason her platelets began to disappear. In the spring of 2008 they dropped to 38. Her rheumatologist ordered her first infusion of platelets. Two or three more times in 2008 she needed platelets as well. All during 2008 she had red blood transfusions just 4 or 5 times.
In January of this year Lana could no longer produce her own platelets or red blood cells and her oncologist ordered a second bone marrow biopsy. This time it showed myelodisplactic syndrome. Chemotherapy was begun immediately but proved totally ineffective. We were told that Lana had only two years to live without having a bone marrow transplant. This had to be done at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I went online and immediately registered Lana as a patient. About two weeks later we had a visit with the transplant surgeon.
The first step was to put her in the hospital and give her massive doses of chemotherapy. She was kept in reverse isolation for the next 29 days. All the while she had no less than six bags being infused day and night. A central venous catheter, CVC was installed in her lower right arm. I needed to officially learn to be her “caregiver”. This required classes and being tested by an RN who was quick to point out any deviation from the accepted procedure. When we began going to Anderson we had adequate insurance coverage to take care of the cost of a “Family Transplant”. The cost would be $270,000.00. That was in April. The bill for the first 29 days was $160,000, $46,000 was for medications, blood and platelets.
Lana came home for the next month while the chemo did its job of killing all of her white blood cells. Several more bone marrow biopsies were ordered. Then she was admitted again for a second round of chemo. It lasted only five days and she was discharged. This is when the problems really started. About a week or two later while we were back at M. D. Anderson Lana began to vomit. She also had diarrhea. She was given bags to throw up in while she lay on a sofa in the aisle just outside of the B elevators. We were waiting for her 2:00pm appointment to have a unit of platelets. Later, about 5:00pm she was discharged. The trip between La Grange and Houston is 105 miles and normally about 2 ½ hours. When I got her home she went straight to bed. She was very weak. The vomiting continued as well as the diarrhea.
At 11:00 the next morning Lana called me into her bedroom and said, “I need help now”. We had already had several very bad experiences with the local ER. I did not want her to go there. It would take them anywhere from 2 to 6 hours to determine what if anything they should do. This waiting period is called “triage”. They don’t take the patient’s or caregiver’s word for anything. I immediately went to the RNs who did her blood tests and asked what I should do. I was told to go to the ER. “Lana doesn’t have time for that,” I replied. “What if I ask one of the doctors that she goes to here in La Grange?” “They will want to see her first,” was her reply. I did go quickly to the clinic where Lana had been two months earlier. I left a detailed message with the receptionist and left. I had no sooner arrived home than her doctor called. He said to meet the nurses at the front door of the hospital, they would be waiting for her. Ten minutes later Lana was in a bed with an IV in her CVC port. They also gave her antibiotics. What we hadn’t checked at home was her temperature. She had a fever of 101. Six hours later Lana was put in an ambulance and taken to the Seton Medical Center in Austin. I did not follow but rather waited until the morning. Lana was gravely ill. The name for her condition was the dreaded “neuprogenic fever”. Antibiotics have no effect on this type of fever. It is caused by not having any white blood cells. Lana’s white blood cell count that day was 0.01. The fever lasted eleven days. On the second day her oncologist told her that one out of four patients who have this reaction to chemotherapy die, and that I had made the correct decision not to let the ER touch her. He also credited the local doctor for his cooperation and correct initial treatment for this condition. Mainly that she have fluids and to send her to where she could get the proper care. Lana stayed at Seton for 22 days and the bill was $98,000.
When she was discharged from Seton we went back to M. D. Anderson. They ordered another bone marrow biopsy this time her diagnosis was “Acute Myelogenous Leukemia”. They also ordered a third round of chemotherapy. It would be milder this time. We had additional visits with the transplant surgeon. He was happy with Lana’s condition. She was exactly where she should be for a transplant except there was a problem. We no longer had enough insurance in our plan to cover it. Forms were mailed to us for “Financial Assistance”. They wanted to know where every penny came from for the last three years. We also had to verify that we were American citizens and legal residents of Texas. Weeks went by and one day I got a call from the woman in charge of our case. I had filled out the forms incorrectly plus she needed an additional 6 items of information. I was an emotional “basket case”. Whether Lana lived or died now depended entirely on me. Could I satisfy them? A week later the answer was again NO. There was still another item that had to be verified. Fortunately I was able to have it taken care of the next day. The application was now complete.
All of 2009, from January to now, August 24th Lana has had at least 25 two unit blood transfusions and fifty platelet infusions. Blood costs approximately $2400 per unit and platelets $1600 per unit. Her monthly bill for medications she takes at home is somewhere between $5000 and $6000. December 1st Lana will be eligible for Medicare. That will solve some of her financial problems but if the transplant does not take place by then she will be ineligible—too old.
As to how Lana looks, she has lacerations and bruises up and down both arms and also on her lower legs, breasts and butt. Her skin is like butterfly wings it is so fragile. The slightest bump and she has a laceration. She has also lost all of her hair. We carry Band-Aids in every size and type as well as all of the surgical kits necessary to change the bandage on her CVC and the blood thinner necessary to keep the lines open.
Tomorrow, August 25th, we see the transplant surgeon again and are hopeful that he will have the authority to proceed with the transplant. Lana and I have just returned from her Monday blood test. Her platelets are at 12 and her nose has begun to bleed. We are at this very moment waiting for a call to go to Austin for platelets. This is always an all day affair. Last Friday on the way to Austin, again for platelets, the transmission of our car began to go out. I stopped at my local GM dealer on the way home. Two days remained in the "Cash for Clunkers" program. I saw that as an opportunity, as my Buick Estate Wagon was now 13 ½ years old. Fortunately no money was involved. Sign here and pay 72 monthly payments. I didn’t need more payments now but had no choice in the matter. The good thing is I am paying zero interest.
My $500,000 lifetime family health care limit was set in 1980. It had never been increased. I am retired now and it is not possible for me to change plans as our medications are covered by Medco. I am afraid even to call Blue Cross to see what, if any coverage remains.
The M. D. Anderson
Financial Assistance Process
July 16, 2009: The five page financial assistance package arrived from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. I filled it out and found all of the supporting documents that day and the next day.
July 30, 2009: Tonya, the financial assistance coordinator, called to say that my application was incomplete. All of the income sources had to be verified and she needed a copy of my birth certificate and Texas drivers license. This required calls to Social Security and my Union pension plan. The shock of hearing that our application had been rejected nearly gave me a heart attack.
August 8, 2009: The requested information arrived in the mail and I photocopied them. At this time I redid page one and three of the application.
August 11, 2009: Lana and I saw Tonya at M. D. Anderson and presented the additional information. At this time as we were talking about the application and the income sources and I mentioned where the "Other" income came from. I was immediately told that the donor had to sign a notarized statement saying that they were the giver.
August 12, 2009: the donor faxed the required statement to Tonya.
Unknown Date: but between the 12th and the 18th of August someone called our bank and asked for the balance on hand in our checking account. Mind you I had sent them four months of bank statements. They were given the balance as of that minute.
August 18, 2009: the "Denied" letter was typed but not mailed.
August 25, 2009: Lana and I saw Tonya again and in a very soft voice she read a short blog at the bottom of the application.
"Your application has been approved for $500,000 for a non-family transplant. You will be required to pay $11,600.00 in cash." Neither Lana or I remembered the amount correctly but we did say that we would be back to Houston in one week. In fairness to Tonya I admit that I am hard-of-hearing. But we were not in a position to pay that amount on the spot. Money market stocks had to be cashed in.
August 26, 2009: I went to my stock broker and signed the necessary forms.
August 27, 2009: The Denial letter was mailed by Elvira.
August 28, 2009: The check arrived in the mail from Edward Jones, my stock broker.
August 29, 2009: Lana and I received the Denial letter. Just a short while after receiving the letter I called my daughter, Colleen. She immediately fired off emails to: The American Cancer Society, Senator Kay Baily Hutchison and Congressman Lloyd Doggett. She was aware that the Senator and Congressman were acquainted with me and she felt they could be of some help. They both had copies of my book "The Saga of Old La Grange".
September 1, 2009: Lana had an appointment with her transplant surgeon. I had forgotten to take my checkbook with me. We also did not know the status of our financial assistance application other than it was denied. We again saw Tonya. Both the surgeon and Tonya said that the money needed to be paid before the application would be approved. We only had an approximate idea of the amount. I asked for the exact amount. She made a phone call and said the amount was: $11,619.05. I asked her to please write it down for me. She tore the corner off a sheet of paper and wrote it down. Lana, Tonya and I went to the finance office together and I presented my ATM card. Sorry we cannot take an ATM card, was the answer. That's all right I replied, I will return tomorrow with a check.
September 2, 2009: At three in the morning I had the thought that I should not write a personal check but rather get a certified check at the bank. Lana was adamantly opposed to my getting a certified check, saying that she did not have time to waste. I did not listen but rather left twenty minutes early to go to the bank which opened at 9:00am. It only took five minutes for them to make out the check and three more minutes for me to photocopy it when I got home. We arrived at M. D. Anderson at 10:50am and parked the car. I put Lana into a wheelchair and took the sky bridge from the parking garage to the Main Building. Who should be standing just inside the door of this mammoth facility but Lana's surgeon. She immediately took the certified check out of the envelope and waived it for him to see. He was talking on the phone but smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. Now we knew everything would be OK. Lana and I went alone the finance office and gave them the check. The teller did not know what to do with the check since we had a zero balance. I explained that it was front money for a transplant. She made a phone call, seemed satisfied and processed our check. She was very pleased that it was a certified check. There would be no waiting until it cleared our bank. She gave me a receipt and I asked for two additional copies, one for Tonya and one for the transplant coordinator. We went to the 8th floor, transplant department and asked them to call Tonya and the transplant coordinator, that we would meet them here in the waiting room. Five minutes later Tonya arrived, this time she was all smiles. That too was reassuring. I gave her a copy of the receipt and she said she would give the other woman hers as well. Finally we were officially approved. They mentioned that the donor would be called immediately.
The Transplant Schedule
A few days later this schedule arrived in the mail. It involves pre-transplant testing.
It is going to be grueling to be sure....(please remember that we live 105 miles away from the hospital itself so our days begin around 4 am). Also, many of these appointments take place in different buildings, sometimes on opposite sides of the M. D. Anderson campus. There are "shuttles" available in some sections but in others I am literally pushing Lana in a wheelchair for a good mile to get from place to place. Quite a workout.
9/18/09 -
9:00am Fast Track Lab Collection
11:00am Dr. "C" appointment
9/23/09 -
8:00am Dental appointment
9:00am ITT Pre-Procedure Assessment
9:45am Blood/Speciment Collection
11:00am Echocardiogram
1:00pm Bone Marrow ASP/BX W/PreMed
9/24/09 -
7:10am Check In/Prep for CT Exam
7:40am CT Scan, Head/Neck Area
9:15am Chest, PA & LAT
10:00am Receipt HT/WT Storage Consent
10:30am Dr. "C" appointment
11:30am Business Center Follow-Up
12:30pm EKG Resting
1:00pm Complete Pulmonary Function
2:00pm Dr. "C" appointment
9/25/09 -
8:00am Transplant Coordinator Visit
10:00am Social Worker Visit
2:15pm Stem Cell Pre-Admission Class
9/29/09 -
10:30am Blood/Specimen Collection
11:00am Receipt HT/WT Storage Consent
11:30am Dr. "C" appointment
9/30/09 -
8:30am Subclavian Catheter Insertion and removal of the one in her right arm. This is how she will receive the chemo which starts tomorrow as well as the bone marrow and or stem cells. Tomorrow we will know what her room phone number will be. Her surgeon is very happy with her blood test numbers. The transplant will take place on the 8th of October. Her donor is a 30 year old woman who has type AB positive blood. Right now Lana is type A positive. After the transplant Lana will be AB like her donor. She will be in isolation for at least a month. Hopefully she will begin making her own blood real soon. She has had over 70 transfusions this year alone. She got platelets Monday and again today.
10/1/09 - Scheduled Admission for Transplant
The Emails to Friends and Family
10/2/09 - Lana is checked in at M. D. Anderson and has begun another round of chemotherapy. The chemo is already taxing her system and causing vomiting, so they added an anti-nausea to her IV this morning which should help. Otherwise she is in good spirits. In fact, while checking in one of the nurses commented to Lana "you don't even look sick".
Those good spirits and positive attitude may be the very thing to save Lana's life. Both the head nurse and doctor performing the transplant have eluded to the fact that the hospital just can't help everyone. My guess is that perhaps only 25-50% of patients who apply for the financial assistance receive it. The doctor has also said he has been writing a case study on Lana which will then be published in medical journals on the subject. I feel it was Lana's survivor spirit that lead to his decision to focus on her case. As Lana says "death will just have to catch me by surprise."
After my visit with Lana tomorrow I will then drive 19 miles to meet the daughter of a friend in La Grange who lives in Houston. She has kindly offered to let Lana and I stay with her during the 100 days after Lana's release when she has to go to M. D. Anderson for daily testing. This will be a lifesaver for us as it would be impossible to commute the 105 miles each way from our home in La Grange. I offered to pay her $500.00 per month for two bedrooms and a bath. Hopefully it will be covered by the kind donations we receive to Lana's medical fund.
10/3/09 - My 94 year old father, Joseph D. Mole of Melbourne, Florida died today. He did not suffer since he had only been in the hospital for about a month. I believe he had a stroke and his body just began to shut down. He was on a morphine drip the last few days so he felt no pain.
10/9/09 - It is Friday 6:16pm and Lana's transplant has just begun. It was to be yesterday morning and I went to be with her but they said the plane was delayed. The donor's bone marrow arrived at M.D. Anderson at about 5:30pm. The donor did not come to Houston but rather to their local hospital where ever in the world that may have been. Lana will be asleep during the procedure which may take all night. I will go there again Sunday.
10/10/09 - There were complications and I had to rush to Houston Saturday morning. Lana could not catch her breath so they rushed her to the intensive care unit where they could better monitor her. I was with her again Sunday the 11th and will be with her again Monday. She appears to be out of danger and the transplant seems to be OK so far.
10/15/09 - Lana had her bone marrow transplant on Friday at 6:16pm. Fifteen hours later she had a very difficult time breathing. Her respiration rate was between 30 and 40 and her pulse 95 to 130 per minute. They did blood cultures several days ago and today they said she has pneumonia. She still needs platelets and blood, they gave her platelets today. She also has blood in her urine and both eyes look like she has been battered. I was with her today and spoke with the infectious disease doctor. I stayed with her for three hours today but she told me to go home all she wanted to do is sleep. I really don't know what to make of it. She didn't have a temperature. I looked at her blood report from this morning her hemoglobin was 9.5 but she had 0.0 white blood cells and no way for her body to fight any infection. She had several IVs including an antibacterial, anti-fungal and an antiviral. The nurses check her constantly day and night. She tries to talk but it is very hard for me to understand what she is saying. It would not be possible for her to answer the phone at this time. She is in room G1180 at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. She cannot have any type of flowers, fresh or artificial as she is in isolation. It is very depressing to see her in such an awful condition. They did say the transplant otherwise seems OK. She was in intensive care from Saturday to Tuesday the 13th but now she is back in a private room.
10/17/09 - 7:09pm, as of this very minute I am closing up the house and planning to spend all my time with my Lana in her private hospital room at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. They have a pull-down bed that will cost me nothing to use as long as she is hospitalized. Last weekend she was in the ICU. You would be heartbroken to see her now. Acute Leukemia really trashes one's body. The transplant is nothing more than an infusion through a tube implanted in her chest. I will be carrying our cell phone with me from now on. I am also very hard of hearing now that I am nearing 70. So far I am holding together OK but it is only because of my faith. I pray for Lana constantly. In January when I prayed for an angel to come and care for her I was immediately told, "You are already here." I have been commissioned as Lana's official guardian angel. She was told the next morning while she was in her bedroom praying that, "You are not alone." She got up and looked all around her room to see who said that. Those few words have been very comforting to us. I still believe that she will pull through all of this. Yesterday they did a CT scan of her head. They thought there may be some mental impairment but they found none. Today they X-rayed her chest again to check on the phenomena situation. I will not be able to email for the next couple of weeks but hope to when we move to Houston for three months. She will be a daily outpatient to monitor her condition and can only be 30 minutes from the hospital.
10/24/09 - I have been with Lana for the past seven days, day and night. Some of the nurses are competent and caring while others are only in nursing to follow the rules and to collect a paycheck. I caught both doctors and nurses making life and death mistakes this week. Lana had been bleeding from her nose for two days and I asked for platelets. The answer was that she had 45 and did not warrant them. The next day a nursing assistant looked in her mouth with his flashlight and her entire mouth cavity was filled with bloody mucus which had the consistency of tar. She failed the swallowing test and also was unable to speak, they ordered a CT scan of her head which showed nothing. Not even her doctor or any of her RNs thought to look in her mouth. They sent her to the intensive care unit and the RN there put her blood pressure cuff on incorrectly and was getting readings above 190/--. The cuff was timed to inflate every 15 minutes. The next time the cuff inflated I noticed that even full of air it wasn't touching her skin so of course she always got the highest reading it was pumped to. I brought it to the nurse's attention and she redid it. The next cycle read 158/-- and the following one was 136/67. I informed the RN that these were her usual numbers. She threw me out of the ICU but while I was leaving I ordered her to correct the erroneous readings in her chart. I doubt that she did. Lana was not able to speak and sleeps most of the time. She still has no white blood cells. The reading is 0.0. Her hope for recovery lies in her body's ability to begin making white blood cells. She has no fever but still has pneumonia. One of her doctors resents my being there. His comment to me the other morning was, "You're here again!" He was not the doctor in charge who cares very much for my input. Yesterday Lana was visited by the head doctor and eight assistants who were RNs and MD interns. I had equal say with all of them and they made certain that my concerns were immediately acted on. They now clean her mouth out at least twice a day with a special suction device. It is easy if the blood is still less than a day old otherwise it becomes very thick and hard to remove. I am still hopeful that what I am seeing is just chemobrain and not permanent mental impairment. It always takes two people to handle her and turn her and keep her clean. On several occasions she did lie wet for several hours. She has severe rashes on her back and genital area. You can see the value of my staying there 24 hours a day. They all know that they are being watched. Had I only gone twice a week for an hour or so I truly believe she would have died by now.
10/25/09 - 3:25am Saturday and early Sunday morning is the only time I can email right now. I plan to come back once a week to pay bills and do my laundry. This is the only break I will have for the next ten days or until she is discharged but I will do whatever it takes to save her life. The health care system is need of much repair. Many of the regulations regarding how often blood and platelets can be given is determined by the insurance companies. This has to end! I have a direct line of communication with my congressman, Lloyd Doggett and have already personally given him a copy of her health care story up to the point of being approved for a transplant. My daughter, Colleen, is putting all the emails I send her on the Internet at savelana.blogspot.com Thank you for your support and prayers.
10/26/09 - 6:51am I just came from Lana yesterday. They put her back in the ICU this morning and inserted a tube through her mouth into her bronchial tube so she could have an uninterrupted supply of oxygen as well as a vacuum tube in her mouth and inflatable devices in each nostril to put pressure on the nasal passage walls to stop the bleeding. She is literally bleeding to death. She received two units of blood today but already there is half a unit in the vacuum tank and she has completely saturated a wash rag as well as a mouth full of 4 inch gauze squares. At 9:00 this morning she had a unit of platelets but they are no longer having any clotting effect. Her white blood cell count is still 0.0 so regeneration has not yet begun even after 16 days. She is also unconscious and not a pretty sight. I suggested that in her present condition there was nothing more I could do to be of any help and they agreed. In fact they do not encourage caregivers to stay in the ICU but rather go home. They said they would call if there is any change in her condition. I am back home now in La Grange. The nurses' concern was how well I was taking this turn of events. I assured them that I was OK that I have been dealing with the situation now for nearly three years. I told them today about the RN who turned, tore off her gown and ran away at the sight of blood three days earlier. "One of our nurses here on the eleventh floor?" "Yes," I replied. It is very stressful being there and not being able to help anymore. We have to hope for a miracle now, the doctors and nurses have now done everything humanly possible to save Lana.
10/26/09 - 5:17pm The ICU called me for permission to put a catheter in her neck to connect a kidney dialysis machine because she cannot filter out all the junk they have been given her. They said it would not be permanent. They also constantly monitor her intake and outflow. She had been retaining fluid for nearly a week. I am carrying our cell phone constantly. I did not cry until I began reading the responses to my emails. But if her kidneys are failing it could mean her body is shutting down. At least I know there may still be some hope.
11/1/09 - 2:30am I was awakened by the "Vision" which was “Our Miracle”.
At 2:30 Sunday morning the 1st of November while I was at home in La Grange, Texas and in bed asleep I had a vision. Lana had been in room 23 in the C pod on the seventh floor of the hospital, the ICU floor. Her room was the first room you see as you come around the corner from the “F” elevators and look into the C pod. All of the rooms have patio doors so that the end of each room is glass to make it easy for the nurses to read the monitors without coming into the rooms. What I saw in my vision was light—ten times brighter than daylight streaming from her room. I knew that angels or the Lord himself had come to escort her spirit up out of her body. As soon as daylight came I drove to Houston. The first person I spoke with was the RN on duty in her room. She was not busy and we spoke for half an hour. I told her of my vision. During the next two hours twelve to fifteen MDs, RNs and social workers wanted to speak with me concerning “end of life issues”. A Chaplin also wanted to see my legal papers, medical power of attorney, advanced directives etc. Every thing was in order. Their decision Sunday was to give Lana until Friday, another five days, so I came back to La Grange.
The next morning at 10:30 I got a call on my cell phone from her transplant surgeon Dr. "C". He said to come back to Houston as soon as possible. I arrived at 12:45. The same RN was attending Lana and made the comment, “Mr. Mole do your remember the story you told me yesterday about what you had seen. The ventilator (the machine which was assisting her to breath and which is a computer and has a monitor) recorded the time you said as the time your wife could no longer breathe on her own. After you left yesterday your wife had a CT scan of her head and it showed swelling in her brain.” In other words, Lana became brain dead at 2:30 Sunday morning.
During the next hour and a half I talked with all the people involved in the process of “termination of life supports”. Finally I was connected to an MD by phone who said that all I need to do was to say yes to terminate life supports and Lana would be put on “comfort care” only. That involves only a sedative and pain killer. Lana had been on dialysis and that was the first things to be disconnected. With that done I was able to go and stand next to her bed and hold her hand. Over the next 20 minutes the RN disconnected the 22 IVs which were on three stands, and then she left the room. The monitor above Lana's bed was displaying her pulse which initially registered 64 beats per minute. Every minute the number dropped by one: 63, 62, 61, 60. When it fell to 32 the next reading was 0. I noted the time, 15:33. One minute later the RN came back into room and said, “Mr. Mole your wife has just died.” Not knowing how I was supposed to react to the situation I waited another minute and then left Lana’s room.
Of all the people I spoke with during those two days none thought I was a crackpot or some kind of weirdo. Basically what I had done was to tell all of them when Lana had actually died. The machines simply kept her body alive for another 37 hours. Life supports were terminated at 2:45pm and it took only 48 minutes for her to pass away.
I am a classical music fan and had been a Chicago Symphony Orchestra season ticket holder for many years. Concerts are rebroadcast on the Internet and the radio every week. A week earlier I had recorded one on the Internet at cso.org but had forgotten what it was. It was a two CD set, a recreation of the very first concert ever held in Orchestra Hall, Chicago one hundred years earlier. When I went to Houston Monday morning I played the first CD and all but ten minutes of the second. Ten minutes after Lana died I left the hospital and began driving towards the freeway. Just as I reached it what should come next as the final selection of this concert but Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah. I played it over and over for the next two hours about 24 times.
The sun began to set as I neared Columbus, Texas. There were no clouds in the sky and it was a perfect day. The sunset stretched for miles across the vast Texas landscape. When I turned off Interstate 10 onto HWY 71 towards La Grange I looked over to the right to see the most beautiful perfect full harvest moon which had just come up over the horizon. It was glorious! What this meant to me was that all creation was celebrating for Lana. She didn’t just get some old spare parts from another woman to keep her going for a short while but a whole new body.
Lana J. Thompson, my wife of twelve years was an artist, writer and poet, and had been very ill with acute myelogenous leukemia. Her symptoms started nearly three years ago but her first bone marrow biopsy proved negative. She had no definitive diagnosis until early January of this year. She died on November 2, at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Twenty-four days earlier she had had a bone marrow transplant that did not regenerate. They could not keep blood in her; even daily platelet infusions were no help. Her blood simply would not clot. I held her hand as her heart beat for the very last time and she breathed her last breath. It is not altogether a sad story, in fact we did get a miracle it just wasn’t the one we were looking for. My sunset was Lana's sunrise. "Like the arms of angels singing Allelujah — Allelujah".
Obituary of Lana J. Thompson
Lana Jean Thompson, age 64 of La Grange, TX, died Monday November 2, 2009 at 3:33pm in Houston, TX from a three year illness. She was born Wednesday, December 13, 1944 in Ellicottville, New York. She is the daughter of Elizabeth Hilbig and Chester Konieczka, a merchant marine who died November 29, 1966 in the shipwreck of the Daniel J. Morrell off the thumb of Michigan. It was the sister ship of the Titanic and also split in two in a storm. Lana’s mother had no attending physician or midwife. Bernard Thompson, who later married her mother and raised Lana died this year on July 25th. Her mother died in 1994.
Lana is survived by her husband of twelve years, Joseph L. Mole and her daughters Anna Christen of La Grange, TX; Carol Armstrong of Yoakum and a son Leonard who lives in Hallettsville. She has one brother Bernard Thompson and three sisters: Mary Drake of Johnson City, TN; June Lyness of Winter Haven, FL and Betty Moss of Kissimmee, FL; five grandchildren, and two great-grand children and plus one due in a few months.
During her life Lana was an award winning artist working in all forms of water media and collage as well as fabric arts including fine art quilts and wall hangings. She is also a poet and writer and was an avid reader. For six years she and her husband owned and operated the Thompson • Mole Gallery in La Grange, Texas. The gallery was closed due to her illness. Tommy Taylor is handling her final arrangements; there will be no funeral service or wake.
