Jacquelyn Hurst Bean:  

MY BELOVED DON'S FINAL STORY – 7/27/2019 The past month and a half have been a crazy blur with hospitals, IVs, antibiotics for fevers of unknown origin – all ending in laying my sweetheart, Don Bean, to rest this morning (7/27/19) under a blue Texas sky. The birds were singing and a gentle breeze soothed us. A few little clouds scurried by to welcome home the beautiful spirit of Don. After suffering from a severe UTI, possible pneumonia, resulting in a diagnosis as having Hodgkin's Lymphoma, he laid in his hospital bed looking lost and confused. Perhaps a little scared, too, as he'd lost his younger brother and sister both to different cancers. I can still see his clear blue eyes looking deeply into mine as we held hands as we reassured one another. He told me he loved me “for all eternity”, to which I always replied, “And a day”. For 2 days after his one and only chemo treatment, he did well, but on the 3rd day he said he was a little nauseous, so he took one of the anti-nausea medications the oncologist had prescribed. He felt a little bit better the next day, but on Thursday, his fever was back and he was becoming disoriented. He got his words and phrases mixed up and I was afraid he'd had a stroke. I called the oncologist and they told me to call 911, which I promptly did. The local hospital couldn't get his blood pressure stabilized, so they transferred him to a larger hospital's ER. After numerous tests, it was determined that Don indeed had pneumonia and since his white cell count was down to .003% (10k-15k being normal) things were not looking good for my love and the lymphoma had gotten into the bone marrow. He was not doing good with the nasal cannula, so they put him on the c-pap, which made conversation difficult, but we managed. We could hear each other's love coos spoken in our limited French. As Don was in ICU, there were strict rules for the patient's well being, so son Jon and I left for the night. On Friday (7/19/19), the hospital called and the pulomonologist asked permission to put Don on the ventilator and sedate him as he was getting delirious and trying to get out of bed. Yes! Of course! Before I could even finish dressing, received another phone call from the hospital and they needed to know if it was against our religion for him to receive blood transfusions. Again, I had to tell that to another medical person it was ok to do so. Told them we were on the way and Jon got me back to the hospital (about a 40-minute drive) as quickly as possible, and things were not looking good at all. I kept in constant touch with my youngest son, Kenny and his wife, Crystal during this whole time, but Kenny, bless his heart, had just had eye surgery on the 18th and couldn't see to drive, but he was there. The ICU doctor came in and after a brief examination of Don, he shook his head and was very blunt, but spoke kindly with us – he told us that Don might not make it through that night. We wanted to save Don if there was *any* chance at all, but one of his doctors explained should they have to do CPR, that would mean cracked ribs and Don would most likely die from the pneumonia viruses then. His nurses kept connecting hydrating solutions, blood, antibiotics, etc., to get his blood pressure up as that was bottoming out. They told me that as soon as the IVs were completed, his blood pressure would drop again and it was a vicious circle. I got Don's folks on the phone and told them the situation had gone from bad to extremely critical since we last spoke. I put the phone up to Don's ear after explaining he had been heavily sedated so they could insert the ventilator and could not respond, b...Expand for more