Gary Update

It has been a week since Gary was admitted into the hospital. His condition plummeted each day. He had a seizure and they added dilantin to his morphine. Every day they raise his morphine dosage. I visit him every morning and evening and if I have no work I sit with him in the afternoons. He is in and out of conciousness and picks up on conversations from hours or days before. He isn't lucid long enough to get through the living will in one sitting. He's concerned about his homeless and rehab ministry being carried on and he has ordained me to take it over in the event of his death. It is an honor that he has given me that charge.

Bishop Benjamin went with me and Fr. Damian (our priest whom Gary loves) and Bill Gould to visit Gary on Saturday during our heirarchical parish picnic. We took Gary a cheeseburger and some brisket.

Of course, as soon as something like this happens I pick up a lot of work, so I'm juggling visiting Gary and keeping three projects going. Yesterday Fr. Damian spent most of the day with him. We've joked with Gary for a couple years about baptizing him and getting him into a "black dress". He hand wrote a sign for his hospital room: "No men in black dresses carrying water will be allowed in this room." He told me he wished he could live longer to talk to me more about Orthodoxy since we both came from the same protestant tradition. Fr. Damian called me and told me that Gary wishes to be chrismated. If he dies, we will bury him at St. Paisius Monastery where my father in law is buried (and I will be buried, but after I'm dead...)

The medical update is a mixed bag. The lump in his lung is pre-cancerous. They don't know if he has cancer anywhere else, or what is causing the excruciating pain. He has an anuerism at the base of his brain. His kidneys have ceased functioning. They don't know the condition of his heart yet because his health is so bad he can't do a stress test, and he is allergic to the nuclear iodine dye and is too big to fit into a full body MRI machine.

He wanted me to be the person to make his "end of life decisions" on his living will, but because he wants to will his ministry and its assets to me I cannot do that (no one who stands to "financially benefit" from someone's death can make end of life decisions...makes sense.) We've found another friend of his that is willing to do that for him.

The hospital doctor said they are pretty much at the end of their resources. He might be discharged in a few days and will have to go to a nursing home and be treated on an outpatient basis for each individual issue, heart, kidney, cancer, brain and unknown pain. The hospital he is in is an abomination. I won't even try to tell all the neglect and carelessness I've seen in the last week. Unfortunately the only way to get moved is for Gary to request it, but he is too drugged up. We will be trying to get him moved to a better hospital tomorrow one way or another.

If you pray, please do so for us all.