I decided to come back to this blog today and re-read some of it. Tomorrow will be seven weeks since Lauren passed. I don't know why, but it seems like it happened a long time ago. My Mom says the same thing. Don't know what that is.....

I need to call my brother. I keep up with him through my Mom. She says he is staying busy.......taking care of Lance and Pheobe, working a lot, gardening, going to church, etc. If I remember right, Mom says that somehow he feels that Lauren's passing happened a long time ago too. At first, he couldn't sleep much at night. That may still be the case....not sure... I hope not. He hurt his back recently...I hope he is taking care of himself.

I emailed Lauren's boyfriend, Blake, today. I haven't heard from him since I last saw him the night after Lauren's funeral service at the cabin we were all staying. I hope he is OK and that I hear from him. I asked him to get the DVD from the funeral home with all the photos from Lauren's service. Those photos were wonderful. I also asked if he wouldn't mind helping me download them to this site as well as the photos of him and her that he gave her in a photo album for Valentine's Day. That album was such a treasure. He did a really great job on it. Just a peek at the relationship they had.

Well, I have stopped sending out email blasts about Lauren....but if you happen to be reading this or happen upon this blog somehow, please pray for Lauren, my brother, my mom and stepdad (Lauren's grandparents), Lance, Blake............our family. Thank you.

If you would like to send condolences or any healing thoughts, please go online at www.gundrumfuneralhome.com. Thank you.

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, in the next few weeks I am going to try to post two really wonderful photo albums of Lauren. One was given to her by Blake, her boyfriend, on Valentine's Day this year. The photos are of the two of them and are sweet and fun. The other is a DVD pictoral of Lauren's life put together by her mother and the funeral home for Lauren's service.

Well, that's about it for now. I thank all of you for praying for Lauren....and my brother....and our family. There will definitely be hard days ahead for us....but Lauren's hard days are through, and as much as we wish that weren't so, we know it is what is best for her.

We will miss her....but we know that she is always with us.....watching over us...helping us....guiding us.....making us better people. We love Lauren. She is and always will be our inspiration....Our Hero.

Lauren passed on Sunday, March 15th at 1:08PM in the emergency room of Logansport Memorial Hospital. The same hospital she was born in eighteen years ago. The minister who officiated at her funeral was at the hospital when she passed...the same minister who had baptized her years earlier.

I wish her passing had been easier for her. She struggled so. She was such a fighter.

Starting the night before, she was extremely restless and did not sleep. The next morning (Sunday), she seemed to be in pain. Because of the cancer in Lauren's liver, there was always the chance that her liver would eventually not metabolize the drugs effectively. Nevertheless, Dilaudid is all that we had, so we hit the bolus on the Dilaudid pump every 5 minutes to add another 55 ml per hit to the constantly flowing 100 ml per hour. Medicines were supposed to be on their way by hospice courier from Indianapolis. These medicines would put Lauren into a comatose-type state (no pain, no anxiety, no fear) until she passed.

At mid-morning we got the news that the drugs that we had been told were on their way had in fact not even been mixed in the pharmacy in Indianapolis. At that point, the hospice nurse began trying to make arrangements for Care Flight to take Lauren to Riley's Hospital for Children to receive these drugs. But Care Flight only flies critical patients whose lives are trying to be saved, not hospice patients in their final stages of life. So the nurse began trying to find an ambulance to take Lauren to a hospital 40 mintues away in Kokomo to get these medicines. In the midst of all of this, the Dilaudid pump failed. Dilaudid, the only medicine we had on hand.....medicine that we weren't sure was even working that well any longer.....had stopped flowing. Something akin to controlled chaos erupted in that apartment. My brother, my mother, Blake (Lauren's boyfriend), and the hospice nurse began working furiously to re-program the pump....to no avail. My brother then began injecting Fenegren into the central line in her stomach. Her Mom gave her Haldol (or Morphine) under her tongue. Her Mom called 911. Everything was being done to stave off what would be crushing breakthrough cancer pain. The ambulance came in minutes, but seemed to take forever leaving with her.

The hospital didn't have anywhere near the levels of Dilaudid in stock that Lauren consumed in an hour. The emergency room staff finally got another Dilaudid pump running and were quickly preparing her for the 45-60 minute ambulance ride to Riley to get the drugs needed to induce the comatose-state, when someone noticed that she had passed. Sometime in the midst of all the desperate and valiant efforts to help her..........she had passed. At some time while everyone was fighting to help her, she had helped herself.......she had stopped fighting.........she had let go.

Now that we have stopped long enough to think....in looking back, Lauren had become very still and calm right after the pump broke. Now that we think about it, she had stopped flinching, and grimacing, and clenching her fists. Her pain was already gone........her eyes were fixed......she was already floating....

Her funeral was on Wednesday, March 18th. The room was packed....a lot of young people from her high school.....and four staff members from Riley's Hospital for Children that had been her caregivers all of these years. They travelled two hours from Indianapolis after their shifts. Two of them had been with her during her first go-round with cancer while a still a baby. One of them spoke. Her oncology doctor had tried to come but could not make it. He sent a card that was read out loud. Lauren impacted a lot people.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to try to add two photo albums that we have of her.....a lot of fun, madcap photos of a beautiful girl who was a crazy, little free spirit.

I don't really know what else to say....except that we will all miss her. She was an amazing example of a person who lived life big. She was (is) our 'Buggy,' 'Bug Bug,' 'Twinkle Star,' 'Twinkle,' 'Twink,' 'Sweet Tart,' 'Tootsie Roll'.........and we will always love her.

My brother called tonight to tell us that a hospice nurse came to the apartment today and based on the changes that she has seen in Lauren since last week, she feels that Lauren only has 2-3 days to live. My Mom and Stepdad are driving from Illinois to Indiana in the morning. Brian and I are flying out tomorrow at 7:40 AM. We should get to Logansport, Indiana by about 1:00 PM.

She hasn't eaten anything in the past two days.....maybe a little soup or pudding or something....I can't remember what Glenn told me. He said she has barely drank 3 oz. of fluid in that time. She woke up once yesterday and saw her brother Lance. She asked him if he wanted to play a game with her. I don't know if they played.

Earlier today she woke up and everyone was standing at the foot of her bed. The hospice nurse was there. She opened her eyes and smiled at everyone and waved. That's Lauren. She's not speaking today....too weak. When I was on the phone with Glenn tonight he said to me "Its all so sad, just so sad....she tried to talk tonight." All he understood was "I" and "want, want" and "go." He said that her Aunt Tamara and stepmom Phoebe began to cry. He asked them what Lauren had said because he hadn't understood. They said that she said "I don't want to go.' I hope that is not true. We don't want her to go either.....but we don't want her to be afraid. As Glenn and I were talking tonight, they came and got him to go upstairs and be with Lauren because she is very agitated tonight. Hospice had been called back out......and we hung up.

I pray that she has a peaceful, quiet night......of beautiful, tranquil dreams. I really continue to pray that she will beat this as she did when she was five. She has fought so hard for so long. But I also pray for her to find peace and happiness and God's love.

I pray that if this is the end, that she not be afraid. I pray that she is alive when I get there. I pray that my brother will survive this.

If you are reading this, I ask for your prayers too. Thank you.

My Mom and Stepdad's Trip to Indiana

Well, I have gotten behind on doing Blog entries, so I am doing two at once tonight. My Mom and Stepdad went to visit Lauren and my brother Glenn from Saturday, February 28th through Monday, March 2nd. Mom said Lauren slept a lot, but they all watched "Stardust" together ....one of her favorite movies. She ate a little Olive Garden.....her favorite food. As sick as she is (we don't know how she does it), but she loves their soup and salad. She eats only a few bites of it these days though.

On Sunday, Lauren asked my Mom if she was afraid to die. My Mom said 'No.' She asked Lauren what it was that she was afraid of. Lauren told her that she wanted to know what would happen at the very instant that she dies. Would she be all alone......all by herself? How soon would it be before she got to see anybody? My Mom tried to alleviate her fears. She told Lauren that she felt that Jesus himself would probably come and meet her because he will know how long she has suffered and he would recognize her because of the cross she has on her body, similar to the cross he hung upon. (From her numerous surgeries, Lauren has a large cross carved across her chest and stomach.) My Mom and Stepdad also told her of the passing of two of my Stepdad's family members, ie. his father and a 4-year old child who would have been his Aunt. Both reassuring stories. They did what they could to diminish her fears and give her hope.

That night, while playing a game of Phase 10 with everyone, Lauren suddenly felt very badly and layed her head down on the diningroom table. My Mom said that she said "It hurts so bad Dad, it hurts so bad...its awful, just awful." All my brother could say was 'I'm so sorry, Buggy I'm so sorry.' She felt so bad that she couldn't lift her head up. It just siezed her that quickly, incredible breakthrough pain. They hit her bolus repeatedly to get more Dilaudid pumped into her system. Lauren has worn a Dilaudid pump 24 hours a day since August 2008. She receives 20 ml. every hour with 15 ml. expressed each time she hits the bolus. These are high doses. But on this night, it wasn't working. A hospice nurse was called in. She got there within the hour and increased her hourly dose to 30 ml. Lauren was put to bed and my Mom and Stepdad went back to their hotel around midnight.

The next day (Monday), my Mom and Stepdad went to visit with Lauren before they left for home in Illinois. Lauren was pretty perky and visited with them. The increased Dilaudid was working. Although before they left she became nauseas and very tired and had to lay down. She kept telling my Mom how sorry she was to have to lay down while company was there.

She is such a trooper. She tries to visit and play games to the best of her ability. She does it for herself, but I think she does it just as much for us.

Our Trip to Indiana

Brian and I went to visit Lauren, Glenn and Blake between Saturday, February 21st and Tuesday, February 24th. Lauren is hanging in there. She is thin, pale, weak.....she sleeps a lot. She doesn't go much of anywhere....she pretty much stays in the apartment moving between her bed and the couch. She is still lucid and knows all that is going on. We played two games of Rummy Kubes....a few hands of Phase 10 while we were there. She eats like a bird. Although she wants to eat, not much agrees with her. She threw up one time while we were there. It was all green fluid and kept coming and coming and coming. It was an unbelievable amount. I felt so sorry for her. She just wiped her mouth off and laid back down. I offered her some water; she didn't want it. I couldn't have done that. I bought her this really soft, furry, orange body pillow on Monday before we left. I hear from my Mom that she loves it....that she sleeps with it.

At one point around Christmas, she wrote a letter to my brother. In it she told him that she was OK with dying, that she had made peace with God, and that she knew one day she would be dancing in heaven with Jesus. But recently she has been saying that she is not ready to die, that she is scared to die. Of course this is hard for everybody. We don't want her to go, and she doesn't want to go. Darcy with a local Presbyterian church comes to see Lauren. I don't know how often; I don't know if it is enough. But I know that she likes Darcy.

All in all, I am glad that we went to see her, my brother and Blake. We will go back in a few weeks, although Brian told me that my brother told him that by the time a few weeks passes, she may not recognize us.

She is frail and pale, but still funny...and sweet.

My Mom, Stepdad, Aunt Bobbie and I went to visit Lauren, Glenn, Phoebe, and Blake (Lauren's wonderful boyfriend), for a long weekend (January 30th through February 2nd) at their apartment in Indiana. My brother has had to rent a small efficiency apartment in Indiana to keep Lauren close to Rileys Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. He has had to make several spur-of-the-moment trips there in recent months.
We had a wonderful visit. It was good to see Lauren and for all of us to be together. She is frail and pale, but still funny...and sweet. I'm ready to go back for another visit...which will be soon.