Since many of you may be
confused, we will start from the beginning. We are Tom Morgan and Val Martin. Our parents are Bob & Theresa
Morgan, who have been telling us for several years that their black cocker
spaniel, TJ, is our brother.
On Tuesday, November
29th, 2006, our parents were returning to their Granite Shoals, TX home, after
spending the Thanksgiving Holiday with the Wyoming Gang, as Mom always calls
us. They had been transporting semis
from Texas to Wyoming for a year. The company would then send them back to
Texas in a rental car. Taylor Petroleum (?) was gracious enough to employ
Mom, so that she could join Dad, and they always let TJ ride. This allowed them to visit family
several times during the winter.
Apparently trying to
outrun the storm that closed the south central United States, they drove through
Atoka, OK, where they were involved in an
accident. Had the accident not occurred, we believe they would have successfully
beat the storm home by Wednesday morning.
Today we will learn where
the accident happened, as we are now in Atoka. Around 4:30 p.m., a 16-year-old girl
driving a pickup pulled out to pass a semi in a no passing zone and ran into Mom
& Dad head on. We were told the driver of the pickup was listed in
fair condition, while her passenger was not as good as the driver. We
later learned the passenger was critical.
Mom & Dad rented
mid-size cars for their commutes, but when they arrived at DIA in Denver to pickup the car they had ordered,
they were given instead a 2007 Ford Mustang. Dad emailed us, saying it was
extremely small, but it really was fun to drive! That's just like
Dad!
Mom & Dad never had a
chance to avoid the accident. It is our deepest sadness to inform you that
we have lost both our father and his beloved TJ, but
we are comforted to know they are together. It is critically important to
understand that Tom and I have made the decision that we
CANNOT tell Mom that Dad & TJ have
died. When she learns, we want it to be from us. She WILL suffer
greatly when this moment comes, and we will not risk her opportunity to
survive. We won't know when we are able to tell her. If she knows,
it is because Dad mentioned it to her.
By a miracle we don't understand, our mother is
alive. We will not know for several weeks if she will leave us to join Dad
& TJ. She is very critical, but
almost every doctor's report has been to share her improvement. As one of her Nurses, Mike,
told us, she's at the bottom of the mountain, and there's not a lot of place to
go but up. As critically injured as she is, we were told to expect that
she would probably have regresses.
We spoke with the driver
of the flight for life ambulance, shortly after
we arrived at St. Francis Hospital and Trauma Center in Tulsa, OK. He
was waiting to hear how Mom was doing. Because of the storm, they were not
able to put a chopper in the air. Atoka
is about 130 miles south of Tulsa. When he met the ambulance bringing her from Atoka Memorial Hospital, Mom was hyporheic, on top of the injuries she received in the accident. From somewhere we
heard that it had taken a half hour to extradite all four accident victims from the wreckage. Dad's injuries seem
to be much the same as Mom's, which helps us to understand the impact of the
collision.
We received a call saying she was going into surgery
around midnight on the morning of the 30th. Her aorta had been torn &
crushed, & she would not have survived without the surgery that gave her a
3" stint and re attached her aorta. She was
given a 50% chance of survival through the operation. Her injuries are so
severe and numerous that the large team of doctors attending her do not even
know what all the injuries are. We
still don't know how many broken bones she has. Mom never had a broken
bone before the moment she lost her soul-mate.
Until about 4 p.m. on the
30th, there was very little hope that Mom would survive, despite having done so
up to that point. It was around this time that she began opening her eyes
& responding to the staff. While Tom & I desperately wanted and needed to be with our mother,
we were not able to land in Tulsa until 2 in the morning on the 1st. At a
later point, we can share with you our own experiences during this time.
By the time we arrived, Mom had decided she would try to make it.
Mom knows we are with
her. However, we are unable to speak in her presence unless she is heavily sadeted
to the point that she cannot move. We check each time before we
speak. When she heard our voices in the room, talking to the nurse, she
immediately opened her eyes. We went to her bedside, but she cannot move
them, so it is not possible to get ourselves into her line of vision without
hurting her. The problem was that she began kicking her legs, & while
she is immobile, there is so much damage to
her body that she is hurting herself.
We have had Father John,
of St Francis, pray for her. We apologize to all of the Catholics reading this, but as hard as Mom
tried to raise us as good Catholics, we have strayed from the path, and are
winging it to make sure Mom has the spiritual healing she needs she
requires. Sister Catherine Mary has been of great assistance to
us.
While we would like to
share the rest of the details of Mom's last few days, we do need to attend to
business here in Atoka, and it is now 7:15. So
for now we will say that her Nurse, Summer, told us she had a good night.
As we said, there have been setbacks, & one of those is that this morning,
they will need to insert a drainage tube into her gall bladder. She has
stabilized enough for them to have taken her off of the blood pressure medicine
& iron. Her blood pressure is very good. But the last we had
heard, they have given her more than 40 pints of blood products.
Tom & I cannot
express the quality of service Mom has received from the staff at St. Francis Hospital. They have
treated the two of us with just as much care. Our gratitude to them is boundless.
Tom & I came to Atoka to take care of Dad & TJ. It was Dad's wish to be in his dress blues,
which we had to bring from Wyoming before he could be cremated. We met
with the Funeral Director at Atoka Funeral Home (he
had stayed until we arrived after 6 last night). He allowed us to say
good-bye to Dad, whom we have always known, wished to be cremated. Folks,
I have to tell you, that it was a great comfort to see Dad, and both of us
wanted to stay with him, because we knew he would open his eyes any
moment. The only thing we could see wrong with Dad was that his mustache
was not waxed! As we were both showing Mr. McGue how it should appear, he let us know that it
had been waxed when Dad came in, but he'd had to wash it. He assured us he
would take care of it, but we're pretty sure Dad is going to be explaining to
him that he is using the wrong wax! The expression on Dad's face is so Dad
- the beginnings of the huge grin that was his and his alone.
TJ was also at the Funeral Home. We have made
arrangements to pick him up on our way out of Atoka
this morning. We will take him to a Vet in Durant, who will have him cremated. From there
we will go to the Granite Shoals property, to pick up Dad's truck, for
transportation. We cannot pick TJ up until Monday morning, so it will be
mid-Monday at the earliest, before we can get back to Mom. From there, we
do not have plans.
We ask that if you know
of anyone that we have not included in this email, to please share this
information with them, and to share their email address with us so that we can
include them in the future. We know there are people we have no way of
contacting, at least until we can find Mom's purse, which has a list. If
we are lucky, we will make contact with her cell phone and computer.
There are so many
people who have been important in the lives of our parents, and we have tried to
contact each of you, but we keep remembering more. They didn't just make
friends among the bikers or their co-workers. Each of their medical care
personnel, is a friend of our parents. Their auto insurance agent, their
banker. The list is so large.
We were deeply touched to
learn last night that Dad will be featured in an article in the Wyoming
Tribune-Eagle of Cheyenne today, Saturday the 2nd. I don't know that Tom
& I will be able to obtain the paper before we get home. We have not
been able to come to believing we will never see him again. Mom & Dad
traveled so often, that we are accustomed to them being away for short or long
periods. He always came back, and we still expect to see him, just as we
kept expecting him to open his eyes last night.
I will try to write again
tonight. Please pray for Mom. She has shown that she is willing to
try to stay with us, if her body will let her. We don't know how she will
handle the losses she doesn't know she has suffered.
Sincerely,
Tom & Val