The Original HoneyByrd Sweets

Let me start by saying, this is not a post in which I am looking for condolences. My wife would have hated for me to go out looking for sympathy and this is meant to act as more of a snapshot of what happened to my love over the past days, weeks, months, years. Since no one really reads obits anymore, this in a way serves as a public notice of her passing.

This is the way I’d like to remember my wife of 23 years married and nearly 25 years of being together.

Everyone has got a story to tell and I am no different. Unfortunately, mine is a sad tale, one that ends abruptly and without any warning.

My wife, Kathryn, struggled for decades with RA. In our early years of marriage money was tight and of course as with many citizens, insurance was too costly. However, even with insurance, the medications that Kathryn would need would still need to be paid for OOP which would amount to thousands per month! However, we were lucky in that we found Clinical Trials which kept her going for the better part of a decade. Upon completion of these Trials, we managed to get Kathryn the care she needed within the VA system. All we could think of was “Thank Goodness she served early in life”, which gave her these benefits. If she didn't, no insurance company would take her on due to her having previous conditions. During the 2010 to 2020 time period, Kathryn’s RA progressed as did other issues as a result of her disease. We sought out and had nearly every department head care for her in their respective fields of the condition she was exhibiting. It was nothing short of a constant and ceaseless war with her body under attack. This was the main reason we shut down her candy business, HoneyByrd Sweets, of which so many grew to cherish over the previous decade. This also pushed her state of depression further into darkness as she gave up the one thing she loved to do and did it well.

Enter the COVID years and everything changed for my, Honey. She began to spiral deeper and deeper both mentally and physically. Doctors were chasing everything they could looking at this and looking at that, sending her here and then over to there. She ran up to her sister, Sherry out of desperation not knowing what to do, and fell even deeper, coming home about 20 pounds lighter. Little did we know, this would be the beginning of her end.

Over the next year or so, Kathryn continued to lose weight at a rate of around a pound a month, sometimes managing to keep steady for a month or so. Regardless, it was still a struggle to keep her eating and maintaining calories.

Towards the middle of 2022, Kathryn’s RA doctor at the VA saw something she did not like in her tests and sent her to an outside Pulmonologist. It was now that her 8 month journey began to June 29th when I lost her. Test after test and more doctors and more tests, no one could figure out why she was coughing so much. It was all this coughing that was putting a strain on her system preventing her from eating.

As we now close in on Memorial Day weekend, I finally put my foot down and overruled her continued “I’m Fine” self-diagnosis. But upon seeing nothing but veins and knowing she weighed in at 82lbs and seeing that she could barely stand, I rushed her off to the hospital.

One week of seeing top doctors at the hospital, they determined she had not only a pneumonia, but they said there was also an underlying bacterial pneumonia hiding out and very resistant to the regular artillery of antibiotics. However, they treated her with 2 or 3 types and felt they had both under control, but said the bacterial pneumonia she would probably carry for the rest of her life. At the end of her stay, they wanted her to go to a rehabilitation facility for a month to recover and get stronger.

Her stay at the Rehab Center during the first week was interesting where she seemed to take an interest in getting better. By the second week, however, everything turned “Gray” which is probably why she started playing the song by Seal (kiss from a rose) more often that week. The center was pushing her to participate in activities even though she wasn’t eating, the exact opposite of what they should have been doing as she needed to be holding on to calories as much as possible! At the end of that week, I received a phone call that they were calling for a Medical transport to the hospital.

It was during this week that the big guns came out and doctors that I couldn’t even pronounce nor understand started bringing us the news of how sick my girl truly was. She was now diagnosed with Interstitial Lung Disease which they said was an onset of the RA but who really knows for sure. And now for the drum roll please! She now has a blood clot in her lower left lung. Keep in mind she has already lost most of her right lung to this RA and a lot of her left lung as well. Basically, the RA was eating her up not unlike any cancer as the WBC was driving everyone crazy during the previous 8 months as it was through the roof!…

So now they started hitting her with blood thinners in hopes to catch this thing as they spoke of trying to ensure nothing would form in the legs while trying to keep the one in the lungs at bay. It was at this time, a doctor came to us to talk about the lack of a DNR and how if they did try to resuscitate her, they would end up causing more damage to her than one could imagine being so frail. So of course, DNR time… He made it clear that it was time to talk about Hospice and that he felt he “wouldn’t be surprised if she died in 6 months”, which is what they have to say in order to get Hospice. However, he went on to say, she could go on for 2 more years or more, or it could be perhaps 2 days…

We told them we wanted to get her home care Hospice as she would be more comfortable there. Again, THANK YOU VA for stepping up! All the equipment came in on Tuesday 6/29/23 by noon and she arrived safely by 2:30pm. She was thrilled to be home! She loved how I made the room all ready for her with the new paint and all cleaned up just the way she would have done it herself… We sat and talked and just got things together. We finally sat down and had a great meal, provided by my neighbor, Eggplant Parmesan. She ate about 3 or so ounces which was a lot for her. 9:00pm came and she took the ½ hour or so it took for her to swallow down all the medications she needed to take for the night.

2:00am, she woke me up in a start for me to get in her room. I panicked but all she needed was to get to her toilet, Phew! Anyway, on with the day. We had a great day together. We ate breakfast, lunch and dinner, the most I’ve ever seen her eat in probably a year! Again, 9:00pm came and she went to sleep.

3:30am came the morning of the 29th, and I awoke to my usual time thinking, huh? She didn’t wake me up. I went into her room and she was sleeping peacefully. I took her vitals with one of those finger devices and her O2 levels were off the charts for her, 98 and 99! Which was great for her as I’ve never seen her get out of the high 80’s when relaxed really. Her BP was also good in the mid 60’s. So I decided to let her sleep. The day went on and 10:30 rolled around and the Hospice Social Worker came to visit to discuss her future (and of course to check me and the house out), and she was still sleeping. After she left, the Hospice nurse came. She stayed for around 4 hours and did a lot of nurse things and saw that she was struggling for air which was something I didn’t see even though her vitals were okay. “She always sleeps with her mouth open and jerks for air," I said. But she said, “this is different”.

She ended up giving her some morphine for the pain. Her speech was very slurred all through the nurses routines to ensure no bedsores and even during getting a sponge bath. As she left, the nurse told me she really wasn’t happy with the way things looked and she left. My wife was back to sleep again and a few hours later, the nurse called to tell me she was going to come back the next day and if there was no improvement, it would be best to bring her back to Hospice at the hospital.

It was now 7:30pm and still, Kathryn was asleep but I had to wake her to get her to eat. I woke her up and yea! She ate 3 ounces of Lasagna and she smiled. Still slurred speech but happy. At 8:15pm Kathryn then wanted to lean back in her bed again and as I helped her to lay back down, she died, in my arms, as she looked at me. Her eyes started to glaze over and fall away. I screamed, I yelled, and I held her face to mine but that was it. She was gone. No goodbye. No last kiss. No nothing.

I truly thought we would have time together. What we got was a few hours one day, 24 hours the next and 1 hour the next. We certainly did not get anywhere near the 6 months and therefore we both never really ever got to say the things needing to be said other than “I Love You”, over and over again. But perhaps after 24 years and 9 months together, that’s all you really need to say to each other…

Your struggle is over, honey. You can finally rest easy.

My phone rang within seconds after her death. It was the evening Hospice nurse checking in. I was frantic and devastated of course. She immediately called for the Hospice Nurse on call to come over. She arrived at 9:30pm and pronounced her officially dead at 9:32pm telling me she most likely died of a Pulmonary Embolism.

My neighbor thankfully held me tight during this dreadful time and gave me the name of a funeral home for Kathryn to be brought to. Hospice arranged everything and by 11:30pm she was on her way. It was humorous as all I could think of was how Kathryn would have laughed as she loved Tim Burton movies and the two people who showed up to take her looked every bit of characters out of one of his cartoon movies (Nightmare before Christmas, Frankenweenie, etc…).

Kathryn loved her Audiobooks, Movies and took particular interest in fantasy fiction and drama as well as space-SciFy. We both loved to watch and listen to both movies and audiobooks of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones as well as The Expanse among many others.

Kathryn leaves behind her loving and devoted husband, her sister Sherry Decelles, her brother Donald Parker as well as her nieces and nephews. She also leaves behind the last of her pet birds P.G. and Kiki. and our cat Goldie. Her heart broke twice over with the loss of her cats Beju (2010) and Moe (2022).

The two pictures attached are how I’ll always remember her at her happiest. The first when we were building our new home in 2017 and the second with her cat Beju back in the early 2000’s. The third pic is of our cat Moe est 2021.