UnderNewManagement

Sunday the 31st of October was the day of the Highland Baptist Church Block Party, an alternative to Halloween. I am a co-leader, with my wife Regina, for a sixth grade group of Campfire kids that built a booth for the festival, a variation on a dunk tank, for one of the most prestigious emblems that they can get. My kids put in over 40 hours of work into the design, concept, and construction of their project and The Block Party was the final step of ‘operating’ the project. About ten minutes before the start of the festival I received the call that my Grandfather Ernest Toussaint Muise Jr. had had a stroke and was in the Emergency Room at Saint Anthony’s Hospital. I knew that there was nothing I could do, I couldn’t leave my Campfire kids or they couldn’t finish their requirements without me and it would not be fair to leave them anyway. All of the requirements to complete the project had been met by 3:30pm and I left to go to the hospital.
Soon after I got to the Critical Care Unit I was informed that the CAT scan in the ER showed not a stroke but a cerebral bleed. Grandpa Ernie was now on a ventilator and was responding to voice by squeezing our fingers and moving his legs, he did not open his eyes or talk to us, and he looked very good. I was there with my Mom and my Aunts Di and Jane, Uncle Rob and Uncle Sam was there, too. We all stayed till around 6:45pm when we all left except Di and Jane. The next morning when I got up I called to check on him and Mom told me he was not doing well so I went to get my brother and together we went to see Grandpa.
When we got to the hospital he had been taken down to CAT scan again and we went wondering around the hospital trying to find him. By the time we found CAT scan he was gone back to his room but I ran into some old acquaintances that let me look at the new images. I had been a CAT scan Tech 4 years ago and I still knew what I was looking at and I knew it was not good. He was taking an anti-coagulant medication for a recent heart stent placement and that medication was exacerbating the problem of his cerebral bleed. The problem is, (sorry, I forget that everybody doesn’t understand the lingo) Ernie is bleeding on the inside of his brain and the medication he had taken is preventing the blood from clotting and stop bleeding. Problem number two; the skull is a confined space, there is only so much room, and all the newly arriving blood has no where to go but to compress the surrounding tissue which kills the compressed brain causing permanent damage.
So Bill and I find our way back up to Grandpa’s room where the Doctor has showed up to discus the findings on the new scan, I already knew what he was going to say. If the anti-coagulant was not in the equation they could take him to surgery and remove the big clot and stop the bleeding and he would have a very good chance of a full recovery. But, if they take him to surgery now he will start bleeding everywhere they cut him and nothing will clot for at least 12 more hours making the problem one hundred times worse. And, if we wait 12 hours the bleed will be so big that he will have irreversible damage. The Doctor showed us the two CAT scans and it was unarguably evident that Ernie’s situation was not improving. Di, who is also a Radiographic Technologist and the reason I got into this business, sat down with Jane to explain what the Doctor had said when Mom approached me. ‘You don’t think he will get any better, do you?’ she asked. I could see the tears welling up in her eyes. ‘No’ was my response. We all lost Grandma Jean just 16 months ago and now with an ever-increasing sense of doom Ernie’s time is drawing near.
I left the hospital to take my brother home and head to work. While I was in the car by myself I spoke with God, I did not ask for Grandpa to get well because in my heart I knew that is not what Ernie wanted. The sky in Oklahoma City on November 1st was very cloudy, on the verge of rain, but the clouds were so big and they were very beautiful. I asked God to give me some blue sky for just a little while and one ray of sunshine parted the clouds and followed me for at least ten minutes. That was when I knew for certain that Ernie had left to be with Jean and God. He was not lying in the bed in Saint Anthony’s, that is just the shell of a great man that I did not take enough time to know.
Ernest Toussaint Muise Jr. passed away on Wednesday November 3rd, 2004. Grandma Jean Muise passed away on July 3rd 2003. She and Ernie were married for 53 years, they have four daughters; Susan, Katherine, Di and Jane (my mom is Susan), four son-in-laws; Howard, Paul, Sam and Rob (respectively), eleven grandchildren, and at least twelve great-grandchildren.