Upon graduating college in 2003, my daughter, Mandy, had no idea what she wanted to do. She attended a pacemaker check up appointment with me one morning at St. Thomas hospital in Nashville Tn. during my exam Mandy engaged in conversation with my Medtronic Electrophysiologist nurse.
My daughter, Mandy
On the way home Mandy said, “Dad, I am going to go to work for those people, they just don’t know it yet”!
When we got home Mandy emailed her resume to the closest Medtronic division in Memphis, TN. Within hours Medtronic emailed a request to interview her the very next day. I drove her to Memphis, she did the interview and on the way back to Nashville Medtronic called and sceduled a typing test for the next morning, back in Memphis. We doubled back, she passed the test and was hired on the spot so she moved to Memphis, bought a new home, got married and went to work for Medtronic.
Mandy’s new home in Memphis TN.
Several months later, in 2004, Mandy called on a Friday to say that she was not well and the doctor admitted her in St Francis Hospital there in Memphis. It didn’t sound all that urgent, so Sandra and I decided to drive to Memphis on Saturday morning to check on her. No hurry, we even stopped at her house on the way and did up her dirty dishes.
I knocked on her hospital door and peeked in. She was lying on a made up bed, still in her street clothes. Charles, her husband, was fast asleep in the recliner in one corner of the room. Sandra and I tried to keep quite and sneak in so as not to wake them. As I got closer, I noticed that Mandy was vomiting. Her eyes were rolled back in her head with only the whites being vivible. No doubt, She was unconscious!
Nothing needs to be said here. The picture is worth a thousand words!
I ran out of the room into the hallway. Pointing back at the room I cried and yelled “Can somebody help my daughter? A nearby nurse responded and said, sir, there is no one in that room. she followed me as far as the doorway, glanced in, and said, I know what it is, the chemo treatments are making her sick. I’ll get her sone Phenergan, and she hurried away.
I ran to the third floor front desk, just in time to hear the tail end of a telephone conversation by the receptionest. “Well, if you will just come up here and smooth things over, I am sure that you can calm him down, and things will be just fine”!
Mandy and her first born, Alex.
That did it! I grabbed a wheelchair, hurried back to her room, snatched her lifeless body out of that bed and got her into the wheelchair. When the elevator doors opened I was greeted by the hospital director who rode down to the first floor with us. All the while, telling me why I couldn’t take her out of the hospital without her doctors orders. At the street curb, I tried to pick her up out of the wheelchair and get her in the back seat of the car, I almost dropped her. He did reach down, grabbed her by her belt, and helped lay her in the seat. I drove away.
Having no plan whatsoever, and not knowing anything about Memphis, I headed for the I-40 East interstate ramp. Nashville was only two hundred miles down the road. We did stop by Mandy’s house, just long enough to pick up a change of clothes as she was wet and soiled. Sandra changed her in the back seat while we were under way.
The kitchen that I built for Mandy. She loved to make pretend pies!
About half way, as we sailed past the Jackson exit, I had Sandra call ahead to give St Thomas hospital in Nashville a heads up on an ETA, the situation, and that we were on our way. The person on the phone explained that if we removed Mandy from St Frances without doctors orders they were not allowed to accept her, but, if we pulled up under the St. Thomas emergency room canopy, they could not legally refuse her.
They met us at the door, lifted Mandy from the car and gurneyed her in behind closed doors, and the wait seemed to be an eternity.
Coincidentally, there just happened to be a Hemotologist on duty in the ER at the time. He saw her feet and legs sticking out from under the sheets. The red freckles caught his eye and he announced, “that is not a breaking out of sorts”‘ That is Petechia, her blood vessels are bursting underneath the skin”. “She has Thrombocytopenia Purpura, (TTP for short), and is very close the point of death”. The odds of having that condition is better for winning the power ball lottery!
When Mandy was born, I bought the morning newspaper and I cut down a huge cherry tree from our homeplace. I sawed the log, stacked and dried the lumber. when Mandy was twenty two years old, I built her a nine piece bedroom set out of the lumber. I retained a small amount of the cherry sawdust. The newspaper, along with the small container of sawdust were included in a special nitch inside of the blanket chest. There is also a hand made wooden book included with the story of the bedroom suit, its orgin, and a story containing our family lineage as far back as I can remember.
The significance of the sawdust is the fact that Mandy always said that she loved the fragrence of the wood smell when I came into the house after work, and the fact that she used the sawdust in making the make believe pies in her play kitchen.
The Hemotologist then took over her care plan. He shoved a consent form into my hands, giving permission to give her blood, lots of blood! I crenged and gave him a doubtful look. He said,” Mr. Cripps”, “If you don’t sign that consent form, I can tell you what is fixing to happen shortly”! Without further hesitation, I hurriedly signed.
As we waited we witnessed bags of plasma being carried into Mandy’s intensive care cubicle by the cart load. The bags were stacked so high such that if another one was added, it would just slide off on to the floor. The doctor who inserted the port in which to tap into her artery emerged from the cubicle sweating profusely, shaking his head, wringing his hands while saying, “she is going to hate me for the rest of her life!
Over the next two and a half months, Mandy would receive 5 units of whole blood, 2 units of platelets, and somewhere between 600-750 units of plasma. She required 30 Plasmahaeresis treatments, and each treatment took between 20-25 units of plasma. They told her that she used more plasma in one day than the whole hospital typically used in a month. Upon arriving for one of her treaments one day, they told us we would have to wait a few hours. This was because she had used all the plasma in the Nashville area, and they were waiting for a shipment from Memphis to arrive.
More to come later!
The Plasmahaeresis treatments went on every day for two weeks. Finally, the doctors decided that she was in remission, as there is no cure. They told her that it was a very rare condition and that she stood a better chance of winning the lottery than comtracting the TTP and that for the rest of her life she needed periodic but regular checkups, and that she could relaps at any time. With that being said, Mandy was released on a Friday with orders to come back in to see her doctor on the following Monday morning, just to be on the safe side. We were so thankful to be able to take her home with us.
On the following Monday morning we carried her back to st. Thomas for her checkup. They did a blood draw to check her blood platelet level, and shure enough, she had relapsed!
She was readmitted, and the treatments Plasmahaeresis treatments were resumed. More blood, and then more blood. They were ordering blood from other cities, because she was requiring more than could be found locally. I stopped her doctor in the hallway one afternoon and I asked, “what else can you try”? His answer was, “Mr. Cripps, I am sorry, but therehere is nothing else that we can try”. At that point I started wondering where I was going to bury my precious daughter.
Sandra and I left the hospital that night, tired and weary and hopeless. I sat down in my recliner and got to thinking. before too long I was up, getting ready to return to the hospital. I arrived just after midnight and tried to sneek into the room withought making a sound. I managed to find a chair, in the dark and settlrd down. I then heard a familiar whisper, “Dad, is that you”? “Yes baby”, it’s me.
I had done some research that evening before returning to the hospital. We disgussed my findings. It was grim, but we needed to understand the challenging hurtles that Mandy might be faced with, along with all of the prospects and scenarios. We had a warm loving, all night father/daughter conversation.
On the way back to the hospital that night, I stopped by the gift shop and bought a teddy bear. I gave her the teddy when daylight had illuminated the room enough to see each other. We used paper and tape to fashion a hospital identification arm band for the stuffed bear. Ihe name in the band was FUR-REESES. The name was chosen because it fit well, with her Plasmahaeresis treatments. As daylight came, the day somehow seemed a little brighter and we both fell asleep.
Sometime later, were abruptly awakened with wonderful news. Once again, the blood platelet count was rising. The treatments were working. Praise the Lord. Now, after another long two week round of treatmrnts, Mandy was again going home with us!
Mandy required a long period of time to claw her way back. Sandra became her caretaker. After Months she regained enough streingth to return home to her Memphis home, and to her husband and job. She tried to find a doctor in Memphis that she might trust with her life, but to no avail. As it was, she had to return to Nashville every Friday to be seen by appointment with her trusted Hemotologist. The decision finally had to be made to sell the home in Memphis and buy a new home in Ashland City Tn, Only minutes from St. Thomas hospital and her doctors.
Three of Mandy’s doctors have written nexus letters stating that it is more than likely that her TTP was caused and linked to my own agent orange exposure while serving in the military. In 2020, I found out that I was diagnosed with TTP twenty years ago by the VA doctors. My TTP is not to the extent of that of Mandy’s. Also, My TTP is just a shadow in the face of the Fournier’s Gangreme, two heart attacks, kidney failure, Type II Diabetes, Peripheral Neuropathy, loss of use of two feet. I am now on my fifth pacemaker/defibrillator and have a wheelbarrow full of other comorbibities, all service connected due to Agent orange exposure at 100% to include the SMC R-1 rate
Mandy moved back. She and her husband found new jobs. Charles was able to transfer from Pepsico in Memphis, to Pepsico Nashville. Mandy went to work for Vanderbilt clinical trials devision, doing the same job at Vanderbilt in Nashville that she did for Medtronic in Memphis.
When I delivered Mandy’s new Bed that I had built for her, I said that it was to be the foundation for my future grand children. As it turned out, I must have been right. Alex and Avery are now members of the clan. At this time Alex is fifteen years old, and a sophmore. Avery is twelve years old and in the seventh grade.
In bold gold lettering, it is inscribed, carved into the lid of the blanket chest, that under no circumstance, is the furniture ever to be bought, bartered, or sold, but rather it is to be passed down through my leneage for as long as it exists on this earth.
Mandy’s marrage to Charles, as it goes nowdays, for some reason, did not survive. When one chapter closes, another seems to open. Mandy has remarried. She met and married Nathan. He has a son Chris, and a daughter, Samantha.
I live on thirty five acres of paradise. When Mandy was about five years old she returned from a four wheeler ride for a glass of ice water and a snack. she announced that she has stopped under the shade of a huge pear tree and decided that it was that peaceful location where she was going to build her house when she grew up.
in 2018, we surveyed off a five acre tract and I deeded it to Mandy. I dug the basement with my track loader, and construction began on her new home soon after. Now mandy not only owns the bedroom suit but she also owns the cherry stump outside her back door, that supplied the lumber from which the bedroom suit was built.
Wow yeepers, what a ride, and the only life sacraficed was that of a huge cherry tree and a grand old pear tree.
VA THE REDNECK WAY, YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO IT ALONE! 