Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting and we will try to do fairly frequent updates. We love all your texts and phone calls and may not get back to everyone. We will make sure Sunny gets to see all your notes here.
Sunny has had some challenges over the years, but has beaten the odds and lived an amazing life. Despite being diagnosed with MS in 1957, she has raised two kids, Melanie and Randall, traveled all over the US, Canada, and Europe, and shared a loving life with Mel.
Here's the story of her cancer journey... On April 4th, she played bridge with friends. On April 5th, she saw her primary care doctor and things were fairly normal although she had been having some unusual back pain since January. On April 6th, she woke up and her feet were numb. On April 7th, she woke up and couldn't feel her legs below the knees and couldn't move her legs or transfer from the bed to her scooter. She called an ambulance and went to the Emergency Room where they discovered she had a crushed vertebra and a cracked rib. They sent her home. She had to call the cute burly firemen to come help her get back into her bed. On April 10, Sunny went back to the ER (we are starting to suspect she likes the firefighters) and saw a great doctor, Dr. Said. He was amazing at getting diagnostic work completed. In about 4 hours she had completed two CT Scans, three blood tests, a stroke protocol, a swallowing test, a neuro exam and a one- hour MRI. Dr Said arranged to transport her to Lovelace Hospital in Albuquerque. We arrived in ABQ around 11:00 pm.
On April 19, we received the diagnosis of non-small cell adenocarcinoma and Sunny made the decision to return home to Las Cruces and enter hospice care. She is not currently treating her cancer in any way.
On July 24th, Sunny passed peacefully in her sleep with her family by her side.
Services will be:
August 2nd 11:00am FIrst Presbyterian Church of Las Cruces
200 E. Boutz Rd. Las Cruces, NM 88005
Reception will follow
September 1st 11:00am First Presbyterian Church of Lamesa
1305 N Avenue G, Lamesa, TX 79331
Family Graveside service 10:00am
Reception will follow
In lieu of flowers
We are establishing a Sunny and Mel Parish Scholarship through The PEO Foundation
Memorial Donations can be made to : P.E.O. Foundation
