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Donna Mae (Evansen)’s Story
Site created on March 13, 2021
Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.
This is just getting Started today 3/13/2021 Stay tuned...
Donna had her first major mishap several years ago when the trike we bought her to ride for exercise, with Arnold who has his own bicycle, ran up on a curb and overturned throwing her violently to the hard pavement.
She ended up breaking her hip that time eventually making nearly a full recovery but in her hospital stay she contracted a pneumonia which repeated in both her next two falls and subsequent hospital stays.
Her second fall she broke her femur, and again almost fully recovered even though she was touch and go in the hospital. That time she literally thought she would die and had called everyone to her side for prayers and family support.
The third fall she broke her neck and was much closer to a visit from the grim reaper when we gathered around her hospital bed. She was unresponsive, pale and ashen when I walked in, a terrible sight and very scary! We prayed and sang hymns which we have done with her at her hospital bedside each time and this time she had a near miraculous turn around within 30 min she was smiling and color had returned to her face.
Her recovery the third time was short lived and she was admitted to the hospital again and after a course of antibiotics was once again released to a nursing facility.
That is where it got complicated since she was in the Kirkland Life Care Center where the original Corona virus was diagnosed. Her room mate in that semi private room died from the COVID-19. But once again Mother survived!
It has been a long hard road the past 5 yeas or so and just last week she regained a fairly good grip on her cognitions which had suffered severely at times with Alzheimer’s type dementia symptoms and delirium at night. She had been very difficult to understand and she was clearly frustrated about not being able to make any words work properly for her.
It was so good to hear her say when I visited her that she had been through a rough time but also that she thinks the worst is behind her. Once again nearly a miracle and she currently seems to be holding her own comparatively and relative to her prior conditions.
My sister Karen has welcomed both parents into her home as their primary caregiver. They have been there over six months now and Mom was initially on hospice care but she quickly proved that that was not necessary!!!😄😁😍🥰😁😀 we are all delighted!
Donna Mae has survived some of the worst and these things would no doubt kill the majority of patients her age, even without the COVID and the past year of isolation without the benefit of proper family and friends able to visit, but she is very strong and I believe has at least a couple more years! I hope to see her continue to improve.
Donna is currently and most likely permanently confined to a wheelchair and never complains! She loves reading cards and letters.
Thank you for visiting here and please leave a comment, a prayer, a poem, or other expressions of your love and support.
The details are by my memory, I have not personally been able to be at her side through much of this due to my personal limitations. My other siblings might have much more accurate details, but this is for the most part the bare basics and as accurate as possible for me! I am currently the oldest sibling, my big brother Paul died in 2011 from cancer.
I will try to ad more details here, or answer questions. Hopefully maybe my siblings also have something to say here about her, and will ad photos and videos.
I heard that possibly sometime in March 2023 there will be some kind of official tribute, or memorial service. More on that as it develops.
