Benefield: ‘3 minutes to say goodbye’: Sebastopol woman grieves the whys and hows of her husband’s death
Yes, Connie Kellogg was worried. But not exceedingly so.
Her husband, an ex-military guy, had been a fit athlete in his youth. And now, at 80, he still seemed strong to her. He had spent the day prior doing much of his usual routine, which included a long walk with the couple’s Airedale.
But having lost his spleen in a long battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma three decades ago, J.P. Furch was deeply immunocompromised.
So, in this era of of the deadly coronavirus, Kellogg and Furch were vigilant.
They got their first vaccination doses in February, and both received booster shots in July.
Still, they prohibited unvaccinated people from their home in rural Sebastopol and never went into public spaces unmasked.
When Furch complained of feeling unwell upon waking on Sept. 11, Kellogg, a licensed therapist with a Ph.D., kept a watchful eye on him and his symptoms.
When his fever topped 100 degrees and he appeared more and more distressed later in the evening, she asked her daughter, Wendy, to call an ambulance.
As her husband was loaded into the ambulance, Kellogg asked medics if she could follow and be with him at the hospital.
“I said, ‘Can I go with him, and they said no,’” she recalled.
‘Three minutes to say goodbye’
Recalling how that September night unfolded, Kellogg says now she was concerned but had faith because Furch had survived much worse medical scares.
In 2012, he suffered a massive septic infection and went into organ failure. He was put in an induced coma. Kellogg, who had power of attorney over her husband’s medical care, said Furch stunned everyone when he left the hospital 3½ weeks later.
“He’s Teflon man,” she said.
But her concern on this September evening rose as doctors in Kaiser’s emergency room began calling her with updates and, more crucially, she says, questions.
“I began getting these increasingly frantic phone calls from doctors, and it was always a different doctor,” she said.
Kellogg said she felt confident dealing with any medical crisis her husband faced. But communication over the telephone made it impossible to not only understand the dire situation her husband was in, but to also defend and honor his medical wishes.
“You cannot make those decisions over the phone. It’s inhumane,” she said.
As Kellogg fielded calls deep into the night, Furch’s crisis worsened. At some point, Kellogg thinks it was around midnight, the phone rang again.
She should come to the hospital, said the voice on the other end of the phone.
“I walked in and I immediately, immediately, knew he wasn’t going to come back from this,” she said. “I have been with people who have died. I know what it looks like. I knew he was dying; there was no question in my mind.”
Kellogg touched her husband’s cheek. His left hand held her daughter’s hand, but Kellogg couldn’t hold his right hand, there were too many tubes.
His eyes were open, but he could not speak. When doctors had intubated him, they put an endotracheal tube in his mouth.
“I just whispered in his ear that I loved him very much and would love it if he could come home, but I didn’t think he was going to and that was OK. I would be fine. He just needed to take care of himself,” she said.
“And then I kissed him,” she said. “I got three minutes to say goodbye.”
She and Wendy were just to the door when Kellogg says Furch’s heart stopped for the third time that night.
“The doctor looked at me and I said, ‘Please call it.’”
Compassionate exceptions
Kellogg’s pain today is twofold.
First, she was not allowed to be with her husband in his final hours and second, she’s frustrated we are mired in these pandemic-related protocols while 18% of eligible Sonoma County residents remain totally unvaccinated.
Kellogg said she should have been with her husband throughout his final hours, not just his final minutes.
She has no complaints about the medical care Furch received at Kaiser. In fact, she describes it as top notch. However, communication that evening was sorely lacking, she said.
In August, a month prior to Furch’s death, her daughter had an emergency room visit. At that time, Kellogg said she was told to wait outside, per COVID-19 protocols. She assumed the same protocols to be in place when her husband was wheeled in just weeks later.
“It wasn’t that anybody said, ‘No, you are not allowed in here.’ It was kind of an unspoken agreement that I wasn’t allowed in,” she said. “Maybe I should have pushed. Maybe I should have said, ‘I need to be there.’ But I didn’t do that. That’s my guilt.”
In a statement, Tarek Salaway, senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser Permanente Marin Sonoma, said while hospital policies “that limit visitors and verify vaccination or testing continue to follow current public health guidance … part of our policy is providing compassionate exceptions for families to spend precious time with a critically ill patient, as their care allows, regardless of the patient or visitors’ vaccination status.”