Our Daughter, Martha

These lines are devoted to our daughter Martha. She was much too short with us. She died so suddenly. What did we wrong, what did we not see?

Why we tell this story? It is up to you, readers of this page, to give the answer.(If there is an answer). But writing down this helps us a little.

Tuesday, May 3 1994, our daughter Martha died in the hospital here in Vlissingen. She was suffering the "Sickness of Crohn". Crohn is NO CANCER, and it is NO AIDS. According to medical books, the sickness is NOT very dangerous, and seldom dangerous for life, so patients can become very old. However, up until now, there is NO weapon or treatment against the sickness of Crohn.

Yet, our daughter (the only girl we had) did pass away that Tuesday morning, because she was suffering the Crohn-sickness. Why did she die? We never will know why this happened so fast.

In the last 6 years of here life, Martha was a Crohn-patient. In October 1993, the doctors found out why Martha was ill so often. The sickness did get a name -CROHN-, and Martha did get help (medical help), to fight against the attacks of Crohn. Martha almost never complained she always did hold the sunny side up. Sometimes however the Crohn-attacks where so intensive, that Martha did need hospital-treatment to recover. Main reason for that was, that she sometimes became a very weak, tiny person, almost dried out. (If Crohn attacks, you cannot hold any food inside your body, just likewise a Flue that goes on and on).

Because of Crohn, Martha did work only half days. The doctors did NOT give her permission to work whole days, for obvious reasons. The week before she died, she was learning for a test, to become a "purchaser" at the chemical factory were she was employed. Martha did put a lot of energy to pass that test successful. The Friday before she died, she did go for the test. It did take the whole day to pass all modules. Her mother did company her the whole Friday. She noticed that Martha was exhausted that Friday-evening after she finished the job. Back in Vlissingen (the test was in Leiden, a 2 hours drive by railway), both did have an evening meal at a restaurant. Martha had no problems with keeping the food inside. So all seemed normal. However, Martha was recovering from previous attacks. She did take drugs, which did give her the idea that she was stronger than she really was.

That Saturday evening, Martha and her husband did spend the evening with us, watching the Eurovision Song Contest on TV. It was after midnight before they did go home.

Monday evening, after a half day working at the factory, and after playing squash in the afternoon, Crohn did attack again. The next morning, we got a phone-call from our son in law. He asked for assistance. We did find Martha very exhausted. Perhaps it was again the time to get her into the hospital, for recovery-reasons. So Annie did rang Martha's doctor to get assistance. He, however, was on holidays. At 8 o'clock, Annie did start the first of several phone-calls to the hospital.

Two and a half-hour later, Annie did get the right person, from the hospital, on the phone. An ambulance was send to Martha's house, and Martha did get a first medical examination from the paramedical team of the ambulance (the 9-1-1 from the Netherlands). Ten minutes later, she was in hospital, where the medical staff did start procedures to give Martha medical treatment. At that time, it was 20 minutes to 11 o'clock in the morning. Annie, who was all the time with our daughter, did see that Martha suddenly became blue. She ran for help, which was available at the same time. Twenty minutes later the medical staff did stop attempts to get/keep our daughter alive. Her brain was too long without air.

I arrived too late in the hospital, to see my daughter alive. We still don't know why our daughter died so suddenly. We did know that Martha was against autopsy, so we could not give permission to the hospital-team for the autopsy.

We do think, that she did ask too much of her body, and that her heart was giving up. She died at an age of 26 years, after a marriage of almost 2 years. She had no kids, getting kids was too dangerous because of the frequent Crohn-attacks.

We are recovering (is this the right word?) very slowly. At first, very busy weeks did keep us going. Now the time of slow down and silence has come. We are trying to keep our social life also going. But sitting at a party, with other people at the party ignoring us, is not much of help for us. Even the fact that Martha did get her diploma for "Purchaser" does not reduce the emptiness... She never will have the benefits for working so hard...

Even after 7 years have passed, the pain is still there. We managed to get on with our lives but do not ask how. We love to be together with the rest of our little family, our son, his wife, and our two grandkids. Martie would have loved these 2 kids very much.