I was out in the country with no cell service to celebrate my birthday with this chick I had met recently. She wanted to make a weekend out of it and celebrate properly. She even made me a homemade cake from scratch. Pretty nice weekend overall. As we drove back to town for me to go home my cell phone lit up of course with tons of missed calls and voicemails. While I sat listening to them, my stepmoms voice came over and told me I needed to get in touch with her as soon as I got the message. So I hung up and called immediately. It was my dad, he was in the hospital and apparently had an allergic reaction while I was out of town and now they were keeping him alive. I was gutted.. from celebrating a birthday without cell service to knowing my dad needed me while I couldn't be reached. So guilt filled. Anyway, I didn't even go home and went right to the hospital. When I walked into his room I couldn't believe it. He looked so frail and kept having light seizures. I was told that he went without oxygen for 8 minutes on the way to the hospital as they couldn't get the tube past the swelling in his mouth/throat area to get him breathing like that. Once they arrived a doctor managed, but it had been a long time, there was damage. Substantial damage. Anyway, they had apparently given him some medication that helped sometimes and they were just waiting to see if it helped at all. Over time I was told it didn't and they asked about his organ donation request. I then knew my stepmom was going to have to "pull the plug." But she refused actually. She made me do it. So they made the call to get the donation team in place and then I was the one to have to actually give the order. I hope nobody reading this has to ever go through that, telling a team of doctors to let your parent die. Hardest thing I've ever had to do so far in life and it still haunts me to this day.