Episode 13: Love, Loss, and Resilience

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, hey, nurses. Welcome to the Nurse Dot podcast. Giving nurses validation, resources and hope. One episode at a time. Oh. Today on Nurse Dot podcast.

Yolanda Fintor

You start remembering the good times and things to be grateful for. To me, that's living a good life. To be grateful for what you have and not be bitter about what you would like to have and don't have. I find that gratitude really helps me a lot in appreciating my life now, my family. It's a good mindset to have gratitude.

Cara Lunsford

Joining us today, Yolanda Venter, an incredible woman who has lived through and survived an unimaginable journey. Yolanda is a mother to three beautiful children. And in a twist of fate, her eldest son, Marc, and second child, Laura, were diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a devastating genetic disease that claimed their life at the ages of 29 and ten, respectively. Join us as we walk through the realities of caring for terminally ill children, exploring the depths of grief and the power of resilience.

I'm your host, Kara Lunsford, registered nurse and VP of community at Nurse Icon. Oh, all right, Mom. I call you mom because you're my mother in law. Your name is Yolanda Fincher, though. I'm so happy that you came and joined me for the podcast, Mom.

Yolanda Fintor

Thank you. And I like being called mom. Is gives me a place of honor, I think.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, well, we love you. I love you. And this is a conversation that I think I've wanted to have with you for a while. And we've had variations of this conversation over time, but I don't think with this type of intentionality behind it. So let's just start with you are the parent. You are the mother to three children, two of which are no longer with us, one of which is my wife, Dawn Lunsford.

And you had two children that both had cystic fibrosis.

Yolanda Fintor

Right.

Cara Lunsford

And these children were born during a time when so in the fifties. So Mark was born in the fifties, right? Yes. Tell me a little bit about just the experience of having a child in the fifties and what it was like for you in terms of just finding the diagnosis, just finding his diagnosis.

Yolanda Fintor

Yes. When after he was born, he developed a cough and he was not gaining weight. I was breastfeeding him, but the food went right through him. So he had very runny bowel movements. What concerned us was his constant coughing. By three months he was coughing quite a bit and the doctor that delivered him chalked it up to allergies and maybe my breast milk.

He might have been allergic to my breast milk. So I stopped breastfeeding him.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, of course it was your problem.

Yolanda Fintor

So luckily, I and my mom knew of a pediatrician who also had patients at Children's Hospital, and she suggested I go to Dr. Harrison, and I did. And she examined him very thoroughly. I told her what all the symptoms were that did not make him a normal baby. And because she did deal with cystic fibrosis children, she recognized the symptoms right away and immediately put him on a low fat, high protein diet, gave him enzymes so that he could digest his food.

They were bitter tasting, but I put it into nectar fruit, nectar glass, and he drank it without a problem with no problems. Anyway, he did thrive on this protocol he that Dr. Harrison prescribed for him. And he did so well that at three years of age he was really filling out and she thought maybe she misdiagnosed him. And then, wow, she sent him to a pediatrician who specialized in cystic fibrosis, who again gave and another assessment.

And she confirmed that he did have the cystic fibrosis.

Cara Lunsford

Were they able to do genetic testing at that time?

Yolanda Fintor

They did not have that.

Cara Lunsford

So it was all based off of symptom that they actually diagnosed him?

Yolanda Fintor

Yes. And what they did tell us that surprised us was that both parents have to carry the gene for cystic fibrosis.

Cara Lunsford

That's true.

Yolanda Fintor

So at the time, he was diagnosed at three months and that was in 1954, lifespan for children with cystic fibrosis then was five years. Oh, wow. So that was a shocker. We were both in our twenties and, you know, I think young parents are very optimistic and that they could, you know, handle it. And I was lucky that my husband was a strong person and supported the family emotionally because I found out by taking him to Mark to Hospitals Children's Hospital for his checkups.

I talked to other mothers who told me that the father's just ditched the family because they couldn't deal with a child that had a terminal illness. Wow. And we just did what we we had to do it. It was part of our daily life to give him the I forget what they call it now, where you need to tap very strongly the lung area to loosen.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah. So we call it percussion. Percussion. We use we do percussion. Now they have you know, she exaggerates.

Yolanda Fintor

Yes, I do it best to do it. I know it's come a long way. And I know see, if children are living a lot longer now and even having families getting married and having families.

Cara Lunsford

Yep. Lung transplants.

Yolanda Fintor

Yes. Yes. And it doesn't even have to be a full lung. I understand. It could be a piece of a lung.

Cara Lunsford

That's right.

Yolanda Fintor

So as it turned out, her husband had Mark live to be 28. He lived to graduate from high school, get a job for two years, and then he went to get a degree to get into film work. So he went to see Son and graduated from season, by which time he was actually on oxygen and not really doing that well.

But he achieved his goal and we were we were very proud of him.

Cara Lunsford

28 years is quite a bit longer than five. So what do you think was what do you think was the reason for that?

Yolanda Fintor

Well, I think we had good doctors, for one thing, and we followed the protocol that they told us as far as diet goes and exercise. As he got older, his supplements that were important. And then when he got to be a teenager, he actually helped himself a lot. When he learned to drive, he drove himself down to Children's Hospital, which which he used to have to go so many months to clear out his chest, his lungs, and he called it a tune up.

And it was just part of a, you know, part of his life. And the amazing thing is that he never said, why me? And we never talked about early death. Wow. His not being able to. He just always thought he could beat it. That was his attitude. And he would work with other teenagers at Children's Hospital and encourage them to take their meds, which was very important, encourage them to do their exercises physical, stay physically healthy.

And I think that all blended in with the father that was there that stayed and cared for for him and was a was a rock for us. So all that combined, I think.

Cara Lunsford

So about five years later, after he was born, you had your second child?

Yolanda Fintor

Yes. Yes.

Cara Lunsford

And did you immediately know that Laura also had cystic fibrosis?

Yolanda Fintor

No. She developed a little cough, but she didn't have any digestive problems. And it wasn't until I think she was probably almost a year old before they decided she did have cystic fibrosis, but not as seriously as Mark. And she would have lived longer, except that she was born with a which we thought was a birthmark on her hip.

It turned out to be a Manji Yoma, and they didn't realize until she was about nine that her heart was working too hard, sending blood because he had she had these blood vessels going to her hip. So they decided they'd have surgery and cut off the blood supply and give her heart a rest. But it was really too late.

By that time, the heart had worked too hard, so she passed away when she was ten.

Cara Lunsford

But really from heart failure.

Yolanda Fintor

Yeah, I would say it was it was her heart. It wasn't cystic fibrosis. It was her heart. It was just they just didn't realize. Even though that spot kept getting on her, it kept getting bigger and redder and red or just they never made the connection that it was connected to the heart.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, that it was putting a strain. So in some ways, did Mark feel like because she passed away and maybe didn't pass away from cystic fibrosis directly, do you think that that helped him in a way to maintain his positive mindset? Because maybe in his mind his sister didn't die of his disease, she died of something else. Do you think that.

Yolanda Fintor

How he never thought about that? I don't know if that went through his mind or not, because we we never really talked about it. There was only one time I remember we talked about his impending death, and I don't know how the subject came up. And I was surprised because he said, Well, when I die, I don't want an open casket and I don't want organ music.

And then he went right back to eating lunch. So and that was the end of it. So we you know, we honored his wishes when he when he had the kind of funeral that he wanted. But it was as if something warned him that he should say something.

Cara Lunsford

How old was he when he said that?

Yolanda Fintor

Oh, he was he was probably I see. Around 2021. Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

Okay. So he was starting to maybe feel the decline in his health a little bit more or.

Yolanda Fintor

He might have. I know, but he did a lot to help himself. He he saw an ad in the paper about health healers, faith healers. He did call them and made an appointment to go down. He wanted to see what it was all about and he was there for a couple of hours. You are here. He had to be driving by this time.

So he's over 16. And when he came home, he was standing, walking straight, not bent over which people with lung problems tend to do. And his lips were pink because sometimes they were bluish because he didn't get enough oxygen into his system. And he was very changed person. And I said, well, what do they do? And he said, Well, they had me lay on a table.

It was a husband and wife team. And they they had barely touched me. They just passed their hands over me. And they said a few words. She says, I didn't understand what they were saying and I didn't feel anything changing, but they were telling me that they were taking the bad energy out of my body and putting good energy and fresh energy and wow.

And he was so impressed with what happened to his body that he he made arrangements for June. The wife, to come out to the house when he felt like he needed his lungs emptied of mucus or some kind of help breathing. And she would come to the house and do the laying out of hands. And he would. There was one Mother's Day when he was feeling stressed out and he called her and she came out and passed her hands over his lungs front and back.

And then she would do that and then she would shake her hands like she was shaking off bad energy. Yeah. And then she would put back good energy. And after she left, he probably split up about a cup of mucus. She really well thinned out the mucus through phase healing. So I'm a big believer now, but she even did it over the phone when he wasn't feeling good.

One time he called her. She couldn't come out. She told me to stay on the phone and just talk to her. I just do I have to do anything she says. No, just talk to me and I'll send the energy through you. Wow. And that helped also.

Cara Lunsford

And I find this fascinating because you and dad, I wouldn't say were churchgoing people. I mean, maybe spiritual, but I didn't know you to be like, churchgoing. We used to.

Yolanda Fintor

We used to go to church. Did you? We had the babies baptized.

Cara Lunsford

Were you like an every Sunday type of family?

Yolanda Fintor

Like I taught Sunday school. I was in the choir.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, I don't think I knew this about you. I know you to be a very spiritual person, but in the time I've known you, you haven't really been a churchgoing person. But that doesn't mean that you're a person without faith. So I was just curious, like, you know, how that how that kind of resonated with you when someone was working on energy and maybe like the ethereal body?

And did that seem like a bunch of who we are or did it? Or were you like, Oh, you know what? I, I get this like, from the beginning when he first started doing this, how did you feel about it?

Yolanda Fintor

I felt good about it. Ernie wasn't as much his dad wasn't that convinced, but I really felt that there there was something there that was helping him that we couldn't explain. So we left the church. I think, because we made some moves and just never found a church that we were interested in going to and just kept up with the Golden Rule and hoped God would treat us better.

And of course, we questioned why, you know, why God would give us to children like this. And and then take them away and causing all this pain. I was really mad at God for a long, long time. I didn't I felt he was punishing us and he there was no reason to punish us. And it took me a long time to to understand or maybe feel that there was a reason these two children were given to us in our care, and it was easier to teach us lessons about life and death or to teach them when we're not sure.

Cara Lunsford

But or maybe a combination of the both. Like, you know, that you had something to offer to them and they had something to offer to you. That was life changing.

Yolanda Fintor

And I think God picked the right parents because we did all the right things. And I finally resolved my feelings by saying thanking God for letting us have the children, for the time that we did have them, because they did enrich our lives.

Cara Lunsford

So maybe to take a step back for a second and kind of explore and the reason I want to do this is because I think that people in general, the public in general, and I, you know, nurses are part of that. We struggle with grief. We you know, we struggle with loss. And when for me as an oncology nurse, I had seen a lot of parents who had lost children and sometimes more than one child to cancer and it started to make me realize how resilient people are, because when I think about the idea of losing my child, it makes you think that you're going to it would kill you, that you would die if

something like that happened. But all the evidence shows that, no, we are far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for and that we can be faced with an enormous amount of pain and suffering and that there is an opportunity for life beyond it. And I think you're the reason why I wanted to talk to you is because I feel like every day that I look at you, I see someone who has gone through an enormous amount of pain, suffering, loss, but looks at the world in a way that is so positive and that you have so much gratitude and you still genuinely seem to enjoy life.

What was that going from like maybe last or the loss of Laura when she first passed to having to pick yourself up and keep going? What was that like for you? What was it like for Dad? How was that?

Yolanda Fintor

Well, I knew that we had done it. Don was five when Laura died, and I knew that I had to be there for her. And I did worry that while the attention we spent on Laura and Mark, if it would have an effect on her. So it was it was really important to us that we we we were there for her.

That was one motivation. The other thing was that we found out that we could be sad and still be happy. We didn't have to walk around with a long face all the time and if I was if I was down one day with grief, Ernie would be up in If he was down, I would be it. We kind of helped each other that way, I think.

And, you know, a lot of parents sometimes will blame the death of their child on their partner and their spouse, even though there's no basis for it. And we never did that. We knew we did the best that we could with these children and kept them alive as long as we could. And Don was 16, I think, when.

HUTSON When Mark died. I'm sorry. No.

Cara Lunsford

It's okay. That's all. He's like, my boy, my husband's, my he's the boy. In your life these days, our son is now the little light of your life. Like over there.

Yolanda Fintor

Oh, he is. He is. You can just. I love him to pieces.

Cara Lunsford

He's such a good boy.

Yolanda Fintor

But that's. That's kind of how we got through. And we we expressed our grief in different ways. I remember one day looking out the kitchen window, and Ernie had the ping pong table that he and Mark used to play and he took a baseball bat to it. And he was in such anguish, he just crushed that table. He was he didn't know what else to do with his grief.

And this is how he he didn't take it out on me or anybody else. He took it out on the table. And for me, I wouldn't cry in front of other people. I cried at night when I was alone. And that's how I handle my grief. So everybody handles their grief a different way.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah. And I guess I think maybe the the success of your marriage was that you both allowed each other to process your grief in different ways.

Yolanda Fintor

And I think it made it stronger. I know of parents who lost children and it destroyed the marriage, but I think it made our marriage stronger.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, you came together, and I've heard before that sometimes, you know, the reason is that the one partner won't think that the other partner is still grieving or is still sad. They've moved on that in some way like that. The reason why is because their partner has moved on sooner. Then they feel that they have and that can cause a lot of animosity and resentment.

Yolanda Fintor

I'm sure can, Yes.

Cara Lunsford

So let's take us another step back. So you had a third child and that third child was Dawn.

Yolanda Fintor

Right.

Cara Lunsford

And was that a planned pregnancy?

Yolanda Fintor

No, don't tell her that. But no.

Cara Lunsford

I don't think anyone would blame you having two sick children to say, I'm not sure I want to roll the dice again.

Yolanda Fintor

Well, that was the that was the scare that she could also have cystic fibrosis. It turns out she does carry the gene, but she doesn't have she did not have the disease. So I've always considered her our gift. It's as though God said, okay, I made you two suffer enough. Now I'm going to give you a gift. And she was our gift.

Oh, so it was it was wonderful that she was there. I think she helped keep my sanity. And she's been a gift ever since.

Cara Lunsford

And she's a funny person. So maybe. Maybe the fact that, like God also gave you a funny person to make you laugh.

Yolanda Fintor

She always had such a good attitude towards life and other people. I've never heard her talk badly about anybody. She never talk bad about people on and she loved people. She was a people person. People loved her. And she she was a joy and still is.

Cara Lunsford

She is. She is. And so I know you mentioned earlier that you did have some concerns that she was maybe living in the shadows a little bit because she had two sick siblings where you clearly had to put a lot of your time and energy. What did you do to make her feel special or important or hard?

Yolanda Fintor

No, I think me I think her dad might have taken her on some dates, luncheon dates or doing something special with her. I know we were really proud of whatever she did. We could tell at an early age she was musically inclined and we we promoted that and supported her. Even when she decided to quit playing the piano and play the guitar instead, I thought, okay, I'd rather have her play voluntarily than have me have me stand over her and make her practice the piano when she didn't want to.

Cara Lunsford

So she had her own things.

Yolanda Fintor

She did, and I never really gave it that much thought that she was being ignored. And I. I never really discussed it with her either. I have to talk to her about that. If she ever felt ignored.

Cara Lunsford

Well, I know at one point she said to me, well, you know, it's tough when, you know, maybe you just have a cold or a flu or something. But it's hard to compare that to dying if you're always around, you know, siblings who, you know, are really in life and death scenarios. Everything else can kind of pale in comparison, even though it might be something that is hard for her, you know, or she's struggling with.

Or maybe it's just a toothache, or maybe it's a fever, or maybe it's something, but, you know, I wonder sometimes, like it's probably hard to speak up and ask for that attention. Maybe when you know that your parents are.

Yolanda Fintor

Well, I think Don had a lot of empathy for them, but she was only five when Laura died. But with Mark, she was nine or ten years younger and she would bring the world to him and spend a lot of time talking with him. And when he was confined to bed, if he wasn't feeling well, I mean, she was kind of his comfort and his eyes out to the world and she did that for him.

I think a lot of that is empathy and love. And she was the kind of person that probably saw what was going on and decided she would not criticize her parents for it, that this is the way it had to be. This is where your life is. I don't know. I have to ask her. Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

We'll have that on another episode. Yeah, I can really only imagine I'm the parent of of one child, so I don't have the dynamic of more than one one child or the. That's kind of sibling dynamic, but I can imagine that guilt is a tough thing as a parent. I know moms have mom guilt all the time. They have guilt about going to work.

They have guilt about we're really hard on ourselves. Moms are hard on themselves. Was it something that you did you struggle with that at all? Did you struggle with any kind of like, guilt?

Yolanda Fintor

I did. I had a little bit of guilt. I wasn't hard on myself. But I think every parent that loses a child has that guilt and wonders, Could I have done better? Did I do it right? In fact, I just wrote a poem about that. Yes, I do remember. Guilt feelings. Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, guilt. I mean, guilt is part of the whole process, right? I mean, feeling anger, feeling guilty, bargaining, they all the different like, you know, things that we do in grief. Guilt is just part of that, you know, leading all the way up to acceptance.

Yolanda Fintor

Well, I think any time your kids even go astray, probably parents say, what? What did I do wrong? Yeah, it's there, but I got over it. I go for it.

Cara Lunsford

But see, that's what I think is really incredible about you is that you acknowledge things everybody knows. I'm a huge Brené Brown fan. It's all about kind of the recognizing of things, the rumble rumbling around with it, like really trying to explore what that is bringing up for you. And then kind of the revolution of like coming out of that and and doing that with like hard things, things that come up.

And I think you've been really good about that. I don't see you as someone who just buries things away, although I do think that that is one level of coping mechanism to put things behind a door and not open them.

Yolanda Fintor

Yeah, I think I did put a shell up after that for a while of, of not feeling hurt so much. I remember doing that for a little while too. I don't know whether I just pretended it didn't happen or I lived in a make believe world. Yeah, I think we all find ways to protect ourselves from more pain.

Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

So association. Yeah. You know.

Yolanda Fintor

I did that kind.

Cara Lunsford

Of being dissociated in a way, or creating some sort of alternate reality for ourselves. Because to what you're saying, protecting yourself from the pain, sometimes there's just only so much that you can experience and tolerate at one time. You pull out the memories as you can process them.

Yolanda Fintor

Maybe I would say so, yeah. You start remembering the good times and not the bad times, and you really concentrate on that and things that you to be grateful for. To me, that's, that's, that's living a good life. To be grateful for what you have and not be bitter about what you would like to have and don't have.

Yeah, but I find that gratitude really helps me a lot in appreciating my life now. My family, the support I get, my friends and it's a good mindset to have gratitude.

Cara Lunsford

And this is something that I think is going to really resonate with nurses because caregiver fatigue is is a real thing. And I've talked about this in one of our previous episodes, the 24 seven caregiver and really tough when you just go from one caregiving situation to another to another to another and you have not just cared for two sick and terminal children, but then you've had other people, friends, family, Erle at Bertha, who you took care of, Dad who you took care of.

So you have been a caregiver for a very long time. Did you feel like there was a period of time where you had a little bit of relief from that? Was there a period in between Mark and maybe early where you had a little bit of relief from caregiving, or has it just been was it just a lot of years together?

Yolanda Fintor

I don't know. I don't feel that put upon with Erle because or my mother in law when she had to go into assisted living because I wasn't doing the 24 seven job. What what we had to do was decide where we could have them go and get the best care. So that wasn't physically. It wasn't physically hard on us.

And it was true with his Aunt Bertha, too. She lived to be 95 and we made sure she was taken care of in a board and care home for the last two years of her life. And then the hardest, I think, was just taking care of Ernie. The last two years was pretty physical, but before that it was a gradual decline of his health that, you know, he would go from a cane to a walker to a electric scooter because it was cooler than a wheelchair.

But I, I never resented it. I think that after 60 years of marriage, you have a partner and then all of a sudden the partner keeps disappearing and you're doing it a little more and a little more and a little more on your own. And then when it gets to the point where he just he can't function and you have to be there for him.

And he feels awful about it because he knows how much pressure it puts on you. And you keep saying, well, if it was turned around, you do the same thing for me. And yeah, he agreed. But he thanked me every night for taking care of him. And and I have a friend that's going through that now too, and it's she's by herself and she does it.

I says, well, when you get, you know, burned out, you just call me any time. We'll talk because I know what you're going through.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, having that connection, being connected to other people. And also I think that's something that you've done kind of remarkably well, is staying connected to people in your community because you've been part of the writer's group and is it California Writers Association.

Yolanda Fintor

Club Club.

Cara Lunsford

And you've been a part of that for a long time. You've written cookbooks. You were playing volleyball up until this year, so clear up into your nineties, you were playing volleyball.

Yolanda Fintor

Right?

Cara Lunsford

Which is amazing. But you started back in your forties, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Yolanda Fintor

In my forties.

Cara Lunsford

So you've been connected to you stay connected to people.

Yolanda Fintor

And I think that's an important part of having being healthy. This is what they always tell seniors to, you know, as they age when they retire, they're always urging us to keep in touch with friends, to be social, to volunteer, to be active. I guess that's what I've done and it's been a tremendous help. Makes me feel like I'm only well.

Cara Lunsford

You I know that the listeners can't see her, but she always gets mistaken for somebody who is in their seventies. Always we, no matter where we go. People are shocked to find out that she is as old as she is because she looks incredible. Her energy is unmatched. So any you know, there are men out there, you know, feel free to write in.

Yolanda Fintor

Nobody over 70.

Cara Lunsford

Yes. No men over 70 need apply.

Yolanda Fintor

As you're older. You can teach me to play pickleball.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, yes. Pickleball is the new thing for Yolanda Vinter, so I. Well, I could talk to you all day because I think that there's so many things that we could touch on. But I really think that what you were able to bring to this episode today is just hope and incredible amount of hope for people who are out there experiencing immense trauma and grief and sadness and loss.

And I imagine that when they hear this and when they hear your story, that they can see themselves lives at 90 plus years old doing some of the things that you're doing and having and enjoying the kind of life that you're enjoying today and that's what I that's what I hope for people.

Yolanda Fintor

That's really nice of you to say that. But I also have to tell you that my experiences at the hospitals with with Mark really made me respect nurses, especially, I think especially after I became a full time caretaker to my husband. I thought, these nurses do this every day and how do they not get burnout? You know, it's so I'm very proud to have you as a nurse, too, and my daughter in law and and I've learned so much from you as well about nurses.

So and how they do get burned out and not always treated fairly. I don't know what that has to do with me, but I just I just.

Cara Lunsford

Wanted to really I think it's a mutual admiration society, you know, that there's so much to offer. And I know how much you appreciate and love the work that nurses do and that you've been touched by that personally. And so I just appreciate those words. And I know everyone listening really appreciates those words. So I think I've taken up enough of your Friday.

Yolanda Fintor

Any time, any time.

Cara Lunsford

We may have you on again, because I may think of other things that I want to talk to you about and at some point I'm even going to interview your daughter, vouches to her own experiences.

Yolanda Fintor

That would be interesting to me, too. I would really like to hear her voice on that.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, well, that is going to happen. So for all of you listeners, if you enjoyed this, I am sure you will also enjoy an upcoming episode about just the experiences of being a child within a family, kind of going through these types of experiences. So stay tuned for that. And Mom, I love you.

Yolanda Fintor

Oh, I love you too.

Cara Lunsford

Bye bye for now. If you are a nurse who enjoyed this episode and you have an idea for future episodes, you can connect with me by downloading the nurse dot com app. Nurse dot is a nurse dot com original podcast series Production music and sound Editing by Dawn Lunsford, Production Coordination by Rhea Wade, Additional editing by John Wells.

Thank you to all the listeners for tuning in to the Nurse Dot podcast. Until next time, keep spreading the love and the care.