In honor of my mother

Linda Guillod

March 28, 1961 - February 24, 2021

Donor, Minnesota

In honor of my mother Linda Marie Guillod, She gained her angel wings on February 24, 2021 in Minneapolis, MN. My mother gained her wings at the age of 59. She helped so many people in the time she was here on earth. She loved her family so much- especially her grandchildren. My mother was a director of nursing during COVID. She contracted COVID and was given the news on November 12, 2020. She fought a tough battle and recovered from COVID but the damage was too bad to her lungs. She was then sent down to Minneapolis to the University of Minnesota Fairview Medical Center. She was awaiting a lung transplant, she actually qualified to be a donor recipient. She awaited her transplant when things – her words exactly to me ” all things went to hell this morning”. She was then put on ECMO and intubated trying to keep her alive while waiting for her miracle organs. We called them miracle organs as she has a lot of antibodies which made it more difficult for a match. She then had complication after complication, which then made it even harder to find a lung match. She was on life support for 27 days when we were told that she will not recover, even if she got a match she most likely would not make it through surgery. So the hard choice to terminate life support was made by the staff to let her go. This was the hardest thing ever for us to do. Since it was COVID we were not able to see her until 3 days later – and that was just to say good bye to her. 🙁 This was the hardest thing to ever go through, saying goodbye to your mother at the age of 59.:( We were told on the day that we got to go say good bye that she was a organ donor. So something good came out of all of this, many people got to live because she made the selfless decision to be a donor. We had to follow her advance directive, as her being a nurse, she knew she did not want to live like this. She gave her life for her career.

My mom loved to cook and garden, she loved being a nurse more than anything.

Mom we all love and miss you more than you will know, heaven is too far away