A Celebration of Life

Thank you, dear family and friends, for your love and support during this difficult time, and for sweet Katy who created this photo-montage to help us celebrate Curtis' life. View it with a prayer in your heart and a smile on your face, in honor of the man that we all love and greatly miss. Please share your memories of Curtis in the comment section below. While you watch the Super Bowl tonight, don't forget to cheer extra loud so that Curtis can hear you from his front row seats up in heaven.

Smiles, Memories, Tears, and Cheers

Dear Ones,

I cannot adequately express the gratitude I feel within my heart for all of the love and support that you so graciously gave Curtis and myself throughout the ups and downs of life and health these past few years. Curtis and I discussed the possibility of his not making it and what his final wishes would be. True to form, he did not want us to mourn his passing, but wanted us to be joyful about his life. Curtis was adamant about not wanting a funeral, nor a viewing, and requested that he be cremated and for his remains to be privately scattered at a place that was special to us. As you all know, one of the great joys of his life was football, and following his recovery from surgery, he was looking forward to the Super Bowl. And so, in lieu of a funeral, I ask all of our loved ones, near and far, to join together in spirit on Super Bowl Sunday, February 3rd at 10AM MST. Please visit our blog that morning. There will be a photo-montage posted here of our happy moments together for everyone to watch. Please view it with a prayer in your heart and a smile on your face in honor of the man that we all love and greatly miss. And then feel free to share your memories of Curtis in the comment section. They will all be printed up, along with the photos, in book form for me to keep as a remembrance of him. While you watch the Super Bowl that night, cheer extra loud so that Curtis can hear you from his front row seats up in heaven.

With love and friendship,
Nadine Shelton

My Best Friend, My Lover, My Soulmate

I regret to inform friends and loved ones that Curtis passed away last night. I appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers. Curtis is everything to me, and I love him so very much. I just wanted his friends and loved ones to be informed. Thank you again for the love and support and prayers that were offered and continue to be.

This is Lucy. I just spoke with Nadine's sister, Tami, at the hospital. Your prayers are greatly needed for Curtis right now as he's going back into surgery. We're hopeful that it goes well and that his recovery continues.

The surgeon at Mayo was able to close Curtis up today. He is still swollen, and he has a long way to go, but closing him up was a big step in the right direction. He is still on dialysis, but not 24 hours a day now. If Curtis keeps doing better, and continues to heal, he will start to wake up on Friday.

I'm hoping for everybody's prayers and thoughts for Curtis right now. Between noon and 1 o'clock today, Curtis will be in surgery. Hopefully, if all of the swelling has gone down, they will finally be able to sew him up. I'll share post-op news as soon as I can. Love and thanks to you all!

So all of the prayers, thoughts and love are working. Just wanted you all to know, it is working and Curtis is getting so much better. Friday and today have been great he is doing so wonderful. They are treating his infection, and they are going to sew him up on Monday. They started to take him down on his meds today that keeps him in a coma. When I was talking to him today, he blinked his eyes…I told him if he could hear me to blink twice, and he did. I was so excited; it was the best news I got all day. My husband is a very strong fighter, and he is an amazing man. I’m so happy at his progress. He is receiving great care at Mayo. We have some of our favorite ICU nurses taking excellent care of him. This is a picture of Trish, who is just amazing! She has become a great friend as well.

I caught her in mid sentence poor thing, what an awesome nurse.

Curtis had a couple different procedures done today, and he is getting better. He is stable and the nurses and doctors are trying to keep him that way until he continues to improve. They also took tests and are still focusing on trying to find the infection in Curtis. They are hoping to keep him healing throughout the weekend, and then hopefully by Monday the swelling in his lungs will be down enough to close him up again.  ***Thank you everyone for your prayers and support. I have been letting him know that everyone is praying for him to get better and everyone wants to see him***

Rough Night

Last night was a rough night. I received the call that I never want to ever get again in my life. I was told to get to Mayo as soon as possible. Curtis was going into emergency surgery. His lungs and chest were filling up with blood. After waiting what seemed like an eternity, the surgeon came out and told me that Curtis is still with us. He has an infection in his body that they are trying to locate and treat it. His lungs have swollen back up again, and they were not able to close him up. He is on constant dialysis right now, his artificial heart is doing better, and he is still on the ventilator. It looks like he will be in the medically induced coma for another couple weeks probably. Things seem to change on a daily basis, but I will do my best to update this blog with the latest news. Thank you so much Shanna and Lucy for being at the hospital with me last night and into the wee hours this morning. Thank you everyone for your support, love and prayers.

Curtis Update

Curtis has been in a medically induced coma for a week now. I thought that he would be able to start waking up on Friday, but today he has gotten worse. He has an infection and also his kidney’s started to fail. He will start dialysis tomorrow. They are keeping him in the coma while he is healing and they are correcting his infection through different antibiotics. Curtis and I both appreciate all of the thoughts and prayers. I will try and post on here at least every other day so that everyone can stay up to date.



Curtis and Maddie at Mayo with some of the top heart surgeons, 10-2012

Artificial Heart

This is the guy that talked to Curtis about his artificial heart and made him feel better about getting it.

Blog for Curtis

My friend Lucy helped me create this blog so that everyone can come here to find out the latest updates on Curtis. Also, if you want to post any comments to him, when he wakes up and through his healing process, I want him to be able to read this also. Thanks, Nadine



Christmas Eve visit at Mayo from Jerry & Lucy's daughter/ our lil' niece, Maddie