BW 140 Rebeca Quintana
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Introduction and Encouragement
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[00:00:00] Emily: Welcome to episode number 140 of the Brave Widow Show. Before we dive into Becky's story today, I just wanna say that I see you, those of you who watch and listen, who are on the fence who know that in order to create a different future, you need to take action.
I see your messages, your comments, and I can feel your hesitation. I wanna encourage you to reach out, whether it's through email, it's through a dm, or it's even just scheduling time to chat on brave widow.com. Just start the conversation. There's no obligation, there's no pressure, only possibilities, and hope that the future can look brighter than it does today.
Alright, let's dive into this week's episode.
Welcome to the Brave Widow Show, where we help widows find hope, heal their heart, and dream again for the future. I'm your host, Emily Tanner. After losing my husband of 20 years, I didn't know how I could ever experience true joy and excitement again for the future. I eventually learned how to create a life I love, and I've made it my mission to help other widows do the same.
Join me and the Brave Widow membership community and get started today. Learn more at BraveWidow. com
Meet Becky: Background and Early Life
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[00:01:18] Emily: Becky, welcome to the show and thank you for agreeing to come on and share your story.
[00:01:25] Rebeca: Thank you, Emily. I'm happy to be here.
[00:01:28] Emily: I know our audience would love to know more about you, more about your background, and then we can dive into your story, just wherever you wanna start.
[00:01:39] Rebeca: Great. Yeah. So I go, I was born in Honduras. My parent, my dad is Honduran, my mom is American. They both met at Bible college here in Hollywood, Florida. I was born in Honduras and then I think it was when I was 12 years old, I moved to Miami and that's where I grew up for the most part until I was.
Love Story and Marriage
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[00:02:02] Rebeca: 23 is when I officially met Mickey and he was also in my, he lived in Georgia and we knew each other by sister churches. We knew each other that way. And I always knew who he was. And one of those times we. We connected on Facebook and I was actually during that time given up on finding the man for myself and my dad.
A few weeks before I fell in love with Mickey, or I started talking to him. He had sat me down and said, your sister needs a husband. I took that as a mission. And one of those things with Mickey was I was looking at Mickey for my sister. Oh, okay. And I started to get to know him to see if it would be a good match with my sister and within what I would say, three weeks.
I said no, this is not good for my sister. This is for me. I love that so much. Yeah. Yeah. So yes, that's how we started. It was a long distance relationship. We got married in 2014, November of 2014, and I moved to Georgia.
Mickey's Health Struggles
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[00:03:27] Rebeca: Now I will dive into his condition and how this whole thing started with him.
When he was 19, he was diagnosed with Crohn's, which the doctors couldn't figure out if it was Crohn's or in the end it was ulcerative colitis. It's all linked, it's all pretty much very similar in a way. And then when he was 21, he was then diagnosed with ulcer. What is it? PSC, which is Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis , which is an issue with the liver.
Which then turns it the liver will then fail on you but when he was 21, they told him that he had 10 years before he needed a new liver cirrhosis. Sorry, that was it. Cirrhosis of the liver. So he had mentioned it to me before getting married. And it wasn't a big deal. I didn't think much of it. I'm like who could this happen? This is not gonna happen to him.
And I think he thought the same thing too. It's, no, I'm, nothing is gonna happen to me. We're gonna be okay. And he felt great. Right.
Facing the Reality of Illness
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[00:04:33] Rebeca: Now fast forward, oh, and we have a son, Santiago, during our marriage I think it was he was born in 2017, so I have a 7-year-old right now. Which has, he has been my amazing source of joy, and it was for Mickey too.
Now fast forward to 20 July of 2022. Mickey had been having issues with his mouth. He had sores. It would come and go, but it came to the point where it was too much. And I said, Mickey, you just need to go to the doctor. We need to figure this out. And he had gone, but they said that his medicine, his ulcerative colitis medicine would have to go up and they would have to change it.
And he was always very fearful of stronger medicines. So I always agreed because to me the way I would think is the least medicine the better. The more natural way, the better. And it happened where the doctor, we went to a new doctor and he said, I just need a full panel of blood work just to see where you are at.
And that's where we found out that his liver was, it had very high number of his, bilirubin was really high, which was, it made all the sense in the world because for the last year I had seen these up and downs with his skin color. And then his eyes would look yellow every once in a while. And I said, Mick, just drink more water.
There's something going on with your liver. You need to drink more water.
The Liver Transplant Journey
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[00:06:04] Rebeca: But then it was more than that the doctor said, we need to send you to a liver transplant team. And that freaked him out. And I also did, so my sister was during that time she had just gone through some courses with a regenerative consultant and she suggested that for us.
And so we did, it was a good chunk of money to get through that and, but it was so worth it and we really thought he was going to get cured, healed through this method. And I would say two, three weeks after we started this regimen and it was all. Eating. It was all about eating, removing toxins into from our bodies and removing toxins with what we clean in the house.
It was insane the way that we just did a 360, change in our lives lifestyle.
[00:07:01] Emily: And what were you thinking during this time? Did it cross your mind that, oh, this could be like a terminal illness, essentially, he has limited time, or were your thoughts more no I've gotta have faith.
What, how are you feeling? And even just trying to process this during that time.
[00:07:21] Rebeca: I had mixed feelings. I had both. It was it could be one day I was on the floor crying and saying, okay, my husband is gone, and he would be walking around. I would say, no, he's gonna die and I need to figure out how I'm gonna do it by myself.
And this is, and it would be from negative to positive. And then there would be a moment where I would say, no. We got this God is in control. And then he would always keep reminding me, I was always grounded in scripture, especially during this time. I think it was the year before my brother had almost passed away with Covid.
And that was, I think the beginning of my heart change where it would've been my first time losing somebody so close to me. And I even told my brother, I said, listen, I feel that what just happened to you, and it was very traumatic. What had happened to him, how he was treated in the hospital. And then the fact that I was in Georgia and he was in Miami, just it.
I have been a control freak. I've been really good at keeping control of my surroundings. And for that first time in my life, I could not keep control. I could not help my brother. I could not fight with the doctors and the nurses. And I said, Carlos, I feel that. This is just the beginning of something bigger coming.
I feel like God has prepared my heart or is preparing my heart for something more coming. And when I found out how bad Mickey was, it took me a few weeks to think, okay, this is the big thing that I felt God telling me, talking to me. So in a way I feel my heart was prepared for this. The Lord prepared my heart through one trial and then coming onto the next one just a year later.
If I were not to have gone through what I did with my brother, I would've probably been a complete and total mess. So I was able to lean on his promises. I was able to remember scripture through it. Yes, of course. They were very difficult moments where I would lack faith, but most of the time I was strong.
I can tell you I was strong and firm and I was, I could see Mickey's numbers get better, and I thought, okay, this is it. We're on our way. And then he finally decided, you know what? I'm feeling great. And he looked great actually. He said, I feel great. I'm gonna stop all meds. And that's when things started to go downhill.
Hospital Struggles and Miracles
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[00:10:03] Rebeca: There was a period of three weeks that he had a, this severe, like severe pain where he, for tho from those three weeks, two weeks of those, he was in our closet floor. He wouldn't leave. He couldn't get out. He couldn't get up. So I would take his food there and I would hear him cry and I would hear him sing.
I would hear him pray. And that was very difficult, that's where things started to get really difficult and for some miraculous God and his sovereignty. He, Mickey worked in the paint industry, so he worked in a paint store. The paint and the fumes. Those toxins would, I'm sure that affected his liver and sped things up.
It wasn't the cause, but it was, it's sped things quite, quite a bit. And he needed to get outta the store. At that point, he couldn't even go back to work. There's no way he could go back to work because of. He couldn't even get up. Barely. So he, they re, he got a position for Florida right here in, in Melbourne.
So during that time, even him being so sick, he was able to recuperate and start walking and just be more active. We transferred to Melbourne in 2020, the beginning. 2022, actually the end of 2022. And things got complicated with the hospital not wanting to take him in for his transplant. We knew by that time he needed a transplant.
I knew that the natural route wasn't gonna work and we were. We were in, in desperate need of a hospital to help him. So finally we got chance to help us. And he got his liver transplants in November 11th, 2024 last year. And, everything looked well, relatively okay with a few hiccups here and there.
So he stayed a little bit longer than the usual liver transplant patient would. We left on Christmas Eve that year and it was just a beautiful thing because we arrived home at Melbourne on Christmas night. It was Christmas evening, so it was very special to be home for Christmas. Last year.
I'm skipping a few things that had happened through the Journey because it's a very long story. But he also had because of his ulcerative colitis, he had a bag ostomy bag. So the issue with that was that kept bleeding, the ostomy the stoma kept bleeding and it was massive clots that would come out.
So he would lose a lot of blood. And so when we came back home. It started bleeding again. So it got things were just not looking that well. By the 31st we were in Miami visiting family, which the doctor told us he's gonna be fine. It's just we gotta, he's, it's really not a big issue and to just keep putting pressure on it.
But by the 31st of that year, December, he was bleeding too much and it became like an emergency. So the hospital in Miami did not wanna take him, did not wanna treat him just because he was a transplant patient. So once you become a transplant patient from a hospital, no other hospitals want to treat you because that is very delicate situation.
It took a day for them to figure out his ride there. The insurance to approve it because it became the first January 1st. Then nobody works on January 1st, so things got complicated. But he managed, we, he got, he arrived, I believe it was on the first January 1st, and we came to find out that he had a clot in his portal vein.
And Mickey and I was in the process of still driving up because I had our son. And I arrived on the second, but the night before arriving, they did the surgery, which was Mickey. I remember Mickey calling me and saying, it's just to remove the clot. It's gonna be an easy one. This is just gonna get me in and out of the hospital.
So on our, on my way to Gainesville at Shands. I received a call from the doctor and saying, then it's a lot more complicated than what they thought that the portal vein, that the clot was forming in front of them as they were trying to remove it. So it was something that they had never, ever seen before.
Mickey's case was a very new one and very complicated one. Long story short, we were at the hospital from January to May. He was in ICU the whole time. Now, during that time it was, I saw many miracles. I saw God's Hand at work that's where God was actually molding my heart and I could see Mickey's hearts being completely changed there.
He was left, he was unconscious or sedated until the 10th, from the second to the 10th of January. Because they, he had to keep going back to surgery and going to getting these procedures done because they were just trying to save his life and not allowing that. His body or his, that big vein to clot again.
[00:15:41] Emily: And that had to be really hard. Just every day feels like an eternity and you're waiting and there's lots of ups and downs and it's emotionally just exhausting.
[00:15:53] Rebeca: It is exhausting. It was draining. It was emotionally, physically, mentally, everything. Thank God my mother-in-law was there with me the whole time she stayed there.
So we both encouraged each other in many different ways. We prayed together, we cried together. We figured a lot of things out together. So it was, I wasn't there alone, per se, she was constantly there. It was a blessing. She wouldn't leave her son, which is very sweet, a mother's love.
But yeah, he woke, he, they finally woke him up and they tried to extubate him and he couldn't because he had gotten so weak by that time. So they ended up doing the tracheostomy, I think is what they call it, tracheotomy. And that was a very hard thing for me to see. When they removed his tube.
I could see that he had lost so so much weight. But during that time on the 10th, something very difficult happened. Made everything go downhill. Because he was sitting there for so long and not moving the, I noticed that one day, he, they would remove some of his sedation so that he could wake up and respond.
And I could see him and feel like I would be holding his hand and he would tense up his hand and look at me with these big, wide eyes and then finally let go. And then. A few minutes later, it would happen again, and I kept looking at the monitor. I just trying to figure out what was happening to him.
I thought it was this emotional rollercoaster that he was going through, but then I noticed that his oxygen was going down to the eighties and I told the nurse, Hey, this is going on. Can we see is, I feel like he's not comfortable. Something is going on. So it took a while. They re they changed the machine, his breathing machine.
It ended up being that it wasn't that, and then quickly things started to go south. Within a minute or two, there were 20 nurses with the main doctor there. And I could I, between my mother-in-law and I, they shoved, like we quickly separated and I was in one corner of the room and she was in the other corner of the room.
And I was just watching. I didn't know if my husband was gonna die in that moment. I didn't know if I had no idea what was going on. I just knew that he couldn't, something was really off and there was no breathing and it was just and the doctor was eloquent in the way that he was giving his commands.
He said, you do this. Okay, try that. No, okay, do this. And he, I think he kept the calm in me, actually was, which was great because deep down I feel like I was going emotionally down south. Fast forward, he told us that Mickey had gone through a septic shock, that he had just gone through septic shock.
And that at the point where Mickey was he was shocked himself, the doctor, because he said that he has only, Mickey has been only the fifth person that he has been able to save from septic shock. So to me, that was the fir the biggest miracle I saw in that moment. And I said, okay. This is amazing. This is terrible that ha has happened, but this is great because Mickey is going to give such a great testimony of what the Lord has done in his life and how he saved his life.
And I was from then on, Mickey had five sepsis episodes, not septic shock. So the first one was septic shock. The neck, the others, they caught them on time. So it was a rollercoaster from January to May. By the end in May, that was his last sepsis. And the doctor said, I feel like it's, it looks like it's like a septic shock because his, all his organs failed.
I. His, his lungs were not doing well. His kidneys were not doing well. And he was attached to almost every machine that you can think of in the hospital.
Mickey's Final Days
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[00:20:11] Rebeca: So by that time I had seen Mickey go through a massive amount of suffering where he would.
He would tell me several times. He would say, I'm just ready to go home. I want to be with Jesus, and I'm so tired. I'm done. And I, during that time, I was so strong, I was so firm, and I said, Mickey, you have so much life in you. You can't give up. I am here. Your son is here. You have a story to tell. You have so much to tell.
And that would help him. It would encourage him and he would push through so much. He, the, I think I am currently dealing with. The trauma just from seeing my husband suffer or seeing just someone that you deeply love suffer. Just a few days before he passed away,
actually the week before I, I started telling God, listen, if there is nothing. I can do to convince you to heal my husband. If there is nothing that I can do, take him. Just take him and remove the suffering from him. And just a week later, God responded and he answered my prayer, not in the way that I wanted.
But he answered my prayer and he removed the suffering from my husband. Which I am so grateful that he is not right now dealing with that. I have so much gratefulness in my heart for that. Because I know where Mickey is, I know where he is. He was so ready in his heart. He was ready.
[00:22:00] Emily: It's just hard to wrestle between, we know that he's, they're in a good place, right?
But we also miss him and we want him here
[00:22:10] Rebeca: a hundred percent.
[00:22:11] Emily: And trying to embrace both of those things at the same time, it's really hard.
[00:22:17] Rebeca: Yes. Yes.
Faith and Hope in Grief
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[00:22:19] Rebeca: Mickey lived with the hope. Of Jesus Christ. Mickey had the hope that he knew. He knew that the day his heart would stop beating, he would be face to face with Jesus Christ.
He knew, I knew his life show that he had Christ in his heart. He had the Holy Spirit. He truly believed that the Lord Jesus died on that cross. To pay for every single bad thing that he did in his life for every single sin, the sins that he deserved to die for Mickey. But Jesus took it upon himself. God gave his son Jesus to do it.
And that is deep love. That is love. And just knowing that Mickey. Went to heaven. Having that assurance is something that nobody can take away from me. And it's, I am, I can live with that hope knowing that he is not suffering. At the moment that Mickey passed away, um, for that millisecond when I had.
My head on his chest, and I heard his last breath and I heard his last heartbeat. I doubted that heaven was real. It's okay, you're physically here, but where is your soul? What are you doing right now? And that is just human in me and we it's part of human. And then as soon an hour later, after my husband passed away, my brother sent me this verse.
It's in one Thessalonians four, and it says. Brothers and sisters do not I, we do not want to be uninformed about those who sleep in death so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope for. We believe that Jesus died in Rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him according to the Lord's word we tell you.
That we who are, we are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord will certainly not proceed. Those who have fallen asleep, falling asleep, as in those who have passed away, and that is Mickey, for the Lord will himself come down from heaven and will with the loud command and with the voice of the arch, Archangel, and will the trumpet call of God and the dead in Christ will rise first.
After that he who are still alive and who will be left to be. So that kind of reassured me, confirmed heaven is real. Jesus Christ is real. This is this life that we are in on earth right now. This is not our home either. I have a whole eternity to look forward to. And I think that's one thing that I have been taught through this with Mickey is, and now that he has officially gone, is this is not my home.
There is so much more to this and there's eternity left. It's eternity with Jesus Christ. And the day, yes, the day that I get to see Mickey again is gonna be great. My goal in this life is to be able to be more excited to fall at Jesus's feet than to hug my husband, 'cause of everything that he has done.
And I cannot wait to see Mickey, but I also cannot wait to see my savior, and I, a lot of people tell me, oh, you're so strong. You are doing great. But you know what, this is not on me. I didn't do all this. I, it's not up to me to be strong. It wasn't my by my own strength.
It clearly says in second Corinthians that it is not by my own strength. It, it is for when I am weak, then I am strong because it's Christ's power in me. There's no way, honestly, Emily, that I would've been able to go through all this with Mickey neither my mother-in-law, that she also got to see everything.
We wouldn't have been able to do this on our own by our own strength. I think God carried us through. He was our constant. He was my constant. During that time, many books helped me. There were several authors that. They don't even know, these women that have ministered to me, they have no idea how they have changed my life and my view on trials.
Really? Yeah.
[00:26:52] Emily: Yeah. I heard it said once that. Many times for widows, we're afraid to move forward because it feels like we're leaving our loved one behind when in reality, if we believe they're waiting for us in the future and in eternity, it's that by moving forward, we move closer to the time that we're going to see them again.
Yes. I just thought that was a great way of thinking about that. But what was, you know that,
[00:27:18] Rebeca: sorry, that was one thing my son told me is that. It was just a weeks after my husband passed away and he said with a huge smile on his face, and he said, you know that every day that passes is one day that I get to die.
And you know what he said? It's one day closer to getting to see my dad. So even to him, to us, we have no fear and death. We have he such a young age. He's seven years old right now, and he has no fear. He has no fear because it's just one day closer.
[00:27:55] Emily: That's amazing. It's amazing that he has that right mindset and belief, and that's just such a reflection of you and your faith and what you've taught him.
Resources and Advice for Widows
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[00:28:06] Emily: So you mentioned some books that you thought were really helpful to you. What's maybe one or two of the top ones that made the biggest impact for you?
[00:28:14] Rebeca: Yes, so it is Venita Randall. Her book is the Scars that Shaped Me. She is an amazing, she, and most of these books are from people that have suffered.
Another one and she, I started reading her book days before Mickey passed away. A friend of mine sent it to me and that was the biggest blessing. That book was just exactly what I needed. During that time, and I stopped reading it when Mickey passed away, and now I have picked it up again and it has just been so great again.
Johnny Erickson, I am not sure if you've heard of her, but when she was 17, she had a, an accident, a diving accident that now she can't walk, she can't move. But she is amazing. So she has several books actually. But I have listened a lot to her podcast. I have been listening to her podcast for two years now, three probably.
And she speaks to other people that have also been in suffering which is Joni, and Friends. And then another one that I recently started to look into, which my, my pastor's wife, which has also become really close to me. Her name, the author's name is Nancy Guthrie, and it's the book that has best minister to me has been God works with Empty.
And she lost two, two children. She has lost two children also.
[00:29:50] Emily: Thank you for sharing that. And for anyone who watches or listens, we'll be sure to put that in the show notes as well. Sure. Awesome. Yeah. What advice or. Suggestions would you give to people who are in the middle of the storm?
Maybe they're still in the hospital with their person trying to figure it out. Maybe they have just gone through this roller coaster of days or weeks or months, and now their person is gone. What would you say to them?
[00:30:24] Rebeca: You are not alone. You are loved and you're cherished. The Lord sees you,
and if you would just clinging to him and just look for him, he's going to show up. He will show up, and then the suffering that you go through. That you're actually going through right now will also serve to others. So you will also be able, if you are to be comforted by God, you will that same with that same comfort, you will be able to comfort others.
And that's something that has always encouraged me is. Yes, I went through so much, but this has molded me into a person that, that loves God more. But it also helps me comfort others in their sufferings because I can feel their pain. So what you're going through is not the end. You still have more to live and, there is a lot more in life and I think that doing this without Christ is difficult, very difficult with Christ is still difficult, but there is this one thing that it makes it so much better, which is hope you live in hope.
[00:31:50] Emily: That was so beautifully said. Thank you so much, and thank you for just being so open and honest about your story and what you've experienced through that.
I know so many people are gonna resonate with what you shared and just feel inspired to lean even more into their faith.
[00:32:10] Rebeca: Thank you. Thank you, Emily.
Conclusion and Support Resources
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If you're newly widowed and aren't sure where to start, you need the brave new widow's starter kit inside brave new widow. You'll find a starter guide to help you through your first few months. A quick start guide. You can share with family and friends so they know how to help you. And a collection of some of the frequent topics that widows want to learn more about. To get the brave new widow series.
Just go to brave widow. Dot com slash start it's free and you'll get instant access. That's brave widow.com/start S T a R T. See you there.
