In memory of Bill Cox

My husband Bill was a hard working guy… a Jack of all trades… he did or tried everything.
We met when he joined Pike Co Sheriff’s department where I worked. After a few years he joined the Missouri State Water Patrol where he and others worked floods, boating accidents and drownings. He and others in this field volunteered to go to Louisiana after Katrina hit and was there for about a week.

In 2010, Governor Nixon merged the Water with the Highway Patrol and August 2011 he retired.

Bill also worked on stock cars when he was a kid, did a bit of farming, raised hogs… he was an outdoorsman.

Bill started noticing problems about a year before his diagnosis… his knee would over extend, he had drop foot, hard time breathing when he laid flat. He had a sleep study done and found out he stopped breathing many times. The thing that really got him was trying to qualify for a CCW (permit for carrying a concealed weapon). He told me it took everything thing he had to pull the trigger on his handgun… that really bothered him.

Then later he had a really hard time breathing and walking. He thought maybe it was his diabetes but his diabetes doctor said no, it would be both limbs and not just one. When he was around 17 or so he was in a car accident and broke some vertebrae in his neck. They were built back up and the doctor said they would have to be redone in about 20 years… it had been 40!

We were sent to a nuerosurgeon who had an MRI done, his vertebrae were coming apart… we thought this was it! It wasn’t though, and after surgery he was a bit better, no more tingling in the hands, but that was it. He went to rehab for awhile but nothing really changed… we bought a wheelchair thinking when he got a bit stronger, we would go for walks and when he got tired I’d push him in the wheelchair. That never happened… his symptoms didn’t cease.

I had a doctors appointment one day and when I got back I told him I’d get his lunch… I couldn’t keep him awake and called 911… it was a scary after that. They had to put in a trach after two weeks, they said hopefully it would be temporary.

It took 2 1/2 months and 4 hospitals to get a diagnosis…

I was his caretaker for 2 1/2 years… he would get so mad and aggravated and would tell me, put me in a home… I told him, you are in a home, you are in OUR home and this is where you’ll stay… for better or for worse…we are in this together!!

As hard as it was, I’d do it all over again if I could get him back.

Diagnosed May 2017
Passed October 2019
My Heart is Wherever you Are… always and forever.