CASPER — One of many tattoos on her left forearm is a dandelion in seed stage ready to blow in the wind.
Deanna Cotten calls it “the wish flower” because in Texas where she was born that is its name. And like a seed ready to fly, Cotten finds herself in her last days on Earth and understands existence here is temporal. She considers each dawn a blessing.
ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, has already claimed a lot of ability from the 43-year-old Glenrock, Wyoming, wife and mother of four. It’s also brought a revelation about a guy named Hezekiah from above.
It has also fueled a “bucket list” and causes her to treat each day in her Central Wyoming Hospice room as if it is her last.
“I’ve actually caught myself, even in the hospice setting, pleading just a little bit to get a few more things done,” she told Cowboy State Daily this week.
One of those “things” is a book for people in situations like hers who are facing the end of their lives. Another is a sleeve tattoo on her left arm that still needs some roots on an olive tree and some other tinkering.
The owner of her own consulting business, Cotten said she moved from Texas to Wyoming with her parents when she was in sixth grade. She graduated from Natrona County High School, moved out of the region from 2012 to 2020, and came back to the state to live in Glenrock with her family and husband, Oren.
As a business consultant, she typically was all “business” in everything she did, making strategic plans, writing mission statements, establishing goals and getting things done.
“I’m an avid strategic planner,” she said. “It almost never goes my way, but it’s all planned out.”
In 2022, her plans for the year became complicated in February when she was taking her children to school and another driver ran a stop sign.
Cotten T-boned the other car, causing her then 15-year-old daughter to hit the windshield and suffer significant injuries.
Traumatic Time
Then on Jan. 5, 2023, she was headed home to Glenrock from Casper at 8 p.m. on a dark, nasty night and wary of black ice on the freeway.
She topped a hill not far from the Glenrock exit and was confronted by a jackknifed semi with a Wyoming State Highway Patrol trooper beside it — lights engaged.
She tried to avoid the pair by driving into the ditch, but instead her car started spinning toward them. At the same time, blinding lights from another semitrailer following her filled her vehicle and she saw another big truck headed for her.
Cotten was positive she was about to die and screamed out a prayer.
That’s when she believes angels intervened.
The truck turned toward the same ditch she had tried for, missed her, and flew by with the trailer that had swung around at her but somehow never connected.
Her vehicle, still moving, ended up in the semi’s tire tracks in the ditch. There was space to open her door. Then other vehicles came over the hill as well, some navigating the danger.
“How this did not turn into a major pileup on I-25 is beyond me,” she said. “It took them 35 minutes to shut down the freeway. I was in shock.”
Though uninjured in the incident, it shook her profoundly.
Cotton said that in one sense she felt robbed and angry that she didn’t die and go to Heaven to meet Jesus, who she had committed her life to eight years earlier.
And still, she knew that made no sense because of her family and business.
The incident traumatized her to the point where she thought about giving up her business, clients, blogs, podcasts and responsibilities and just go work a less-demanding and time-consuming job at McDonald’s.
Deanna Cotton has a well-worn Bible and she said God gave her a revelation from it about a king of Judah named Hezekiah, who cried to God and received 15 more years of life. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
A photo taken of Deanna Cotton getting her tattoos has been enlarged and put in a frame for her by Central Wyoming Hospice staff. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
A dandelion flower in its seed stage that Deanna Cotten calls the “wish flower” is a central part of her tattoos that represent revelations she has received through therapy. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Deanna Cotten says she has received great care from Central Wyoming Hospice staff and wants people to understand that being in hospice care does not mean you are a “prisoner.” She still has the keys to her van. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Family and friends have show Deanna Cotten their support in many ways, including through the old-fashioned way – cards and letters. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Central Wyoming Hospice has an inpatient facility in Casper with 14 beds. The nonprofit offers end-of-life care to residents in Natrona, Converse, and Platte counties. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
Counseling Help
She sought counseling from someone who put her through eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy that helps people recover from traumatic experiences. It made a difference.
The year 2023 ended on a high note, both emotionally and for her business. She was back meeting with clients, writing blogs, doing podcasts.
But Cotten said health issues that had been in place for a few years started to become worse.
As she entered another new year on Jan. 12, 2024, she heard the family physician tell her that the reason she was struggling to hold a pen to write and facing increasing breathing issues had a 95% potential of being ALS.
She decided not to tell her husband, family or best friend right away. She went “straight to God.”
In the two weeks between that moment and her final diagnosis after a confirming test, Cotten said she got a divine answer.
“The Lord directs me to Hezekiah, and it’s in this two-week period, and I literally heard God ask me, ‘Do you still believe what you said you believed?’” she said.
Cotten said her thoughts went back to near-death incident on I-25, the momentary certainty that she was going to die, and then thoughts that she would not be able to say goodbye to family and friends.
“The whole last year I was going through mental health therapy and getting over the fact that I still have a purpose to live,” she said. “That was such a big moment in my life that I had to talk about it a lot.”
A Revelation
But then, she said, God reminded her about Hezekiah, the king of Judah in the Bible who was told by the prophet Isaiah to put his life in order because he was going to die. Hezekiah prayed for more time and God granted him 15 more years of life.
And she said God told her that he had answered her prayer.
“And it clicked,” she said. “On I-25 I was screaming, ‘No, don’t make me go yet. I just want to say goodbye.’
“I look back at the accident and none of us should be alive.”
Cotten said she was given time to say her “goodbyes” and prepare to leave the world.
“Being able to see it as an answer to prayer allowed me to take this time this year to live the way I should have lived if it was going to be my last day,” she said.
Cotten has the rarer form of the disease, Bulbar onset ALS that affects motor neurons in the brainstem leading to speech, swallowing and breathing difficulties. After conversations with medical personnel, she estimates her initial symptoms began five years ago.
The past year has been one of testing, work with speech and physical therapists, and physical struggles — but also accomplishments.
Writing A Book
With the help of a friend, she is completing a book she started writing for her business clients that has morphed into a book for people in similar circumstances who are facing some sort of crisis and end.
The pair took the business chapters and blogs that Cotten had already written, experimented with ChatGPT for some editing help, and added other new material to produce “Embracing the End — Finding Purpose and Peace at the End of Life.”
A big part of the book is about resiliency.
Cotten is in the process of working through her author’s version of the book making final revisions.
In November, she entered hospice treatment at home where a team that includes a nurse, certified nurse assistant, social worker, chaplain, volunteers and bereavement specialists from Central Wyoming Hospice & Transitions cared for her and offered assistance to her family at their Glenrock home.
Cotten said she chose not to get a tracheostomy in her windpipe that would help her to breathe when the disease is in its final stage. She has signed a “do not resuscitate order.”
In December, she contracted pneumonia and battled through two weeks of not knowing whether she would live or die at home.
In January, things took a turn for the worse. Her hospice nurse and doctor recommended she go for a five-day stay at the inpatient facility in Casper just to get medications right and have oversight her working family could not provide 24/7.
That stay has now become more permanent, where she’s living out what days she has left.
Hospice spokeswoman Taryn Houser said about 85% of the hospice patients served by Central Wyoming Hospice & Transitions are in their own homes or nursing care facilities.
Patients come to the 14-bed inpatient home when care issues heighten, and it is harder for family members to meet patient needs.
Hospice Help
For Cotten, in addition to weakening from her battle with pneumonia, her muscle weakness brought other challenges, and it was harder for her to accomplish bodily functions. She needed more nursing assistance.
“People that are living with these terminal diseases, they know they are terminal, they know they are going to die, but they don’t always know that we are just an extra level of support,” Houser said. “Of course, the patient care is so important, but the amount of care and support we can give to the families is equally important.
“We can take that caregiver role away. They get to just be daughter, sister, friend, wife, husband and we get to just love and support them and be the caregivers.”
Cotten said her room is not a “prison” and she still has the keys to her van.
Though sometimes it’s hard for her to sit up in a wheelchair, she can slip away to a store if friends or family take her there. She gushes over thetype of care she has received at the facility — one nurse told her when she arrived that she was of fan of hers on TikTok.
She also is thankful for the nonprofit working with her family to make the stay affordable.
The Tattoos
One last bucket list item she hopes to accomplish is a sleeve tattoo.
With the help of an AI design program, Cotten created a tattoo that incorporates all the “revelations” she received during her trauma therapy with the counselor. Tattoo artists come to her at the hospice facility to work on her sleeve.
A major part of the design is a dandelion flower at seed stage. Cotten said it symbolizes resilience — the word she received from God in 2024.
She also is in the process of having an olive tree with its roots put on her left arm. The tree symbolizes harmony and peace. Part of the tree is in place, and she wants to have the rest done in the near future.
In addition, she had a tattoo of the word “hope” in Hebrew put on her left wrist. “Hope” is her word for 2025.
The tattoo revelations also include a spider web that substituted for a “dream catcher” and a fence line representing God’s boundaries.
“The fence line just reminded me that God is always with me, but I’m not in control,” she said.
She has worked on planning her own funeral with family and friends. A reception will be at the Casper Christian School center where she invested a lot of her talent in fundraising and the actual service at Restoration Church.
Cotten remains grateful for the remaining days and the “Hezekiah” revelation that allows her to face them with thankfulness. She knows her disease often has a “plateau” before a final descent and appreciates the past month at the hospice facility that has removed a lot of stress.
She also shares some wisdom gained through her journey — some from her business mind and some from her practical and personal experience.
“I recommend people have a very decent life insurance plan that will at least cover your spouse’s home, so they have a place to live and time to grieve,” she said. “I would say that having a sense of humor is incredibly important if you are terminal.
“Laughter is the best medicine. I don’t mean for that to sound so cliche, but I do agree that when you get to spend time laughing with people and you forget for a minute what your body is doing to you, it changes everything.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
