MUNCIE — This year has been the best professionally and worst personally for Jeff Scott.
On Oct. 23, he was named chancellor of the Muncie campus of Ivy Tech Community College.
On Jan. 6 — the day he buried his mother — his 30-year-old daughter Brittney's sepsis infection ended in multiple organ dysfunction and death.
Two months earlier, doctors had warned Brittney after replacing a damaged heart valve — related to her heroin addiction — that the sepsis would return if she started using again. They told her there would be little they could do next time.
"My mom was ill and knew her time was coming," Scott said. "She passed on New Year's Eve. We kind of knew that's when she would pass. That's when my sister passed 51 years earlier, at age 6, on New Year's Eve."
Five days later, on the day his mother was being buried, Scott received a text that his daughter had died. "The funeral director wondered why we were so upset, because we had gotten through (his mother's visitation) OK the day before," Scott said.
He doesn't mind talking about Brittney's death. The family didn't hide anything in her obituary, referring to her hard-fought battle with addiction. The honesty prompted a flood of support from friends, relatives and strangers.