Then came 2020

Let’s go back to December 2019 to answer the question of why you haven’t heard from me in eight months.

December second, my husband, Dean, and I were coming home from our Thanksgiving trip at our oldest son’s home in Dallas.  The week prior Dean was having horrible indigestion, but wouldn’t go to the doctor.

“I’ll go when we get back,” he’d said.

He sucked down Mylanta like water from a gushing spigot. We went to Dallas. We had fun, but he wasn’t feeling right. Driving home, I became sick with a strange bronchial virus like nothing I’ve experienced. It hit fast and hard. Called the doctor on the drive home. Got in the next day. Got medicine.

That night Dean wanted to go to bed. Instead we went to the hospital. For him.

I was sucking down cough syrup while he’s having a widow-maker heart attack. An ambulance rushed him from the small rural hospital to a larger one.

Racing behind the ambulance, Christmas lights flew by my window. Holiday songs sprang from the radio. I’ve been here before, 2014 following the helicopter carrying my mother to the hospital. Same time of year. Same music. Same lights. Mom died.

Not again. Not Dean. Not again.

Dean was coded. He came back and went into surgery with two minutes, yes two minutes they said, to live. His LAD was blocked 99.9% and further down 88% blocked. Two stents in that valve saved his life. I could breathe again, although labored.

Into ICU for recovery. Immediately pulmonary complications set it.

All the specialist said, “We have no idea what is causing this.”

Who would’ve thought a heart attack was the least of our worries. Lungs are frightening organs. It was a lung whiteout. ARDS of BOTH lungs. I didn’t know that was a thing. It is. You don’t want it.

He tried to leave three more times, was coded, and came back. I lived with him in the Intensive Care ICU for the month of December 2019, learning, watching the nurses, the doctors. I couldn’t leave Dean, my husband of thirty-seven years. Wearing the same jeans, shirt, underwear that walked me into the first emergency room on December fourth. I could smell myself coming.

The loving, caring, amazing nurses at Northwestern Delnor Hospital arranged for me to shower down the hall. No makeup. Crazy hair. Didn’t care, I was clean. I bought a couple shirts at the gift shop. My eighty-nine-year old father, and our wonderful neighbors visited Jag our Akita, and Chicago the cat four times a day. Feeding them. Loving on them. I thank God for these people. They shoveled snow from our lane, walks, back steps so Jag wouldn’t slip going outside. Friends brought me toothpaste, a toothbrush, and snacks, although I don’t remember eating. Then my closest friend, Patricia Childers, came to Dean’s room pulling a rolling suitcase filled with clothes, shampoo, toiletries, slippers, pajamas, and underwear. I’m blessed to have these people in my life.

My three siblings were invisible. No calls. No visits. No shit. My father couldn’t bear to come to the hospital, it was too hard. Too fresh, too similar to losing my mother, his wife, just a few years before.  He did what he could to help. He showed his love by taking care of my furry family at home.

Except the few times friends came, for the month of December I was alone in the room with my dying husband. His arms turning black with lack of oxygen to organs. Oxygen machines chuffed. His ribs expanded, contracted with each death rattle, searching for air. Alarms sounded constantly. A deep haunting, black symphony.

Our sons couldn’t come. One was in South Korea, the other we’d just left in Dallas. I was alone. Alone fighting death, pushing it out of the room. Blocking the door. Death moved from room to room. Cardboard coffins rolled past Dean’s room.

I washed his hair. Cleaned his body. Brushed his teeth. Preserved his dignity. I researched the medicines he was given, talked with specialists, all the while fighting with the VA to make them cover his medical costs. Dean’s a 100% (actually 240%) disabled Vietnam Veteran.

Just weeks before his heart attack we’d received a letter from the VA that read they were discharging him from the VA Cardiology Clinic. They’d determined his cardiac condition was stable. Odd decision considering his LAD valve, the widow-maker, was packed with seconds to close. Apparently the VA ignored that prevalent valve, which is right there in front, for all to see. Once I mentioned that letter, the VA was very cooperative.

I slept two hours a day. Not in a row. A catnap here. There. Life support came. Thirty-six hours, watching, waiting, revealed the color of hell. Its hospital gown green.

Our son from Dallas came, but had to leave. Dean told our son in South Korea not to come. Dean remembers nothing from the ICU, or that conversation.

The room filled with doctors, nurses. “I’m sorry. We don’t know what this is.” Again with that. “To find out, we have to intubate him. But.” And here was the kicker. “He will never be able to come off the vent once it is inserted.”

“We’re not doing that and I don’t give a shit what is causing it,” I said. “I want him to live.”

“You need to prepare yourself.” Somewhere in that conversation the words hospice care emerged.

No, my mind screamed. The room emptied. The nurse came back. “Say it again,” I said. She did.

A young doctor came in urging me to let them insert the useless vent that wouldn’t save my husband, just extend this hellish nightmare.

“What’s your first name?” I asked that doctor. He flinched as if I’d slapped him.

“Uh, it’s Nathaniel,” he said. “Why?”

“If you’re going to come in here and give me the worst news of my life, I need to know your name. My name is Christi.” I pointed to Dean. “That is Dean. We’re people, not numbers, not specimens.”

That doctor left. A nurse came in. “You’ve been so brave,” she said.

“Give me another option and I’ll take it.”

Sliding under tubes, again I climbed into bed with my husband and held him. “Don’t leave me now. Please don’t leave,” I begged.

It’s coming on Christmas. I wish I had a river. Joni Mitchell sang it. I felt it, and looked for that river to skate away on. There was none.

Dean came back.

“It’s a miracle,” the pulmonologists said.

It was. I took my husband home. Struggled to get him up the front stoop. Eight months have passed. He’s still on oxygen, steroids, a plethora of pills, and injections. I’ve become his caregiver. I had no idea the depth of this job. For better. Or worse. We’ve had the better. I don’t like the worse.

Send light and love to caregivers. They need it, along with clean clothes, toothpaste, and coping skills.

Now we know what ‘that’ was. Covid-19. For those in the backrow, the 19 means 2019 when we were in the hospital. It didn’t come to the USA in March. It was here, long before, banging on the door of Dean’s hospital room.

As of today 137,347 souls have left the United States of America, carried away by this disease. Each one is a person with family, hopes, dreams. They are not numbers, not specimens.

Dean’s still here fighting its effects. I’m still blocking the door. Holding the door. Hold door. Hodor.

Thank you for all your well wishes and hope, but if you REALLY want to help, wear a mask.

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