“My Wife…I Love Her”

Posted by Sammy on Dec 27th, 2009 | 4 comments

I thought yesterday was rough but I was wrong. Today was definitely a lot rougher on me. It was an emotional rollercoaster and quite frankly I’m already over that. I started off the day being able to communicate with Gary. He clearly knew who I was he just wasn’t sure if I was real. He had so many doctors and nurses come in. I had to give consent to do so many things. They had to put a central line into his neck. Good thing he has had one before with chemo so I knew what it would look like. They ended up having to sedate him because he was fighting them which of course caused his oxygen levels to go down. There were times when he was so calm and then times when he’s be yelling or talking nonsense. At one point he was convinced he was talking and seeing his oncologist (Dr. P) but the doc wasn’t in the hospital at all. It was horrifying to see him like this. It was 1000x worse than yesterday.

His delusions got the best of him. It got him intubated (not sure if I’m spelling that right). I was in his room with my fabulous friend, Mel, and he started to get up and take off his leads and his mask and was getting ready to leave. We couldn’t convince him to relax and had to get the nurses to get him back. We got out of his room and waited outside. I peeked into his room and saw one of his nurses holding him so that he could breathe. It was horrible but then I heard the last words that came from his mouth “My Wife I Love Her”. I started crying and was so glad Mel was there with me. We went back to the waiting room. A few minutes later heard over the loudspeaker an alert calling to his room and I jumped up and started walking back and one of the nurses found me and got my permission to intubate him. Of course I willingly let them do whatever they needed to do to help him out.

I’ll admit like I did to everyone that called or was able to stop by the hospital to be by my side today that seeing him intubated was HARD but it was so much easier on me that seeing him delusional and fighting and declining. Around 6pm they started his first dialysis which lasted 2.5 hours. He did GREAT. Of course we won’t know how well until they run his labs in the morning. But I’m a numbers girl like he’s a numbers guy and his heartrate and oxygen levels were both staying down the entire time he was on dialysis and to me that’s a good thing.

After they were done with dialysis and the room was somewhat cleared out. I went back in the room with his mom and walked up next to him and had my hand on his shoulder. I started talking to him and his heartrate went from the 120s to around 108 which to me is FANTASTIC. As soon as I let go it went right back up to the 120s. So he clearly was responding to my voice and touch. So of course I put my hand back to comfort him. I told him to keep fighting. He’s done so well while on chemo that this is nothing. He’s in fabulous hands with some fantastic nurses and he’s got the medicine he needs. I gave him a big kiss from me and Mikey even if it was through a paper mask. I told him I’d be back first thing in the morning and that I loved him which was the most important.

At this point no call tonight is a GOOD thing. I thank all of our friends and family members that are out there thinking and praying for us. We appreciate it and it means the world to us to know that we have such a great support system. This is a hard time for us right now and its just another bump in the road. For some reason we’ve got another test, as if our love hasn’t been tested enough.

My husband….I love Him!

The Christmas we rather forget

Posted by Sammy on Dec 26th, 2009 | 10 comments

I’m posting this late on what now is the day after Christmas because I’m in the middle of cleaning up my house so that it isn’t a disaster. This has been probably one of the worst days of my life so far and since I can’t sleep right now I figured I’d come on here to post a not so good update on Gary.

This hasn’t been the easiest week for Gary. He started off the week feeling like utter crap, ended up unable to get out of bed to eat, drink, or even go to the bathroom at all on Monday. On Tuesday he was able to get out of bed but was only able to really drink and didn’t go to the bathroom much again. By then I knew he was getting very dehydrated, but he told me that he promised he’d drink a lot so that he didn’t have to go to the cancer center for fluids. I should have known better. On Wednesday he was doing better and was eating a little and drinking a lot but he was hardly peeing. Yesterday he was GREAT, so great that we were able to go to a Xmas Eve party and I had to drag him home because he was Mr. Social Butterfly.

That brings us to this morning. He woke up at 5am coughing badly. He has had a dry cough for a few days and it usually gets bad at night. Well he sat up on his side of the bed and touched my arm and then started talking about this great baker and their bread that was REALLY good. I was laughing in my pillow because it was too funny, I thought he was dreaming. He went back to bed and was up an hour later coughing and once again talking, but this time about some nonsense about fixing something which I can only assume was related to work. I once again thought he was talking in his sleep, but I later learned that he was wide awake.

We woke up, did presents which was VERY difficult for him to do. Before we knew it, it was 11am and he hadn’t eaten. He went shower while I made lunch. This is when things made a turn for the worse. He came out of the shower drenched in sweat, he sat down to attempt to eat and the salad bowl sat on his lap while he went in and out of sleep. Every time he came out he’d start telling me about something that made NO sense at all. It got to the point where he was telling me about joining something that had a lifetime membership and he really believed what they were all about and it was a good fit for us but it wasn’t a cult it was truly something good. He REALLY believed this and at that point everything that was funny started to make me cry because my husband was clearly not himself. I picked up the phone and called a friend who insisted that I call his doctor. I told the doc what was going on and she recommended I take him to the ER because she thought he might just be dehydrated.

When we got to the ER Gary was unable to fill out a simple form that asked simple questions like his date of birth, age, phone number. He got it right after really thinking about it. He was unable to quickly answer questions, he’d give a long explanation for something that could have been answered really quickly. He was quickly taken to triage and then quickly taken to a room in the ER. The nursing staff quickly came in to start tests and we ended up with a diagnosis of pneumonia and the beginning of kidney failure.

His heart rate has been around the 120s and he had to go on oxygen wearing a mask because his oxygen level was so low.
I ended up having to come home since Mikey was with me. I called the hospital not too long ago to see how he was doing and the ER nurse told me that they just took him up to ICU and that it was a rough night for him. After I left he got even more confused to the point where he was trying to take his mask off. He ended up coughing so much that the nurse was having to help him work up a blood clot, all while I was at home and he was all by himself.

So I sit here writing this feeling so awful for my wonderful husband who is all alone at the hospital fighting for his life. I hate cancer with a passion because it has made us go through things that I wish NO one ever has to go through.

If you’ve gotten this far, bless your heart.