Half Man, Half Machine

So I sat in the waiting room, window to my left displaying the soccer field below and the mountains in the distance against the greyish blue backsplash of the 5AM sky. I was a little lost in that moment, with my wife maybe 30 yards away but completely separated from me, enduring what could possibly be the end of her life by herself, and completely unaware of what was happening. Her aunt has told me she was on the way with her uncle. I knew when they arrived they would ask how I was, and what was going on. I was hoping the doctor would return with good news before they arrived so I could leave them with some hope. As I stated before, I ran the scenarios and came to peace with the potential outcomes, though it still was painful, and I am fully aware this is a rarity and can be confused with compartmentalization. It was not compartmentalized in this moment.

The doctor came back for a third time, “I've been talking to colleagues all night and no one has really seen this before. Your wife has complete DPD, which means she lacks the enzyme that breaks down chemo, this in turn poisons her entire body. This is extremely rare, she is the second case in the State in the past 10 years. Now we have an antidote from a nearby hospital but it is only one dosage, we have to locate the others elsewhere (I think he said Sweden). She will be given one dose every 6 hours over the course of several days. We will have to keep her in a medically induced coma and on life support so her body can heal itself. This is good news, and as long as we get the antidote in I am very hopeful for her chances.”

I thanked him for everything, and that was it. I wasn’t truly satisfied with “looking good” but I was content with it, a win is a win. Shortly after her aunt and uncle arrived and I filled them in on the events, the bad news, and the good news. In these moments there isn’t much to say on either side, the facts were laid out, we all felt the same way, so it was just silence and groans. It was now 6AM and I decided to resort to my first step in problem resolution and emotional processing; I went home and went to bed.

When I woke I found her aunt had texted me “No updates.” Depression finally started to set in, some self-pity too, I’m sure. I am not entirely certain what I did with my time outside of the hospital, it didn’t seem to matter much. I talked to people when they were around but I didn’t go out of my way to find them. I’m not much of an extrovert, in fact I am not an extrovert at all, so the desire to see anyone at all was at an all time low. Our friend, Melissa, was hosting a name-your-price yard sale on our church grounds with the intent to donate proceeds towards our hospital bills. I forced myself to go to show my gratitude and to be around people if only for a moment of time. It was an odd experience,  I could feel people actively trying to not bring up the recent events, yet others were too inquisitive and legitimately concerned to hold it back. I remember walking around looking at the goods for sale, listening to the purchasers bargaining with vendors, hoping not to bring attention to myself. I found myself eventually just standing behind a table staring into space, so I took myself home after about an hour, or at least it seemed like an hour. I spoke with other individuals here and there filling them in on the details as they asked, but I do not recall who. Faceless, timeless, and eventless were those 5 days.

The ICU had a relatively strict visitor policy so her aunt, uncle, and myself split it up throughout the day. Everyday I visited my wife in the ICU. Everyday it was painful. I didn’t know if she could hear me, I didn’t know if she was even still there. She laid on the bed hooked up to so many machines as if they were reconstructing her… because they were. She had a tubes everywhere, she was motionless aside from her mechanical breathing. Her chest would inflate with air and deflate in a pulsatile fashion, as if her lungs were being propped up by jack lifts, her hands were warmer than when she went in and that was my takeaway. She was half man half machine in all the ways that are not cool. Everyday I went in and held her hand, I would ask the nurses/doctors/ what have you about her progress every time, everyday looking a bit better. One day I had asked them about her brain. They were confused at first so I explained myself. My thought process was that her body had effectively failed and was non functional for a period of time, reduced blood flow, or poisoned blood flow, means reduced oxygen being carried, and when your brain receives less oxygen for a period of time… unfortunate things can occur. So I asked them one more time and, to not much my surprise, the answer was “We don’t know.” They told me I could speak to her if I wanted to, and I wanted to, but it was hard. Seeing my wife without any of the life made her seem like a shell, it was so hard to look at her most days I would just hold her hand, hold onto the warmth that reminded me she was still there. Everyday I arrived I greeted her with “Hey, baby. I’m here” and left with “I love you, I will see you soon.” There was not much beyond that, I couldn’t catch her up on all of the non-stop action at home because there wasn’t any and, if there were, it would have been relatively unimportant. Beyond the greetings I spoke to her once on the first day.

“Hey, Baby. I love you very much and I want you to know I am very proud of you. You are literally the strongest person I know, and you don’t even have the slightest idea just how strong you really are. Not only can you beat this, you are going to kick its ass, and I will be here when you do.”