Glasses

I hit the doors of the ICU dead on at 10am and, of course, they were still closed. I did my usual pacing round and round, watching where my toes hit in the center of each square tile. After a few minutes someone walks out and I slip through the double doors as they start to close and bee-line for her room.

Amber, her nurse, is sitting on her perch looking over a long graph...folding it out and over. She looks up as I come to the room and smiles in greeting, I smile in return and look in at the silent figure on the bed. I turn to ask my usual question, but Amber is already on her feet, looking into the room at the monitors...she gives me the run down...how the night went, where things are now, goals for the day...hopes. A lot of the bad stuff gets left out, instead I tend to hear "well, her blood pressure is pretty much the same" which translates to "we can't get her blood pressure under control and we don't know why and there may be a problem". Thankfully, though, today there were very few of those and her blood pressure was on the "looking good" list. Amber smiles at me again, a sort of familiar trusting and reassuring smile, and quietly says "she'll be happy to see you".

I walk in and she opens her eyes, I smile and take her hand...juggling my car keys, a bottle of water, and the Nintendo DS I've brought in with me...I tell her it's me and she nods. I explain I'm going to set my things down and come back, I kiss her hand and slip mine out of hers. Her blind eyes follow me the best they can across the room. I look over to her silently, taking a moment to take in the room and how it feels...how it smells. Her eyes are watery and full of fear, her brow is slightly knitted...she is scared and confused, and alone from what all her senses tell her. I realize she can't call for help, she has no voice...it is blocked by a thick plastic tube that is "helping her breathe", her hands are in restraints...tied down next to her sides. She can't speak, she can't gesture, she's blind, and only semi-conscious while being given amnesiacs so she can't remember one day to the next.

Terrifying

I walked back to her and held her hand, it feels like holding a surgical glove that's been filled to some comical size with warm water. I leaned close, so the light was on my face and she had some chance of being able to see me if I held still and told her all about family and friends, everything I could come up with. I felt so helpless, she kept looking at me with those watery frightened eyes. Finally I asked her if something was wrong...feeling the internal face-palm as I said it...of COURSE there's something wrong, look at her. She nodded and I started guessing. Sometimes she seemed to just drift off, her eyes going vacant and I'd try harder to guess the right thing. What did she need?...Pain medicine? Is your mouth dry? Do you want to talk about someone particular? Do you want the TV on? Are you feet cold? Do you want me to rub your legs? Are you uncomfortable? Is it too warm in here for you? Too cold? ...sometimes she'd shake her head 'no', but most of the time she'd just check out.

I put my head down on the hard plastic rail and apologized for not being able to guess right. I looked at her and felt struck with sudden inspiration...I started going slowly over each letter of the alphabet asking her if what she wanted started with it. Eventually, after about the fourth go through all 26 letters she nodded when I said 'M'. Later we narrowed it down to something starting with M that is a thing which is found indoors and does not have to do with the hospital.

It's still bugging me.

Doctors came and went, poking, proding...she'd cling to my hand and I'd try with everything I had to translate for her. "That hurts...no a bit more to the left...yes, right there" as her face would screw up in obvious pain. More x-rays, more tests...I'm almost sorry I said anything....they weren't watching her face, they'd never have known.

She got her glasses back today, they help what little vision she has left and I think it makes her feel a bit more normal. I can't imagine what it must be like, laying there like that, tubes in literally every orifice and several new holes made in your body to accommodate more tubes...I pray I never know.

She was also given a stuffed dog today, that came with a gentle story and the innocent, uncomplicated, unconditional love of three children. When I put it in her hand so she could feel the remarkably soft plush fur she closed her eyes, I told her the story and gently brushed the tears from her cheek.

When I left she was sound asleep, one hand tightly curled around the dog with her glasses on.

Wax on...Wax off

I spent this morning standing next to her as her vital signs went all over the map. It was a stomach wrenching roller coaster of a ride. Once she was mostly stable the nurse left as she was covering for another nurse who was going to lunch and the family in "bed 5" needed more attention than we did.

I stood there in the semi-silence of her room, the receptacle that collects the blood from the chest tubes bubbled away like one of those pseudo-zen waterfalls people put on their desks...there was the constant rhythm of cccshhhhh, click, puh-shhh as the respirator forced air in and out of her lungs.

The room is 3 normal walls and one made of huge sheets of glass that swing open in various stages from the size of a doorway to completely open. Inside the glass wall there is a length of hanging cloth that acts as a privacy divider. This was pulled a bit over half-way closed giving the room a sense of quite and privacy it hadn't had before.

I held her hand and put my other hand on her forehead and closed my eyes. "Heal" I thought over and over and over again as I took long deep breaths trying to focus on her with everything I have...I prayed silently "God, be with me, let the energy of the Universe...of all those praying for her, let her feel it" I took another long deep breath and focused, my hand moving over the incisions on her chest and as I exhaled I focused "Heal".

It's so hard to do, my mind keeps popping up saying I'm not doing anything or I'm being foolish or what an idiot I'll look like if someone walks in...and then, somewhere, deep inside of me there was this deep sense of calm and I heard "have faith" and I did...and I focused...but somewhere in the back of my mind I prayed for a sign it was working, something to hush the skeptic of my mind. And even in doing that I felt bad, because one isn't meant to ask for a sign when God simply asks you to have faith.

I felt so young, naked, pure...and I breathed and focused..."Heal" I could see her lungs in my mind's eye...but not in the medical way I'm used to picturing them. Just this sense of pushing that energy into that space and knowing where it was needed. I focused and breathed and pushed and relaxed into it, blending with her...with something beyond that room.

Finally I was exhausted, though it was more of a sense of being done for now and being allowed to feel spent. I slowly opened my eyes...her blood pressure was stable...her o2 absorption the highest it has been in days. I watched the stats in silence, some part of me knowing it was over and that nagging annoying bit of my mind waiting for the numbers to plummet again.

I watched for close to half an hour, I know because the blood pressure cuff went off twice and it's set to every 15 minutes. I looked at the clock as her vital signs looked better and better to me, it had been well over an hour. Suddenly I became aware of my feet hurting and the horrible crick in my low back from having been hunched over.

I hobbled over to the only chair in the room and sat in silence for a long time, just watching her and feeling deeply grateful. "Thank you, God" I said to myself over and over and over again.

When we went back a few hours later, she was awake. Her vitals have been stable, she squeezed my hand and all I could think was "thank you, God" over and over and over again.

Breathing

Tubes...lots and lots of tubes

Tubes pushing things in, dripping, monitoring...and more tubes, draining or carrying away what the body doesn't need.

More specialized care...specialized doctors and nurses.

We didn't have a choice, not really. If we didn't go this way the other way was a long slow certain death with a lot of pain...this was the choice with a light at the end of the tunnel that didn't mean ascension of one sort or another.

She told me yesterday, after the surgery, when she was cold...when she was uncomfortable...when she was scared. It's hard to believe, I guess, since she's been kept under generalized anesthesia, but I can hear her...or maybe it's better to say I can feel her. Or I could. Today we have a new doctor on the case, someone we trust and respect a great deal more than anyone else they've put forward. He caught something that has slipped through the cracks...she was silently going through withdrawal. Years of being on morphine were silently catching up with her and the sedation was keeping the physical signs from coming through. He looked at her pupils...there were pin-points and completely nonreactive. He climbed all over the nurse...I have to admit it felt good to stand there behind this powerful gray-haired man as he defended her and took care of her and people had to listen.

I'm tired in some deep and fundamental way. I feel sort of hollow...it's hard to explain.

I can't express how grateful I am for my family, for the well wishers all over the world, and for the care she is receiving.

I miss her, I have a knot I can't seem to untie in the pit of my stomach...all I know is something is deeply not right and I can't juggle things enough to be able to get enough time to fix it.

ICU

It's quiet, but not in the same way the other room was. It's in the way everyone moves and the hushed voices one instinctively uses in someone's sick room. Even the alarms are unobtrusive...a polite beeep beeep beeep in almost a melodic tone. Lights flash from time to time on the monitor behind her bed silently triggering a quiet visit from the nurse.

They forget she's blind. They'll enter silently and give a familiar, warm, reassuring smile before half stepping behind the IV pumps to press the control pad on the wall. I watch them, watch as they flip through menu options on the monitor from across the small room...usually they trigger the blood pressure cuff, though sometimes they click "print" and, giving that same smile, slip out of the room. Most of the time she'll ask me, "was someone just in here, honey?" and I tell her everything I just watched. She's grateful for my eyes and for someone letting her know what's going on with her own care.

I miss her when she fades and it scares me when she stops making sense. When I'm not there I can't walk away from my cell phone and I keep my car keys close at hand. I am in a perpetual state of READY. The hard part is not knowing what I'm ready for.

I tell people "she's a tough old bird" with a confident half chuckle and brings a polite smile and agreement from those that have been working with her, or a look of having been reassured by those new to her case. She is, too, she's a tough old bird. Still, somehow, this time is different...I wish I could lay a finger on how it is, but I haven't been able to so far.

Surgery in a few more days, unless her heart "forces their hand". Until then I'll keep up my love-hate relationship with visiting hours and maybe buy stock in Starbucks since I seem to be more living on their products than sleep or even air at this point.

Thank God for family, for being able to switch off so I can wolf down the lunch that's been brought to the ICU waiting room for me and get a chance to write for a minute so it's not all in my head and heart.

and lines

I watch, not exactly helpless…not exactly heartless, from my perch on the end of her bed as once again she struggles for breath in her sleep. I know it will come, like I know the nurses would if I call them.

The air is dry and cold, my lips are starting to chap, but it has to be this way…bacteria love moist and warm and this, of all places, is a breeding ground a sewage pit would be hard pressed to beat out. It’s quiet aside from her occasional nonsensical murmurings. I keep an ear toward the door; I am aware of every footstep that passes and tense every time someone pauses on the other side.

I wonder how many times she has sat at the end of my bed and watched me sleep over the course of my life. I wonder if someone will watch me sleep when I’m old and sick. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want her to leave me, either.

She struggles for breath again, and my eyes go automatically to the monitor. I’ve learned a lot, I can read all the blips, numbers, lines, and graphs. Her hand moves to her chest as I watch her pulse rate drop into the 50s. Her 02 absorption is in the high 90’s, the blood pressure cuff triggers and I wait for the numbers…they are too high. There is a beep as her pulse drops below 50 and she begins to twitch in her sleep as muscle spasms control her limbs.

I take her hand, breathing deeply, focusing on her…she breaths a long deep breath, her eyes open a moment and I smile for her, even though I know she can no longer see me. She smiles in return…she doesn’t have to be able to see me, she knows. Her body relaxes as her pulse moves back into the mid 60s. The blood pressure cuff goes off again and I watch in silence for the results as she fades back into sleep.

When she wakes up I’ll smile and get her water, as I’ve done my whole life. Only now I’ll hold the glass so a random tremor doesn’t spill it, and I’ll direct the straw into her mouth. We’ll talk for a while about the past and gossip about family and I’ll hold her hand or rub her foot so she knows I’m paying attention. At some point she’ll fade away mid-sentence and I’ll watch the monitor until she wakes again or the pain comes.

We’ve been down this road many times, she likes hospitals and medicine…she likes being the center of attention and good drugs, she always has. Somehow, though, this time is different. The decisions I’m making for her have more weight and tomorrow I’ll make the hardest one I’ve had to…I can only pray it’s the right one and I have no way of knowing until it’s done.

So, for now I’ll hold her hand while she sleeps and watch the monitors and listen just incase a doctor comes by…and pray.