A Broken Promise

That great philosopher and sage Mike Tyson said it best, “Everyone has a plan until you hit them in the face.”  How astute and perfectly said.

We got hit in the face.  I thought I was prepared, I thought I had a plan, I thought I knew how to handle it.  I let my own theories delude me.

On April 7th, a Sunday, Marty and I were headed to Dallas to see Hamilton at the Dallas Summer Musicals.  In the end, we didn’t see Hamilton and I broke a promise to my bride.

Right before we were going to get in the van Marty started really struggling to breathe, she was working hard to get enough oxygen and you could see she was losing the fight.  We blew off Hamilton and wore our theater duds to the hospital.

There was no doubt we needed to be seen now, when the triage nurse saw us, we were taken immediately to an ER room with a bevy of nurses taking vitals and hooking Marty up to monitors.  She was not getting enough oxygen, she was breathing heavily with her chest and abdomen and falling behind and the thing I hate the most, she was afraid.  She didn’t say it, she couldn’t really talk, but I could see it, she was scared…..she wasn’t the only one.

They tried several different things to help her breathing but she simply was not getting enough oxygen and was working her entire body to the extreme to get air, and she was still slowly suffocating.  I sat beside her gurney as they tried different machines and masks and I held her hand as she struggled.  Erica, caregiver deluxe, stood at her head, holding her head whispering prayers in her ear.  It was brutal, her trying to get oxygen was almost violent.

I contacted the kids, I honestly don’t remember if it was text or a call, but I think they read through the lines and immediately understood that this was different, this was, in a word that doesn’t do it justice, bad.  Matt got in his car and headed south to Waco.

After testing, poking and prodding, doctoring, nursing and breathing treatments seemed to fail to stop what was clearly a critical issue they moved us up to ICU.  We hadn’t been in the ICU in 14 years.

We got up to the Intensive Care Unit and found ourselves among some of the best health care providers in Waco.  Dr. Rod Ritchey, a small man with glasses and an astounding shock of grey hair to match his beard took over Marty’s care.  We couldn’t have been in better hands.   I was shocked, not shocked, when he asked me how we felt about intubation, he said simply, we are headed there, think about it.

Marty and I have had the talk, the one all of you need to have with your loved ones, the one where you talk theoretical bullshit about death and dying and how you want to go out and what you want those who love you to do if you are in a swirling drain.  I knew what Marty wanted.  But this was real, this was not theory, this was cold, clear reality.

I had promised Marty not to resuscitate, I had promised her that I would find the courage to say let her go if and when we faced that issue.  I promised Marty I would not have her intubated again, I had said those words to her, she had confirmed to me, that was her wish, that was what she wanted.

Those conversations played over and over in my head as I watched her, with a huge BiPap machine pushing air into her lungs, struggle to stay connected to the world.  I watched this almost violent drama played out, I held her hand as she squeezed my hand so tight the blood cut off to my fingers, I listened as she struggled to breath.  It broke my heart, if felt like the end of our journey.

Dr. Ritchey came back to me an hour later, looked me in the eyes and quietly said, “We need to make a decision, she can’t do this much longer.”  

I looked at Marty, my bride of 42 years, the woman who was my complete responsibility, the woman who had complete faith in me to do the right thing and I saw how afraid she was, how hard she was fighting and I thought about the promises I wanted honor, I thought about all of the times I had pretended I would have the courage to fulfill that promise.  

I couldn’t do it; this was too hard.  I told him to go ahead and intubate and put her on the life sustaining ventilator.

They asked me to step out and I walked down to the ICU waiting room and thought about the people we knew who would want to know what was going on, I thought about how afraid Marty must have been, I thought about how I was breaking my word to her, I almost got up and ran into the room to say stop, she doesn’t want this.

I didn’t, I accepted that tonight, I wasn’t going to keep a very basic promise to my wife.

That was Sunday night.  Wednesday they began to wean her off the vent, Thursday we were in a regular room, the next Wednesday we went home.

At least for a while.