Posted Monday morning, July 16, 2018.
My Facebook “memories to look back on” today included this post from last summer that I thought was cute and funny at the time. It’s not so cute and funny to me anymore…
July 16, 2017.
Mrs M has been feeling poorly again. Thinking to cheer her up and earn some extra good husband points, I bought her some flowers when I was at the grocery store this morning. I put them in a vase and set them at her usual place at the kitchen table before calling to her to come have the bagel I also picked up and a cup of the coffee I'd made. She staggered to the table, ate her bagel, drank her coffee, then staggered back to bed, without saying a word about the flowers.
I thought that was a little odd since she's always been a big fan of flowers. So I went in to check on her.
"Thank you for the bagel," she said weakly from under the covers.
"And?" I said with my most winning good husband smile.
"And for making the coffee," she murmured.
"And?"
"And for getting the groceries."
"AND?"
"And what?" She still had enough strength to start getting annoyed.
"Once again, Watson, you see but you do not observe. Did you not notice what was right in front of you on the table?"
This sparked her curiosity. She mustered her strength, threw off the covers, and staggered back out to the kitchen.
"Oh! They're pretty! Thank you!"
Can good husband points still be redeemed if you had to award them to yourself?
Notice that again in “Mrs M has been feeling poorly again.”?
Fatigue, listlessness, lack of focus, inattention, indifference, intellectual and emotional detachment---those are symptoms of hydrocephalus, symptoms that were about to start getting worse for Mrs M. I don’t feel guilty---at least not greatly guilty--- for not knowing what was happening to her. And it wasn’t the case that I saw but failed to observe. I observed. I just didn’t know what I was observing. I thought it was depression. Which I took seriously. I’d been pushing her to see the doctor for that. I’d heard of hydrocephalus, but I didn’t have a clue that that’s what was afflicting Mrs M. I didn’t know what it looked like so I wasn’t looking for it. But it’s the again that bothers me and makes me feel guilty.
I should have observed more. I should have been pushing harder sooner.
Nine months! Nine months it took to get it diagnosed! Nine months to the day, in fact. Monday, April 16, 2018 is when she had her CT scan. Four months ago today. That’s the memory I have to look back on today, Facebook.
Remember that phrase from the 60s "I've been down so long it looks like up to me."
Its very easy to get lulled into a state where you just cannot believe that anything is seriously wrong -- when I got sick the summer of 2016, and didn't eat for 2 months, I was literally starving to death without realizing what was happening. And neither did my husband. I saw my doctor regularly and she didn't think anything serious was wrong either, even when I had an attack of diverticulitis. In retrospect, we were all delusional. I actually thought I was recovering, bit by bit, just really slow, and I kept telling my doctor this too. Actually, I was drifting away. I remember thinking maybe I was dying but not really caring. Finally in September the doctor's office weighed me and found I had lost 70 pounds in 2 months. It was only then that I finally demanded that SOMETHING had to be done and my doctor referred me to the hospital. Surgery followed -- three, actually, the most recent was this June. It wasn't cancer, though everyone thought it would be. It was actually "just" bowel obstructions in two places, complicated by inflammation throughout my gut. Doctors didn't have any explanation about why this happened to me (though I blame a car accident 10 years ago). Recovery after that first surgery took weeks -- I had been without protein for so long that my legs were all swollen up and I could hardly walk, so I was 7 weeks in hospital before I could manage the stairs at home.
So don't blame yourself for not figuring out that something serious was wrong with Mrs M.
The important thing is that you stuck by her through it all, you didn't give up on her even when it seemed like her misery would never end.
I will never forget how much my husband helped me get through the last 2 years, I simply could not have managed without him. It wasn't so much anything he did, but just that he was THERE, always in my corner, always with me, always fighting for me.
I'm sure Mrs M feels the same way about you.
Posted by: Cathie from Canada | Wednesday, July 18, 2018 at 12:51 AM