Chapter 16

March 9, 2007

Don spent the next week working from the office in our room, although it took a massive effort for him to work his way from the bed to the computer. Still, he wouldn't stop working. He had a work ethic that wouldn't quit, even while his body was in the process of quitting.

During the evenings he stretched out in bed and quietly read his Star Wars book. The blood clots should have been breaking up, but he didn't seem to breathe any easier. In fact, he seemed more and more tired as the week went along.

On March 9, he had a doctor's appointment at nine-thirty in the morning. He got up at the usual hour, around seven, and painfully hobbled his way over to the computer. I rolled over in bed and looked at him disapprovingly.

"Hey," I said. "You have a doctor's appointment today. What are you doing?"

He shrugged as he settled into the old chair in front of the computer. "I can get an hour or so of work in," he said.

The hour of work didn't exhaust him, but getting down the stairs and to the car did. At nine-thirty we arrived at the doctor’s office for bloodwork, to be certain the blood thinner was doing its job. Don sat, slumped and miserable and silent, in his wheelchair, and after the bloodwork I took him back down the hall to the doctor’s office.

“Hi,” I said. “Is the doctor going to see him today?”

“I don’t think he’s scheduled for that,” the nurse said. “Unless you think the doctor needs to take a look at him.”

I looked at Don, slouched in the wheelchair, the Virginia Tech jacket looking about five times too big for him. “Yes,” I said. “I think the doctor needs to take a look at him.”

A few minutes later the doctor came out to the waiting room. He was as warm and placid as ever, and he spoke gently to Don. “How are you feeling?”

Don made a little so-so gesture with his hand, too tired even to speak.

“I don’t think he’s getting better,” I said. “If anything, I think he’s a little worse.”

The doctor stepped back and looked Don over carefully. “I think,” he said at last, “it’s time to check you into the hospital and see what the problem is.”

Two hours later, after calling the preschool to tell them I’d be late picking up my kid, and calling Don’s parents, I wheeled Don into VCU Medical Center, the big hospital across town. I was dismayed to realize the doctor had sent us to the Palliative Care ward.

That’s not right, I thought. I knew enough about cancer terminology now to know that “palliative” was the opposite of “curative.” Palliative Care meant the ward where they tried to keep you comfortable as you died.

But we weren’t at that stage yet.

Were we?

I got him settled into his room, then left to get the preschooler, leave him in the neighbor’s care, and return again. Unfortunately, once I got back, I discovered they’d transferred Don to the Cardiac Care Unit. That was preferable to Palliative Care, I thought, but the problem was that children under the age of twelve weren’t admitted, because it was an ICU unit. And here I was with a toddler. I hadn’t left the toddler with the neighbor because he was a handful, as all toddlers are, and because no one had warned me his presence might be a problem.

I stood there in the hall, staring at the door, tears of anger and frustration filling my eyes. It had been a hellacious day, and I damn well wanted to see my husband.

One of the nurses figured out my dilemma. “I’ll watch him for you for a few minutes,” she offered.

I gratefully accepted. She took the toddler into the waiting room and let him look out the window, and I went to see Don.

He was clearly exhausted, but he smiled when I came in. “It’s fluid on the heart,” he said. “They’re going to do surgery.”

I was frustrated that I hadn’t been there to talk to the doctor, and once again had to get my information secondhand. Ordinarily Don was as astute about asking questions as anyone, but right now he was simply too worn out to be a reliable source of information. “On the heart?” I repeated. “Not on the lungs?”

“On the heart,” he repeated. “I can’t remember exactly what they called it, but they need to drain it. But they have to wait till tonight, because they’re giving me something to counter the blood thinners.”

That, at least, explained why he was in the cardiac unit. I couldn’t ask the nurse to babysit forever, so I ran my fingers through his hair affectionately, kissed him, and headed back to the house.

In the late afternoon, my parents-in-law arrived. When I called the hospital, I was told Don was already being prepped for surgery. They confirmed what the paperwork they’d given me told me—I wasn’t allowed to spend the night in Don’s room. That made me extremely unhappy, but I realized the hospital had its rules, and wasn’t going to break them just for us.

I spent the afternoon alternately visiting with my parents-in-law and doing research on the Internet. Fluid on the heart, I found, was called a pericardial effusion. It seemed to be a pretty common side effect of lung cancer, just like pleural effusions. It was scary to think of my husband undergoing heart surgery, though.

I waited till about eight o’clock to hear from the surgeon, fidgeting and talking with my parents-in-law. Finally I grew impatient and dialed the cardiac unit’s number. I told the nurse who I was, and the cardiac surgeon came on the line. He sounded distressed.

“He came through it all right,” he said. “But his pulse rate is really high, around 150, and we can’t get it down. I’m not sure… I just don’t know…”

I blinked at the phone and wondered if he was telling me my husband was dying. He sounded disturbingly distraught, upset and flustered in a way doctors don’t usually get when talking to patients.

“Okay,” I said, trying not to respond with panic. Maybe the guy just wasn't a people person. “Listen, I realize I’m not supposed to spend the night there, but is there any chance you guys could make an exception?”

“Let me let you talk to the nurse,” he said.

A moment later the nurse picked up the phone and told me that in this case, they’d let me spend the night.

Oh, my God, I thought, reeling as if I'd been struck. They think he’s going to die.

I hung up and relayed the facts to my inlaws—the high pulse rate, the fact that the cardiac surgeon was worried, and that they were letting me spend the night. I kept my fear that he was dying to myself, because after all, the doctor hadn’t actually said that. My inlaws kindly agreed to take care of the kids overnight, and told me to go. So I went.

By the time I got there, I could see the readout showed his pulse had slowed down to around 120, which was unfortunately normal for him lately. I asked a nurse how he was doing, and she smiled reassuringly.

“Oh, we managed to get his pulse down,” she told me. “I think he’s doing pretty well.”

“Great,” I said. Don wasn't conscious, of course, but I ran a loving hand through his rumpled dark hair, then called his parents to give them an update.

And then I stretched out in the chair next to the bed to spend the night with my husband.

Read Chapter 17 here.