Without question, the most excruciatingly painful experience in my 36 years is, and will likely forever be, watching my beautiful wife—the absolute love of my life—fall ill and pass away.
The details of her illness and rather quick death are many, and are extremely difficult for me to recount, so please forgive me if my answer seems, in any way, disjointed or unstructured.
This past March (2016), my wife had caught the flu. Though she had seen a doctor and been told to simply rest and drink plenty of fluids, within few days, she returned to the ER, this time extremely ill with viral pneumonia. Doctors had suggested that she be sedated and intubated so that they may deliver medicines directly to her lungs and airways, but before we could discuss this option, her lungs collapsed and doctors were forced to do an emergency intubation. Within hours, her major organs began to fail, specifically her liver and her kidneys. Within the first two days of hospitalization, my wife was transferred to three different hospitals, as her condition was growing more grave, it seemed, by the hour, and only one area hospital ICU was equipped to handle her extensive care.
My wife was placed in an induced coma, put on 24-hr dialysis, had a multitude of tests and special procedures done, all to little or no effect. However, despite her persistent illness, the medical team took her out of the induced coma after a week, as they feared leaving her so heavily sedated could create more problems for her down the line. After fifteen days, during which time my wife began small bouts of physical and occupational therapy (all the while intubated and on 24-hr dialysis), the doctors believed she had showed enough progress that they decided to remove her breathing tube. For those of you who haven't either been intubated for long periods of time nor have been around someone who has only recently been extubated, let me explain that it takes several hours to a couple of days before one can speak after having the tube taken out (both due to inflamed vocal chords, as well as an inability to articulate from non-use of the tongue and mouth during extended intubation). Despite this, within an hour of the extubation, my amazing, determined wife, smiling the most beautiful smile I have ever seen, was able to enunciate well enough to say, “I love you,” to me—the last words she would ever speak to anyone. Within a few hours after the extubation, however, her breathing again deteriorated, and doctors were forced to intubate her and place her on mechanical ventilation once more. The progress that had been made during the first two weeks of hospitalization seemed to evaporate in an instant as her breathing became erratic, her blood pressure dropped precipitously, and the doctors felt it best she be placed in an induced coma once again.
While in the hospital, doctors from several different teams (hepatology, nephrology, infectious disease) were never able to determine an underlaying cause nor find a viable treatment for all of this--her body, in its extremely weakened state, never fully recovered from the influenza-b virus, and while they suspected a secondary infection to have taken root, they were unable to find one. Then, shortly before midnight exactly three weeks to the day she was first hospitalized, my wife succumbed to her condition, having developed a fatal arterial hemorrhage in her abdomen that could not be stopped by any means—that she remained alive long enough that we might all say our final goodbyes was only due to the desperate work of the ICU nurses and doctors, and the extreme measures of life support she was on. Her entire family, her best friend, and I were all there with her, surrounding her, as she was taken off life support and passed, rather peacefully, from this life. Her mother sang to her, "you are my sunshine," her father held her hand, and I ran my fingers through her hair, as she had always loved so much, as she drew her last breath and her heart beat its final beat. She was 32.
As we walked from the ICU so the nurses could remove all of the tubes and wires and clean her body so that we might see her one last time, I felt entirely numb, as if I were watching this all unfold from afar to some other husband, some other family I didnt know. As we made our way to a courtyard just outside the hospital’s main entrance, I felt my legs give way as I collapsed in a heap on the concrete walkway. Tears ran down my face in rivers as I choked on every sob and shook uncontrollably. After what seemed like an eternity, my wife’s best friend and her husband holding me tightly from either side all the while, I was finally able to compose myself long enough to breathe, stand, and form this single coherent thought: that nothing has ever been this painful. That nothing will ever be this painful again.
We held my wife’s memorial exactly one week following her death. Her service was attended by almost 200 guests, with so many more responding with their love who were unable to attend. And while it was heartwarming to see that so many loved and adored the woman who forever owns my heart, that blinding pain I felt the moment she passed never once subsided.
It has been eight-and-a-half months since my wife’s passing, and while I am no longer completely debilitated by the pain of her loss, I nonetheless feel it every day. There are still times when it is just as sharp and crippling as in that one moment, such as what would have been her 33rd birthday this past November, and I’m certain there will be many more of those moments to come (I am dreading Christmas, now only a few days away). But I do know, with reasonable certainty, that this will be the worst pain I will ever have had to experience, and there is some comfort in that…that while there is still plenty of pain to come in this life, nothing will ever compare…
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from Quora http://ift.tt/2jQEuNC
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