Calamity
I can recall this somewhat clearly: I had a desire to take the door off of the hinges. Our apartment had a relatively large living room, and a kitchen offset by the door to the hallway. Our bedroom was seperated from the livingroom by a door, but the door swung inward into the bedroom, and often clanged with the door of the bathroom, which also swung into the bedroom. So one night, I took the bedroom door off of it's hinges.
The next day, my wife was complaining that she was hurting inside, so she took a bath to see if that would help. Before I knew what was happening, she told me to call 911, and after a little questioning I did just that. They removed her from the bath and put her on a strecher, which could have only been accomplished with that door of the hinges. And they took her to the hospital.
The problem, I was told, was that she needed to have her gall-bladder removed. That was removed, by due to the incompetence of the hospital staff, my wife got a blood clot in her chest. They treated it as best they could, and eventually she was let home with medication to take regularly.
One day months later while we were visiting with my parents in NH, she started having trouble with her blood clot. We took her to the hospital, and after some investigation they took her across the state to Dartmouth Hositpal, where she was treated by one of the countries experts in these matters. She was in the hospital for like 3 to 6 months, during which she was essentially tortured by the treatments she underwent. She had repeated angioplasty, during which something like a balloon is scraped along the insides of her veins in an effort to clear them. She was kept drugged most of the time, yet even drugged the pain was excruciating during those angioplasty sessions.
But for me, life had to go on. I had to work at my job, and come home to an empty house at night. My parents had offered to watch my daughter until my wife came home, which was quite kind of them. Every weekend I took the beater I was driving (our only car at the time, since the lease on my wife's truck from Colorado had expired) up the New Hampshire and back again. I stayed at my parents house, had some face time with my daughter, and visited my wife. I probably put on maybe 600 miles with each one of those weekend trips, and as the weeks turned into months my wife was still in the hospital, I was still working my job and coming home to nothing at night.
Finally, she was released and our family was back together, but she was never the same. Her blood clot hurt when she moved, and she was told that it would kill her eventually. Could be tomorrow, could be 10 years from now. But she was living on borrowed time. And this had a serious phychological impact on her. She was afraid to go hiking now because she thought it would kill her. When she was 7 or 8 months pregnant, we would hike regularly up local trails. Now, she could hardly manage to take stairs without getting winded. She grew self-consious of the veins in her chest, a pronounced blue spider web across the left side of her upper chest.
Life had changed for the worse, and I believe that that blood-clot was the catalyst for many of the relationship problems we've had since then. Who's to know what would have happened with us if that had never happened? Maybe I'd be dead, maybe we'd be more in love than ever now. I can only tell you that many of the problems I now face are consequences of her blood clot. Not in a vacuum, of course. Nothing ever happens in a vacuum (and if it ever did, it would suck). But who's to know? All I know is I've got to play the hand I've been dealt.
The next day, my wife was complaining that she was hurting inside, so she took a bath to see if that would help. Before I knew what was happening, she told me to call 911, and after a little questioning I did just that. They removed her from the bath and put her on a strecher, which could have only been accomplished with that door of the hinges. And they took her to the hospital.
The problem, I was told, was that she needed to have her gall-bladder removed. That was removed, by due to the incompetence of the hospital staff, my wife got a blood clot in her chest. They treated it as best they could, and eventually she was let home with medication to take regularly.
One day months later while we were visiting with my parents in NH, she started having trouble with her blood clot. We took her to the hospital, and after some investigation they took her across the state to Dartmouth Hositpal, where she was treated by one of the countries experts in these matters. She was in the hospital for like 3 to 6 months, during which she was essentially tortured by the treatments she underwent. She had repeated angioplasty, during which something like a balloon is scraped along the insides of her veins in an effort to clear them. She was kept drugged most of the time, yet even drugged the pain was excruciating during those angioplasty sessions.
But for me, life had to go on. I had to work at my job, and come home to an empty house at night. My parents had offered to watch my daughter until my wife came home, which was quite kind of them. Every weekend I took the beater I was driving (our only car at the time, since the lease on my wife's truck from Colorado had expired) up the New Hampshire and back again. I stayed at my parents house, had some face time with my daughter, and visited my wife. I probably put on maybe 600 miles with each one of those weekend trips, and as the weeks turned into months my wife was still in the hospital, I was still working my job and coming home to nothing at night.
Finally, she was released and our family was back together, but she was never the same. Her blood clot hurt when she moved, and she was told that it would kill her eventually. Could be tomorrow, could be 10 years from now. But she was living on borrowed time. And this had a serious phychological impact on her. She was afraid to go hiking now because she thought it would kill her. When she was 7 or 8 months pregnant, we would hike regularly up local trails. Now, she could hardly manage to take stairs without getting winded. She grew self-consious of the veins in her chest, a pronounced blue spider web across the left side of her upper chest.
Life had changed for the worse, and I believe that that blood-clot was the catalyst for many of the relationship problems we've had since then. Who's to know what would have happened with us if that had never happened? Maybe I'd be dead, maybe we'd be more in love than ever now. I can only tell you that many of the problems I now face are consequences of her blood clot. Not in a vacuum, of course. Nothing ever happens in a vacuum (and if it ever did, it would suck). But who's to know? All I know is I've got to play the hand I've been dealt.
posted by Adam Skinner at 8/01/2004 04:19:00 PM
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