Halloween

You have been in the hospital since Thursday night. You wouldn't go until the baseball game was over. After all, it is the World Series! Outside of the World Series, you're not much of a baseball fan. I worried that we would be in the waiting room for a long time but I think a half hour is pretty decent in an ER these days, especially with the swine flu going around as it is. As soon as the triage nurse took you, things moved along rapidly. They were ready for you, took you to a room, hooked you up, sent in the surgeon on duty, and moved you upstairs to a room where they put a suction tube into your stomach through your nose and got you on an IV.

Friday you got an IV PICC. What an amazing gizmo that is! A pharmacist formulates a liquid composed of all your meds and everything your body needs based on whatever is in the computer database on you. Wow! Sweet deal.

When I saw you you looked so much better. Your color was good and you were perking up. I brought you mints and hearing aid batteries. I didn't know you weren't supposed to have mints. The whiteboard in your room said 'Nothing to eat or drink', But I only brought you a few mints. You asked me to go get you a Sprite. I said, "No way". You started arguing with me, and then, as you sometimes do, you starting cajoling me. And you hurt my feelings. There have been so many times in our lives when you have belittled me because I wouldn't let you have your way. I was not going to go against the doctor's orders. You are the kind of person who feels that rules are made to be broken. I'm the kind of person who believes the rules, especially when since this is a life-and-death situation, are there for a reason. When the nurse came in you said, "My wife is the kind of person who always follows the rules. I'm not. People like her need rules because without rules they wouldn't know what to do. They wouldn't be able to find their way through life". I felt humiliated. Up to that very moment, I had been a pillar of strength. I had a million balls in the air, I had a cold, and I was juggling them all with ease. But the insult crushed me. I was deflated and knew I couldn't take that ever again. The nurse told me it was okay to get you a Sprite. He would put it over your ice cubes and then pour it off leaving your ice cubes with a sweet lemon-lime taste. When I returned, I took the Sprite out to the nurse's station and then I went back to your room and told you how badly you had hurt my feelings. I told you I wasn't going to be able to handle that kind of talk and survive the stress I'm under. I was angry and you had embarrassed me in front of two nurses. My strength was shattered. I went home. You text-messaged me and apologized. I wrote back and said that there wasn't any room for criticism, badgering or negativity now. You got the picture. Do I have a right to be angry with a terminally-ill cancer patient? Yes, I do. With you I have to constantly redraw the boundaries.

Today you apologized again, this time in front of friends. I stayed with you for five hours. I bought you another Sprite and a lot of TicTacs. You wanted all of them. I balked. You said,"I'm dying. What's the difference if I have TicTacs?" You have a trump card there.