Susan’s Scare

Susan & Ernie on a cruise May 2011.

NOTE: This post was actually written in June of 2012.

The last 10 days have been one of the toughest periods of my life. As you may have noticed, I have not written a post in several days. Last Monday, I was about to go into session with my therapist and my phone rang. My wife, who was in Las Vegas for a conference, was calling to tell me that she’d had an insulin crash and she was at the ER of Sunrise Medical Center. She told me that she would call,me back or text me when she knew more. About 2 minutes later, I got a call from the school nurse informing me that my grandson, Colby, was feeling I’ll and would I please come and get him.  My session with my therapist was good. However, I had these other things looming over my head. I had not yet heard from my sister – the one with terminal cancer, so I decided to run by the nursing home to check on her. It was only then that I found out her phone had gone missing over the weekend. Just what I needed…

I got back in touch with my wife who informed me that the doctor was admitting her for further testing. They wanted to do an EGD. They had discovered that her red blood count was seriously low – at that time a 7.2 when normal is around 12. They needed to find out where she was losing blood. The EGD revealed a stomach ulcer that the docs said was not bleeding, and thus not the likely source of the bleed.  To be sure that it wasn’t from somewhere lower in her GI tract, they scheduled a colonoscopy for the next day.

Overnight, her red blood count dropped to 6.7 and the hunt for the source of blood loss was on. The colonoscopy appeared to show no abnormalities. Frustrating, to say the least. My wife was going crazy, just wanting to get back to Florida. the doctor wrote out discharge papers before he left that evening letting her know that as long as the numbers went up, she could catch her flight home.  They would simply have to check them in the morning.

The next morning, they checked her CBC numbers and they had actually fallen to 6.2 – a critically low level. The nurses neglected to call and inform her doctor. She was in such a dither to get home, she wasn’t about to remind the nurses to make that call. She caught her flight home. Fortunately, she was traveling with a colleague that is a registered nurse; so, at least she had a medical professional to keep an eye on her.

While she was in-transit, I called one of the hospitals owned by my wife’s employer.  As soon as she landed, I was at the airport to collect her.  She looked very pale and was in an airline wheelchair.  Her new colleague, who is an RN, was with her. I can’t thank her enough for all of the help she gave to Susan during that travel time in her severely weakened condition.  I pulled the car around and loaded up her and her luggage.  We went directly to the hospital in Naples.  When we got to the hospital ER, we went into the waiting room.  We weren’t there for more than 10 minutes when an ER nurse came out and wheeled Susan back to be seen by a doctor.  After she was all set for admission, I went on home.

Then next day, when Colby and I went to the hospital, the doctors were quite concerned with Susan’s condition.  The doctors told us that, since as a JW she would not accept any blood transfusions or blood products, there was not really anything that could be done for her beyond continuing to give her iron intravenously and giving her epo injections.  If her ulcer started bleeding again, there wasn’t anything they would be able to do.

I went to the hospital each day and kept an eye on her progress.  She was very weak the whole time.  Often, she couldn’t even walk to the bathroom without it exhausting her.  I tried to put on a brave face, but it scared the shit out of me to think that I might lose her.  I had just lost my mom earlier that year and my sister was on her way out with cancer.  I had no idea what I would do without her.  Fortunately, my wife also had a real wakeup moment.  Being so ill made her think about a great many things.

For one, we both realized that we have way too much stress in our lives.  We needed to reduce stressors – in a big way.  We also needed to get our affairs in order.  Neither of us had a current will, so we wanted to take care of that too.

Eventually, Susan’s levels got good enough to come home.  She was ordered by the doctors to stay home from work for a couple more weeks.  During that entire time, she continued to feel very weak.  Life is short, no question about it.  I just hope that it’s not shorter than our plans for our future.