My Wife May Be Dying Right Now, And There's Nothing I Can Do About It.

OPERATIONMINDCRIME

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Fri Sep-21-07 07:45 PM
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My Wife May Be Dying Right Now, And There's Nothing I Can Do About It.

Edited on Fri Sep-21-07 07:55 PM by OPERATIONMINDCRIME

As many of you know, my wife has breast cancer and is undergoing Chemo. We ran into a problem after her 2nd round. Our two young sons had been sick for awhile, and last Friday my wife started coming down with it. The next day (saturday) she started running a fever that warranted our bringing her to the emergency room. We were there 6 hours and they released us saying it was probably just a passing virus and the chest xrays were ok. Then, Sunday, they called and said they looked over the xray again and she has some small spots that may be pneumonia.

That night, she started vomitting profusely and her fever got to 103.3. I called the Sloan Kettering emergency number and at 11 pm that night, I woke up the kids and off to Manhattan we went. They took a CT scan and confirmed the pneumonia. So starts the longest week of my life.

Some may have noticed that I've been even more sarcastic and irritable than my usual pricky self this week. Part of that is my defense and way of distracting myself from real life. Since Sunday, things have been really rough. I've been really sick myself all week and still had to go back and forth to manhattan and take care of my two young kids alone. I've gotten almost no sleep all week and have barely eaten. But that's not the problem. The pneumonia is the problem.

After being admitted Sunday night, it was around day 7 after her Chemo which is when white blood counts begin to plummet. She also had pink eye in both eyes. By tuesday, she was officially neutropenic with almost no white blood cells at all (.5). She was put on IV antibiotics and we knew it would be a few days.

When I was with her Wednesday night, they gave her another CT scan. We were hoping it would show the antibiotics to be working. Unfortunately it didn't. I got a call at 12:30 that night that it showed it grew 3 times the size. They put her on 2 different antibiotics.

She had been pretty stable all that time and was still able to get up herself, talk fine, breathe fine and was overall doing ok. The main problem was that her blood counts weren't going up and her fever kept spiking each day to over 102. Then, last night, she began to get confused/delirious temporarily. This made them want to move her into the ICU.

This morning, things took a turn for the worse. Her breathing started being labored and her breaths were 40 a minute, which is way too high. She had an oxygen mask on all day helping her breathe. I was with her all day, and she looked fine. Talked to me fine. She was just uncomfortable and anxious, but hanging in there.

But the next chest xray showed it's still growing and now shows a spot in her right lung as well. It was getting harder for her to breathe on her own, though she was still able to do so. We were told by the doctors that it is unlikely she can keep it going, and that she should be put in a light coma (heavily sedated) and put on a respirator to breathe for her. They said it is better to do it now, while she's still somewhat ok, then all of a sudden later tonight at 3am when all of a sudden she crashes and burns and can't breathe anymore.

So that's what we did. My wife, though finally being peaceful and restful, is now in a medically induced light coma hooked up to a respirator. The doctors are no longer giving their pleasantries of "don't worry, we'll get her better". Instead, it's now simply that no one has any answers. No one knows. Her counts need to come back up in order to fight this thing, but no one knows when that will happen. It's day by day and she's officially fighting for her life. If her counts don't come back in a few days, I fear the pneumonia will take her. It is a really dangerous situation right now and I just don't believe this is real, and so out of nowhere. For god's sake, I may have to tell my kids next week that they'll never see their mother again. How the fuck do you do that?

But I know I can't think like that, even though it's almost impossible not to a little. I know right now not even the doctors can be sure she'll come out of this. But the only thing encouraging me is that she's young, otherwise healthy, and with healthy lungs. Her platelets and red blood cells started coming back really well from their having plummeted a few days ago as well, and her latest white counts from this morning had her up from .5 to .8, which though not nearly where she needs them in order to fight, is at least hopefully a sign that day by day they will start coming back.

So that's where I'm at. My wife is in Manhattan right now having a machine breathe for her, and I have no way of knowing if my saying "everything will be ok honey, I love you so much. You'll be home soon" will be the last words I even got to speak to her while she was conscious.

This is hard. Really hard. Words can't describe. I'm sure in the coming days I will continue to use DU to post my typical snarky obnoxious take on everything, as that is something that always gets my mind off of other things. But just know that behind the poster that everyone loves to hate, there is a father of two young children who loves his wife with all his heart, and who is cryin his eyes out right now watching her possibly dying in front of him with nothing he can do but Pray.

I have to just hope with every hope and pray with every prayer that in a few days her counts climb and she fights this thing off. She's too young. She's too beautiful. She loves her kids too much. God I hate chemo...