When Your Better Half Isn't

Sometimes life gives you a message in uncertain terms that time has marched on.

I visit my husband of nearly 44 years each day at the hospital. I only stay for a short while: half an hour to an hour, max. He's been there four weeks now, and counting, after contracting a blood sepsis that resulted in endocarditis and diskitis. Damn you, streptococcus!

Once he's completed a four to six week round of antibiotics for the endocarditis (bacterial infection in the heart) via IV--he has a picc line inserted into his brachial artery--he'll start an oral regime of penicillin that will go on (and on) for six months. But first, the medical team has to ascertain that he is not really allergic to penicillin, as he's always believed. That should be interesting.

When I first brought him to the Emergency Department, we thought it was the usual suspects: effects of liver disease, dropping haemoglobin, unstable blood sugar levels. Nope. Strep. INTO. HIS. BLOODSTREAM. Look it up. Not good.

He was unable to move on his own, unable to feed himself, and was delirious (still is a bit, which is part of the presenting symptoms of endocarditis, apparently. Who knew?). Now, after four weeks, he can get to his feet with support and feed himself. Still a bit shaky, but on his feet for short periods of time.

'Way back when we met in grad school, he was so handsome, so strong, so confident. I felt that we could handle anything life threw at us--and it did throw things at us from time to time. Now, at 72, I see a thin, wrinkly old guy (don't tell him I said that), and (I hate to say it), someone who can only be described on his worst days as feeble. I see a man who is anxious and worried that this is all that he will be from now on. That he won't get any better than this. He feels diminished.

There is no ship to the West for him.

So, I go each day, bring him a CD and hook it up for him as I leave. Try to stay brave and calm. Smile. Try to remember when I look around the nursing unit--he's in a stroke unit as that's the only place with a bed available--that it could be worse.

Remember our adventures and misadventures and hope for some more. Just hope.