YOU WILL NEED TO DECIDE

YOU WILL NEED TO DECIDE

           My husband is hanging onto life only because he is connected to a machine that is breathing for him. I don’t know how long they, the medical persons who supposedly know much more than I do, are going to allow the machine to perform its function of keeping my husband alive before they make me decide what step I want to take next. It’s not really a question of something I want. It is something I have to do, like it or not.

           My life goes on whether Sonny is sick or not. I want to spend day and night with him, but I can’t.

           He doesn’t know whether or not I’m here because he is so deeply comatose; but, just in case, I talk to him, I touch him, and I let him know that I love him.

           It is Saturday and I’ve driven for two hours from the home that Sonny and I share in Tazewell, Virginia, to the Veterans Hospital in Johnson City, Tennessee.

           “Hi, Baby,” I say as I don a yellow isolation gown and force my short stubby fingers into the rubber gloves I’ve pulled from the box that is atop the metal rolling cabinet outside his pressurized Medical Intensive Care Room 28.

           “I can’t stay long, Sonny,” I ramble on. “I’ve got to go to my book signing. It was too late to change it to a later date. I’m sort of obligated. I know you understand, but I’m sure I will be condemned by those who think they know better.”

           He is lying there with hoses attached everywhere imaginable. His face is relaxed. His eyes are closed. The machine is whispering with its breath of life.

           He is in far better condition now that he was two days ago; not that he ever woke up, because he didn’t. Two days ago he was having seizures where his eyes would fly open wide and his arms would rise and fall with a loud thump.

           “God,” I prayed, “Tell me what I should pray for. Tell me whether I want him to live or to die. He wouldn’t want to be a vegetable. That’s not a life.” The tears were welling and I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want Sonny to see the tears or hear from my scratchy voice that I’m that scared.

           The eye openings and the thumps were occurring about every sixty seconds and the medical personnel were scurrying around searching for a way to put a halt to the seizure provoked activity.

           Sedation was what was prescribed along with anti-seizure medication. Finally, the thumps slowed and disappeared, but so did all of the hope that he would wake up and see me, talk to me, or just breathe on his own.

           Four doctors suddenly appeared at the doorway. That’s a good thing. I was hoping to get an answer or two. Of course, this is a teaching hospital so three of the young men standing around gazing at my husband were doctors in training. The fourth person, a lady, is the teacher and the one from whom I should get some answers.

           “How long do you think he is going to stay like this?” I ask her knowing that she isn’t going to give me a direct answer, at least, not at first.

           “Have you spoken with the neurologist?”

           “Yes,” I answer as I began to regurgitate the info garnered from him. “He told me my husband has significant brain damage.”

           As she stands in front of me her face transforms from a rushed busy doctor to a person professing to care about me and how I feel. 

           “We are here for you as well as your husband and especially for you because you are alone with no family to support you.”

           Those words are really beginning to bother me. I am hearing them way too often and they are sounding more and more phony just like the gentle little pats on the back I am receiving from almost every medical person who enters the room.

           “You can’t keep him in ICU forever. How do you determine when to move him out of here?”

           “You will have to make a decision once your husband has been off sedation for four or five days and he is still showing no signs of climbing out of the coma.”

           I had heard a conversation earlier that told me thirty-six hours without sedation had passed. The time for decision making is getting nearer.

           “You will need to decide if you want him attached to the respirator with a tracheotomy allowing him to rest just as he is indefinitely or if you want everything detached allowing him to slip away gently.”

           I shook my head in understanding. I couldn’t speak. The words weren’t there. The voice was completely gone.

           Thirty-six hours have passed. Another forty-eight to seventy-two hours will need to pass before I am backed into the black hole of choosing life or death for my husband.

           In the mean time, I’m going to my book signing. I’m going to try to think good thoughts. I don’t want to dwell on the decision.

           “Hey, Sonny, I’ve got to go. I love you,” I say as I strip away the gloves and gown.

           The book signing is about a half hour drive from the hospital but within the same metropolitan area. 

           It was too late time-wise to cancel the event when Sonny became so ill because it has already been advertised locally and it was scheduled more than six months prior to the actual book signing.

           It is difficult to steer my thoughts away from Sonny but the hospital staff assures me they will call me if there is any type of change in his condition.

           I smile and I try to convince people who are within earshot that my books are good and that they really need to read them.

           My cell phone rang once later in the afternoon. No one was at the other end and the caller was identified as “Unknown”. I’m glad now that they were not able to reach me at the time. I found out when I arrived back at the hospital after the book signing that they wanted the decision about pulling the tubes then. 

           I continue to try to smile and sell my books knowing what is waiting for me at the hospital.

           The decision never leaves my thoughts but it already has been made in my mind.

           He would want to slip away peacefully and that’s what I will let him do.

           “Just remember, Sonny, I love you with all my heart,” I whisper before I step out of his room for the final time.