So here it is 4 am and I've been awake the past hour. I'm awake because I had another nightmare reliving the cardiac resuscitation effort made on Mike that morning. I wake up with tears down my face after hearing my voice saying "it's ok, Mike, I'm right here". I have said that phrase to him countless times over the years and it had always been ok. This time it wasn't. It wasn't ok at all. I never got him back after that. His pulse returned but he never did.
For being such a smart girl, how could I have thought that the man I fell in love with who had a terminal diagnosis would never die? Mike was such a strong willed fighter. Together we had made it through so much. I still have the messages he sent me from previous hospitalizations where he tells me that he's in so much pain that he wants to die but he can't stand the thought of leaving me. Have you ever been in that situation before? I hadn't. I hated the pain that he was in but I didn't want to lose him either. How do you love someone enough to tell them it's ok to die if they need to? I would go nose to nose with him and tell him that he will never lose me, even after death. But if he wanted to live and fight that I will never leave his side. I would ask them to call in pain specialists, I would call for the ethics committee to fight for his right to treatment, I would call his Priest. I would stay by his side as much as I could, speaking for him, caring after him. I had hospital directors threatening me, I had countless "meetings" with charge nurses regarding complaints nurses had of me. I kept all of this that I could from Mike because he needed every bit of strength that he had to stay alive. He needed me to help him stay alive despite the hospital efforts to let him die from infection, calling it an "ethical decision". "You wouldn't want him to suffer would you".... they'd say.
This time, the time he didn't make it, I had to leave him. Hell, I couldn't even go in with him from the house because the girls didn't have a nurse. I got there as soon as I could, I left him at 2am with him still talking to me. I returned at 10am and he had his cardiac arrest at 10:30am. For half an hour I watched them brutally (but necessarily) try to revive him. After years of telling people not to lay him flat because it displaces all his fluids and he chokes on his own stomach contents, that is what is going through my mind. Not oh my god I hope he doesn't die, it was they are hurting him, he is going to be so pissed. Messed up, right? But when you spend so many years speaking up for him, it doesn't just shut off. In order for him to get good care anywhere it was essential that people liked him. Every reason that people had for not liking me was because I was taking that from him. I became what he needed to say and they hated my presence because of it, but it got him the care he needed.
These posts are my way of still trying to maintain my own happiness. When Mike first died I was almost paralyzed with fear that I will miss something and my girls will die. With Taylor being on a ventilator and her care being so similar to Mike's, the first time I was to care for her by myself after his death I was sobbing so hard I could barely see to do simple tasks. I never thought he would die, so how will I keep my own kids from dying. I transitioned from those thoughts to going to the cemetery to get out of the house. I was going every other day. One day I wasn't able to go because a nurse called off and my first thought was, he's going to be disappointed. That's when I knew that I was not in a healthy place. I started writing these blogs to replace going to the cemetery so often. It's helping. But I'm now trying to remember that this is MY story. I own my own words and thoughts. I'm still so careful of keeping the peace for Mike's sake that I forget that there is no peace to keep anymore. He's dead, his mother is dead. Why can't I just say she was the biggest bitch to me? Why am I still so careful with what he would think? He isn't here. Even when I read some of the posts I've made I noticed that I still will slip into present tense when I talk of him, I don't correct it.
I know things will get easier for me. I know that the nightmares will stop. I know that eventually I will love someone again, maybe. I know that I take excellent care of my kids. I know it isn't my fault that he died. I'm ok.
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