At the hospital

The brain bleed was a huge setback and some of the worst days of my life were spent in the hospital with him. When I received the Alzheimer’s diagnosis was the worst day of my life because I knew step by step, one day I was going to lose him. I know that death is inevitable.

When we are born, we don’t know if we will be rich or poor, happy or sad, beautiful or ugly, but we all have one certainty and that is one day we will all die. Someday means in 50 years, 100 years, 10 years but my love had a brain bleed and I wasn’t sure if he was going to survive. I wasn’t prepared for this. Not him. Not now. Not my man.

After the pet scan, he was disoriented, he didn’t know where he was and he was scared of all the noises from the machines (blood pressure, heart rate, etc.) he didn’t know where the bathroom was, where he was, he was hooked up to so many lines and tubes. He murmured that he needs to pee and he couldn’t stand up because he was dizzy so the nurse told him he should pee in the bottle at the bed or in the bed pan. He refused. I didn’t know what to do! He pulled all the lines out of his arms to try to stand up and all I did was cry and try to speak with him: “Rick we are in the hospital. Please, pleeeeease calm down. Lay down. Stay quiet. They are testing you.” So after the nurse left, I helped him go to the bathroom in the bottle by the bed. He wanted so bad to stand up, I helped hold the bottle and he managed to pee, finally.

I stayed there with him and slept on the bench in the window at the hospital. I pretended to sleep, let me think 2 hours per night? I hardly got any sleep. I woke up every 5 min to check on him. Was he still alive? Does he need me?

So I left the bedroom and walked around all night in the hospital singing Rick’s song “All the same to me…it’s 3 o’clock in the mooornning…and I’m not about to sleep…I’ve lost my sense of believe believing I could keep.” I cried and cried and walked around the entire hospital thinking, trying to find a solution. Currently there is a show on TV that I like and it is called “The Good Doctor.” On the show the main character has autism but he is an incredible doctor and great diagnostician. Because of his autism he sees things in a different way and seems to always know how to fix his patients. At the time this series didn’t exist and I am not a doctor but I was wondering, how can I fix this?  Was it something that I did? Was it the supplements? Was it because he was by himself? Should I stop working? Should I sue the first doctor? If I didn’t wait 48 hours maybe the bleed wouldn’t have been so bad? I always have so many questions with no answers.

I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I decided to pray. I wrote my prayers and put them in box they had at the hospital. I wrote 3 prayers every night hoping for Rick to get better. My hope was to find any solution. I couldn’t do anything other than pray and wait.