It’s Com­pli­cated, Part 4

This is part of the It’s Com­pli­cated series.

Home again. It’s late. Just poured myself a dou­ble bour­bon. I have a pound­ing headache.

I have a headache from the effort of not cry­ing in front of T. She is dis­in­te­grat­ing in front of my very eyes. Every day she’s worse. I got her in on in-​patient hos­pice Sat­ur­day night, March the 20^th. We both thought it was best; she was not sta­ble enough on her feet and she was lonely because I’m gone most of the day work­ing. I thought it would be a change of scenery for her and she’d get to social­ize a bit before being brought home again to a hos­pi­tal bed, oxy­gen tanks and all kinds of nifty hospital-​type stuff.

The hos­pice thing was her oncologist’s idea. They are tak­ing the approach to wait and see. In other words, they have com­pletely ceased any can­cer treat­ment and that’s why she is in hos­pice care. They are focus­ing on keep­ing her com­fort­able now.

They haven’t even fin­ished the breast can­cer chemo course. And no sur­vey for other metas­ta­sized can­cer sites, either. After all, if the brain can­cer isn’t under con­trol, there is no point in exhaust­ing her with point­less and grue­some treatments.

I agree.

Sat­ur­day night she was clear enough to have an intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion with the intake nurse that came to our home. The most impor­tant thing in T’s mind was to get the DNR (Do Not Resus­ci­tate) order in place. She knows what’s going on and she doesn’t want to fight.

This morn­ing, the hos­pice called and asked me to talk to her and calm her down. She was con­fused and agi­tated and kept telling me that we were all going to die and there were peo­ple com­ing to get her. As it turned out, that part was true.

They had screwed up the intake so she was placed in a hos­pice that isn’t cov­ered by my insur­ance. So I spent the major­ity of the day on the phone orga­niz­ing her trans­fer to the only hos­pice cov­ered. I can’t even imag­ine how that will affect her already ten­able grasp on real­ity. But in a way, she was right. Peo­ple really did come to take her away.

I was present dur­ing the trans­fer; I came an hour early to calm her down and I helped her set­tle in at the new place. She’s a dif­fer­ent per­son today. I rec­og­nize shad­ows of the per­son I have known for a decade-​and-​a-​half but there are only sliv­ers of her left. She tried to make a run for it and I had to restrain her. She kept telling me that they were going to kill us both. Still, she trusted me enough to let them trans­port her in rel­a­tive peace.

It’s so hard to keep a straight face when being faced with some­thing like this. To tell her that every­thing is going to be okay while blink­ing back tears and that aching clump in the back of my throat. I know that she would be hor­ri­fied if she could have seen her­self. This is not her.

Nobody will tell me any­thing. Except for one RN on the phone that took pity on me and con­fided that she per­son­ally didn’t think T would last a month. At least that gives me some­thing to hold on to.

The house is quiet. T always had the TV on and I hardly ever do. Our dog (her dog, actu­ally) is mak­ing sure to lay in such a way that he’s touch­ing me at all times. I wish I could make him under­stand. He misses her.

I’m exhausted. I’m worn down. I’m burnt out. Between work and this I feel like I’m always on the go. I don’t have time to write. And when I do have time to write my fin­gers won’t work. And if my fin­gers work, my fuck­ing head won’t get in gear.

I’m going to go to bed now. I just want today to go away.

There are a few tears in my bour­bon now. Fuck. I hate watered-​down drinks.

And now was a shitty time to try to quit smoking…