Personal Journal

Jean Hospitalized a 4th time.

In September, on September 11th, Jean had her first seizure in the middle of South Dakato, after a morning of warning signs that I was too inexperienced to understand.

In October she had her second, after a day-long headache. November, she had her third, after fighting another headache for 5 hours. That time, she threw up and seized, and my eye wasn't on her the moment it happened, but they were the moment before and after. That one was shocking, and I called 911.

Today, I'm pretty sure she had her third, after 24 hours of fighting headaches, and another day before that of bad symptoms. I was giving her meds at 4 o'clock, she was lying in bed. I put a straw up to her mouth so she could swallow the pills with water - same thing I've been doing for 24 hours...
And she couldn't swallow. Her teeth clinched shut and her eyes wouldn't open. She went rigid, though not unflinchable. I knew something was going on so I asked her if she could hear me. She couldn't answer, but she seemed to be trying to nod. I told her to hold out one finger if she could hear me. She held out on finger on her left hand. Her right hand... I just realized this... Her right hand was limp while everything else was tight - she's losing all nerve communication at some level...

I'm watching her die, and tonight, where she's in the hospital, I realized there aren't going to be many more trips back. In October, we were overnight in Wyoming at the hospital - only a night because it was Wyoming and we are from Colorado...

October, overnight because she improved pretty fast, and she was ornery as usual. November, 72 hours because she didn't pull out as fast. Tonight, I watched this episode come on for two days, only I didn't realize it until she seized. And I am fairly certain that she won't pull out as fast as... three weeks ago.

I'm pretty sure Jean knows she's started the process of dying. Tonight, after she came out of her seizure, and I arranged for her to be admitted (no ER this time, thank god, and the oncologist) at 5 p.m. on a Friday night... She said I was using my muscle to help her into position to get off the bed...
"I'm going to die soon, aren't I?"
With a scientist's sense of observation, like asking if tomorrow were Tuesday...
"I don't know," I said.

We've had our conversations about death. All of us, me and Jean, Jean and her mom, and the doctor with Jean and I. Tonight I even took in DNR paperwork we had all signed, with witnesses. Another sign that Jean is aware of the path now, she asked the doctor whe conferring about DNR, "It's not going to happen that fast, is it?" He said it would be "unusual" for it to, especially in such a young and otherwise healthy patient.

They aren't giving her chemotherapy tonight. "We'll put that off for the time being," Dr. Young said. In other words, as I see it from here, let's worry more about quality of recovery than maintaining a futile last-chance schedule of chemo.

I can't believe this is real, tonight. I remember thinking at the hospital tonight, when they rushed up a dinner to her table that I knew she couldn't eat - am I selfish for wanting to eat her dinner roll? What kind of thought is that?

At different times, I think so many strange things when you extract yourself afterwards and think, "How is someone able to behave that way under these circumstances?"

I'm too existential perhaps, sometimes. Blessing and a curse.
All that I know is that saying or being told "I love you" between us has never in my life meant what it means now. How I wish that this indellible essence of Jean could be understood now to exist within my soul. How comforting it is to recognize that I am a better human being for having been loved by her. How I wish that the warmth that I feel in my heart from sharing her existence could somehow heal her.