Anticipation, then Heartbreak - Long Post - Part I

 It's Wednesday, June 8, two days and a few hours since I lost my love, my best friend, my husband Brandon. 

Backtrack - 

Friday, the 3rd, he was moved by ambulance down to Thomas Hospital in Fairhope. Mobile was on diversion, basically meaning they couldn't accept patients. Thomas had a room open up so they went down there, lights blazing, sirens screaming at speeds faster than I felt comfortable following in our car. Honestly, there was no need in that urgency - just drive like a normal person. Seriously. He wasn't in any trauma. 

The plan was to do the catheter placement into his left lung space, similar to what he'd had done in his right pleural space back in March. When? Well...

I get there, find his room, he apologizes and complains how ridiculous it was too that they went that fast and for what? 

His nurse came in, got all his info, loads of questions and he began his stay there. I left around 7:30, I think and went on home. 

Saturday, I got up at my regular "work day time" and was in the kitchen, pulling on a shirt, grabbing coffee, and trying to get pups and birds ready for the day for when I was out of there when my phone rang.

Hello, Mrs. Milam? This is so and so at Thomas? Your husband is fine, but he wants to be discharged. Me - w t f? What happened? Nothing ma'am, he's just a little distressed...are you on your way? Me - Yes, running out the door in a minute. Take your time, he's fine, we're not discharging him, but he'd asked me to call you and find out if you were coming down. Me - of course, of course...

I get up there and he's sitting on the edge of his bed with his arms braced on either side of himself, head down. 

'I just want to get the hell out of here, I hate this place, Mel'. He wouldn't tell me if anything happened no matter how much I asked, so I dropped it. 

I helped him get into the recliner that was in his room, got him comfy and got into his bed and spent the day with him. 

Things I noticed (hindsight): confusion, what looked/sounded like aphasia, frustration, no interest in food, frequency and intensity of coughing and the junk he'd produce at times with that, just weird things that no one seemed to be too concerned with. That's my perception. 

Nurses came and went of varying levels of experience. Housekeeping, etc. Never talked to any surgeon. I did talk to one of the nurses at the cancer center; she'd been in touch with his oncologist and his CRNA. She was quite frank and was one of the folks who'd said it looked like it'd be two weeks if not sooner. 

Talked to the respiratory doctor who helped him through one of his horrible coughing bouts, the "hospitalist", etc. The hospitalist stated that what she understood was going to happen was that they would be replacing the catheter he had in his right lung space to which I got a bit "irked".

Me - wait a minute, MY understanding of why he was rushed down here so fast was to put in a catheter or some other drainage mechanism in his LEFT lung space so that we could do drains of that lung at home. There was NOTHING mentioned of anything with his right lung space. Am I missing something? 

Hospitalist - well I guess we have some miscommunication. Yeah? Ya think? 

She asked me about what I was doing to drain his right lung and I hauled out one of his drain kits and a dressing kit and showed it to her, showed her where his cath was. She asked who was managing that? Me. And you are? Me - the wife. Her - well it looks like you're managing that well. Me - yes, well, we've been married for 23 plus years, I'd hope so. 

She left marking notes on her paperwork to update info - still didn't know when etc., that the procedure would take place except - sometime Monday. 

He got coughing and agitated later in the day and they wound up giving him a 1mg tablet of Ativan, his cough meds and a Guaifenesin. Change was pretty quick and kind of alarming, too. His breathing relaxed and intervals between were getting longer. One of his nurses said, is this recent? I said it's new...he'd been sleeping with his eyes open for a little while now (yes). But this deepness (I couldn't get him awake) was new. Scared me, quite frankly. 

I stayed til about 7 Saturday night and got him awake enough to hug and kiss him and tell him goodbye. I grabbed a few groceries, had some morbid thoughts pushing my cart through the store, had a moment back in the car before I drove the 45 minutes home. 

Sunday morning, wash/rinse/repeat. Back down there a little after 8. Sunday was weird. He was agitated from time to time but verbally, things were even odder to me. He had difficulty articulating what he wanted; move the blanket from behind me - it was a pillow. Take the pillow off me, it  was his blanket, etc. It wasn't always the same thing every time, pillow would turn into another word and I'd have to try and figure out what he wanted. I got a little frustrated because I couldn't figure it out. 

It was just a rough day. His coughing was worse, BP was trending down, his telemetry monitor was doing crazy stuff and had been since the day before. One of the nursing assistants came in several times, checked batteries, checked connections, etc. Finally called the nurse...they came in and checked his BP a couple times; somewhere on a notebook, I've got the readings from every time they did it when I was there. And, he was having runs of AFib.

I did get a couple spoons of apple sauce in him, a sip or two of an Ensure drink (that didn't work out great), a sip or two of a shake I'd made from home, and a few sips of water here and there. 

He got very upset when around 7 or so I told him I had to go home to get some rest, that tomorrow he was going to have the procedure and I needed to get home, do domestic things and would be back bright and early in the morning. I stayed a bit longer and tried again, same reaction. He fell asleep and I finished gathering my things and woke him up at which point, he stared right at me and said "Okay" when I said I was leaving and "I love you". Kisses/hugs and I left feeling like a huge shit. 

He didn't seem like Brandon.