A forewarning: this is a lengthy post. A very personal one, but lengthy!
The last few months have been C-R-A-Z-Y in my world. In February I lost my job after working on the same government contract for 23 years. I was trying to brace myself for the lay off for a while prior to it. With all of the government cuts, I knew it was inevitable. Regardless, it was a tough blow. I loved the people I worked and the work that I did. The saddest part is that I worked in toxicology research which means that the government is spending less money on finding things in our environment that cause cancer and learning what we need to get rid of to keep us safer and healthier.
A little less than two weeks later my husband was scheduled to have hernia repair surgery. One good thing about not having a job was that I could be home to help him recover. Since hernia repair requires stitching muscle, it is somewhat similar to having a c-section when it comes to the recovery. We left on a Friday morning to go to a local hospital for the outpatient surgery. The surgery was scheduled for 8:30 and we expected we would get home around 2:00, in time to greet our daughter when she arrived home from school. Things, however, didn't go quite as we planned.
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| My husband at the start of the crazy, scary day! Love a man in a "lunch lady" bonnet! |
When the surgery was completed, the surgeon came out to talk to me and said that my husband had bled more than what was considered normal. He asked if my hubby had a bleeding disorder or if any prior surgeons had mentioned any excessive bleeding in prior surgeries. My hubs has had two hip replacements, a gallbladder removal and a previous hernia repair plus some minor surgeries done under local anesthetics. At that time, I couldn't remember anything. The surgeon said that he was in Recovery 1 where he would stay for a bit while he woke up. Then they would move him to Recovery 2 where they would then call me to come in and see him. Since I am familiar with this hospital far too well, that is the time I usually sneak off to go get coffee, which I did.
When I was back from the coffee shop, I hunkered down in the waiting room and waited for my call from Recovery 1 saying that they were going to then move him to Recovery 2. Well, I waited and waited. Wore out the battery in my e-reader and then went through two magazines that I had brought with me. Meanwhile, almost all of the dozens of other family members who were in the waiting rooms got their phone calls and moved on to go see their patient in Recovery 2. When it was down to me and two other families, I mentioned to one of the volunteers that I was getting concerned as to why it was taking so long. Shortly afterward, I received a call. The nurse who was attending to my husband said that he was awake but his BP was quite low and he was very pale. She seemed concerned and said that she wouldn't move him to "2" until the BP went up some. She said not to worry, that he was talking and being a sweetheart. At that point, my concerns were eased because my daughter had super low BP after she had kidney stone surgery, so I figured it was just a thing they had in common. My daughter had rebounded fairly quickly with hers.
Over the next few hours I got another phone call basically repeating what she had last told me. He was fine, but the BP was still a little low so they were going to keep watching him. Eventually the waiting room was completely clear except for me and the two sweet volunteers who seemed worried for me. I called a friend and she brought lunch by for me around 3:00. While she visited with me I received another call from the nurse who said that they had some issues with a catheter (I won't go into details because I wince just thinking about it!) and they were calling a urologist down to help with the problem. I thought "poor baby", he is just having a rough recovery. Then a while later the nurse called back and she said that she was concerned that even though his BP had gone up a little, it was not where it needed to be yet so she had called the surgeon back to consult with him. (By this time the surgeon had left to go see patients in his office). She said the surgeon was going to finish up in his office and come back by to check on my husband. At this point I still wasn't too worried. I figured that they were being overly cautious and I appreciated that. I missed my husband, thinking I would get to see him by lunch time and it was late afternoon by now. I then received another phone call. This time it was a doctor and I was assuming it was the urologist. It wasn't. It was an anesthesiologist. I am not quite sure how he got brought back in, but he told me that my husband's blood pressure was the best it had been post-surgery, but that he was concerned why it was not better and he had spoken to the surgeon who was stuck in traffic on the way back to the hospital. He said that the surgeon could possibly want to send my husband back into the OR to see if there was something going on and just make sure that all was good. He said that if the surgeon didn't do that, they would at least admit my husband so they could observe him overnight. While we were on the phone the surgeon arrived and the anesthesiologist said that the surgeon would check my husband out and then come out to talk to me about what he wanted to do.
Luckily, I was still remaining calm at this point. I have a lot of faith in the staff at this certain hospital. My sister and I had our babies there, my father was there many times with heart issues before he died, my mother had multiple surgeries there and I have had a boatload of surgeries there as well. The surgeon had operated on me before. He is older, but has a wealth of experience and I trusted him. My girlfriend was still there with me and that was a great distraction. The surgeon came out and said he was concerned about the BP and that my husband was so pale and that he wanted to go back in laparoscopically to make sure that everything was fine. They use a mesh to reinforce the muscle wall and he wanted to make sure that the mesh was in its proper place and that the bladder was fine. They were going to move him down to the regular OR (versus the outpatient surgery suite) and I could see him before he went down. I sent my friend on her way and asked her to check on my daughter for me and run by with some dinner for her.
The doctor led me down to Recovery 1 to see my husband. He dropped me off so he could go scrub in for the next surgery. They led me to my husband and I was a little taken aback by what I saw. He was extremely pale and he was barely awake. He only had enough energy to say hi and tell me that he loved me. I told him that they were going to take him in for another surgery so they could make sure that everything was OK. He nodded, but that was pretty much all he had to give me. I was confused because the nurse had told me earlier that he was talking to her and was being funny and really sweet. I was expecting him to be much more alert. There were two nurses attending to him now and one got on the phone and was ordering blood for the operating room. I didn't think that was too unusual and was glad they were being cautious. It came time to wheel him down to the inpatient OR suite and I followed along since the waiting room is just outside of it (I am far too familiar with the layout of this place!). When we reached the waiting room, I was greeted by a different anesthesiologist, a nurse anesthetist and an anesthesiology intern. The anesthesiologist was very somber and told me that they had lots of blood on hand for him "just in case". I kissed the hubs and told him I loved him and they wheeled him off to surgery. I went into the waiting room and sat down and gathered my thoughts. The tone and mood of the three people I just had met changed everything for me. This was all becoming very "real". Things were serious and potentially extremely serious. I got on the phone and started making calls. I called the girlfriend that was with me earlier. I have no recollection of anything I said to anyone, but I must have scared her because not long after, one of my girlfriends was on her way down with her husband (they live 25 miles away, in the same town that I do), my niece and her husband were on their way and I played it down to my sister on the phone because she was dealing with her gravely ill mother-in-law and I didn't want to give her any more to handle.
Once the reinforcements showed up, they all kept me talking and distracted. The volunteer told me that surgery had begun. A while later she said that the doctor had called and that they had to open him up, but he was stable. This is the point at which I began to freak out. By opening him up, I knew they meant that something was wrong when they went in laparoscopically and therefore they had to cut him wide open to fix whatever the issue was. I had to explain to everyone that this was bad. Probably very bad. This is where things just became dreamlike for me. My friends and family were talking but I started to choke up. My sister came in and my niece filled her in on what little we knew. My friends kept the conversation up so that I would stay distracted, but it wasn't working any longer. I started having the "what if he dies?" thoughts running through my head. A while later (I have no idea of how long it had been, as I had lost track of time) the surgeon came in the waiting room to talk to me. I wanted him to tell me what was going on with my support system around me, but he took me into a consult room by myself. I was thinking I wanted my sister in there because it was too much for me. I just knew from his demeanor that something was wrong.
We sat down in the tiny room and he told me that my husband was alive. When he opened him up to peek in with the camera my husband's abdomen was full of blood. He then had to cut him open. He thought there had to be an artery or major vein severed, but he could find nothing to cause the amount of bleeding he was having. He called in two other of his partner's and they all meticulously went through his organs looking for something to tell them why there was so much blood and they could fine nothing. He said he would only expect to see something like this from a hemophiliac and asked again if my husband had a clotting issue. I told him that I don't remember ever being told that and he had never had any issues in previous surgeries and never required any transfusions before. He never had problems with cuts and he cuts himself as much as anyone else does. The doctor told me that he had bled out well over half of his blood volume. After they were convinced that there was no further bleeding, they sewed him back up and he was on his way to ICU. He was going to have to be closely monitored to make sure he didn't start bleeding again. So much for a simple little outpatient hernia repair. The surgeon made it clear to me that we weren't out of the woods yet. If my husband didn't bleed anymore over the next 24 hours, he should be OK.
My husband spent 24 hours in the ICU and then was sent to a regular room. After 24 hours there, he was sent home. Before he came home they took a bunch of blood for genetic testing to see if he had a clotting issue. On our first post-op visit to the surgeon, he told us that my husband did indeed have a genetic clotting disorder. We were set up to see a hematologist to get more information. We told the surgeon that day how much time we spent talking about how lucky my husband had been. He told my husband that it didn't have anything to do with luck. My husband was blessed, he said. The fact that he didn't go into shock and that he survived losing 6 plus pints of blood was a blessing and that God must have a purpose for my husband to hang out on this earth a while longer. My husband is not a religious man, but I am a religious woman. I had been saying something very similar to my husband since he came home from the hospital. To have the surgeon say the exact same thing made an impact on my husband. In fact, he went home and told everyone that called to check on him exactly what the surgeon told him.
The hematologist told my husband that he is Factor VII deficient. We have had our daughter tested, too. We are waiting on her results. Factor VII is better than Factor VIII, which is full blown hemophilia. If my husband ever has another surgery he will have to make sure everyone is informed and has plenty of blood and clotting agents in the OR. Once we find out if my daughter has it, I am ordering him (or them) Medic Alert bracelets. My biggest fear would be if they were in a car accident or had some sudden issue where they had a severe cut. If no one was aware of the situation, they could bleed out before some did figure it out. We are educating ourselves and are spending our days being very thankful. After six weeks at home, my husband was able to go back to work and his life is getting back to normal. I am doing projects around the house and getting prepared to job hunt (yuk).
All seems trivial compared to what we have been through. We are really blessed. My husband sat down just a few days before going back to work and asked me to walk him through that day. I told him everything I could remember. Luckily, he remembers little and had no fear before the second surgery. I am so thankful for that. That night, after he was safely in ICU, I went in there and said everything I needed to say. My mother died from cancer 6 years ago and the hospice volunteers told us to make sure we said everything we needed to say to her so we wouldn't have regrets. Well, I took a cue from that. If he was going to die, I was going to make darn sure I said everything I needed to say. I was bawling like an idiot. Then it was his turn. He told me how much he loved his kids (he has an older daughter, in addition to our daughter) and how much he loved me and if he was going to die, he wanted me to always remember that. Then he was bawling like an idiot. Then I told him to "suck it up, Princess" (what I always say to him when he complains, whines or cries - which is extremely rare, btw). That is how we roll in this family.
Last week was the week that he went back to work. On day three, he hit a deer. Not a normal sized deer, but a Herculean sized doe. She was huge. He hit her so hard that she went airborne and landed quite some distance from the road. He drove away from it with just a broken grill. Now I call him "Death Cheater". He is one blessed boy. And I am one blessed girl, because I get to keep him around for a while.
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| My best friend and husband of 21 years! |
Now, go squeeze your loved ones. And always remember to say "those things". No regrets.
