Doozer's Journal

My Story 

I am not sure where to start with this.  My wife and I met at work. We started working for the same retail store around the same time.  We hit it off from the beginning. Thinking the same things where funny, dealing with some of the same issues in life. It all just seemed to fall into place.  We worked and lived together for over 6 years.  She became general manager of the store about 4 to 5 years in. Shortly after that our owner offered me my own store here in Venice. We did this for a year without incident.  Things where good. We had bought a house. We where making more than enough money to meet our needs.

That year she had not been feeling herself and had been diagnosed with pneumonia.  She was never quite able to shake it.  Shortly before Thanksgiving she got very sick and was suffering from a lot of pain. We had to go to the emergency room because our doctor was on vacation. They quickly realized that she had a rather serious gaul bladder problem. Plus their were a couple of white spots in here lungs on the X-rays. They immediately did surgery and removed here gaul bladder.  She was home for Thanksgiving but could not get out of bed. I was at this point taking care of both retail stores and her.  At this point I had no idea about the spots on the lungs. She kept that information from me because she did not want to worry me. I had just lost my Grandfather and my Grandmother, plus my Mother is battling lung cancer also. She was worried the burden would be too much.

I took care of her for two weeks. Doing everything I could to make her feel comfortable, but she kept on getting worse.  After two weeks of this we went back to the emergency room and she told me about the possibility of lung cancer.  She was there for 3 days in a regular room. I was in there at one point when they where taking blood. The Nurse was very rude. She commented about how it was better to be at the hospital and healthy than home sick. I didn’t like this implication but I blew it off, because I had become accustomed to this type of behavior.

I was still running both stores and was not getting enough time in with my wife. I will always regret this. The only day of work I missed was the day she died.

About three days in her oxygen level dropped severely despite being of oxygen.  There still haven’t been any real tests done at this point.She couldn’t lay down long enough for the MRI and they where too afraid to do a  biopsy because she wasn’t healthy enough.  We had to make the hardest decision ever.  Do we put her on life support and resend the do not resuscitate order. The doctors and nurses convinced  us to go on life support so we could find out what was wrong and if we could do anything for her.  My wife spent two weeks being fed oxygen and food through tubes. This type of thing is horrible to see. I had seen it before but the person was never conscious. My wife was conscious and alert the whole time. She would write to us on a board. They where able to get an MRI after she was put on life support. Her cancer was everywhere. Inside here lungs, outside her lungs, up against her heart.  We received this news about three or four days of being on life support.  They wanted to do some intense therapy so we let them, but at this point I knew she wasn’t going to make. I wanted life support removed immediately so that we could get maybe a few days together before she died. They wouldn’t even consider it. Plus her daughter was sure the doctors where doing the right thing and that everything would be O.K. I couldn’t get the doctor’s or nurse to talk to the daughter and let her know what was really happening. She just wouldn’t believe me and thought I had given up on her mother. Everyday I asked to take her off life support everyday I was denied.  Two weeks went buy and the doctor got worried that if they didn’t take her off life support she wouldn’t make it very long.  That day my wife asked me to kill her. Hospice was there helping us to make preperations to take her home and take care of her there for her final days. We removed life support and she struggled quite a bit. But then things to smooth out a little but she had a problem being too hot. That was always her problem. She could never get cool.  After a few hours we decided to let her rest and go home to get some sleep.

I did my banking for work really quick that morning and went right to the hospital. When we left we had a deal that if anything at all changed they where to call me. I went to her room in ICU and she wasn’t there. My heart dropped, but some one caught me and sad they moved her to another room to the progressive icu.  I went to the area wich was right down the hall. They give me her room # and I walk in and it is over 82 degrees in the room. I can hardly breathe myself. Some one else is in the first bed and the curtain had been pulled on my wifes part of the room.  I turn the corner and she is hanging of the bed her face is in agony and lifeless.  Everybody told us that she was going to go home with us, but no one wanted to take care of her.  I should have never left the hospital. I had to call her daughter and tell her the news knowing I was the one that pushed for this. We had an argument the day we took her off life support. She didn’t want it removed, and I took full responsibility for the decision.  She hasn’t looked me in the eye since.