Pressure and Catharsis

I didn’t realize until I got home today how much the pressure has been building over the past couple of days.  I felt pretty ok yesterday, spent the afternoon playing with and getting loves from my babies and went back to the hospital in time for the 7pm shift change.  It jarred me a bit to go back in there, to see his condition unchanged and to be reminded once again of the absolute enormity of it all.  

He’d had a pretty rough day, his sedative dose had been lowered and he was breaking through it pretty frequently, whenever they would suction his mouth/throat or move him around or turn the bed vibration on.  He also was coughing more, which is part of the point of turning the sedative down.  He has developed pneumonia and it is good for him to cough up the mucous, but when he breaks through in response to pain he becomes very agitated.  

It’s quite a sight when he gets riled up about something.  He tries to sit up in bed, grabs for the ventilator tube, tries to pull off the mitts the nurses keep on his hands to protect him from himself.  He swings his legs around and tries to get out of the bed.  He tries to push the nurses off of him.  In a way it’s really good to see him struggle, it feels better to see him fighting than to just see him lying there, the ventilator pumping his chest up and down.  But although his movements are purposeful, he is still unconscious and does not respond to commands or voices.  It just makes it look like he’s still in there.

As the evening wore on it was really hard for me to feel hopeful, to feel connected with him, to feel sure that he was still there.  And a cold panicky depression began to creep into my heart as my mind started looking too far ahead, asking too many questions and imagining too many possible outcomes.  I tried to sleep but it was a busy night.  The doctor had to come in to re-position an IV line that had become dislodged during one of his fighting episodes, the radiology tech came in to do the daily chest x-ray, the nurses managed his medicines and changed his bedding.

In the morning the doctor decided to switch his sedative to something that might calm him, take the edge off, but still allow some signs of increased consciousness to come through.  She had observed some promising signs that he might be ready to show some meaningful response.  Well, it was a total bust.  No increased consciousness, just lots of fighting.  So they put him back on the other one at a dosage that keeps him pretty sedate.  We will try to bring him out of it again in a few days.  This will give his lungs a chance to recover from the pneumonia as well, the hope being that next time perhaps we can wake him up enough to take out the ventilator tube.

The depression from the night before continued into the morning, and rolled on through the afternoon.  It did me some good to sit in on the “rounds,” when the doctor goes through all the different aspects of a patient’s condition and makes a treatment plan for the day.  It helps me to understand the details of how all the medications and treatments are interacting and what they are trying to achieve with all of it.  But as the day rolled on I just couldn’t feel optimistic or at peace about anything.  All the unknowns just kept swirling and sucking me down, swamping the little speck of hope inside me.

I left the hospital this evening and drove home in the pouring rain.  I walked in the door and fell on my sweet mom and sobbed it all out.  She has been such a lifesaver, coming to me in my time of dire need to watch over my babies.  I gave voice to the bitter hopeless feelings.  I let all the fears and questions and darkness come out.  And when it was over I felt better.  The hope and optimism were still there, just buried by the grief.  Let the grief out and the little nuggets of peace and faith were what was left.

And now I’m too spent to do much else but fall into bed.  It turns my stomach that David will not share it with me tonight, and not for many nights to come.  But I’m letting my sweet Z sleep in there with me.  She and J are my rays of sunshine through all of this and I’m really looking forward to the snuggles.