This past weekend, I celebrated the first anniversary of my 50th birthday. So, yeah, I turned 51. But more importantly, my husband celebrated the first anniversary of the first day of the rest of his life. His idea of celebrating my 50th birthday? Have a heart attack. He said, while being worked over in the ER, that he felt like I'd been getting too much attention. Next time, just a discreet whisper in my ear, please!
That day will forever be etched in my mind as the day I could have become a widow. Of course, we all know that any day could be that day. There are no guarantees for any of us, no warrantys about to expire, no shelf-date beyond which we are no longer useful and will be put out for pick-up. But, that day, I had to confront the reality that the love of my life could leave me, permanently. Or at least for the rest of my mortal life. His best friend died due to a clot in the same coronary artery, hence it's macabre nickname, "The Widowmaker." It's a known killer, usually taking out it's victim before awareness has set in. V** didn't complete the sentence he had started to form before he hit the ground and was gone. Fortunately for us, my love only suffered a partial block.
The symptoms were pretty powerful and obvious. We both knew what was happening, and in under 15 minutes from the start of the symptoms, he was in the ER with an IV in his hand and EKG wires stuck to his body. I'll never, ever, forget the look on his face as the reality of the situation set in. I was sitting in a chair at his feet, and, throughout the workup, we stared into each other's eyes with fear and worry. Trepidation. The staff worked around us in a frenzy, trying to stop the pain and halt the cell death occurring in the cardiac muscle. He was conscious throughout the ordeal, and I don't recall his eyes leaving mine, though I'm sure at some point he must have looked away. But that's not how I remember it. I was trying to keep him here, present, mine. My friend, my lover, my companion. The one person who gets me, and accepts me as I am. And who loves me unconditionally. Well, as unconditionally as marriage gets. I know, I'm making this all about me..... it is my blog!
The ER doc came in at some point and said that he'd called for a helicopter to transport my love to SLC as he was having a heart attack and needed more invasive intervention than was available at Logan. That was like cold water in my face..... to hear the words we'd not dared utter thus far. A heart attack. He could die. As I write, the feelings of dread come back to me, and I can again feel the terror at the idea of losing him. I stared into his eyes again, trying to hold him here, communicate to him that nobody, even God, needed him more than I did. Stay with me, please. And what I saw in his eyes was fear, something I've never seen before. There isn't much that intimidates my husband, few things he is afraid to confront. But I could tell he didn't want to leave me any more than I wanted him to.
Within a few minutes, blood work started to come back, and the doctor felt that the results indicated that D was stable enough to get to McKay by ambulance. D had the presence of mind to joke about losing the opportunity to fly above the mountains in a helicopter. I reminded him that he wouldn't be in the co-pilot's seat! He probably wouldn't have been allowed to sit up and look out the window, so he might as well be lying down in an ambulance. Either way, we were eager for him to be on his way toward a higher level of care.
The ambulance driver turned out to be a friend, someone D had worked with in his previous life in law enforcement. That provided some comfort, as I felt like I wasn't turning him over to strangers who weren't invested in their patient's survival. Even so, no one was invested like I was. Closing those ambulance doors with him inside was the single most difficult thing I had to do that night. Close behind was calling my children and saying those dreadful words, "Dad had a heart attack." That's when I broke down and cried. Saying it out loud made it real.
Upon arrival at McKay, D was seen by a cardiologist, who outlined the plan of care. He would perform an angiogram in the morning, hoping to spot the location of the blockage and do whatever was necessary to eliminate it. D and I spent the remainder of that night with family members who'd come to the hospital to provide moral support, and I remember sitting at the edge of his bed holding his hand, trying to memorize the feel of it, and the warmth emanating from him. I didn't want to let go when the time came to go to the cath lab, but I was eager for him to be on his way back to health. He has always been my rock, a solid base from which I can go out into the world, do what I need to, always returning to home base. He is the earth, I am his moon, and the gravitational pull is just as magnetic and powerful as that which governs the tides.
The cardiologist placed a stent in the left anterior descending coronary artery, allowing blood to once again nourish the left ventricle of D's heart. I can imagine the woosh of the blood rushing back in to the starving cells, the relief as they once again received the oxygen they'd been deprived of for so many hours. His heart began the journey back to health, each beat saying, "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here." And my own heart started beating normally once again, seemingly in tandem with his, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."
In the year since D's heart attack, I've had many occasions to reflect on what might have changed in my life had we not been so lucky. I'd be sitting on the porch by myself watching the moon rise over Mount Logan. I'd sit on the deck by myself next to a cold grill reading the paper silently, no one to share the news with if he weren't standing there flipping burgers. I'd have buried our Libby without his strength holding all of us upright, his love enfolding us and giving us a place to grieve. I'd tuck our kids in at night alone, rising in the morning to scramble eggs without that special dad touch that makes them taste just right. I'd have to raise my son to be a man with only memories of the loving, kind, compassionate dad he has been so lucky to have. I'd have to wrap my arms around the girls myself and try to convey to them the importance of having a strong, moral, kind man next to them throughout the trials they will be called to face. A man like their dad. A real man, one who is not afraid to cry, or to love with his whole heart, or to stand up for them whatever the cost. A man who loved his mother fiercely and tenderly, now willing to care for his father in spite of the cost to his own emotional health. A man who loves me, with all his heart, willing to swim shark-infested waters to bring me a drink were I to ask that of him. A man who would rather go to hell with me, than to heaven with anybody else. That is the man I have by my side today. And I don't know why I got so lucky; his friend's wife didn't.
An unanswerable question: why? Doesn't matter, really. All that matters is that we were given more time, another chance to live and love, one more day. Now one more year. How many after this we cannot know. This much I do know: I love that man, and every day for the rest of his life, and mine, I will tell him so.
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