the nightmare

Usually I wake up in time. You know the time... when you wake up seconds before it happens. But not tonight. I am awake now, really awake, drenched in sweat, one of his old t-shirts I sleep in clinging to my damp skin. The clock bears 5:40 in that echo of electric green. I can make out basic shapes in the room. A pile of dirty laundry overflowing from the basket. The fish tank, long forgotten but somehow still inhabited with three tiny fish that seem to thrive in the self-sustaining ecosystem I created for them, or more acurately, that they created for themselves. The house is still but not silent. From the bedroom I can barely make out the whirr of the cat fountain that I never remember to fill and that the cat refuses to drink out of anyway. Outside the wind nudges the house, teasing it to lean. I pull the blankets closer around me and flip myself over to the other side of the bed. Reach my arm out to feel for the cat. He's there curled in his bed beside my bed. I'm not alone. I curse the clock. This always seems to happen around 5:40. Too early to get up and too late to salvage a good sleep. I toss and turn finally giving in and getting up to pee. The inky dark of the lowest part of the night seeps into the house, into my bones. I get nervous and rush back to the safety of the warm blankets. Curled under the covers I remember my nightmare. He's gone. And I am here. I stare desperately at the clock... 5:42. The minutes slowing as my life seems to disappear out from beneath me. I don't want to remember anymore.

what's for lunch?

It’s two days later.

An interruption. Spell your name? D-A-V-I-D G-A-U-M-O-N-T hyphen G-U-A-Y. Birthdate? Septembertenthnineteenseventytwo. Ok.

One nurse leaves and the I glance over to watch the other attach a bag of what I think looks like orange juice –orange juice with pulp- to David’s plastic and metal tree of medical equipment . The tree of life? I guess so, kind of. Plump bags are hung like ripe fruit for the picking. A mysterious blend of nectar draining perpetually into his veins to be distributed by his heart. The orange juice obviously isn’t juice, but instead the sticky bits of the blood. I glace up at the write on run off calendar on the wall and notice today’s numbers. The platelets were at 7 this morning. So he needs them



Finally the nosebleed stops.

 I flash back to a month ago when he endured a 6 hour nosebleed. They transfused platlets into him for 4 hours before the bleeding finally stopped and the garbage bin full of bloody soaked gauze and Kleenex stopped increasing in size. That was the first time in my life that I thought I might pass out. The blood just wouldn’t stop and the second David released the latest gauze from his nose a stream of blood would escape making it’s way efficiently down his chin, chasing gravity.




One of many uneaten hospital dinners

A few minutes ago I set off on a journey to select something for lunch that my stomach would accept. I toured around the cafeteria, poked at a few of the sandwiches and debated the option of a tuna salad sandwich with grapes and walnuts. I scanned the ingredients. Tuna, grapes, cherry tomatoes, hard boiled eggs. Wait a second, hard boiled eggs? In a tuna sandwich, with grapes and tomatoes. Um, I don’t think so. Notice I didn’t even comment on the walnuts. Some things just aren’t worth the effort to try and decipher. I continued my search cringing at the idea biting into a sandwich with such ingredients. I stopped briefly at the pre-packaged sushi wondering if the trend towards using brown rice instead of white would catch on. Come on, really, if brown rice sushi makes you feel better about yourself you’ve got bigger issues in life that you should probably be dealing with.

So my options are limited. I walked briskly past the pad thai – only denying it because it was too big, too much food, and I liked it so much I’s eat it all and feel sick for the rest of the day. The Chinese stir fry received the same pass for the same reason and the grill special looked greasy and unappetizing as usual. So, in mid-stride I did an about face. Pushed the up button on the elevator and escaped back into the room. I had a triscuit and consider eating cheesecake that Paul dropped off yesterday for lunch. But I won’t. Bet it would taste great though.

vancouver on pause

Out the window, in the distance I notice a sign. Sandman. It’s green. Beckoning. But I’ve never noticed it before. In my head a phrase repeats. Mr. Sandman take me away. I beg you to. Take me, take us away.

It’s 3am. I’m sitting, perched really, on the edge of the bed, my eyes blurred with sleep. Outside the city seems to be on pause. Still. Shiny and sparkling in the darkness. I search for signs of life, movement, but nothing, not even a car on one of the many bridges that connect a peninsulated downtown to the rest of the world. The city on pause for a moment – a strange thought. While beside me David writhes in sickness. He’s vomiting now.

Still.

I reach over and put my hand on his shoulder and silently encourage my arm to move, to rub his back, to provide him with some sort of comfort. As I whisper – it will be ok – I realize these words seem false and lifeless, but I have to believe, I want him to believe. I say it again. This time to convince myself.

He’s sitting on the opposite side of the bed from me, doubled over, a cytotoxic bucket clutched in his hands. From my vantage point his shoulders blades protrude precariously from beneath the hospital gown. I as I will my arm down his back I can’t help but notice the skin stretched so thinly over ever rib and bone. I resist the urge to run, to throw up, myself. I feel sorry for him, not because he’s sick, not even because he’s violently vomiting in front of me, but because I know he despises the idea of throwing up. The man that never throws up struggling to keep his insides from being expelled into a bucket of toxic waste. This is our reality now. The life we left behind seems distant, a memory too painful to engage. We’ve been here for two months now. Or has it been two years? I’m not sure. Time moves differently here. Moments that I used to categorize into minutes and days used to all line up in a row. But now it’s like moving through time in a haze. Like I show I saw once on driving in the fog. Apparently it’s difficult to judge your speed when your brain can’t disseminate passing objects. Trees, houses, invisible, coated and camouflaged under a wet blanket made up of billions of tiny suspended droplets of water. You rush forward blindly into whiteness with no sense of when you might reach your destination and what you could be missing on the way.

*update* acute leukemia

Hi Folks,

Things are no going well for us. David's disease has rapidly progressed to acute leukemia. He starts chemo today for 6 days. They're going to try and knock the disease down a bit - if it works there may be more options to think about, but right now it's too hard to think any farther than the next 6 days. I know lots of people are wondering how he's doing. I wish I had better news.

His spirits are ok. We're coping ok. We're trying to make the best of every moment, but it's very difficult.

We request no visitors or phone calls. I will not be providing update emails would prefer that a mass email is not send out. I will answer individual emails when I can.

Cindy 

*update* back in hospital

David was admitted back into the hospital on Tuesday morning. It's been a rough couple of days. Lots of tests without answers. He's in surgery now for a lymph node biopsy. We're still hoping the latest is all related to a severe infection that will resolve itself with time.

Trying hard to be positive, but it's more difficult this time. We're also keeping a bit more to ourselves right now - trying not to spread the word that David's back in the hospital - of course this means we have less support - which is harder, but we'll manage. We miss home a lot these days.