We Interrupt This Nightmare—To Bring You Another One

Last year I began posting blog entries here as a form of therapy. Writing about the horrors of a medical crisis helped me gain some perspective on the reality of the unthinkable. After more than ten years I needed to come to an acceptance of my husband’s serious brain injury.

As 2021 drew to a close I was near reaching that goal. Dennis had long been completely physically rehabilitated. He was working out with a personal trainer every week. He enjoyed running and push-ups and demonstrating that he was “strong like bull.”

His years-long participation in a clinical trial for electric brain stimulation led to improvements in his memory and impulsivity. I realized that he was still the funny, smart man that I married, but he now had cognitive difficulties that we would navigate together.

We enjoyed a quality of life that included friends, family, music, movies, even modified travel. We did not have the retirement we planned and hoped for, but we’d adjust and find new ways.

Dennis loved to listen to the Springsteen channel on the car radio.  Whenever Badlands played he’d sing along and virtually shout the lyric “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.” When Tougher Than the Rest was playing, he’d say to me, “That’s you. They’re playing your song.”

On December 29 we had a visitor, a woman who was an old high school friend we hadn’t seen in years. It turned out to be one of those gloriously simpatico reunions. We talked and laughed and ate and laughed and talked and laughed for several hours more.

When she left that evening she told me that she was expecting to be a little depressed by Dennis’s condition, but instead she found him delightful. It was heartwarming to hear. I went to bed that night feeling a contentment that I hadn’t known for eleven years.

I was awakened on the penultimate morning of 2021 to the sound of Dennis calling, “I need an assist.” He was on the floor on his side of the bed. “I slipped going to the bathroom,” he said. When he looked up at me I could see he had fallen hard on his face.

I tried to help him up, but his left arm flopped. I assumed it was broken. The possibility that he had suffered a stroke was pushed from my mind because it just seemed too ridiculous to fathom.

I called 911 asking for help with lifting my husband. When the first paramedic walked in the bedroom, she said, “Hi Dennis, my name is Katherine.” “Do you spell that with a C or a K?” he asked with genuine interest. “I really need to pee,” he continued. “Can you get me to the can?”

He was conscious and understandable, so I still didn’t think the worst would be true. The second EMT immediately suspected a stroke, though. “We have to get him to the ER now,” he barked. Within minutes Dennis had been put in the ambulance and was on his way.

By the time I had gotten dressed and drove to the hospital, Dennis had been scanned and was officially diagnosed as having suffered a stroke. In the short interim since I had last seen him at home, he had gotten so much worse.  The injuries on his face were bruising and his left eye was darting back and forth.

It was the beginning of another long, dark chapter of life that was going to unfold without a chance for appeal. “We don’t deserve this! What the hell could the fates be thinking?” were not arguments that could change anything.

The last six months have been heartbreaking and exhausting, but not without some progress, some excruciatingly slow progress. My daily goal is to just find a way to keep going. Maybe writing about the nightmare, once again, will help me accept what has happened and make it count as best we can…