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An Ordinary Moment

Neither one of us had asked for this nightmare.  He was chronically sick, chronically scared, in such horrible pain, over-medicated, and our lives transformed into daily endurance tests.  Chad was trying to cope with more misery than I could fathom, and I was trying to cope with him.  That insight gave me needed perspective, and helped me (at times) to function.  Above all I did love him and knew for a fact that he would care for me if our situations were reversed.

I recall remarking to a friend at the hospital that I hadn’t signed up for this.  He took on a wry expression and responded sagely, “yes, yes, you did.”  He was right, of course, I had indeed.

Trying to mimic normal to the best of his ability, Chad rallied one afternoon, and announced he was going to use a birthday gift card to buy a new golf club.  There is a beautiful, forested golf course near us, and his card was redeemable at the pro-shop.  Though I shouldn’t have let him drive, it was a short dash and we both desperately needed a respite of ordinary.  This errand meant that I had, perhaps about an hour off nursing duty, so I began to watch a saccharine-sweet movie on my laptop. It hadn’t escaped my attention that romance novels and fluffy sweet films were becoming my obsession.  My only escape from this impossible situation.  If Chad was asleep, or in this unusual case out, I plugged in some trite nonsense and buried myself in garbage. 

I was so lost in a trivial DVD that I didn’t notice the time.  Becoming aware of the extended quiet it occurred to me he should have returned home.  A little more time passed and I finally heard the car tires on the gravel.  I hit the pause on the film, embarrassed to be caught watching such nonsense, and hurried to meet him at the door.

He slowly rose out of the car and his posture and carriage looked oddly off.  His gait was peculiar as he ambled to the house, bow-legged, his chin in his chest.  Hobbling straight for his bed, he mumbled he didn’t feel well and I let that pass.  He fell into bed and instantly dropped off to sleep while I stood by and watched him.  So very strange.

Quietly returning to my insignificant movie I could hear his light snores, and I tried to underplay how weird he looked when he walked in the house.  Abruptly I heard my name . . . Gail, Gail, Gail, and I darted to his bedside.

He was twisting back and forth shouting there was something wrong inside. 

Morphine

The calendar said late May and I needed to finish the school year.  Yet, he now lay relatively helpless in his bed at the mountain cabin.  We had an overlap of time to solve.

Now, three years plus later, it would have made more sense to take off the last two weeks of the term and care for my husband.  But living forward in time, the curse of us all, I was sure the school couldn’t remain standing without me.  I was compelled to finish the academic year.

In an act of kindness, Chad’s younger brother, Peter, agreed to travel from North Carolina so I could work until the last day of school.  Underneath Peter’s offer lived an honest fear of losing his big brother to cancer.  It was easier for him to come to the mountains and see for himself than wait for second-hand news from me.

After his arrival it didn’t take too long for Chad to snap at his brother, too.  My husband felt so rotten, suffering so miserably, and his rants exploded over any provocation.  Fortunately, Peter took his brother’s outbursts in stride, seeming unaffected. I will always be grateful for his kindness and forbearance that terrible spring.

Once school adjourned, Peter left and we were on our own.  Every morning, after his loading of liquid nutrition and pain meds, we were off to the tumor center.  After his radiation treatment, or his chemotherapy we often met with other staff regarding his care.  The dietician took us aside and spent about forty five minutes showing us boxes of canned nutrition.  Neither of us could decide what the hell that was about.  The tube specialist checked his peg tube to make sure is was functioning properly.  Sometimes we saw the cowgirl, and at other times, the chemo oncologist.  I liked her enormously.  She dealt with us in a way that said “I know this is awful, and I will do my best.”

Over time the torture in his throat reached new levels of agonizing, searing heat.  Both of his physicians along with an array of nurse practitioners wrote all sorts of prescriptions for pain medications.  On his shoulder, Fentynal patches, crushed in water and injected through his tube, hydrocodone.  And injected straight through his peg–morphine liquid.  Chad also had a gargle of morphine suspension to hopefully trickle down his throat and put out the fire.  Oh, and melted percocet, too, right up the tube.

This descent into medicated hell set the stage for our “new normal.”  Living with Chad’s outrageous pain and altered personality wasn’t too easy. And a new dark age of fear and morphine closed in around us.

Bridled

Image

A blond nurse in heavy makeup called his name, and my husband dutifully rose, glancing at me to do the same.  Delaying for a moment, debating my options, I stood too.

Back in an examination room his radiation doctor, a young, attractive cowgirl, took pictures of his neck–both sides–and displayed a CT scan undeniably bearing a clear tumor profile. There was no mistake, the ENT’s diagnosis was correct–Chad had stage four tonsil cancer and surgery became paramount.  This radiation doc announced that she had all ready reserved a date for his tonsillectomy.

This particular oncologist was a very perky, affirming young physician.  Wearing cowboy boots, and a western cut shirt featuring mother-of-pearl snap buttons, she and her assistant in smiling upbeat tones clarified what we could expect from his cancer treatment.  She described a restraint mask, gesturing toward his imaged tumor, that she would construct.  Using the proper measurement of his jaw line and tumor dimensions, the mask would provide marked targets for the radiation laser.  Chad would have to sit for a plaster fitting soon so she could fabricate a precise mold.  The radiation would blast any unchecked cancer cells the surgery didn’t remove.

Smiling with her mouth, not with her eyes, the oncologist admitted that neck-throat-esophageal cancer is the worst type on the patient.  She elaborated her point explaining that the neck has no thick layers of skin or muscle to protect the esophagus from extensive damage.  Elaborating, the doctor continued that as soon as the tonsils were out, Chad would undergo a minor procedure to have a feeding tube placed into his stomach for sustenance.  His throat would very likely become too burned to perform a swallowing reflex.

When we arrived home I confessed to him that I didn’t think I had another crisis in me.  In my previous marriage there had been nothing but catastrophe–in this marriage we had struggled with a blended family.  Just the thought of another calamity paralyzed me from the inside out.  I honestly wanted some way to take a pass on this new one.  He just hugged me, almost in desperation, saying everything would be all right.  I wasn’t assured.

When My Worst is My Best

The tumor institute quickly became far too familiar, an unsolicited home away from home.  He’d press the down button on the stainless steel elevator, lowering us into that stark, beige basement–the waiting room.  An ordeal.  I pretended to be brave. 

The smell in the unit was a combination of baby powder and rubbing alcohol, probably from the hand sanitizer dispensers positioned everywhere on those bland beige walls.  Fox News blared from a 12 inch television in the corner— while stunned patients and family members stared.  Health magazines and pamphlets were scattered on cookie cutter office chairs and faux-wood end tables. 

We didn’t belong in this surreal place and neither of us were prepared for what was coming. 

Walking phantoms, hairless and fragile, shuffled awkwardly, angular-ly across the nondescript carpet, escorted by unnaturally jolly nurses dressed in flowery scrubs.Patients ambled down one of two passages traversing this subterranean ward.  A straight hall toward the right led to the radiation wing while to the left lay the chemotherapy suite. 

I might have giggled when I imagined we had entered an episode of  the Twilight Zone, encountering wraith-like aliens in a windowless underworld. But there was nothing humorous about this place.  People lived or died here, and I somehow grasped that I couldn’t accept this room, with its contrast of sick men and women tended to by a cheer leading squad. 

And that marked the beginning of my own hell–a disassociation reflex that formed to shield my mind.  I couldn’t process this unexpected, horrifying reality. 

For Chad, well, he was just all eyes, trying with all his might to make the hospital and his condition seem smaller, incidental, a bump in the road—but our surroundings betrayed his assurances. 

Update

Hey folks,

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a few days.  I actually have been involved in two-day writing seminar.  Tomorrow is the big day for the next increment for River of January.

In the meantime, I need to ask something of you.

Would you please send your personal email to me at

chumbleg@aol.com

It is a way that I can keep you up-to-date on the final publication day for this epic book.

Thank You for reading along!

Gail Chumbley

chumbleg@aol.com

Take Smaller Bites

Above arid and baking Boise, we found an oasis, a cabin in the cooler mountains.  Purchased three years before Chad fell ill, we were looking forward to calling the little place home after I retired.  We were both thrilled with the location and he stayed most weeks while I remained in the valley.  For me, the place represented my real life.  It began Friday night when I drove up, and lasted till Sunday when I had to turn into a teacher again.    

But this was the same time when my husband started complaining of a steady sore throat.  Unable to ignore the pain, my husband’s doctor referred him to an ENT for more thorough tests.  The appointment had been set nearly a month out, which left him with too much time to worry.  Hurting and scared, he decided to visit a rural medical clinic near the cabin.  Unable to exactly pinpoint the source of his pain, the Physicians Assistant prescribed penicillin for possible strep throat in case the infection was hiding, and that made his wait-time easier.  Sometimes I thought it wasn’t in his throat at all, though it was in his head.

Despite my doubts, I made the decision to cook up a storm during the week of Spring Break at the end of March.  If he fattened up a little, he’d hopefully feel better. 

I think it was the night I made stuffed pork chops that my husband again complained, “I can’t open my mouth wide enough to eat.” Frustrated by his endless fretting, my sympathetic answer consisted of something like “Take smaller bites.”  I didn’t think much of his squawking because he hadn’t stopped complaining in over a month. My vote went to a canker sore deep in his throat that needed to heal.

The first part of April brought the long awaited ENT appointment and he drove down to town.  I was in class and didn’t hear from him at all that day.  Oddly, when I pulled into the driveway after work, Chad was standing on the front porch watching me drive into the garage.  Again, I passed it off as nothing.  It was a nice day and he is the kind of person that is always dusting up chores to do, so I assumed that was why he was outside.

As I dumped my purse, bag and coffee cup on the table he came into the kitchen not looking any different than usual.  Rinsing my cup at the sink I pleasantly asked him how his doctor’s visit had gone, and he looked at me suddenly with an intense expression reflecting shock and disbelief.  “I have cancer”.  At first I didn’t react, honestly not knowing what I was supposed to say or feel.  I stared back, as his eyes filled with tears.

I wish he could have given me the news in smaller bites. 

 

Resemblances

 

There were pieces missing in what I was watching in Florida—mysteries from an earlier time.  The only observable friction I witnessed played out over an air conditioner.  When Chum had built the place, he designed it so that the house angled to the southeast in order to catch the cross breezes blowing in from the Atlantic through jalousie windows.  In other words, there was no central air-conditioning, just the little window swamp coolers in three rooms: the living room, Chad’s bedroom and Helen’s old room.  The old man didn’t like to run these air conditioners because it cost money to pay the higher Florida Power and Light bills.  The insufferable heat and humidity didn’t seem to have an effect on him at all.  Every morning he donned his long green “old man” pants and a long-sleeved khaki shirt, sweating like mad, yet appeared quite comfortable.  What Chum considered frugal was, in Chad’s dictionary, “cheap.” 

After our marriage, my husband wanted to remain with me in Idaho.  I think it was mostly because he loved me and the West, but part of me believed it probably had something to do with his mixed feelings for his father.  I had a good teaching job, and my kids were established in school.  Plus, I owned the house we lived in.  Back in Florida, Chad had earlier lost his apartment on the 79th Street Causeway to Hurricane Andrew, and then moved home to nurse his mother through her final struggle with emphysema.  Chum was there too, with his room in the basement.  The two men—Chad and his father—had cared for Helen together, jockeying around her oxygen tanks and tubes, keeping her fed and clean. 

My husband had wanted out of Florida for a long time, only waiting for his mother to get better, and his son to graduate from high school.  It had long been his dream to live in the mountains and to visit old University of Florida friends now residing in Boise.  Eventually his frail mother died, one thing led to another, and we ended up, as I already explained, meeting, and soon married.

Fifteen years later, unconscious, Chad’s life hung in the balance.  His back looked arched, his swollen chest protruded upward on a raised, levered hospital bed.  Monitoring over his still body, I recognized this was the spot where he would either live or die.  I heard no platitudes, no assurances, saw no smiles, or affirming nods from any of the medical staff.  There simply was nothing to say. 

His father had all ready been gone for a few years, dying on the same kind of medical bed, but in an assisted living facility.  Hospice had then kindly ministered to Chum through his last illness, and assured passing.  Looking down on my husband’s ravaged body, that first trip to Miami strangely returned to my thoughts, evoking the complex bond between this father and son, who now shared a haunting resemblance. 

What had drawn us to that little room with the beeps and lights was the culmination of one distressing appointment after another to a cancer treatment center in Boise.  These visits invariably involved copious amounts of prescribed toxic chemicals pumped into his body on a daily basis, and razor-sharp radiation that scorched his throat.  Health providers were literally killing Chad to cure him.  At least that’s the way it felt. 

Missing Pieces

Chad and I met in the fall of 1994.  We married the following March in Key West, Florida.  I met his family there— his brother, sister, and the patriarch, Mont Chumbley, or simply, as he insisted, “Chum.”  Plainly, his father was a well- mannered gentleman, and I liked him at once.  Chad’s father seemed so unpretentious, that being around him was easy, with conversation naturally flowing. 

When my new husband led me downstairs to his father’s bedroom, the walls were festooned with scores of old-time black and white publicity photos.  They all featured the same beautiful girl.  It was Chad’s mother, posed in professional glossies.  I was immediately taken by her siren-esque good looks.  Helen, by any standard was lovely.  Her flaxen curls were evenly waved, 1930’s style; her eyes smoky lidded, her lashes accented with mascara.  She held a cigarette stylishly between her fingers, as a wisp of smoke, frozen by time swirled upward— a classic Hollywood beauty.  The unknown stories behind these photos—stories she could no longer tell, captured my imagination.  Movie glossies, ice-skating poses, and the black and whites autographed by fellow entertainers, left me sincerely curious. 

Another visible change I noted on this visit was the hostility that my husband began to exhibit toward his father.  Gone were all the glowing descriptions of aviation he had shared during our courtship, replaced now by caustic and resentful criticism.  How odd, I thought.  What did that sweet old man do to alienate his son so severely?  More perplexing was the time the two of them spent working on household projects together— all completed in strained silence.  If Chad turned off the water to a toilet to begin repairs, his father appeared quietly behind him. They worked without speaking.

The house, perched on the side of a sloping hill, led down to a seawall and a man-made lake called Mirror Lake.  Chum had been one of the first to start construction around the water in 1953.  Since then, the rest of that square block in Miami Shores had filled in with lake-front homes.  A Catholic rectory sat diagonally to the right of the backyard, and rang the Doxology from the bell tower each afternoon, sending a lovely resonance of notes tumbling over the small waves. 

Father and son seemed immune to that neighborhood music as they sweated and grunted over the washing machine, the dryer, leaky sinks, or other pending jobs that had waited for Chad’s arrival.  All I could hear sitting in the living room was metallic clinks and exhaled profanities. 

Later, when my new husband caught up with me by the lake, the first words out of his mouth were, “. . . he’s such an asshole.”   Asking for an explanation, Chad only quipped, “He just is.”  It left me again wondering what that harmless old man could have possibly done to earn such contempt.

This family presented real mysteries. There existed a clear disconnect between the adventurous stories of flight, and the sparks of resentment.  What lay behind the glamorous cheesecake shots of Helen on the basement walls?  My mind was was spinning.

Especially crazy was that no one would or in some cases, could answer my questions.  I had some sleuthing ahead of me.