i don't know

Tad woke up yesterday morning incredibly ill. He could not manage to keep his balance nor stop shaking.

We made it to our appointment at the oncologist's office thanks to a neighbor who helped me get him into the car but I quickly realized he needed to be in the Emergency Room at the hospital across the street.

For the next three hours I watched painfully as Tad got more and more pale, weaker then unconscious - as they pumped him with all kinds of fluids to help him come back to awareness and start to breathe normally again.

As this was going on around me I was being approached by a myirad of people telling me bits and pieces but mostly asking so many different questions that I shifted into a near-altered state: completely calm with a steady, deliberate voice. Among the interactions were someone giving me the contact information for the crematorium, someone asking if we preferred he be transferred back to Stanford since it's protocol to treat at the most recent hospital and someone talking to me about banking issues and death certificates.

My biggest torment though was caused by the incredible pressure of being squeezed between my promise to Tad to resuscitate him if he should go into cardiac arrest and the insistence from the doctors -- again and again -- that resuscitating him is not a good idea. Doctors rarely have an opportune time to discuss this (rushing into an ER, transferring to an ICU, etc) -and they also don't like it when the answer is not convenient to them. Tad's request is that I have him brought back to life in case of an accident and then, if his quality of life is completely zapped, I agree to have him unplugged. Doctors don't like to do this with patients who are fragile and who may not have long to live anyway.

One of them said to me snarkily: "Do you know what it's like to be intubated forcefully? Have you ever been intubated emergently?" Another simply said: "I'll do it but I'm sure I'll break a rib or cause him severe damage."

Tad did not have an accident and five hours after our arrival he awoke in the ICU, looked into my eyes and said, "Why are you so calm?"

The truth is I don't know.

I don't know how we find the strength to get through each day.

I don't know how we can possibly feel like we've never been happier and how incongruent that is with the fact that Tad is going to die.

I don't know how Tad has found the strength to stay alive and how he has "defied every bell curve" according to the doctors.

I don't know how we can get back to that sense of happiness when we suddenly feel overwhelmed by the sheer sorrow of the fact that soon I will be here and he won't, the fact that illness is mostly random and unfair and has struck ruthlessly in the deepest, most intimate part of our lives.

I don't know how much time Tad has left to live.

I don't know what happens to a person's essence after the body dies.

I don't know if I'll be able to keep Tad's love alive inside me in a year, five years or ten years.

I don't know.

Today he was moved to a General Medicine floor away from the starkness of ICU. Being in a small local hospital is such a welcome change after the giant teaching hospitals. When the RN walks in and calls me "Hun" then slips me an extra meal my heart skips a beat. I am assured that I was not crazy in my pain at Stanford because they were indeed keeping the sweetness of life out of nearly all medical interactions. That absence caused me so much pain during our month there.

We have begun talking to hospice doctors and looking at what kind of in- home care can be set up; how we can make Tad's life as long as possible and as comfortable as possible from the comfort of his beautiful little house and garden.

Last night my dearest friend John and his partner came down to spend the night and keep me company. They slept on the new, navy blue, sofa-bed I bought Tad for his birthday. Astra slept with me, keeping Tad's place warm for him.

Until he can come back home.