On Wednesday March 8, 2006, ten years go today, Karen, my partner, was in surgery when I arrived at the hospital at almost 6:30 PM. I was happy that she was finally having the surgery because she had been in the hospital for three weeks. I thought, “Now we’ll finally know what’s wrong and we can deal with it.”
I prepared myself for what I thought would be the worst-case scenario. The doctors thought Karen had ovarian cancer because she had a large mass in her lower abdominal area, which seemed to be growing upward from the ovaries. They planned to remove the mass and do a complete hysterectomy. Every blood test indicated that she had cancer. Since the mass was nearly twenty-seven centimeters, I knew the chances of her being in the advanced stages and not having longer than a year to live were far greater than her being able to recover fully. But when the surgeon walked into the waiting room, he told me what I never expected to hear: that Karen was dying, not of ovarian cancer as we thought, but of something so unimaginable that I still have a difficult time comprehending not just how it happened, but how it could have gone on as long as it did.
When he told me he had “very bad news”, my mind processed, in less than a second, what I expected to hear: that Karen had ovarian cancer, that she was in the advanced stages and had perhaps six months to a year to live. But that’s not what the surgeon told me. He started talking about her small intestines and that at some point in time, and they could never know exactly when, the blood stopped flowing to her small intestines. As a result, her small intestines literally died, decayed and rotted inside her body and the mass was almost gangrene-like in appearance. He said her body had built a wall around the mass to protect itself. When he made the incision, he said the stench in the operating room was unbelievable. He said the body could not survive without the small intestines, and he didn’t know how she survived the three weeks she had been in the hospital. I knew from the way he was talking that Karen didn’t have long to live. I just didn’t know she had less than forty-eight hours.
I remember leaving the hospital and walking around in circles trying to come to terms with the reality that Karen was going to die, not in months but in days. I called my sister. I’m not sure why I had to call her. I just knew I had to tell her before I could tell anyone else. I don’t remember exactly what I said to my sister other than that Karen was dying and what was wrong with her. I do remember that my sister said:
“I’m sure you’ll get through this”
After I finished talking with my sister, I sat down on the curb and cried. All I thought at that moment was how easy it was for my sister to tell me I would get through this. She wasn’t losing her husband. I was losing my partner. The woman to whom I had made a commitment and with whom I had planned to share the rest of my life. How quickly those plans ended. Then I called Karen’s mother and told her. She was, of course, shocked by the news. I also called a neighbor, Lori, and asked if she could give me a ride home from the hospital. I didn’t have a car and just couldn’t imagine riding home on the bus that night. I didn’t tell Lori anything when I called her.
I waited until she picked me up and at some point said, “It’s not good and it’s not what I expected.”
I didn’t say anything else during the ride home. I know I told her exactly what was happening. I think I may have told her after we got out of her car. I walked in the apartment and my mother asked how Karen was.
“Karen is not coming home again. Karen is going to die.”
My mother is hard of hearing. I usually have to repeat myself. But this time she heard what I said. Then I went into the bedroom Karen and I shared, knowing she would never be there again, looked up at the ceiling, and, with tears spilling from my eyes, asked the God I believe in, “Do you really have to do this? Take them both now? Who else are you going to take? My mother? The other animals? Are you going to take everything from me?”
My oldest dog, Travis, who had been with me for thirteen years, had been having problems standing up and walking. I knew the time was drawing near when I would have to make the decision I didn’t want to make. Karen had asked me to do whatever I could to keep Travis comfortable until she could come home and say goodbye to him. We were going to take him to the veterinarian and have him put to sleep. But she wasn’t going to get the chance to see him one last time, and I was going to lose them both.
I sat in front of my computer and spoke to someone I had never really talked with until that moment: Karen’s father. He had passed away years earlier. I met him once when I lived in Massachusetts. “I know you will be with her.” I said as the tears fell once again. “I know she won’t be alone and you will take her hand.”
I also called Karen’s cousin Kathy, whom I had known long before I ever met Karen, and her mother, Karen’s aunt Edna, to tell them that Karen was dying. I didn’t get much sleep that Wednesday night.
Moderately liberal, liberally moderate, American flag waving Democrat! Bachelor of Arts in History with concentration in Early American History and Abraham Lincoln
Graduate student pursuing a Master of Arts Degree online in American History at Southern New Hampshire University