The Day He Nearly Died

“Come join us! So glad you made it,” I called to my husband as he got out of his Ford Expedition.

We were playing tennis with friends on a Seattle afternoon in mid-July, soaking up the sun. We were mostly beginners and enjoying just trying to keep the ball in play. Occasionally, someone would make an excellent shot, followed by jubilation.

I wasn’t sure he would come to play with us because he was getting chemotherapy every other week. Despite the toll on his body, he was remarkably active. My husband was tired, nauseated, and pale as a ghost, but still played tennis a few times per week. We joked that he needed to be on chemotherapy so that we could keep up with him.

When his car appeared, I was excited and proud of how he was managing to stay active through his chemotherapy. He was a model of strength, courage, and good humor. I could not have gone through this with the same grace.

We had hit back and forth for a few minutes when he abruptly stopped playing. He stood still for a moment, then turned around, took a few steps, and sat down. 

Never had I seen him stop playing a sport to rest. This was out of character for him even now when his body was the weakest.

He was wearing a wide-brim hat for sun protection, which shaded his face. Already pale from the months of chemotherapy, it was hard to make out a change in his face color from the other side of the court. But when I came up to him, I could see that his pale color had changed to an alabaster white.

“I just need a moment,” he said weakly. I’d never seen him sit down during exercise. It was a hot day, and he was on chemotherapy. Could this be normal? Why was his color so off?

Now, my memory goes black until an hour later. We are sitting at home discussing what to do. Should he rest? Should we take him in to the emergency room? He felt weak and the swelling in his arm and neck was worse.

He had complained about this before. A few times. For several months, he had intermittent chest pain where the portacath was inserted that allowed the nurses to deliver chemotherapy directly into large veins in his chest.

The swelling was much worse now and he had almost blacked out on the tennis court. I remember that he was calling the nurse line to ask for advice. I decided that he needed to go to the emergency room, but somehow it took us time to reach this decision. What did the nurse say? Did she consult with the on-call doctor? What do they think is wrong?

Now things are a bit black again. He went to the emergency room, but I can’t recall if he drove himself or if I drove him. Our girls were quite young and scared to stay home alone. I don’t recall calling a friend to explain what was happening, but suddenly she was there to pick up our daughters. No questions asked. 

The next thing I remember was sitting in his hospital room. There was a very large blood clot and they needed to take him urgently for an emergency procedure to remove it. I wanted to see the interventional radiologist to understand what was happening, but we were in the height of the pandemic. No relatives were allowed in the radiology suite.

The orderlies came to take him downstairs for the procedure. I hardly had time to say goodbye. In that moment, I realized that I might never see him again. The light of my world could be extinguished right before my eyes. And there was nothing that I could do about it.

Isn’t this pain the price of love? To love deeply is to leave oneself open to being hurt in a thousand, painful ways. But isn’t that also life? To take chances, to dream, to feel, to love deeply, to live as if there is no tomorrow. Yet eventually we must all pay the price for a deep love.

I sat in his hospital room in silence in the dark, watching my cell phone as I waited for the call from the doctor that would mark the end of his procedure. Normally, the hospital was a comfortable and exhilarating place for me where I could apply my knowledge of medicine to make people’s lives better. Today, the hospital was cold and unwelcome.

The minutes passed and I tried not to look at the clock. I closed my eyes but couldn’t sleep. I took turns staring at different objects. Everything had happened so fast, and I was in such shock that I couldn’t call friends or family to help. I could hardly speak.

Suddenly, a stretcher was being pushed into the room. It was my love.

HE. WAS. ALIVE. He hadn’t woken up sufficiently from the anesthesia, but I could hear him breathing and see him with my own eyes. I grasped his hand and was grateful for the warmth of his skin.

“What happened?” I asked the person with him hoping it was a nurse who might have information to convey about the procedure. No such luck. They didn’t know anything.

I hadn’t received a phone call from the doctor so didn’t know if the operation had been completely successful.  Later, I found the voicemail from the doctor’s call, which also didn’t report any details. I would have to wait until the morning.

Every nerve in my body was fried. I stayed the night with him in the hospital. Not sure where those hours went or if I slept or stared at the ceiling. I could hear him breathing and his nurses coming in and out of the room, which was more than enough for me. Soon the morning light was coming into the room, and he was awake.

“Hi sweetheart,” he said with eyes filled with love. He never used that nickname for me, so this was a surprise. His voice broke a little when he said it and he looked paler and weaker than I had ever seen him. I went over to him, held his hand in mine and kissed it. He squeezed my hand several times and let go. Both of us had tears in our eyes.

What could I say? My gratitude for having more time with him couldn’t be put into words. I was grateful for our time together, the beautiful children we were raising, everything that he did for them as a father, and his unconditional love and support for me. I took his hand in mine again. I wanted to feel its size, strength, and warmth.

“You were lucky,” the radiologist said on his way in the door. Without further introduction, he picked up a marker and went over to the dry erase board to begin drawing pictures of the procedure and the findings. The procedure had been quite difficult, he explained. It had taken more than 3 hours to extract the blood clots.

First, a clot had formed in his portacath, which expanded slowly over time and eventually clotted off veins in his neck and the largest vein in his chest that returns to the heart.

The picture he drew on the board didn’t leave much to the imagination. A big squiggly line represented the clot starting at his left shoulder, traversing his chest, and ending up inches away from his heart. As my husband had swelling in his arm for several weeks, this had been ongoing for possibly as long as a month. He could have died from the clot.

I couldn’t think or even make the simplest of connections. My husband and the father of our young children had nearly died. We needed him desperately for so many more years.  And then I felt anger bubble up into my throat.

He had been doing FINE on chemo, I screamed silently. It never occurred to me that he might die because of the device they implanted in him to deliver the chemo. My fears had been concentrated on him dying from his cancer or COVID-19 as his immune system was suppressed by the chemotherapy.

There was nothing left that I could count on. The security of my husband – my rock – had nearly been taken from me by a rare complication that hadn’t even been on my radar.

This day marked the point when my hope evaporated and all I could feel was fear. It was as if my grief had magnified itself a thousand times.