Five Days (and counting) of Intubation
A week of facing some of the biggest difficulties yet.
Within hours of sharing that though Michael’s situation was bad, it was not getting any better or worse, things changed dramatically. I’d written that some of the scariest things seemed to have resolved, like the coughing up of blood. But throughout the night after that last post went out, Michael once again began to violently cough up fluid with blood in it.
We were all hoping the sort of stasis Michael had been in meant everything they were giving him just needed that time to work, and the corner, when it finally turned, was going to be toward moving out of the ICU and into the regular ward and then home. Instead, Monday morning became a minute by minute escalation of things going from bad to worse.
By the time I got there for the visiting hour at noon, it had already been established that the planned Bronchoscopy and Lung Biopsy needed to happen as quickly as possible, that day in fact. Also, because his condition continued to deteriorate, they could no longer do it under the sort of twilight anesthesia one gets during an colonoscopy or endoscopy. It had to be full intubation — the insertion of a breathing tube down his trachea and then connection to a mechanical ventilator (detailed description here, don’t click if squeamish). We could say no, but at the rate he was going, the need for intubation just to stay alive would likely only be a day or two away.
They said they’d begin prepping him immediately and that I had about an hour where I’d still be able to hear his voice and interact with him before they’d put him under sedation and intubate him. We were warned it may end up being a permanent situation, that once Michael has been intubated, he may continue to decline to the point where they cannot extubate (remove the breathing tube) as his muscles may weaken from disuse.
I immediately got on the phone to get our sons to Princess Margaret as quickly as possible. I pleaded for an extension of the visiting hour and the limit of visitors so that the four of us could be together while Michael was still aware of us, and both were tentatively granted. During the next hour my panic only raised as a series of increasingly traumatic things happened with Michael, including the unexpected ejection of the arterial IV in his hand which measures his blood pressure, causing what can only be described as a horror film special effect of blood spraying all over the bed. Due to the many people it took to stop that and the other team needed to place a new arterial IV in his foot, when the boys arrived we only got five precious minutes to hear Michael tell us how he loves each of us and for us to tell him to be brave and strong, to come back to us, to feel our love with every beat of your heart.
As we were ushered out of the room, the last thing I heard from Michael was laughter, as he joked to the nurse about what a baby he is when it comes to needles. I myself have to laugh when I think about that. When you take into consideration the number of times Michael has bravely been poked, prodded, stabbed, sampled, and cut wide open this year, baby is the very last word I’d use to describe him.
Hours later we were able to return to his room, to a fully unconscious Michael, rhythmically breathing with respirator, alarms constantly beeping, staff rushing in and out, but me holding firm to his hand and reminding him of all the people praying for him and sending their love. That night was the worst night of this whole year. I didn’t stop crying and shaking and praying until the sun came up. Unbeknownst to me, though Michael was sedated, he was also having the worst night of this year, when it was quickly clear that he was going to need additional support and treatment because his lungs were in such bad shape.
I took so many notes this week as test results have rolled in, unfortunately excluding several of the “easier” hard things we might have been dealing with, leaving us with the far more challenging possibilities due to process of elimination. I’ve had to speak on Michael’s behalf and agree to move forward with a few treatments which might cause permanent damage and death or might extend the time he needs for the other treatments to work. I’ve journaled extensively to capture as much as I could, and messaged Michael’s four siblings and parents several times a day with often very graphic descriptions of the horrors each new day has slapped us with. I witnessed another death in the ICU, this time Michael’s neighbor, and the deep, visceral grief of the patient’s family, sounds which still echo in my head each night right as I try to fall asleep.
It is all so much, made worse by not being able to discuss any of it with my beloved himself.
Discuss it, both to see what my beloved has to say about it and what he would want me to do, and also just because he’s my Person with-a-capital-P, the one I can lean in together through life’s scariest things. And this is scary. There is no other word for it. To deny that is to deny how much I love and adore my amazing husband, this man I have spent 31 years of this beautiful life with. But because I love Michael, I go back again and again, gathering up courage even while completely terrified, to hold his hand, stroke his head, sing him good songs terribly in a very wobbly voice, and pray that the next corner we turn has no jump scare, just beauty and mercy and grace and so much more of Michael.
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