The past week has been one of the roughest I've ever endured. While I'm glad it's over I'm just now dealing with the flood of emotions I'm now drowning in.
Being married to a type 1 diabetic, I'm usually very careful and proactive about his lifestyle and diet choices, trying to keep him (and our whole family) healthy and happy. Sometimes, things just slip out of your hands.
It started last Sunday as a stomach ache. I've been with my husband for five years and I've never seen the guy puke, so this in itself was alarming. We decided it must be some kind of bug and vowed to stay hydrated and rested. I went out to run errands and came home to find him in worse condition. I checked his temperature, which was fine, and implored him to drink more water as he was looking parched and dehydrated. He claimed every time he tried to drink, everything came back up. He told me he just wanted to go to sleep and hopefully wake up to a better day. I woke up in the middle of the night to his shallow breathing, when I asked him what was going on he was confused and foggy. Scared to death and half awake, I rushed him to the hospital where they told me he was in fact experiencing diabetic ketoacidosis. In layman's terms, his body was experiencing such a high blood sugar (he wasn't regulating his insulin because he assumed not eating anything would lead to a low) that it was creating dangerous ketones in his body and robbing him of all fluids and electrolytes.
I spent the night and morning in the ICU with him, watching him try to breathe, listening to him try to talk and ask the same questions over and over and basically just being a zombie. I wasn't processing anything, my brain was completely shut off and just functioning on an as needed basis; responding to nurses questions, providing backstory and saying "no thank you" to all coffee offers. Around 8am I realized I'd have to be to work soon, and so would he. I couldn't think of anyone to call, his parents were close but probably sleeping. All of my friends are too far, my family is upstate, I have no one I'm close to here to come help me. I sent a text to my sister, "mikes in the ICU, not sure what to do, he can't talk yet". She called me, the responsible big sister she is and came up with a plan to take the train in and stay at the hospital while I took care of some work things and went home to pick up some things.
Days went by, I watched him improve. My mom came to stay with me and help stay with him while I worked. I just kept on trucking. I slept when I got home. I ate when food was around, I showered when someone told me to. The whole week felt like a surreal television show or newspaper article about someone else. I didn't have time to get upset or angry or anything other than determined to make everything normal again.
Now he's home. He's healthy. He's a little too thin, but that will pass. He's talking normally and laughing and trying to be comforting. Now I have no choice but to deal with everything coming up. This isn't his first brush with death and every time it happens I'm left with these horrifying images of his face turning blue, his eyes rolling in back of his head or blood streaming from his mouth. I'm forced to think of things like "where will we have the funeral?" and "where will i move once he's gone?" that make me immediately burst into uncontrollable tears and blubbering. After fear and sadness I'm hit in the face with anger. I'm so enraged that he could do this to me. Why isn't he more careful with his health? Doesn't he know that it's not just him anymore? How can we ever have kids when he's still so nonchalant about his disease?
I'm trying to control my thoughts. I'm trying to concentrate on what is happening now and not what might have been. I'm meditating to calm. I'm journaling to push out the negativity. I'm counting my graces to remain positive. Everything will be okay.
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