March 8, 2022

At this point… there are two, maybe two and a half days left. Do you call the day he died a day? If he died at 2 in the morning? Anyway, of course the Universe was like “I DON’T THINK SHE’S GOT ENOUGH” because hahaha, more stuff happened. And I think I worried a lot of people because I didn’t post that day until pretty late. I got a couple of “hey, uh, everything OK” messages. No, nothing was OK. But it was OK.

There are moments that the words don’t reach
There is suffering too terrible to name
You hold your child as tight as you can
And push away the unimaginable

The moments when you’re in so deep
It feels easier to just swim down
The Hamiltons move uptown
And learn to live with the unimaginable

Everything is fine(ish), I just didn’t bring my laptop to the hospital with me today and it’s easier to type these posts out on that than on my phone, the typo factory. Then I had to get some yarn started dyeing, and to do that I decided to carry everything over here to the house, so I could dye it all tonight, and get done by about 10 PM. I’d rather get done at 10PM in my house than over in the studio. I mean, don’t get me wrong, this is not a permanent dye bar change – it’s just that I’d rather turn the dye pots off at 10 and go right to sleep and not have to shut the whole studio down for the night first. And then I also had to feed the studio cats and tortoises, and then the phone rang and it was our new Case Manager and I wound up talking to him for about 20 minutes because he had a lot of questions and had missed me in the hospital when he went to Tim’s room. NOW can I finally get to this post?!

I spend hours in the garden
I walk alone to the store
And it’s quiet uptown
I never liked the quiet before

I take the children to church on Sunday
A sign of the cross at the door
And I pray
That never used to happen before

Today’s nurse (Daniel? David?) was here yesterday and took care of Tim when he was brought in. He said it was chaos, but controlled chaos. It took a while to get Tim to stop bleeding; I knew about this yesterday, because there was a Bonus!Nurse in the elevator with us, laying across Tim’s legs to keep him from bleeding on the elevator ride. They’re still trying to figure out why that was. They have theories (perhaps something about dialysis) and they absolutley want to figure it out so it doesn’t happen again. The amount of Heparin he’s been on should not cause that much bleeding. The theory is that sometimes, dialysis nurses will keep Coumadin (a heavy duty blood thinner) in a part of the …. I am not going to be able to describe this, I’m way too tired; suffice it to say that they think Tim got an accidental dose of Coumadin yesterday during resuscitation becasue of the way his Central Line was set up for dialysis. Yes, they will be looking into this.

Tim also got a CT yesterday, will get an ultrasound sometime today, and cardiology had already been in to see him before I got there this morning.

Here’s the good news from Cardiology – Tim’s heart looks great. His chambers look great, the mitral valve is beautiful, everything with his heart is fine. They don’t see a reason to transfer him back to 77.

If I was sad it wasn’t enough to move him back to the Cardiac unit, at least I was glad it wasn’t enough to move him back to Select.

If you see him in the street
Walking by himself, talking to himself, have pity

Philip, you would like it uptown, it’s quiet uptown

He is working through the unimaginable
His hair has gone grey
He passes every day
They say he walks the length of the city

You knock me out, I fall apart

Can you imagine?
Look at where we are
Look at where we started
I know I don’t deserve you, Eliza
But hear me out
That would be enough

Mostly the issue with Tim right now is respiratory. He’s still got a bit of subcutaneous emphysema (basically, air under the skin) but that gets cycled through the body over time – and it’s not nearly as bad as it was Sunday.

Tim is pretty much 100% sedated, like he was with the intubation, and he’s back on the vent again – but didn’t have to be intubated because he had the trach already.

The heart doctor and team came in riiiiiiiiight as I was thinking “I can’t feel my arms any more, guess I’ll leave” (it was unbelievably frigid in the room – my teeth were chattering about the last hour I was in there) so I was able to talk with them for a few minutes. He said that Tim’s heart looks really good, all things considering. That from his standpoint, what he’s seen in hearts that behave like this, that the cause is external, not internal (to the heart – internal to the body but not internal to the heart… I hope that makes sense, I’m so tired!). That all of the weird unexplained symptoms – consistent high white blood cell numbers, afib, low blood pressure, all speak to him as things he sees when he sees someone is fighting an infection. But again, ID hasn’t been able to find anything. He wants to bring ID back in, and a respiratory team, and suggests Tim stays in MICU (as in, not return to Select) until we get that figured out.

In other words… a continuation of things that had been going on since he was in the Cardiac Unit. High white blood cell count. Afib. Low blood pressure. There’s an infection… somewhere. BUT WHERE? For the love of god, they’ve looked EVERYWHERE. It’s like his body is fighting off something none of the rest of us can see.

If I could spare his life
If I could trade his life for mine
He’d be standing here right now
And you would smile and that would be enough

I don’t pretend to know
The challenges we’re facing
I know there’s no replacing what we’ve lost
And you need time
But I’m not afraid
I know who I married
Just let me stay here by your side
That would be enough

There may be a slight chance that they move him in the next 24-48 hours to the 11th floor, which is another MICU wing that they needed but couldn’t fit on this floor because this hospital is older than dirt. But for the time being, Tim will stay here.

If you see him in the street
Walking by her side, talking by her side, have pity

Eliza, do you like it uptown? It’s quiet uptown

He is trying to do the unimaginable

See them walking in the park, long after dark
Taking in the sights of the city
Look around, look around, Eliza
They are tryna do the unimaginable

I’ll go in tomorrow, of course, even if he’s sedated like he is, but I don’t know how long I’ll stay – on the drive home today my speedometer stopped working (or for all I know it stopped working sometime on the drive in this morning… I didn’t notice it until I was slowing down for a school zone this afternoon, looked down at it and it read “zero” but I was definitely moving, so…..). Anyway. If I have to drive around tomorrow and find a place or something, I’ll need to do that. Auto Mechanic Google (cousin of Doctor Google) tells me it’s one of four things, and three of them are an easy fix as long as the place I go has the part.

Because I really needed One. More. Thing. My fucking CAR? COME ON!

Somebody on Facebook was like, ooo, gross, don’t you ever dust the inside of your car? No. No I do not. But thank you for adding that to my list of things I’m now going to feel like absolute shit for not doing.

There are moments that the words don’t reach
There’s a grace too powerful to name
We push away what we can never understand
We push away the unimaginable

Let’s see… anything else? Probably, but my brain is fried and I can’t think of what else I wanted to say. I think the rest of the night is me, the couch, and my dumb farming game on my phone (I call it dumb but really I love it, especially since my neighborhood is full of real life friends).

The room is… tiny, and not very inviting. I have a folding chair to sit in but I have to get up and fold it and stash it against the wall if anyone comes in to check on Tim. I left my laptop at home today on purpose, since I didn’t know what was going to happen as far as moving around, and my shoulder still kind of hurt from carrying it yesterday AND also I have two bags of his stuff from Select to cart around, so… anyway, I most likely won’t be bringing my laptop with me while we’re in this room, which means I’ll be posting later in the day, after I get home. Just fair warning since I’ve been pretty regular about my posting times and this is going to muck everything up.

I guess that’s it for right now, y’all. xoxo

Here’s what I didn’t say that day.

Every day up until this, even on days when he was fully sedated and I knew he didn’t know I was there, I’d say hello when I walked in. “Hey, bud, how was your night?” I would ask, and tell him a little bit about my night. And every day when I left, I’d say “OK, I’m heading out, no big parties tonight, OK? I’ll be back tomorrow and we’ll get through another day together, ok? I love you. I know you love me.” I said this every day, even when I thought he couldn’t hear me. I said this every day, even when I thought he wouldn’t know I was there or not. I said this every day, even when I wondered, we have so many problems… does he? Does he love me?

This day, I got as far as “Hey, bud, how was….” and I stopped. His body was there. His eyes were half open. I knew he was sedated, so I knew not to expect a reaction, but… this was even less than “not a reaction.” This was as if he was gone. It felt like the room was empty. Like his body was empty. I don’t really know how to explain it easily, but if you’ve been in a room with someone like that, you’ll know what I’m trying to say. The body shaped like Tim that was in that bed, that I was looking at, wasn’t Tim. Whatever held him together, whatever kept his going, made his mind so inquisitive and so able to fix things, whatever made him obsess about some things and ignore others, whatever made him love doing things for people but irritated when someone would ask for help… all of that was gone.

I didn’t tell him I loved him when I left that day. For the first time, I didn’t feel like there was a point. He was gone.

 They are standing in the garden
Alexander by Eliza’s side
She takes his hand
It’s quiet uptown

Forgiveness, can you imagine?
Forgiveness, can you imagine?

If you see him in the street
Walking by her side, talking by her side, have pity
They are going through the unimaginable

Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda
It’s Quiet Uptown