Tuesday, July 12th 2022

I definitely have a lot of mixed emotions, thoughts, and feelings. But, to be fair, we all do. It’s just the situation and the timing that changes for each of us based on what is put in front of us at any given time. Sometimes when they're out of pita bread* at the store and I have to go somewhere else it feels like the world is ending.
 
When I open my computer there is always a photo of Cory as my background/ lock screen. They cycle though all the photos that my computer recognizes as his face, that’s just what I wanted when I took on my current job. I wanted that to be what I saw to remind me of what I have and who I work for. Most of the time, it gives me great joy, and I smile at the photo and the memory that’s attached. Other times, like today, my stomach just drops and I am suddenly just sad and nostalgic.
 
Cory was admitted into the hospital again today. Again. Yes. Again. Again and again. It’s like that episode of Buffy where they can’t leave the house and they just live there infinitely until they find the solution.
 
Cory left the hospital exactly three weeks ago today. He got discharged, he came home. But his arm was sore, because he got a pneumonia shot and that was that. But then it was still sore, and then it was his neck, and then his side. And that was fine, he was probably just sleeping weird and the coughing was from the tube down his throat so long. They even did that awful test last week where they put the camera down your nose and they just said, “yea, your throat is still swollen”. So that was that. Except it wasn’t, because it’s never just nothing.
 
The pain in his shoulder got worse and worse, and over the weekend he got a fever that topped at 101.7. But that’s not too bad, and the on-call doctor was really reassuring when he told me that Cory could or couldn’t go to the ER, that he couldn’t tell really and just, “I don’t know”. But Cory’s fever got lower over Saturday night and by Sunday night it was around 100, and by Monday it was down to 99. So, maybe just a little bug that he was having a hard time recovering from. Sure, fine.
 
But then, last night he couldn’t sleep. The cough was so bad, and the pain was too bad. He called and made an appointment to see a doctor that was part of his primary care physician group. Okay, cool. Friday, we’ll talk to them then. They called back about 10 minutes later. Because of his recent stay and to be totally safe, we should go to the ER.
 
I met with my therapist anyways, because I had the appointment, and I was planning on it just being short. She told me that instead of catastrophizing the situation, I should be hopeful and not assume the worst would happen even though my brain is thinking that it will because history has shown me that it has. So, in the ER, Cory and I talked about dinner for tonight and plans for tomorrow. I mean, we were there from 3:23pm until 11:30pm when I left, we had time to kill!
 
I thought this would be the time that showed me that good can still happen and the worst won’t always happen, but it didn’t this time. Again. But I can’t let it dictate my life. I’m working on all of this, TBD on how that’s going.

Based on Cory’s CT and his labs (high white blood count and a cavity in his left lung), he has a staph infection from the intubation that got pulled four weeks ago. It’s been in him this whole time. Cultures won’t come back for a couple days, but based on everything they’ve gathered, it’s what it is (walks like a duck and quacks like a duck was the professional diagnosis). He is now on antibiotics and will be in the hospital for a few days while they try to kill the bacteria and stop its spread. There will be scarring in his lung from this, but because his lungs are healthy, it shouldn’t affect anything too much. It will just scar and the rest of his lungs will pick up the slack. This isn’t deadly yet, it’s just annoying and frustrating. But it is also time consuming, and he was in so much pain by the time I left that they gave him morphine (they didn't even give him that after surgery, that's how painful it is). I hope that’s all this is.
 
The important things are that he made the call to get it looked at, he knew something was wrong and wanted to fix it, and that our lives are very different than what they were a year and a half ago. He told us all "I don't want to die, no matter what". And this is exactly what this means. Something seems off? We go in again. And we have survived, we have grown as a team together, and tonight before I left, I told him that although this isn’t our perfect life, I know that we are the right people for each other that are growing together regardless of what’s been thrown in our corner. I’m so proud of him for wanting to stay alive and to do whatever it takes to be here with all of us, and that even though it sucks, it’s what needs to be done. Even though EVERYONE (at the hospital) looks at us like we’re just young people who don’t know what we’re talking about. I actually think that the doctor that saw us was baffled at all the info we just have in our brains about heart failure and his time frames. That all of the things are serious. And when he said, “it’s probably just a muscle spasm but we have to rule things out” we were like, well. Okay. Best case scenario. But when he brought us to that little room and said we did the right thing by coming in, it was validation that no one can minimalize our worries just because of how we look or how old we are. We actually are intelligent people (smartest man and smartest woman alive right here!)
 
When I think about that day a year and a half ago when they said “advanced heart failure” I think about how sad we were, not even knowing what this all would actually mean. I think about us thinking that “we can do this, we can fight” and also not really knowing what that would mean. How hard things would get with no end in sight. And how that drive alone from the hospital would just really bring home how much of our lives it has taken. (And it does not help at all that we literally just did this and it’s very fresh and hard to deal with right now). And being here, knowing that I will be spending my nights alone, and taking care of our animals and home by myself, knowing that my life will be on the backburner for another minute while we do what needs to be done. Watching my team pick up my slack while I’m gone, again. Would I do it again? Would I have been that optimistic when they said those words to us? Yes, and no.
 
Yes, I would do it all again, because I am doing it. Every time. The silent drive to the ER at St. Luke’s knowing that I had no say in how this would go, making the list of what to bring to the hospital, having my questions ready for the doctors we get next that have no idea how many questions I actually have, writing this all out while I watch bad movies and can’t sleep, letting Tessa & Fen sleep in our beds when he’s gone, making meal plans that involve only me, calling and texting everyone so they know how our bud is doing, setting my phone to have the sound all the way up just in case and also hoping every “ding!” is Cory texting me, all of it. I won’t ever stop. Would I be so optimistic? Probably not. When they "in sickness and in health" it sounds all well and good, but the optimism wavers during the hard times. It gets really freaking hard.
 
One year ago today, Cory had the defibrillator put in. One year! And dang was that awful. Emotionally, mentally, physically. But now I go into it thinking this; we do the best we can with what we have. And if our best is just “okay” then it’s just “okay” and that is okay. There is no wrong way to cope with this, there wasn’t a handbook on how to deal with heart failure in your 36year old husband during a pandemic and then you get a promotion and also the world is on fire and somehow continues to find new fires to be on fire about for apparently forever.
 
So, we deal with a lung infection. And that’s it, that’s what we do right now.
 
We are okay financially, for now. But Cory is currently working very few hours and I really never know what the next week will bring. My sister set up a new GoFundMe, if anyone is interested. It’s just been helpful to have a little safety net as stuff keeps popping up (Fen has a heart murmur/ we had a heart disease scare and that bill was fun. She is okay for now, but it is something we have to watch, and our car air compressor went and that bill was also fun). Honestly, I don’t want anyone to feel like they should, the love and support and check ins have been honestly priceless.
 
Love you all,
Sarah
 
https://gofund.me/e941d3fd

*insert like 100 things that we buy regularly that they are often out of (its not their fault, the supply chain is rough).