chapter 14: part 2

continued from Chapter 14: part 1

I had read that couples benefit from sharing the dying stage, and was open to talk with Hal always. But no matter what, he evaded the subject. I wasn't alone. Of the four women I spoke to after our husbands had died, each one had the same experience. Our men refused to discuss the fact that they were dying.

Rachael said that Evan had been raised to treat everything in a positive manner and to him dying was a negative. When she raised the subject he'd cut her off with,

“What do you mean, I'm not dead yet. You're not supposed to think like that."

Ever since early summer, Hal's eyes contained a heartbreaking sadness. They seemed to be looking somewhere I couldn't follow; they were seeing something much deeper than I could see.

There had been many changes since Christmas. He suffered pain which was controlled at first by codeine, then later by morphine. He got frequent chills. In February he began a round of chemotherapy; daily fifteen minute injections for five days. There was to be a follow up in a month's time, but then his operation site was blocked again and instead he had palliative surgery to by-pass the site. The doctor told me he could feel a mass but didn't dare touch it.

He began a second round of chemo about four weeks later. By then, late April, he had been in almost constant discomfort, his abdomen made loud squeaking sounds and he vomited frequently, often three times a day. My objectivity was taking a nose-dive, because it was clearly the time to discontinue the debilitating and useless chemotherapy. What option did the doctors have? Hal kept insisting that he wanted to fight on and unless I stepped in, what could they do?

In May, I took him to Doctor Beam the surgeon, because I noticed a pink rash-like stain on his abdomen. It was a cyst at the surgical site and it had to be lanced and drained with follow- up at home for a week, with visiting nurses.

After that cleared, he started hiccuping violently, lasting for days, up to ten minutes at a time and ten minutes apart, requiring strong medication to stop that. He was exhausted.

continued in chapter 14; part 3