Once in awhile I suddenly think about certain things that happened last year.
Awful experiences that Gary went through, but that I can't write about explicitly. It's just too painful to share and I doubt if I would ever be able to speak about all that occurred when there was no one present but Gary and me.
I don't understand why these events happened, but I just know that they should not have, so I tried anything and everything so that the episodes we both suffered through did not happen again. I became militant about giving Gary his pills at exactly the right time. I didn't consult the neurologist about changing doses, I reread all the side effects and contraindications of each of the 6 drugs he took for Parkinson's and the 5 others he took because of the cancer. I juggled the pills' dosages and cut them by half or more. I knew that Gary wasn't able to digest food properly anymore, so I knew it affected the absorption of the drugs in the gut.
I think some of seizures he had were due to unregulated blood sugar too. Having pancreatic cancer means you are thrown into diabetes because the pancreas normally controls insulin secretion but his no longer did its job.
Gary would black out with his eyes fixed and staring and just collapse or crumple to the ground. I will admit that whenever this happened, I was scared shitless because I was so not prepared for this to happen.
He fell in a parking lot, ruining his glasses, his face and head bloodied and bruised in the process. At first he wanted to get the lenses replaced, but gave up as the weeks went by when he surmised he wouldn't need them much longer.
He fell in the trailer in Mesa. When he came to, and since I could not hope to lift him, I had him crawl on all fours to the safety of the bed.
He fell in the hallway of the house after we moved here. He fell one day on the concrete front entrance of the house, hitting the rough stucco wall on the way down with his arm and hand because he tried to catch himself. That time he did remember walking toward the front door and then regaining consciousness flat on the ground, looking up at the ceiling of the covered entrance of our house.
There was never advance warning to these spells, but I did start to recognize them as they were beginning to happen. I could talk or shout at Gary and he could hear me he said, but he could not react or respond.
He fell into the closet in our bathroom, luckily landing on his back on the carpeted floor, but only after he hit the doors and knocked them off their tracks. I did manage to grab his arm and hold onto him a few times to break his fall and avoid him hitting anything sharp.
We were also always aware that Gary could bleed to death very quickly so he was vigilant about watching for blood in the toilet. After watching him throw up nearly a gallon of blood(they measured it) in the ER in Redlands, Gary was literally scared to death about this. He told me whenever he saw blood, because it meant going in for transfusions ASAP.
Thank God he never fell in the shower because he sat on the bench. Whenever he was in the bathroom for any reason, I asked him constantly if he was ok and it became the norm to watch him at all times while in there. Gary had to have my help to get into a sitting position from the bed, so I always waited for him to finish in the bathroom and help him back to bed. Similar to how a husband sees everything when his wife delivers a baby, I saw everything about Gary's body those last few months of his life. We were beyond caring about modesty.
I am reminded of these memories when I see gouges in the wall and door frames from where his walker hit them. After I got back from Sioux Falls (without the walker) I removed every hideous bit of medical aid equipment we had for him. I hated the sight of them. I got rid of the tape that he and I taped his tubes to his skin with after cleaning and feedings. I threw out anything that had come from a hospital. I donated the scratched eye glasses that he wore to watch TV with, even though he could not see well through them.
Dying this way is soooo ugly. I despise what became of my vibrant, handsome, funny Gary. Cancer, and the deadly chemo side effects because of the cancer, stole his life from both of us long before he died.
Seeing the things I saw and living with someone who went through this is why I don't think I could do this caregiving gig ever again. Neither of us asked for the job, and you do it for your dear one of course, but given the choice of doing it all over again for someone else or as a career-- forget it.
I write about this without going too much detail because these scenes are burned in my mind forever. No one else but me experienced this and it was not good.
Last Sunday as I vacuumed and saw those marks on the wall again, the visions came flooding back into my head. I was suddenly struck with the revelation that there was NO WAY that Gary could have lived longer in the condition that he was in.
NO WAY!! Neither of us could even have willed him to live longer.
Gary's condition became the opposite of someone with Alzheimer's. He had the same mind as ever but he was trapped in a body that was disintegrating out from underneath him. It actually helps me to know this as fact. Neither of us would have wanted to go on as we were. It was an honor to take care of Gary and be his only advocate. I loved caring for him and having him need me. He was so sweet a patient, but it was very hard to do the painful things I had to do TO him in the name of caring for him.
It was time. That's all.
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