My Husband Kept His Chin Up

Even when his doc said, “You’ll need to take this pill for the rest of your life” and the prescription bottle read: NO REFILLS

(This story was originally published on Medium)

It’s kind of hard to stay upbeat when your spouse suffers from a chronic disease. But I’m a darn stubborn Pollyanna if there ever was one. And my late husband Bob just refused to let life knock him down.

He had COPD, but he figured out a way to ski and bike the mountains in Colorado using a backpack with an oxygen supply. Bob would often stop to rest and catch his breath. But he’d pretend he was merely taking time to enjoy the spectacular views. “Look at that!” he’d say, pointing. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

He was my hero.

One day, Bob’s doc told him there was a pill he’d need to take for the rest of his life. When Bob got the prescription filled, it unnerved him only a smidgen that the prescription bottle read, “NO REFILLS.”

Hey, he was cool with that. He just shrugged his shoulders and winked at me.

The first time Bob landed in the hospital with a COPD exacerbation, he came out of the coma, looked up at me, blinked a few times, and asked, “What happened?”

“I couldn’t wake you up this morning.”

Bob knew what that meant. His physician had informed him what would happen in COPD’s final stages.

But he just grinned at me. “You know I’m not a morning person.”

Being hospitalized has both a downside and an upside

The downside of being in the hospital is that they poke you, prod you, hook you up to all sorts of weird machines, and do nasty things to you that hurt either your body or your modesty.

The upside to all of this is that the doctors often give you a sedative, so when you wake up, you can’t really remember what a bad time you had.

Ever the stoic, Bob endured his numerous hospitalizations with equanimity. Once, when he came out from under a sedative, he asked me several times where he was and what had happened. I kept giving him shorter and less technical answers.

Instead of telling him for the third time in a row that he woke up in the night with a fever of 103 and a heart rate of 188, I told him, “You were really hot in bed last night.”

You should have seen the big smile that came over Bob’s face when I said that.

Bob had a number of tubes coming out of or going into various orifices in his body. But he didn’t seem to realize it at first. He threw off the sheet and started to swing his feet off the hospital bed. I asked, “Honey, what are you doing?”

He said he was headed for the john. His eyes got big when I explained he had a catheter that would take care of that for him.

Then he shrugged, lay back down and said, “Well, I guess that counts out winning my next pissing contest.”

I got lost. In more ways than one.

When Bob was resting comfortably, I went to go get something to eat at the hospital cafeteria. I got lost on the way back. After endlessly walking the halls of WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, I finally found an exit that took me outside. I figured that way I could go back inside the hospital the way I originally came, retrace my steps, and find my husband again.

A security guard noticed me blankly looking around myself. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“Yes,” I told him. “I actually don’t know where I am.”

For a minute there, I think he thought I might be an escapee from the psych floor.

But he was very nice to me. He drove me around to the ER entrance, where I found my way back to the room where I’d left my husband. The only problem was, Bob wasn’t there.

From ER to Critical Care Unit

Since I’m a Pollyanna, I reassured myself they had moved Bob somewhere better. And they had. From the ER to the Critical Care Unit.

Bob was in a weakened state. But the food staff must have had full confidence in him. The beef in the stroganoff they sent him for his dinner that night required the jaw strength of an alligator to chew.

I’ve told these stories many times to others, with Bob’s blessing. Look on the bright side? Bob was a master at it. He had the best attitude and knew how to laugh at himself.

One day, Bob got up his courage and asked the hospice doctor, “How long would you say I’ve got left, Doc?”

The doctor had been trained how to answer this question. Very cautiously, very carefully, he informed Bob that his time left on this earth would be measured in weeks and months — not years.

Bob looked at me and said with great confidence, “Honey, I’ve got 11 months and three weeks left!”

Bob passed away in 2009.

His last words to me were, “I don’t want to leave you.”

I remained a widow — and a Pollyanna — for the 10 years that followed.

People have always said I’m as sweet as peach cobbler. But during those 10 years, I furiously wrote cozy mysteries about the paranormal: angels, ghosts, and demons.

Spend a minute in my head, it’ll freak you right out.

I remarried in 2019 at the ripe “young” age of 71. Now if that doesn’t describe a Pollyanna, I don’t know what does!