No More Hospitals

My husband was an anesthesiologist. If there was one thing he understood it was hospital care. What mostly goes right. What sometimes goes very wrong.

I’ve written before about the two hospitalizations we had during the waning days of COVID. The ultimate loss of control. No control over your environment. No control of your body. Little control over what happens there.

Pretty clear evidence that people with Alzheimer’s undergoing general anesthesia take a brain hit. That was his field. He knew that data. Plus, they tried to make me leave him there alone when they were understaffed and he was confused and afraid.

Yes, it sucked so bad.

What I do remember clearly is that he said “No more hospitals” on the way home from the second hospitalization that occurred within a month of the previous one.

He had enough and

though he was on the downhill side of moderate dementia, he knew me and he effectively got his wishes across to me.

Now there are some that would say he wasn’t in his right mind, or he was just exhausted and he might not mean it. I knew. The way you know when your best friend is looking right at you with determination written on their face. Not asking. Telling you.

Was it hard when he continued to decline and I was so loaded with anticipatory grief that I clung to having him with me for another month, another week? Was I afraid that if I lost him, I would not survive it? Like those couples you sometimes hear about where one dies soon after the other?

God yes. When he got what I knew was likely a urinary tract infection I was nearly paralyzed by those things. It was the hardest thing I ever did.

He didn’t want to have a medicalized death. I didn’t want that for him either. And still I had to talk myself out of calling 911.

No more hospitals. It’s going to be the title of my memoir.