From 2009-2010, my wife had chemotherapy every week to treat follicular lymphoma.
At first, I drove her to her sessions and sat with her for 4 hours as she received chemo. We’d chat a bit until they got her started. Then I’d read or do work on my computer, while she mostly dozed from the mixture of sedatives and chemicals she received via a chest port.
After a few sessions, she told me that she was fine with me dropping her off and picking her up when the session ended. So for the rest of her sessions, unless she was meeting with her doctor to review results or have a procedure, I would drop her off and pick her up later in the afternoon.
Once we’d both gotten used to it, the process was uneventful and routine.
Eighteen months later she was cancer free.
9 years later, in 2018, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and had surgery to remove an entire lobe of her lung. Then she needed chemotherapy to treat the cancer that had spread elsewhere.
We (or maybe just I) assumed it would be similar to her previous chemo. It was not.
This chemo center was much bigger. There were dozens of patients and staff. It took over 3 hours of waiting before they even started an IV drip in her port! Then there was another 2 hours waiting for the chemo drugs to be “delivered to the floor” and setup for her. Then they gave her a massive dose of IV Benadryl to preemptively counter the chemo side effects. We were told the chemo itself would be another 8 hours once it started.
By this time, 5 hours in with another 8 to go, my wife said, “You can go home. I’ll call you when it’s time to pick me up. I’m going to go to sleep anyway.”
I was planning to stay for the entire session, but since she was already nodding off from the Benadryl, I kissed her goodbye and drove 20 miles home.
An hour later, she called and said “Come get me, there was a problem. I’ll explain when you get here.”
When I returned, I learned that shortly after I left they began chemo. Almost immediately she had a severe reaction – she couldn’t breathe, her back seized up and her heart began racing. She had to ring the bell for the nurse who made an emergency call to the oncologist. He rushed over, gave her “reversal drugs” to counteract the reaction and stayed at her side until she was able to breathe, the seizures subsided and she was in a stable condition.
When I arrived, the doctor told me my wife handled it really well. He said that she was in tremendous agony at the time, but just looked at him and said “Call my husband.”
A few months later my wife was in the late stages of dying at the hospice center. One morning before I had arrived,she woke up in confusion and panic as the nurse was administering meds. She was afraid. She was in pain. She was confused and disoriented. She was dying.
She looked at the nurse and said, “Call my husband”.
“Call my husband.”
There is nothing anyone has ever said about me, nor any compliment I ever received, that I hold onto so tightly.
I wish I had been present both times when she needed me. But I wasn’t.
But I had been there for my wife nearly every day for 29 years. She knew it. I know it.
And that’s why, when she needed me the most, she asked for me.
And I came for her.