I realize that I’ve been going in circle for an hour, hoping that I’ll bump into something that unlocks a solution to Anne’s suffering. Maybe there’s something in the refrigerator. Maybe there’s something on the patio. Maybe it’s between the cushions in the couch. Maybe if I walk into our bedroom and sit next to her on the bed. Maybe if I hold her hand. Maybe if I don’t hold her hand. Maybe there’s something in the refrigerator.
She can’t keep down any food, and barely any liquids. I give her some pain meds and she throws them up almost immediately. Maybe if I hold her hand.
“I’m going to try to just go to sleep,” she says. “You don’t need to stay here.”
I stay there anyway, until she appears to be sleeping. Maybe if I don’t hold her hand.
I gently get off our bed and step over both of our dogs, who haven’t moved from Anne’s side of the bed since she got into it. They both look at me, and maybe I’m projecting, but I feel like there is concern in their eyes. “I’m worried, too,” I whisper. I walk through the living room. Maybe it’s between the cushions in the couch.
I try to watch TV, but I can’t pay attention. I try to look at the Internet, but I can’t pay attention. I try to read a book but I can’t pay attention. I look into our bedroom. Anne is on her side, and I stand in the doorway, making sure that I can see her breathe. Because that’s a thing I worry about when I’m not worrying about everything else. I walk out to the game room and drive my car around Los Santos, because I don’t have to pay much attention, and it’s a way to pass the time.
It’s just after midnight when Anne texts me: Water.
“Oh, good,” I think, “she can keep water down.” I set the controller down and walk back into the house.
I can hear her wailing, nearly to the point of screaming, as soon as I open the door. My stomach drops out of my body.
She’s leaning against the bed, head in one hand, the other hand holding her side.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, stupidly. I know what’s wrong.
“It hurts so much,” she gasps. “I … can’t …”
She doesn’t finish telling me what she can’t do, because what she can’t do is everything.
For the next hour, I try to console her. I try to convince her to take the pills she is convinced she will throw up. Through it all, she is crying out in pain so loudly and intensely, I half expect the police to show up at our house.
“I think I need to take you back to the emergency room,” I say.
“I can’t get up,” she says. “Will you call an ambulance?”
She’s in the most pain I have ever seen another human experience in my life, but I know that there are a finite number of ambulances, and there are people for whom one of them could be the difference between life and death.
“I need to get you eighty feet to the car,” I tell her. “Let me carry you, and we’ll get there faster.”
She tries to argue a little bit, but I pick her up and help her out of bed through it. The dogs are alert and looking at her, at me, at each other. “I’m okay,” she gasps to them.
“We’ll be right back,” I say, as we limp past them and across the house. Time does the thing it’s been doing, stretching out and compressing and it feels longer than it should take for us to get into the car. I notice that there’s fog rolling in, glowing orange from the streetlights. I drive us to the hospital through it, faster than I probably should. Anne kicks her legs and cries silently.
When we get to the ER, I park at the door. I run in and get a wheelchair. There are four people in the waiting room, and when I get Anne out of the car and into the waiting room, two of them are gone. I tell the receptionist that Anne has a terrible kidney stone, can’t keep anything down, and I didn’t know what else to do. She pulls up the information we gave a different person in this exact place twenty-four hours earlier and we wait. I feel useless while Anne cries and moans in pain, and I just watch the clock. It’s thirty minutes before we are taken inside. It’s another thirty minutes before a nurse gives Anne morphine. Another thirty minutes before she comes back in and gives Anne more. I realize that time is moving in thirty minute increments. Maybe if I sit on the edge of the gurney next to her.’
A doctor comes in. She looks concerned and I do my best to disappear while she talks to Anne. She listens while Anne recounts the last 48 hours, then she does some simple tests, including this thing where she pushes on Anne’s abdomen and pulls away quickly. Anne screams in pain.
“That isn’t normal for a kidney stone or constipation,” the doctor says. “I’m going to get you an ultrasound, and some more pain medication.” Then, she does something I realize that the two other doctors we’ve seen since this all started didn’t do: she takes a moment and says, “I’m so sorry that you’re in so much pain, and I’m sorry that hurt so much. We’re going to figure out what’s going on with you, and I won’t send you home until we do.”
I realize how unhelpful the two male doctors we saw were, and I allow myself the luxury of being angry at them, if only briefly.
The doctor excuses herself and a nurse comes back in, gives Anne some more pain meds, and makes some notes on her chart. It is around 3:30am. Anne sleeps a little bit, and I sit in the chair next to her gurney. Maybe if I rest my hand on her leg. I wait.
An orderly comes in and helps Anne into a wheelchair. He takes Anne to the ultrasound. I climb into the gurney and try to sleep.
It feels like no time has passed when they’re back and I feel like I haven’t slept at all, even though I must have because I can’t account for the time. Anne tells me that it hurt a lot, and another nurse comes back in, gives her more pain medications. I make a joke about how she’s used more drugs than the Rolling Stones. Did I make that joke before? The last time we were here? I can’t remember. I’m so afraid and so worried and I feel so helpless and I’m so tired. I want to cry but I can’t because it won’t be helpful to anyone.
I wait.
The doctor comes back and tells Anne that the ultrasound shows something called an ovarian torsion. She thinks that a cyst burst, and it was so big when it happened, it literally spun Anne’s ovary around. She tells us that there’s a dark shadow on the CT scan we had the last time we were there, and it’s in stark contrast to her other ovary that’s healthy. She doesn’t say it, but she seems incredulous that neither of the other doctors we saw seemed to notice it. I allow myself another moment of anger, but I keep it to myself.
“I have called the OB/GYN and she’s driving in. We’re going to admit you, and have that ovary removed,” she says. Anne has some questions. I have some questions. I don’t remember what we asked or what her answers were.
We wait, and it doesn’t feel as long as all the previous waits have been. The surgeon arrives and she asks Anne lots of questions. She examines her. She looks at Anne’s CT scan and her ultrasound. I realize just how utterly, totally, profoundly unhelpful the other doctors we saw before this night were. I remember a woman, speaking at a ceremony when Anne was given an award for National Women’s Health Week. She said, “women need to work in medical research, and in applied medicine, because too many men treat women’s bodies like they are just men’s bodies with female parts, but our bodies are fundamentally different and need to be treated that way.”
I know that an ER doctor’s primary responsibility is to keep people alive, and it’s logical that the ones who aren’t in life-threatening danger will get a different level of attention. But when we went to Anne’s primary care doctor he didn’t even ask about anything else, didn’t check her at all, and just gave her six different types of pills. I don’t know why the ER doctor didn’t even ask why one of Anne’s ovaries was a big dark mass, even after all the tests for kidney stones came back negative, but I understand why he tried to manage her pain and turned us over to another doctor to look at her more closely. While I sit in that chair and listen to this new doctor talk with Anne, I can’t excuse or understand the other doctor we saw not even trying to look into whether or not there was a misdiagnosis in the ER. I get angry when I realize that my wife, the most important person in my world, has suffered longer than she should have, because two men didn’t ask themselves if pain originating in part of a woman’s body that is fundamentally different from a man’s body may have something to do with that difference.
But the OB/GYN is kind, and she tells Anne that she’s sorry to meet her under these circumstances. She tells Anne that she can get this ovary out with a quick surgery, and that Anne will be able to go home later this afternoon. I glance at my watch. It’s 7am. I’ve been awake for 24 hours.
The OB tells us that she’s going to do laparoscopy (a word I’ve written so many times in the last ten hours, I should know how to spell but still don’t), which will require general anaesthesia (another word I can’t see to spell, though I’ve written it almost as much). My stomach clenches because I grew up in a medical family, and I know that there are risks associated with anaesthesia. I know that they are small, but they are greater than zero, and I’ve been awake for 24 hours, on about five or six hours of restless sleep, and my rational brain is easily knocked into submission by my emotional brain. I keep my concerns to myself, because expressing them around Anne won’t be helpful. I realize that I’ve been keeping a lot to myself, because to express any of it wouldn’t be helpful. I’ve been holding myself together, delivering what will be, at least to this point in my life, the most convincing performance I’ve ever given.
The orderly comes into the room and we begin the journey to surgery. All the hallways look alike, and the same grey light of early morning that I first saw when all of this started two days ago is filling the windows. I notice that we haven’t seen any other people since we came in. I guess it was a quiet night in the ER, and it’s a quiet morning in the hospital.
We stop outside the operating room. We have forgotten to tell them that Anne is allergic to latex, so they have to clear the OR and wipe everything down, and start over. I apologize, but nobody is bothered (or at least they don’t let on that they’re bothered.) Anne holds my hand and we just look at each other while we wait. I don’t want to think about how something could go wrong — however unlikely that is — and I may have to face life without her, but I’m so tired and so emotionally raw, I can’t not think about it. I don’t mention it to Anne, because it wouldn’t be helpful.
They finish up in the OR, and the surgeon comes over to tell us that she’s ready. The anaesthesiologist (nope, can’t spell that one, either) is a gentle man. He tells us what he’s going to do, asks if there are any questions, and leaves me with a feeling of confidence that everything will be okay. I know there’s no reason not to be confident, that there’s no rational reason not to worry, but I can’t help it.
I kiss Anne. We tell each other that we love each other. I don’t want to hope that it isn’t the last time, but I can’t help it.
“I’ll see you before you know it,” I tell her. When they wheel her toward the OR, I lamely say to the surgeon, “please take good care of my wife.” She tells me that she will. She doesn’t tell me that OF COURSE SHE WILL BECAUSE THAT IS HER JOB. I’m sure it’s not the first time a worried husband has said this to her.
A nurse takes me to the waiting room and tells me that it will be about two hours. I decide that I’m going to go home, feed our dogs, and take a shower. Maybe I’ll try to eat. I’ve been awake for 25 hours.
I almost crash twice on the way home. Maybe it’s not as close as I think it is, but it’s too close. The dogs interrogate me when I come into the house and they look for Anne. I tell them what’s going on because I have to talk to someone and everyone else we know is asleep. I make some food. I take a shower. I make and drink two cups of coffee, and go back to the hospital. I make my way to the waiting room and sit down. I try to watch TV but it’s a blur. I try to close my eyes but when I do, my brain relentlessly plays out the rest of my life without Anne in it. And I don’t just mean the images. I mean the emotion and the loss and the loneliness and the reality that I will be adrift and lost for the rest of my life if anything happens to her. I sit up, open my eyes, and I just walk around the empty room, grateful that there isn’t anyone else there.
Her surgeon comes in and tells me that everything went well. Anne is in recovery and I can see her in about thirty minutes. She shows me pictures from the laparoscope, because Anne asked for them. Anne has more pictures of the inside of her body than a human should have, because she always asks for them. It’s one of the things I love about her. So her surgeon points out how her one ovary is healthy and the one they took out was enlarged my several factors, and almost completely black because it was filling up with blood. She shows me the twist. It’s almost microscopic. “It’s the same kind of pain that a man would experience if he had a testicular torsion,” she tells me. “It’s one of the worst pains a woman can experience.” I thank her several times. I know that I’m repeating myself. I know that I’m delirious. I know that I’m exhausted. I know that I’m not making any sense. I know that I am relieved beyond measure. She shakes my hand, tells me that she wants to see Anne next week for a follow up, and leaves.
I walk up to the room where Anne will be recovering. I pull out a reclining chair to try and rest while I wait for her, but my brain is now overtired and caffeinated, so I just look out the window and watch the sun burn off the little bit of lingering fog and haze. I hear movement behind me and turn around to find an orderly pushing Anne into the room. A wave of relief washes over me and I again feel like I’m going to cry. “Good morning,” I say to them both.
“How are you?” He asks.
“Entering my 27th hour since I last got any real rest, but okay, I guess.”
“Hi, puss,” Anne says. She smiles a little bit and I reach out to hold her hand.
“How are you feeling?” I say.
“I’m thirsty.”
I get her some water. A nurse comes in and does nurse stuff. I sit in the chair, and I drift off to sleep for about three hours, forty or so minutes at a time.
The texts begin to arrive, from our friends who are waking up. They’ve read my blog, they’ve seen our posts on Twitter. Everyone offers whatever help they can give us. I’m grateful to all of them, and grateful that Anne, who they all love so much, has chosen me to be the guy she married. I go to the cafeteria and eat hospital food. I come back and sit with Anne while she rests and recovers. She doesn’t hurt, and there’s very little residual gas in her abdomen. She is able to get up and use the bathroom. She is able to walk around. She can eat. She is going to be okay. Around 5pm, they discharge her. We’ve been in the hospital for eighteen hours. I’ve slept for three hours in the last two days.
We get home. Anne’s friends have flowers delivered, and then they have dinner delivered for us both. I’m so tired and so emotionally exhausted, I feel like I’m going to cry from so many different kinds of relief, but I just eat, instead. Anne eats. She walks around the house and farts. I fart back her her when I can. We laugh. She’s going to be okay.
I’m overtired and don’t get into bed until about eleven. Anne is already asleep. Our dogs are on the floor at the foot of the bed. Seamus is snoring. Marlowe is chasing something in her sleep. Watson is on the back of the chair. I turn off the light and slide the covers up. The sheets are cool and soft and the bed is as comfortable as it’s ever been in my life. I hold Anne’s hand while I drift off.
I sleep for almost fourteen hours. I wake up with a headache, but Anne is doing great. She’s in the living room with our pets, watching TV. She tells me that she slept well, and isn’t in any major pain. She’s been able to eat.
I try to have a normal day. I keep checking on her. She’s doing fine, and naps in our bedroom. She lets me hold her hand and sit on the edge of the bed and give her food and stroke her hair.
There are hundreds of comments on my blog that I haven’t had time to read. There are thousands more on social media that I will never be able to reply to. People who don’t know Anne love her, and I know how lucky I am to have her in my life. I’m too tired to go anywhere or do anything, but I have too much boiling around inside of me to do nothing, so I sit down to type it all out, because that’s how I process things.
The weight of the last few days crashes down on me while I write this. I listen to Hamilton. It’s Quiet Uptown, and I cry as hard as I have in recent memory. I was so scared and felt so helpless and I’m so grateful that the most important person in my world is just a few steps away in another room, recovering, trying not to laugh too hard at the Sarah Silverman comedy special she’s watching, because it hurts her stomach when she does.
We have more time.
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I’m so broken-hearted for you guys that you had to go through that. I’m literally sitting here recovering from my own second non-emergency totally scheduled laparoscopy from a couple days ago, and my partner and I are finally hopeful that my chronic pain is over. Mine wasn’t horrid pain like hers, it just sucked. I can’t even imagine how horrible what she went through was. I’m so glad that she has such a wonderful partner in life, as she is also such a wonderful person. internet fist bumps PS Also, love yall’s blogs. 🙂
Ok well your amazing wife told your dogs that she was okay as you left for the hospital, and that was where I teared up the first time.
I’m so glad that you’re both alright.
Thank you so much for sharing this. 3 weeks ago my dad had a heart attack and died for a short time. My step mom was able to keep him going with CPR until the paramedics got there and were able to bring him back. He’s fine, totally back to normal, but I read this and imagined what my step mom went through. I live on the other side of the country and never have felt so helpless. I’m so glad Anne is better.
Let the record state that I said “ovarian torsion” yesterday and wondered about ultrasounds. GODS, I am so angry with you that the other doctors didn’t look at that! SO ANGRY! I’m glad things worked out. I’m so glad. That stuff is dangerous, and doctors who don’t think beyond “abdominal pain — kidneys? appendix? shrug” are… Well, just some screaming here.
…maybe go yell at the ER doctors about it a little so they think next time. >_>
I hope y’all recover quickly.
This brought me to tears, because I’ve absolutely been there, in that hellish place where you don’t know if you’ve said your last I love you to someone you care about. I’ve been the one smiling gamely and squeezing someone’s hand while they wait and only-half-jokingly beg for death to take them.
It’s agonizing. And it happens to so many. Especially women – God, especially women! The stories would make you rage. My dear friend had to wait 20 years – twenty, not two, not twelve; twenty – for a hysterectomy, which is the only cure for the condition she’d battled since age 14, and it was only that long because male doctors repeatedly declined to do it. “You’ll want kids,” they said. “What if you want kids?”
She has never wanted kids. She has wanted an end to her pain.
I’m incredibly glad Anne seems to be getting past hers; she seems like such a lovely woman. I hope the recovery is smooth, and I hope that you can also recover. Sitting in hospital rooms watching suffering when there’s nothing you can do will prey on you after a while – please don’t think this wasn’t hard on you, just as much as her. My best to you both.
Will, thank you for writing this. your writing style is like mine. anyway, my fiance takes care of me like you do with Anne. I have had Rheumatoid Arthritis for decades, and your post made me realize how much emotion is packed away in him. I am so glad you guys are both home and resting.
I’m just so glad that everything’s ok. Sending you & Anne all of the good thoughts.
You are the husband that so many women wish they had (and a few of us lucky ones do)! Thank you for taking such good care of Anne, your words brought tears to my eyes. Wishing you many, many, many more wonderful years together.
SO thankful that she’s OK and that shit got figured out. :hugs::
I am so glad your wife is doing better, and you are an amazing husband that I aspire to be.
Thank you for being you and I appreciate you sharing your stories.
My best and warmest soft /hugs to you both and scritches to the pets. I have a great respect and admiration for you both. I’m so sorry for both of your pains and stress. That was terrible what she endured but I’m glad you’re her best friend and husband.
I wept for both of you, reading this. I am so glad Anne was properly diagnosed, and that she is home now. Sending some love and light to all there, including the fur kids.
omg. Thank you for writing this. This happened to me when I was 17-18 years old. It took over a year to diagnose and no one believed the pain I was experiencing was real. I’ve never ever heard a single mention of this happening to anyone else in the 38 years since.
OMG, you have to read this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/emergency-room-wait-times-sexism/410515/. “This is called ovarian torsion, and it creates the kind of organ-failure pain few people experience and live to tell about.” I am so glad Anne finally got the help she really needed – that you did not get on that first visit to the ER. That is some serious malpractice going on there. 🙁
I’m so glad that Anne is ok now. I’ve had kidney stones and it did sound similar but when I shared the story with my wife and she got to the part where there was no evidence of a stone the first thing she said was “I bet it’s a burst ovarian cyst.” (My mother-in-law had a burst ovarian cyst years ago.) But I thought surely the doctors would have seen that on the CT scan when checking for the kidney stones.
I’m so sorry she needlessly suffered in pain for all that time and for your suffering too. I nearly lost my wife when our son was born and it was the scariest time of my life.
I don’t wish health-threatening events on anyone, and Anne is lucky you are strong and stayed with her…it is at times like that when a mate’s bond is most needed. Glad she is OK, well done, Wil.
Oh Wil, I’m so relieved to hear that Anne is recovering well. What a horrible experience for you both. I have so many emotions reading this that I cannot convey but I want to. I am honestly speechless. You are both so lucky to have each other, and we are all lucky to have you share even a fraction of that love with us. Take care of each other. Much love, Mya
Australian doctor here – radiologist.
I refrained from commenting on your first post, because I didn’t want to react to a layperson’s recounting of a medical situation, as important things get missed and unimportant things blown out of proportion.
Now that there’s some conclusion, I’m more comfortable making comment.
Your initial work up at the ER was extremely negligent, for a bunch of reasons:
A woman of Anne’s age, presenting with lower abdominal pain, should not get a CT first. She should get an ultrasound. The only exception is if ultrasound is unavailable (middle of the night, for example).
Having gotten the CT, showing no kidney stones, the doctors should have been thinking of other causes, with gynaecological causes at the top of the list. Kidney stones which don’t show up on a CT do exist, but are so incredibly rare that it’s irresponsible to discharge a patient with that diagnosis. If your blog entry is accurate, you were lied to.
As you surmised, there are other things that would have been visible on the CT that should have been picked up on. I question whether a radiologist had actually looked at it before Anne was discharged.
MRI should never have entered the picture. MRI has no place in the diagnosis of acute pain. It’s far too precise an instrument. You can use it to look at ovaries, sure, but you need to know that you’re looking at ovaries. It’s useless for undifferentiated cases. This is probably a difference in the American health system.
Once the diagnosis was made, treatment was obviously relatively simple. That diagnosis should have been far higher on the list of possibilities in initial presentation. (Appendix, ovaries, kidney stones, in that order).
I’m glad everything turned out ok.
I hope the doctors that first treated you get made aware of their mistake – I don’t really wish any sort of punishment for them, but they need to be better educated.
I hope you get a new family doctor.
Best wishes.
Man, I wish I didn’t know exactly what your going through. Sadly I had a very similar experience with my wife whilst on vacation ectopic pregnancy shares many of the symptoms as you described Anne having. I can all to vividly put myself in your shoes. But it’s all done and over with now, these scares show us really how much we love, and how lucky we are to be loved. Remember that, not the sleepless time in the stark hospital corridors. The fear you felt for Anne, was merely the shadow cast by your love for her. We are truely blessed to know the depth of love we have for our partners.
Thank you, Wil, for sharing this. I am so glad that Anne is and will be okay. My husband suffered anoxia thirteen years ago during “routine” gall bladder surgery and survived — not the same, but mostly the man I married. We, too, have more time, and I am profoundly grateful.
Beautifully written, Wil. I’m glad Anne’s on the mend. Take care of yourself, too. Love to you, both… & the animal clan.
I’m not really the bloodthirsty SUE THAT GUY type, but discussing a malpractice suit with an attorney might be useful. At the very least the GP you saw needs a reality check to take his job more seriously and stop half assing it, because he caused a patient severe suffering and put her in much more danger just because he couldn’t be bothered to consider anything other than a kidney stone.
Wow. You’ve probably seen this article from The Atlantic, but it seems particularly relevant today. (Male) doctors simply don’t take women’s pain seriously. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/emergency-room-wait-times-sexism/410515/
Thank you for sharing Wil, I’m relieved to hear Anne is doing better.
I’m glad she’s recovering and y’all are okay.
I hope you get a big hug, if you like hugs. I won’t offer to hug you myself, because I don’t personally know you, so that would be weird.
God bless y’all. 🙂
As a human being, I’m very happy both of you are going to be okay. That you’re apparently going to get through this healthy and whole. It is fantastic news.
As a writer, I am beyond blown away you were able to write about this … in the middle of it. Or, at least, so close afterwards for it to be effectively be the same thing. It has been said writing is easy, you just open a vein and bleed.
It’s not easy. And it’s hard to show the wound to people. Not only did you bleed, you shared. While still wet and fresh on the page. On you.
Faith manages, and love conquers all. You and Anne have both, in and with each other. Trust in that, and be at peace.
So glad Anne is okay. Brought back so much from my mom’s illness that I never properly captured, about the twilight zone of hospital life and trying to stay rational when it’s impossible. It’s even better than your first entry as a piece of writing, which given what you’ve been through is miraculous.
That is one insane and harrowing story, Wil. Laparoscopic surgery can be a bitch. By the way, did they have to pump Anne’s stomach full of gas before the surgery? If so, that gas will start to relocate and will probably cause her some discomfort. My wife went through something similar…if that happens, a good shoulder massage will usually help to push the gas around.
I saw Anne’s twitter post earlier and was thinking the same thing as the female doc, men don’t treat womens’ bodies. I also wondered why she had not had an ultrasound on the first go round which would have confirmed or denied the original diagnosis. Now she is home and you can rest, both of you. Now you can not worry, she will be fine. But I do know that stomach clenching terror we have to suppress, and the anxiety the suppression costs. Rest. Your wife is safe at home with you.
So glad to hear relief was found, after that horrible journey. Best wishes to Anne, to you, and to the rest of the Wheaton clan.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/emergency-room-wait-times-sexism/410515/
This. I’m so angry this keeps happening. I’m so happy Anne is ok. Ovarian torsion gets misdiagnosed by male doctors, just as other types of pain are ignored. You have the undying love abs understanding of many strangers on the Internet.
I’m crying with you. Thank you for sharing and I’m so glad Anne is on the mend.
I and my better half dealt with much the same problem a few months ago, and your essay brought it all back! What I’m trying to say is this was beautiful and evocative writing of a very difficult experience.
Give yourselves time to climb down from this because you guys had some scary rough days.
I’m so pleased and relieved that they found the problem and Anne was able to get the correct treatment she needed. I’ve been thinking about you two for most of the weekend since you last posted. Best wishes to both of you – and give your pups an extra hug for me.
We love you both, kiddo. I’m glad she’s out of pain and healing. Try to catch up on your sleep.
Crying now. But I am so glad Anne is well. As Women, I think we have all been blown off by a male Doctor now willing to make a effort. Somehow, they don’t even consider that their lack of action may lead to the death of a person who is everything to someone. It does not reflect well on their reputations as Doctors.
Wow that was the most emotional thing I have read in a long time. I am very happy to hear that your wife is recovering well. And I hope that you both continue to recover.
This story brought back memories of my own similar experience. I too had a misdiagnosed cyst on my left ovary. It became the size of a grapefruit, and twisted the fallopian tube until it basically broke and I nearly bled to death. My abdomen filled with blood and as my husband watched a priest gave me last rights. They were able to remove the cyst and determine it had hair and tooth cells and determined it had been a tubal pregnancy to went terribly wrong. The ovary was removed and I was told the other ovary was defective and I would never have children. My OBGYN told me to plan a trip and travel, and not focus on my infertility. When we went on our first vacation less than a year later I was 5 months pregnant with my first daughter. 2 and 1/2 years later I had my second daughter who was conceived while on birth control pills. This is one of those experiences that teach us that every minute of life is a gift and children are a blessing that will come when they are meant to. Your experience will make you more aware of your health and your blessings. Glad things worked out well for you and Anne as well. My youngest sent me the link to your blog. We are both fans and I thank her for sending it. Thank you for sharing your gifts with the world.
You are such a talented writer! Your post makes me want to hug my wife a little tighter when she comes home. Thank you for sharing, and I’m glad your wife is ok.
I’m so glad she is going to be OK. Thank you for expressing the helplessness of a spouse in a medical situation so well. Thank you for also recognizing and bringing attention to the continued problem of how women are treated medically. I’m still crying, but the catharsis is good even if the reasons behind it are hard.
Kia kaha
it’s good, will. thank you for sharing your hopeless, helpless love story. farts and all, especially.
So glad that all worked out and Anne is ok. That torsion thing – they’re supposed to check that first before anything else with men because a kidney stone feels just like that – like when you were a kid playing football in the backyard and someone’s knee rudely met your groin. Only it doesn’t go away after 5 minutes. At least Anne doesn’t have to drink lemon water everyday now. I wish I could sleep 14 hours. I’ve been on less than 2 hours a night for over a week now because of sleep anxiety. I lay awake thinking about the board games on kickstarter of all things.
Wil, thank you for writing this.
Tomorrow (or really, today, it’s past midnight where I am), I’ll be driving my mom to the hospital so she can have spinal surgery for a neck injury she got almost a year ago. It’s anywhere from four to six hours long surgery, and I know already that it’s going to be torture.
Reading this, and knowing that other people know what kind of helpless you feel when a loved one is in pain or in surgery is so much more reassuring than anything else anyone has told my mom.
I’m so glad that Anne is doing well, and that you’re doing better too. A lot of people forget that it’s hard to have to support someone who’s hurting, and you put that into words. So thanks again. <3
I’m sorry you went through this nightmare. I’m glad it has a happy ending. Reading these posts made me appreciate the love of my life a little more. Hope you’re both fully recovered quickly.
I’m so happy Anne is home and recovering, and that now you know that it’s taken care of.
I think my favorite part of the story (because I already knew Anne’s OK from her tweets) was when you both tried to reassure Seamus and Marlowe that everything was going to be OK. You’re both such sweet, kind people.
I understand how you felt, imagining life without Anne. Sometimes I can’t help but imagine what it would be like if something happened to my wife or our boys. I feel like the chaplain in Catch 22, who was constantly imagining his family perishing in a fire or some other disaster. Fortunately it didn’t happen often.
I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again: you’re a superstar spouse. I know you probably feel like you just did what you had to do, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Good job.
I’m so glad Anne’s going to be ok, and so sorry both of you went through the last several days.
Oh geez Wil, I know you probably won’t see this in the flurry of comments but just wanted to say, reading this post was pretty intense, I’m so glad it had a happy ending! Yay for all of you! I can’t even imagine what that would be like to go through. Both of you need rest!
I have to send much love and best wishes to you guys! I know the fear of almost losing the one you love. Wil, you are one of my heroes and I hold you in high esteem. Do me a favor and just remember to tell her how much you love her EVERY DAY!
I’m so glad Anne is ok and that you were able too stay strong for her. I love following you guys on Twitter. Thank you for amusement, and being a kindred spirit.
Hermano, esto es lo mejor que has escrito en años. Me alegro que todo haya salido bien; espero que Anne se recupere pronta y completamente.