The Longest Day

This day started off like any other, my alarm goes off at 12:30am, roll out of bed, head to the bathroom, brush teeth & comb hair and get dressed then off to work I went. The only difference was Damien went to work with me, so I had to get him up and moving as well. Which that in it self is a hard job because no 16 year old wants to voluntarilly wake up at 12:30am. We get to work, I leave Damien up front in the office to watch Netflix on my laptop while I head into the back and start working. We had a decent size order to pull and ship out as well as an incoming shipment that needed to be put up in the racks. So I start with putting up what we received in on Friday the 15th since it was the fastest to get done. 05:00am rolls around and I take us up the road to Bojangles. Get me a Cajun filet biscuit with cheese and Borounds. Because anything else is just garbage. We get back to the office, we sit down and eat, all the while I know what’s about to happen next and I’m really not ready. In-fact, every thing I’ve been through to this point had not prepared me for today. Becke sent me a text and said, “I love you honey …”. We finish our food and I head to the back warehouse again and get back to work. It’s around 06:15 maybe 06:30 in the morning when Brian (my boss) shows up, we finish the order and clean up the warehouse and by now it’s around 07:45am and I head out the door with Damien to travel the 2hours to Durham.

So we set a course of north by north east and off we went. We get near Aberdeen and stop for gas, snacks and some drinks, I made sure to buy extras and put them in my backpack I take with me everywhere,  then we continue on our journey. See while I’m diving and Damien is asleep, I can’t stop thinking about my text from Becke. The exact text said, “I love you honey, I’m heading down now”. At 05:15am they took her down for surgery. This will be surgery 32 since April 2014. Today’s goal is to remove the fistulas, 3 abdominal, one bladder, one vaginal. As Damien and I drive up 540 expressway into Durham, I got a phone call from Duke Hospital letting me know how things were and that Becke was okay. I start thinking about what she has been through, how can the human body go through so much and still take so much more? All of the cutting and stitching and staples and wounds and scars and everything in-between. How? How does this not make any sense to me?

We get to Duke around 09:00am, Becke has been in pre-op and probably under the knife by now since it started so early. Damien and I park in the Erwin Rd parking deck, take the underground tunnel to the elevators and head up to surgical floor 3. We check in with patient services and got lucky when I found a two seats next to a wall outlet. So we took out the iPads and we started up with Netflix. I will admit, I never really used my iPad mini for allot of stuff other than dumb stuff at home but when you have a long wait, technology is amazing.

So now that we have our iPads and phones charged, drinks, snacks we were ready for the long haul, or so I thought. Before I knew it the time had gone by what seemed like for ever, no tv show, no YouTube videos, no post on Facebook, could make the day go by fast enough. Watching season 1 of Peaky Blinders (brilliant show by the way), watched who knows how many vines and YouTube videos. Read countless stories on Reddit, started two books and before I knew it, it was exactly 12:30 and I have not had any updates. Took out my headphones, told Damien I would be back when the buzzer goes off. So I walked up to the desk and they advised me she was still under and doing fine, nothing was wrong and they will update me again later. Head back to my seat and started watching Peaky Blinders again, before watching Lucifer and Superstore. Next thing I know the buzzer goes off and it’s only 14:00.  By now I’m getting restless, my ass has been numb from sitting down so long. I’m tired, most importantly we haven’t eaten and I fear for the survival of my self and Damien as our snack rations are running low, okay they are gone. Its official, were going to die from starvation in the hospital waiting room on the 3rd floor. So I focus on more videos and movies. Next thing I know I look at my phone to realize it’s now 19:15 and I have not had any update since around 2pm. I panic, it seems Pandora was playing every sad song possible, everything that could remind me of her showed up on my news feed or music playlist. I couldn’t stop wondering, “What if?” And that’s when I saw a family walk by and the mother broke down in tears. I ultimate knew what was wrong but it’s almost like I felt that pain, and instantly I thought Becke was gone, something happened and that’s why it’s been son long since my last update, how do I explain this to the kids? That possibly their mother is gone. How do I break this news to family and friends? What am I going to do? Do I need to find a second job? Will I need to hire a financial advisor, what the fuck am I going to do?! I started tearing up and couldn’t stop. I felt sick to my stomach. I was starting at the buzzer to go off but nothing happened. I was now trying to cope with the realization my wife has been in surgery since 05:00 am and it’s now 19:30pm and my wife has died. I quickly wipe the tears and I pack up my valuables and tell Damien that I will be back and go up to the desk, I asked the gentleman if you could find out an update as I have not heard from anyone about my wife’s status. So he calls the OR and says they are finalizing some stuff and the DR will be out soon to speak with me in Consulting room 3. I didn’t know what this meant. Is that good or bad?! Is the Dr. coming to break the bad news? I grab Damien and we head to the room. I now sat here waiting on the fate of my wife and had no clue what to expect. The moment I heard the metal on metal contact of the latch on the door release, and the door swing open, my life flashed. Everything I’ve ever done to this point, good and bad, the past experiences, the memories of everything happened all at once and time slowed down and it seemed like it stopped. Dr. Sudan walked in, she looked so tired and she looked at me and I for that brief moment I felt a calmness over me, as if nothing had happened, and she smiled as she walked into the room. Luckily I though far enough ahead to record the conversation, because if I couldn’t realize how to explain it, then I would at least have this as my fall back to just hit play. 

As you can hear, she infact didn’t die, sooooooo now that I had my life fall apart and put back together, I was glad my wife was on her way back to recovery. Damien and I took this time to go find normal food in the cafeteria. While we didn’t want a slice of pizza or chicken tenders we decided to eat at the subway inside the hospital. It was next to the Starbucks, it’s really unreal how big of a hospital Duke is.

By now Becke was in her  recovery room and she had alot of pain management complications. The pain management team tried putting in a epidural and it failed. It completely came out and then three different doctors were having a pissing match on who wanted to do what and who would need to sign off on it because it “was not my responsibility”.

It was 21:00 before I finally left her side as the nurses on staff assured me they would find out who they had to call to get her pain under control. Those two ladies did a lot to help when some of the others refused. I know every hospital system has good and bad staff and that’s any job but Nurses and Aides go above their job, it really is a job for the passion of helping and not the money. We make the long track back into the underground tunnel to get to the car and head home. We get to Fayetteville and I walk into the apartment 23:30 and we both made a sandwich for dinner, then as I get out of the shower, my alarm clock was going off. It was now 00:30 and I have officially been awake for 24hrs. I’m tired, exhausted, scared, nervous and most of all I just missed my wife. I remember laying in the bed thinking, how I would explain this day and sadly I know I’ve forgotten alot of information but this is the best I could remember.

The next part I won’t elaborate on because it’s all a blur, so Monday July 18 was 14 hour surgery, to have her rushed down on Wednesday the 20th for emergency surgery. She had gone septic, major blood poisoning, and infections. They had to take all of her insides out and wash them with some anti bacterial soap using a spray gun thing and that’s when we discovered Beckes body rejected the bladder repair and created a new fistula. This time it’s dumping urine into the abdomen. Something we have been fighting  since that day. Our hope now is come the middle of October we can do a new repair to the bladder because the Nephrostomy tubes to both kidneys have failed and aren’t helping drain enough with a catheter in the bladder as well.

Today is October 1st 2016, my wife Becke, is a fucking Warrior.
-C