When it started

Thursday April 10th, 2014.

It was around 930pm, Becke, the boys and I were leaving PNC arena after the Washington Capitols beat the Carolina Hurricanes 5-2 in the last home game of the regular 2013-14 season. We had just came out of our season ticket holder entry/exit on the east side of the arena and we’re making the walk to our car when Becke had tripped and fallen on the paved walk way. She went down knees and hands first, before going flat on her tummy with her glasses flying off. I being a typical jerk said “Damn babe how drunk are you? Should I drive?” (For the record Becke never drinks unless we’re on vacation and it’s usually only one Irish coffee). I helped her up and checked her to see if she was seriously hurt. Few cuts on her hands and knees and her stomach was already really cramping and sore. In fact she had been complaining about it all week. By this point in the week she had a small fever. (At or under 100)

So Friday morning comes and we go to work and such like normal, Becke had a slight fever but worked anyways. By the end of the day she was really sick, throwing up, 102 fever and at this point I made the decision and we went to REX UNC Hospital ER. After a ungodly long wait, we get into the back to a ER room finally, it’s been around 5 hours now, and they decided to tell us they will be admitting her. So I take the kids and we grab some food, and head back to the hospital. Just for future reference, if you knowingly go to a hospital, for the love of all humanity, if you have kids, pack a mini grocery store with you, because by the time she finally got to a room, which happened to be around 3-4am I was ready to go deaf from hearing “dad, I’m hungry. Why don’t they have chick fil a here. Or taco bell?” Once Becke got settled into her room I took the kids home and tried to get some rest.

Saturday morning, I make some food, get dressed and the boys and I head back to the hospital. To visit with Mom (Becke), and bring her some flowers. We find out she had an abscess rupture inside and no one knew what caused it or etc. so they patched her up and by that afternoon, it got somewhat worse, instead of puss coming out, it was now a brownish greenish liquid. Ofcourse at the time everyone assumed it was more buildup from the abscess. They assigned a doctor who apparently is big into “strange” and “not normal” cases, and so that’s how we met Dr. Lutz. After doing some tests over the next week or two, we would eventually learn, that Becke’s Crohn’s disease was no longer in remission, and has developed a fistula that was pouring bowel inside her body. The pain all week was the bowel becoming toxic to her internal organs.

We went through tons of antibiotics, potassium (hers was at a 2.2 which from what we were told, she should have died), and started to prep for her first surgery in 7 years. I was scared shitless, in fact, I remember the day she went under the knife because, her family, my family, and my boss and Hr manager were texting me all day. I remember sitting in the lobby for 12 hours before Dr. Lutz came out. Saying he “removed the fistula, did a bowel resection and cleaned her insides out of all sepsis and closed her up”. He had no clue how lost I was with these medical terms, this was my first major surgery to someone I know (Other than my mom when I was around 5, she almost died due to complications from gallbladder removal), so I had no clue what to do, think, say, ask or anything. He did say “she’s left open from the main surgery, we’re going to do wet to dry healing, maybe a wound vac and go from there alright?”

Little did we know, this was the start of a series of events to span 2 years and counting. 25+ surgeries,  4 hospitals, Jejunostomy, colon removed, 120ish lbs lost, lost of her job, married in a hospital, spend every holiday except 1 in the hospital, spend Damien’s prom day with him and his date in the hospital as a surprise visit.  Luckily she was out long enough to go on a surprise cruise, for our first year anniversary and a sorta honeymoon. It’s been rough these last two years, I won’t deny that, but those stories will come in the next episode.

You’re a fighter honey, and I’m right here next to you.

-C