Part 3: The Nightmare on the Bathroom Floor​

​Less than a week later, my husband had a medical emergency and collapsed unconscious on the bathroom floor. There was blood everywhere. He had been throwing up blood, and I didn't realize what had happened in the bathroom until I found him wedged between the wall and the toilet. To this day, I'm still not sure where the strength came from to try and get him out from between that toilet and the wall.

​Of course I called 911, and after that, everything became a blur. I don't even remember how the emergency crew came into the house. One of the few things I do remember is that my dogs were in the bedroom with the door closed. One of our dogs, whom my husband lovingly referred to as "Black Beauty," absolutely adored him. That was her daddy.

​Sometimes she would go outside, and if he was already out there, they would play this game. It was almost like hide and seek: Where is Daddy? Is Daddy in the car? Is Daddy in the shed? Is Daddy in the garage? Sometimes he would purposely hide behind something. You would think her nose would tell her exactly where he was, but hope! She would run right past him into the next place he usually hung out, looking everywhere. When she’d run off, he would step out and say, "What are you looking for? Are you looking for me?" She would come racing back with what looked like a massive smile on her face, panting happily and jumping up on him. It's one of those beautiful memories you desperately hold on to.

​But going back to my husband's collapse. There was so much conflict among the paramedics as to where they should take him. We had two close hospitals on either direction from us; one was just right down the road. But from what I understood at the time, he had lost so much blood that they had to bypass the closest ER and take him to a specialized hospital several miles away.

​And one of the things that still disturbs me to this day is that, evidently, my husband had a shunt in his head from when he was a baby. Do you know the doctor did not understand why he would have a shunt in his head? My mother had to explain to the doctor why he would have a shunt (before MRIs, there were certain metals that were magnetic that were put into people; my husband was one of them), and I got confirmation from my family about why that was done.

​What was crazy was that every time a new doctor wanted to do an MRI on him, we had to stop them and say, "No, you can't do that!" I knew he had an older metal shunt in his brain, and putting him in an MRI machine could literally pull it out of his head and make things fatal. I was incredibly frustrated each time because it was like, are you guys not reading the medical file? Shouldn't there be a warning in big red letters telling the doctors what's going on?

​There was so much more going on there, and I kept being told I should go home and take care of myself. It took several tests to figure out where all the blood was coming from. 

​By the time I finally decided to listen to everyone and go home to get some rest, a decision I regret to this day, it turned into one of my worst nightmares. I had barely gotten home when the hospital called telling me to come back immediately! He was bleeding out again. I remember jumping up, racing for my keys, and flying down the road at 80 miles an hour, blowing through red lights to get back to a hospital 15 miles away. I had never driven like that in my life, and I hope to God I never have to do it again.

​It's one of those things that I still struggle with because I wonder if I should have gone home or if I should have stayed at the hospital. Did they realize I wasn't there and just give up? There are a lot of what ifs!

​The doctor told me that they had instructed him to go back in and retest because they had to understand where the blood was coming from. They finally discovered that he had an aneurysm. They advised that they needed a specialist to work on the aneurysm, and they were calling different hospitals to find a specialist willing to take the case.

​They finally found a specialist who would take his case, but even the transfer to that new hospital was chaotic. They kept telling me they were going to airlift him via helicopter, and then out of nowhere, they switched it and transferred him via ambulance. Right now, you might be thinking: Okay, what difference does a helicopter or an ambulance make? What does any of this have to do with AI? Please bear with me and keep reading. It’s the only way to truly understand why I call myself the human in the middle.

​They finally transported him to another hospital. This was one of those huge hospitals, and I was having a hard time finding a parking space close to the building where he was staying. While walking up to the building, I got a call from the nurse.

​She asked me when was the last time my husband had brain activity. I tell you what, you want to talk about your heart dropping into your stomach or your heart stopping—that is the perfect moment. You're on a high, thinking, Okay, you know what? My husband is going to get this care now. He's going to survive this. I had watched enough medical shows to know that when somebody starts asking about brain activity, that is not a good thing. At times I wonder if I hadn't watched so many medical shows, would I have asked better questions instead of assuming these doctors were telling me everything I needed to know, being upfront and honest? I basically told the nurse that I couldn't think at the moment, that I was in the parking lot on my way to the building, and to just let me get up there.

​I was fielding calls from family and friends explaining what was going on. But of all the calls that I got, I think the call from my husband's childhood friend was the most... I don't know how to say it, but I want to say heart-wrenching, though honestly I don't think that's quite the right word.

​I explained to the friend what was going on and what had just been said. Even though I said it out loud, in some ways I don't think I quite believed it in my own brain, if that makes sense. His friend wanted to come up, but this was on a Friday, and his friend wanted me to hold off on him passing away. If he was going to pass away, wait until Monday because he had a swap meet that he could not miss. I don't know how other people feel about this, but I just felt like that was heartless. I can understand not being able to make it because you've got some other type of obligation, but telling me I need to make sure he doesn't pass away... that still gets to me to this day.

​When I got up to my husband's hospital room, the doctor was there. The doctor was not like what you see on those medical shows, caring and compassionate. This doctor looked pissed. How dare I wake them up and drag them out of bed type of pissed. He asked me all kinds of questions. I explained to him that they told me he had an aneurysm and was being taken to a hospital. Yes, they did tell me he had a brain bleed, but they said it wasn't that serious. Never once did we have an actual conversation about brain activity.

​I once asked the nurse why there wasn't any response from him when they rubbed his feet. You see on these medical shows that it's a terrible sign, but then again, you know they are overly dramatized and what you see on TV isn't always factual. They told me it was simply because he was so deeply sedated.

​I ended up losing him after realizing he was, unfortunately, brain dead, and he never regained consciousness. I never really got to tell him goodbye. Honestly, it haunts me because we were going through such tough times with the loss of our pets, the new job, and even our furnace stopped working in February. A lot was going on in what seemed like a short amount of time.

​The funeral ended up being one day before my birthday. Having it fall right at that time had a much deeper, more painful impact on me than I ever realized. My family that had come down had to rush back home right after the service because something seemed terribly off with my father, though I wouldn't find out the truth until later. So we just had the funeral, it was my birthday the next day, and I was all alone on my birthday. I tell you, that is not a good thing.

​The day after the funeral, I let Miss Black Beauty outside. She hadn't seen her daddy in days, and I think she was entirely confused about where he was. She went looking for him in all the buildings. She even stood up on her hind legs looking into the cars for him. Finally, she just laid underneath the car and wouldn't come out for the longest time. I had to go and get a pillow as well as a blanket and lay down on the ground because she wouldn't come out from underneath the car. We laid there for several hours before I was finally able to coax her out.

Read Part 4: Running from Storms and Broken Bones