A Different Kind of Black Eyes for the New Year
I think many would agree that the 2020 New Year was the last blissfully naive celebration we all took part in. Whether it was from the couch, asleep in bed, or a big night out. The months after that have been fraught with worry, heartache, and tragedy. This New Year of 2021 to 2022 will go down in our family book as one to remember. One I definitely will not forget. Hence the post here, I’m still having a rough time with the lingering feelings of anxiety and panic related to our night. I needed an extra therapy session (didn’t think I’d need it, but as soon as I spoke and began to cry, I realized I was more affected than I had admitted.) So what you will read here is based on my feelings at the time this was happening. My perception was skewed by elevated anxiety, fear, and disconnect from my brain/ body connection. (I’ve been recommended a book called, “The Body Keeps the Score” for this reason.)
As a side note, the friends I will speak of will be referred to as John and Jane. To protect the privacy of our friends, and due to me not having permission to use their names, I’m leaving them out because I didn’t ask if I could use their name. Y’all know I’m super protective of folk’s business and I am fiercely opinionated about telling stuff that’s not yours to tell. SO….here goes.
John and Jane are friends of ours who, like us, have been super careful to protect themselves and others from COVID and we’ve all been vaccinated, so we thought it safe and a fun idea to go to their place and have a New Year’s Eve dinner and play cards and ring in the New Year with some sense of normalcy. We really looked forward to this time with them. It’s been a while since we’ve been able to visit with friends in any capacity other than waving from a distance or video chat.
Dinner was soooo good. Jane made a fantastic filet mignon and we had steamed veggies; these folks know how to entertain. John doesn’t drink, but the rest of us enjoyed drinks at dinner with great conversation. The conversation turned to health, our health, (all of us) care providers, and what we’ve heard from others and experienced at our local hospital. It was not a glowing review or even a confidence boost for the hospital based on what we’d heard. Anyone from our area knows that the opinions of level of care locally are so polarized. We ourselves, have never had anything but A+ care at the hospital, but others haven’t been as lucky. I don’t believe a game of ‘telephone’ with others’ experiences is accurate, nor productive so all I can say is I am so sorry for them. I can’t imagine having the feeling that you didn’t get what you needed when you needed it most.
Dinner was over and we broke out our Cards Against Humanity game. J & J had never played it. Between the warm glow from the couple of drinks in us, and the great company, we were having a great time. The mild weather we’d been having was unusual and set up for a great time to jump into the outdoor hot tub. It seated 3, so Jane and I sat on the deck in chairs and we all talked while the guys took advantage of the hot tub. Raising our voices a bit to be heard over the jets. The rain was slowly moving in and we could feel the gentle spray of the mist on our faces when the breeze brought it to us.
Two cycles, I think, in the tub, the rain cooling down the air, we decided to go back in. I remember seeing John get out, put the cover on the tub. I was watching Anthony get out, wrap the towel around himself. I moved, as did Jane so they could move toward the door and we are still chatting. I don’t recall Anthony saying anything. I saw him walking. I watched him take his glasses from me. He leaned against the porch railing, his back to the rail, about to put his glasses on.
The rest of this, I swear, just like the cinematography of a heart stopping thriller, slows down and moves in disjointed flashes. Yet, every moment is burned into my brain so deeply that thinking of it right now, my heart is racing, my breath is sucked out of my chest and my nose is burning with the threat of tears. Blinking away the blur of tears welling in my eyes right now, I need to get this out. It has taken me sixteen damn days of sitting with this, and I have to get it out. My therapist told me I need to be able to be more vulnerable with Anthony and tell HIM how I’m feeling. But it took me two weeks to be able to do THAT. I didn’t want to burden him with what I thought he would take on as his fault and worry him.
So, Anthony is leaning, his back against the porch rail. He’s looking down at the deck, glasses in hand. I observe him lean forward a bit, bending at the waist…then…he…keeps…going. The thudding sound of his body coming to a complete, abrupt stop, I still hear it. It’s a sound memory that I can’t seem to shake. And the split second realization that he was too still that set off this trauma to my brain and body.
My husband had lost consciousness and fallen…fallen does not feel like the appropriate word for this…his six foot two, two hundred pound body collapsed, dead weight dropped, smashed face down, I can’t find an acceptable way to describe it that matches how I felt watching it. To me, my husband of twenty-seven years was leaving me alone in this world. He was LEAVING me. The last dinner we’d just had was it. I was becoming a widow on New Year’s Eve.
“OH MY GOD!! OH MY GOD!!” I stepped over him to get to the side his face was exposed on and I saw blood pouring from his nose. (I saw pouring. It was maybe a dollar coin size amount.) I don’t know how I managed to flip him over, maybe John helped, I do not remember this specific part. All I know is I was patting his cheek, and repeating, “Baby…Baby….come on….Baby….Oh Honey….Baby…” over and over. I REFUSED to say, “Don’t leave me.” Or “Don’t die.” I was kneeling next to my husband’s body that laid motionless, his eyes partially open, blood on his face, the right side of his face near his eye was scraped up a bit. I think John called it a ‘raspberry’. I was watching him die, (again, not really, but I didn’t know that at the time.) and I couldn’t bring myself to say those cliche movie lines because it would make it more real and I was not about to tell HIM that I was losing my shit in that moment. On the inside. On the outside, I was shaking so hard and felt like my chest was going to explode, but my voice didn’t show any of that. Anthony opened his eyes. His pupils were appropriately sized for staring up at the porch light. His breathing was normal. What the hell just happened? The love of my life is on the ground and confused and asking the same questions over and over, RIGHT after we’d answered them already. We just kept answering over and over.
Anthony- “What happened?”
Me- “Honey, you fell on your face.”
Anthony- “I’m sorry!…what happened?”
Me and Friends talking to him - “You don’t have anything to be sorry for…you fell when you got out of the hot tub.”
Anthony- “I’m sorry!…I’m sorry. What happened?”
I remember standing and asking John if I should call my kids. He tried to reassure me that he was going to be okay and not yet. John has some medical background, and I’ve had CPR/ First aid training, but none of that prepared me for watching the love of my life, my best friend, my life partner in such a vulnerable, confused state, unable to sit up or stand on his own. (Mind you, this asshole wanted to sit up right away and did for a second, before the blood started from his nose again and we got him back down flat on his back.)
While all this is happening, Jane is calling 911, getting a bag for me to gather things to take to the hospital and a glasses case for Anthony’s glasses. Ambulance is dispatched and on the way.
I don’t remember getting my shoes back on or getting my purse and things together. I do remember fumbling around to find Anthony’s wallet to make sure I have his ID and his insurance card handy.
Anthony is still on the ground and I’m literally flashing life without him. I am scared out of my mind that I am losing my husband, despite our friend saying he is pretty sure he’s going to be fine. In moments like that, I now know, I expect the worst.
The ambulance arrives. A driver and two riders. They collect the pertinent information and they load up their most precious cargo in the back and I watch as my everything, strapped to a bed, is lifted and slid into place and disappears from my view. I say my “I love you’s” and he is gone. I am not allowed to go in the ambulance. I cannot drive. I’ve had two drinks. I do not drink and drive. Not even a Kroger wine tasting. I never have, I never will. It is absolutely non-negotiable. How am I going to get there?! FUCK! John doesn’t drink. Without question, without asking, John drove, Jane up front with John, me in the back behind John as we followed the ambulance. John and Jane are talking, I’m half listening. All I can think is, ‘He didn’t make it, I’m sorry.” Or that he will ‘code’ on the way there and the situation will escalate and we won’t be together. He will endure this alone. I took my vows to be with him in sickness and in health. Not sickness and in hell. Hell is what I’m experiencing. I am losing my shit and I am on the edge of a breakdown, but holding it together SOMEHOW. I don’t know how. Anyone who knows me knows that I cry at the drop of a hat. I am miraculously stoic but still vibrating with shaky nerves. Thin. Thin is the proper word for my state then, very very thin….any loud noise, or sudden movement and I will be out. But I’m hanging.
Remember Natasha Richardson? I had her on my mind all the way to the hospital. Natasha fell and had a head injury from a skiing accident, was deemed okay and then two days later she wasn’t. To be fair, I don’t believe she was checked out properly after the initial fall. But I kept replaying her story in my head over and over. That and a man who had fallen and then died in bed with his wife, in his sleep. All this is going through my mind. And I can’t slow my heart rate. I can’t contain the panic. But I don’t allow it to seep out. I keep it inside.
The trip to the hospital was filled with what ifs. No regrets. I cannot tell you how comforting it is to know that in that moment, I had zero regrets. We love and we love hard. Communicating and always checking in. Don’t leave anything undone, folks. Make sure you take care of loose ends and always make sure your people know how you feel. In the what ifs, I was planning a funeral. I was contemplating how to tell my kids. John did call back to me to make sure I was alright and I think the only contribution I made to the conversation was, “Anyone find it odd that we are taking my husband to the same hospital we were just discussing at dinner?” My memory is consumed with what I was feeling, but I think I remember John telling me that for this kind of thing, Anthony is in great care, for sure. And he was right.
Anthony is a true, storybook patriarch of our family. The symbol of father and husband that cares for his family above and beyond. I was not prepared for this. This was too damn sudden. Twenty-seven years was not enough. Not nearly long enough. “Please, God…” I thought of a pastor, Jeff Noel, who said that God is so deep in our DNA that in times of trouble, even the most hardened against him will call out to him. And I did.
The ambulance takes a turn off. We continue straight. We beat the ambulance. John parks us in the garage and he and Jane escort me to the desk. Then they leave. “Please keep us posted, let us know if you need anything.” They will be the people that helped me survive that night. I couldn’t have kept a level head had they not been there. I think of the handful of times that Anthony and I have stayed at places with hot tubs and had drinks and had no problem whatsoever. Unfamiliar places. I purposely don’t think about what would have happened had this event happened when I was the only other adult there.
The Emergency Department desk clerk takes my name and who I am waiting for and tells me to have a seat and it will be a while, but they will call me as soon as Anthony is settled. So I sit. And I feel so alone. My first task as a widow. Sit alone in a room of strangers and act like I’m fine.
I am not fine.
I am not in my body.
I shakily go through the bag Jane gave me and I find my phone. Shit. It’s New Year’s Eve. No one wants to be bothered right now. I need someone. I need my brother, Donnie.
Facebook message- 12/31/21 9:38pm
((Partial pieces- relevant parts I want to share. Also, permission was given to share this.))
Me: You up?
Donnie: Yep? You?
Me: Yep. In ER. Waiting for Anthony to get settled. He came by ambulance…I’m alone in the ER and can’t tell the kids yet. I’m terrified even though I’ve been told he’s gonna be fine. Don’t post about it. I’m sooooo scared, Donnie. Don’t call. I’ll fucking cry.
Donnie: I have my phone on and my volume up if you do need to call.
Me: I love you.
Donnie: I love you too.
Donnie asked if I wanted him to come up from Bowling Green. I declined. No reason. He wouldn’t have been able to come in anyway. He told me if I changed my mind, he’d be there. I appreciated that.
I communicated only with John and my brother, Donnie that night. I just couldn’t talk to anyone else. I did get a couple of texts from people that I replied to briefly, but honestly, I just couldn’t think straight in those few hours.
I am messaging with Donnie when they call my name and I am told which room my love is in. And I am living that scene in “Steel Magnolias” when M’Lynn is walking that nightmarishly long hallway in the hospital to get to Shelby. I can hear my shoes on the shiny, concrete tile floor, I feel my heart beating in my neck, my breath has been ragged since I watched my husband drop onto the wooden deck. The numbers on the damn rooms don’t make sense to me and I’m now panicking…an employee sees me and stops, “It’s alright…what room are you looking for, ma’am?” I answer in the form of a question and she walked me down. I turn the corner and see my Anthony sitting up in the bed, attached to monitors and being cared for by the attending physician. I interrupt his examination, so I quietly sit next to my Beloved and I listen. “Patient has…” It’s a blur. He’s talking to either the recorder on his shirt or something on the wall in the room, but he’s talking so loudly in Anthony’s face so the device hears him and I see Anthony wince- I want to yell, “Why are you YELLING at him?! That HURTS him!” But I sit. A CT scan of Anthony’s head and X-rays of his cervical and thoracic spine are ordered.
Doctor Arnold (Because he is a body builder in appearance) tells us both his guess is that Anthony lost consciousness as a result of a combo of blood pressure medicine, alcohol and hot tub heat raising his body temperature and caused vasodilation. Dilation of his blood vessels causing his blood pressure to drop and in his case, loss of consciousness. Because he fell face first, they want to rule out brain bleed, brain swelling and any spine issues.
Around 11pm, they took him for the CT and X-rays. CT scan came out clean. He did take a hit to his face, and suffered a nasal fracture, but not significant enough to warrant an ENT consultation. But he needs to follow up with our regular PCP.
While I waited for them to bring him back to me from his CT and X-rays, I attempted to calm myself by pulling up a guided meditation YouTube video. I propped it up on my shoulder, close to my ear and breathed into my anxiety and tried to bring my body to the present where all was going to be fine. When over the loud speaker I heard,
“Code Blue in CT2 Room 2…Code Blue in CT2 Room 2” OH MY GOD, It’s not okay… Baby….baby….please God…oh my God, why aren’t they coming to tell me what is happening?!?!?! I pace, I go to the door. Nothing. I sit…when what feels like an eternity, I hear Anthony’s voice…he is being wheeled back in in his bed…My God, I cannot take much more. I exhaled and told them what I’d heard and how frightened I was…”No ma’am, they said CCU…CCU…” Relief. Followed by guilt for the CCU patient and empathy for the family.
We rang in that New Year from that ED exam room and we knuckle bumped another ‘first’. After twenty-seven years together we look for the ‘firsts’ to keep us from feeling like we’ve done or seen it all. His nurse talked him through his baby dose of morphine and zofran into his IV. We both have a healthy fear of pain medication for various reasons, none being self harm or prior misuse. So she talked him through it and he did beautifully and was very appreciative once it hit his system. In usual Anthony fashion, he had the nurse cracking up, we were all laughing so hard while she cared for him. She was phenomenal. I am sorry I didn’t remember her name. She was an angel that night.
I finally did cry that night. But it was RIGHT before we were discharged and I was sitting by his side, my head on the bed rails. We were exhausted. I’d allowed myself to rest for a minute. (Still on alert and listening to the monitor of his vitals.) And I felt Anthony brush my hair back with his hand. And I…just…unleashed my emotions that had been pressurizing for six plus hours. My breakdown was cut short by an employee checking in on him. And so I sealed it back up.
John and Jane kept in contact the whole time, as did Donnie. J& J came back just after 2am and took us back to their place. Our over night stuff was there, as was our car. I barely slept that night. I kept making sure Anthony was breathing. And I’m still doing that every night.
The first night we were back home, and daylight turned to dark, I was surprised by the fear welling up in my chest. My sudden attention to Anthony’s breathing, watching him sleep, getting him ice for his face. What if they were wrong? What if a brain bleed started AFTER we left the hospital? What if it was something that was small and building that they didn’t see on the scan? I felt my whole body come crashing down again. My poor, beat up husband listened as I wept beside him, me unable to voice my fears. Even after he asked why I was crying. I was having a flashback. A sudden body response that was going to repeat the same damn thing as the night before. This sucked. And it lasted hours. He gave me two of my anxiety pills and made my tea to calm my ass down. I was having a panic over my husband’s impending death and HE was making me tea as I had a panic attack on the balcony of our condo. Great, Anita. Some caregiver you are. Way. To. Go. More self degradation. I did this with less and less severity for days following the event. And I hated every minute of it. While simultaneously thanking the universe that my husband was here. Living, breathing expressing annoyance over my fawning over him. Constantly. Breath checks. Bed checks. Hell, he took a shower two days ago and I freaked out because after the water shut off, I was convinced he had LOC and slid down the shower wall, quietly and died. I was on the edge of the couch about to go check, when he emerged from the steam filled bathroom, looking like an Old Spice hottie wrapped in a towel. Sigh.
Anthony was pretty banged up. His face was pretty bruised for several days and I was SO happy he took a few days off work. He had terrible headaches and his eyes were sensitive to light, probably due to the HA. He had his follow up with our PCP, she looked over everything and also agreed with the ED doctor that this was hot tub vasodilation event and that Anthony was fine. BUT…she ordered a twenty-four heart monitor to triple check. For this I am thankful. A piece of mind to puzzle together with the other reassurances.
My lasting trauma in all this is a result of the suddenness of the event, the ‘what could have been’ part. I use to say that I wanted to outlive him so I don’t have to pass worrying about how he will get along without me. Boy, did that night change my mind. I can’t do this again. For real. I do not want to contemplate life without him. Again with the tears. Damn. The trauma I am having to work through is also connected to childhood trauma. ACES, anyone? I have the best therapist in the world who helps me understand my self degradation and anger at myself for feeling so shaken by this event. “It’s so stupid. It’s over and he’s fine. But I’m not.” She assures me it’s okay to feel these feelings and to sit with it for a while, but to also do some work to connect my body back to my brain when I’m feeling the anxiety and panic.
The road to healing from trauma is rough enough without the sinkholes that grab us now and then, taking us into a darkness that we have a hard time climbing out of. This was a pot hole that I perceived as a sink hole.
And I’m thankful to be back on the road. With My Beloved beside me.
By the way - hot tubs are not in our future. Never again. Ever.
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