Althea: A Story of Love Read online

  The nurse then brought me a release form to sign for the helicopter ride to Tampa and I signed it. I questioned her about what it meant catching the part where it only allowed them to transport her and sustain her midflight. This was something I was certain Althea did not want.

  “Althea does not want extraordinary life saving measures performed. I don’t know if I can agree to this.”

  This infinitely patient nurse interrupted my numbness and casually inquired, “Do you know where your wife keeps her Living Will?”

  This is the second time she asked for this and I did not know where it was. Althea always took care of such things. “I need to go home and find it,” I said to the nurse. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. We live just down the road.”

  Just then, the helicopter landed and the team hurried in preparing to move her into the vehicle. I leaned over and talked to Althea again trying to explain to her what was about to happen. I turned to leave.

  Hearing my words, Althea started flailing her right arm violently again as if in protest to what she had heard. Although I only caught her movement in edge of my peripheral vision, her actions did not sink in at that moment. I did not recognize that she was trying to tell me something, something important.

  I spoke with the pilot and crew and made sure I knew where they were taking her. “To Tampa. We are going to University Community Hospital on Fletcher and Bruce B. Downs,” she replied. That was near where our friends Linda and Bob live. I was thinking of how to get there as I left the ER.

  As I walked to the rear of the hospital toward my car, something struck me as odd. It was another one of those moments when I realized the Creator was whispering to me saying, “Think about what Althea was doing. Why was she flailing her arm?”

  I spun around and literally ran back into the ER as fast as I could go. Although it didn’t make sense as to why Althea would object to flying to Tampa, I ran over to the nurse and said, “Have they left yet?”

  “No, they’re just leaving now,” she said reassuringly.

  “I have changed my mind about this ride. Do not take her on the helicopter. Find another way,” I said emphatically. At first I felt like I was being a jerk or giving the appearance that I did not love my wife and wanted to prolong her suffering. I didn’t quite understand why I did this, but I knew I had to trust Althea and this gnawing feeling I had from the Creator. After all, everything she had communicated to me up to this point was spot on. I just had to trust her and accept that she knew what she was doing. Beyond the abilities of my logical mind, Althea knew what was in her best interest. I became committed to this conviction.

  The nursing team tried to argue with me saying it was the only way. They explained to me they were just trying to give her the best care they could. I started to feel guilty about changing my mind, and then the pilot volunteered, “How do you transport someone when we are grounded due to bad weather?” This was a great question. All arguments and resistance ceased immediately and the staff looked at themselves in serious contemplation. Of course procedures were in place when such conditions existed and of course such measures were taken at such times. These people were focused on getting her the care she needed in the fastest way possible.

  “Why can she not just ride in an ambulance?” I asked.

  “It’s because she is on oxygen now and must be administered during the trip,” the attending ER Nurse said. “Once oxygen is started, it cannot be stopped by the emergency crew.”

  “So which ambulance service can do this during the ride?” I asked.

  She thought for a while and said, “I’ll look into it and get back with you.”

  Finally, the elevated anxieties and posturing deflated like the air going out of a toy balloon. Once people make up their minds and believe there is only one way something can be done, chaos can easily froth into frenzy. People put on blinders in such situations and stand on principles spouting rhetoric that may not actually address the concerns of an individual. This mini-life-lesson happens in all walks of life, not just in the emergency room of a hospital. Often another option exists that achieves exactly the same results. Such an option requires more work than the current solution, or a reluctant compromise by the one comfortable with the first option.

  Math teachers know this scenario well in that there are several ways to solve the same problem. People, on the other hand, find it difficult to have their authority questioned by those less knowledgeable. Such people take personal offense at being challenged and believe they must defend their position—sometimes strongly—rather than listening to any alternative. When you look into their heart, rather than your head, you may find that place of compassion and patience. You may find that love exists for everyone, even those you disagree with.

  I could not fault the ER team for wanting to give Althea the best care possible and in fact I expected no less. But because of Althea’s reaction, I needed to express her concerns when she could not. And although I did not agree with the advice of the ER team, I trusted them to know what was best for her.

  The ER Nurse started calling around looking for such an ambulance and after a while one was found. She came over to me and said, “I found an ambulance that can administer her oxygen en route and they will be here within the hour.”

  “Thanks for doing this,” I said. “I’ll go home and find her living will and be back in forty five minutes.”

  Tires screeched as I sped out of the hospital parking lot and into the dark night. Once home, I searched for the Living Will but could not find it anywhere. But as I did, I found something far more important: her medical history. Althea was organized and she kept track of her history specifically noting those drugs to which she was allergic and those medical procedures she had undergone. Althea had prepared this history years ago knowing these questions were often asked and since she was an asthmatic, such a history may someday come in handy. Today was that day. I grabbed that copy and stuffed it into my hip pocket.

  Racing back to the hospital, the ambulance had already arrived and was preparing to transport her. I questioned them about speeding off to Tampa with their sirens and lights on. Again I received resistance to my request stating that it was a law they had to follow when a surgeon was waiting. I reluctantly agreed and Althea seemed not to object. They zoomed off down the highway and reached the hospital about ten minutes before I did.

  As I walked through the doors of the emergency room, I reached in my hip pocket and handed the attending ER physician a copy of the medical history. She was extremely grateful. Making copies, she gave the original back to me thanking me saying that most people are not as well prepared as Althea was.

  An orderly came and said, “It’s time to prep her for surgery.”

  This short stocky man looked fresh as if he had just started his shift. He wheeled the gurney into a corner and pulled the drapes around. Pulling out a set of hair clippers, he plugged them into the wall outlet and started examining Althea’s head. Her hair was chin length and she worked hard over the past few months to get that little flip on the front edges just below her ear. I interrupted him saying only half jokingly, “Can you cut mine too?”

  “No. I’m sorry,” he replied, “I’d do it, but it’s against hospital policy.”

  Our eyes met in a long gaze and he understood my request. He paused for a moment and let me look at her one last time before he began. Then he turned and the whirring of the clippers sang out while its hum rose and fell around the contours of her skull.

  It only took a few minutes and I gathered up her hair. I wanted to keep this for her but I wanted to keep it more for me so I would remember this moment. I guess I just needed something to remind me of what happened in case something went wrong in surgery. My mother kept the hair from my first hair cut as a young child and told me how I cried uncontrollably when it was done. To make me stop crying, she gathered up my hair and gave it to me later. I felt this same connection to Althea’s hair now.

  The tears started to flow f
reely from my face down my cheeks and onto the hair in my hand. I stooped down to gather the rest and lightly sobbed as I did. I took a moment to feel the pain of the last few hours and review the events in my mind. Taking a slow, deep breath I stood up and held Althea’s hand one last time.

  “Everything is going to be alright,” I said to her. “They cut off your hair but I’ve gathered it for you. I will show it to you when you wake up.”

  I began to feel powerless. Looking down at her still snoring away, I had always found the words or had the plan to resolve whatever issue or health threat arose. I just wanted to do something at this point and I knew that cutting my hair off would be such a thing. At that moment, I made a commitment to myself to do this as soon as time allowed. It just felt like it was the right thing to do. I found an envelope nearby, put Althea’s hair into it, sealed it, and put it into my hip pocket next to her medical history.

  Then, a gentle man with a round face and grey hair walked up to me and introduced himself. “My name is Doctor DeWeese and I will be performing Althea’s surgery. Tell me, what was the delay in getting her here?”

  I didn’t want to go into detail about Althea’s flailing arm and so I somehow found brief words that would make sense to him. “Doctor, since it had been seven hours since she was taken to the ER, I felt there was really no hurry in getting her to the hospital twenty or thirty minutes sooner.”

  “I see. I understand now. And you were probably right,” he replied. “Let’s get her in there and see what we can do to turn this around. Don’t worry; I’ve done this sort of thing many times before.”

  I turned to Althea and leaned over her kissing her on her cheek. “Don’t worry darling, everything will be alright. I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere.” I gently squeezed her right hand one last time and tenderly kissed her on her cheek. “See you soon.”

  A small team of orderlies flocked in and flung back the curtain. Surrounding her bed, they rolled her out of the corner room. My eyes strained to follow her as far as they could and then she disappeared down the hall and into the elevator. At eight A.M., Althea was finally led out of the University Hospital ER for her long awaited surgery. On the one hand, I was comforted knowing she was in good hands; on the other I was scared thinking this may have been the last kiss I would ever give to her. I closed my eyes, exhaled completely, and turned all of my fears, worries, and concerns over to the Creator. I had done all I could and now the rest was up to others. After saying a prayer, I picked up the now cool cup of coffee an ER attendant gave me earlier and found my way to the Recovery Room waiting area.

  As I peered out the windows, I thought of the time I wasted not noticing Althea’s condition. If I had been just a little more observant…

  Such thoughts serve no good purpose, so instead I became grateful for this moment. She was alive and in excellent hands. I just needed to be patient and she will come back to me. At times like this, Althea would say something like, “Just let it go. You’ve done all you can.” She was right. For me, surrendering is more difficult than it is for her. But Althea is a good teacher and this is another one of her invaluable lessons.

  Total Lunar Eclipse the Evening of February 20, 2008

  Chapter 3 — February 21, 2008 — Day 1

  * * *

  Only thirteen months after our marriage, I was honorably discharged from the Air Force fulfilling my four year term. At the time we lived in Altus, Oklahoma, where we made several lifelong Air Force friends. One of them, Gary, was the best man at our wedding and proudly from Kalamazoo, Michigan; the other, Bill, my principle-driven hippy radical from St. Louis, Missouri, selflessly enjoyed helping veterans secure their well deserved benefits. Both were glad to hear from me but equally crushed to hear the news about Althea’s stroke. Our close life-long relationship made it easy for me to talk with them and strength returned to me as I relayed the events of the past twenty four hours.

  In my discussions, I confessed my insensitivity to Althea’s actual condition and yesterday’s slow response to it. I relayed the little things that hinted at her helpless state and told them I felt guilty. Gary and Bill both insisted I had done everything I could.

  Feeling somewhat reassured, I took a few minutes to gather my thoughts before calling others. My head spun thinking about the reality into which I was abruptly plunged and the best way to support Althea during her recovery. I tried to block out the blaring television in the waiting room but just could not, so I searched for somewhere quieter to think, pray, and meditate.

  Such a place in this particular hospital I could not find, at least nearby the door where news about her condition would soon arrive. I finally found a small corner in a hallway next to the service elevators where the traffic was lower and I could distance myself from the overwhelming hustle and bustle. Standing next to the windows, I called our church and spoke with Lois, one of our dearest friends. Lois said she would let the others close to Althea know about her situation. This was a great relief knowing I could count on others help to get the word out. I looked through my list of contacts in my cell phone and called close friends asking them to pray for her healing and curing. Before long, Althea was on many prayer chains all around the country.

  Everyone I contacted relayed tender and insightful words to me. Each told me brief tales of how Althea had personally impacted their lives and how they felt honored to now give back to her in this way. Feelings of love, support, and nurturing swelled up inside of me with each call I completed and their sharing moved me to tears many times over. It felt good to cry.

  I called work and spoke with my boss. Compassionately, he told me not to worry and to stay with Althea. My responsibilities for my job melted away with his kind words, and I was now free to focus completely on her curing and healing. After calling everyone I could think of, I wandered back to the waiting room to patiently wait for news.

  The surgery took much longer than I anticipated. With the waiting room so noisy, I couldn’t sleep. Someone was dealing with their own grief by watching a mindless game show with bells ringing and people cheering. I can understand how people cope with stressful situations in their own ways, but a game show just wasn’t mine.

  I walked around the halls gazing out a window at the dark clouds and made my way outside. Although mid morning, the dense storm clouds made it seem like midnight with parking lot lights ablaze. It was raining and the gloominess touched my heart. I always loved the rain and enjoyed the flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder. At our remote mountainside home in Colorado, thunder claps would echo around the valley for tens of seconds and jolting bolts would shake the windows and floors. To witness such power always made me feel surrounded by the Creator’s great strength. I found comfort in this falling rain.

  Compared to Colorado, the lightning in Tampa was more frequent with shorter thunder echoes. Even the driving rains here distinguished themselves from those of the mountains. Wild winds could drive the rain horizontally tapping loudly against a window and bend palm trees to their snapping point. Downpours and deluges filled low spots in yards and routinely flooded streets. Today I saw deep puddles in the parking lot below and watched the reflections of car headlights in them as they magically streaked from one puddle to the next. Traffic lights flashed wriggling lines from rut to rut and red tail lights streamed mysteriously along the wet streets. The familiar hissing noise of tires splashing along the pavement in this slow soaking rain sounded like some strange symphony to my ears.

  I wandered back to the waiting room and its own surreal sounds. I sat at a table and thumbed through a newspaper someone left along with some magazines barely glancing at the crossword puzzle and comics. I recall nothing of what I saw or read; it just kept my mind occupied until I could see Althea again. The painful wait was intensified by my lack of sleep.

  Finally at about noon, the doors to the Intensive Care Unit swung open and the doctor came out. When he saw me, he smiled and I took this as a good sign. Still wearing his surgical scrubs, ma
sk dangling from his neck, Dr. DeWeese explained, “Mr. Rastocny, your wife had an acute subdural hematoma. This is a severe kind of a stroke where a blood vessel bursts between her skull and her brain, fills the area with blood, and puts extreme pressure on it. We performed a craniotomy to remove a section of her skull. This eased the pressure on her brain and allowed us to remove the clot. She is fine and resting comfortably now.”

  “Whew! That’s a relief,” I responded feeling many of my anxieties flow right out of my arms and legs and into the floor. Although I was optimistic, a part of me wondered if anything had gone wrong during this procedure.

  “We couldn’t find the source of the bleeding though. There are just so many folds in the brain and although I tried for quite a while, I just could not locate it,” he continued. “I’m not worried about it though and she seems to be doing fine. It will be a few more hours before you can see her since she is still heavily sedated. Don’t worry, she’ll be alright.”