How Did I Get Here and What the Heck Happened to My Old Life?

 Two days before Thanksgiving my "life" changed. Forever. 

But not in the way you life changes when someone dies, which my husband almost did (twice). Or in the way it does when you experience some modern day trauma. But all the same, it changed. 

After 56 years of living together and loving, the lives we had built shifted on their foundation with a slip of a tiny wire inside my husband's heart that pierced an artery instead of gently going around a tricky corner. The result was sixty days of sedation in the CICU of a major Boston hospital. 

Days on life support, ventilation, so drugged he was unable to move a muscle. Eventually, he was trach-ed, and had to beat back several rounds of serious pneumonia. A move to a specialty hospital for 30 days (limited by Medicare) and then moved again to Skilled Nursing which would be home for 100 days. 

Now my life was six hours a day of visiting. Managing the people in the facility. Fighting for better therapy, bringing food that was edible, and planning was to brighten his days. 

That was my whole life. For 5.5 months I drove to a facility, sat in a chair and watched my husband sleep, eat, or watch TV. 

But he was alive and I was grateful. 

By June I was more than ready to take him home. I thought I had prepped everything he needed. Organized the new bedroom within an ounce of it's life.

June 10 he came home and I became his primary caregiver. 

I am not positing our story is the saddest; our situation the most compelling. It is just one story. We are just one family. I am just one person navigating the new world of caregiving.