The Razor's Edge

My husband is close to death.  Bill started feeling rotten about a week ago and descended through weakness, lethargy, confusion and finally into seizures, aphasia, violent delirium and coma.  The sense of being a powerless, horrified onlooker is beyond overwhelming.

The hospital has been great, the staff attentive and responsive, but I feel like I am navigating the razor's edge trying to help with my husband's care.  The same story told over and over and over to any number of skeptical medicos:  a camping trip over a gorgeous weekend in the Arizona desert, headache the following day, then the avalanche. No, not a smoker.  Yes, a social drinker.  And every day, a new, possible diagnosis. Delirium tremens?  Yes, then no; social history and blood chemistry does not support this.  Septicemia?  Yes, then no.  No infection.  We are finally at viral encephalits, probably West Nile Virus, because of abnormal cerebrospinal fluid analysis. 

The doctors and nurses engage in wonderful synchrony, full of shared, private humor and confidence of numbers.  I know that feeling, because I used to work in the same environment.  But now, standing on the other side of the bed, I feel even more isolated, because I know the code,  I recognize the semaphore, I instinctively grasp the message behind the message in the programmed responses from the medical staff.  Bill is very sick.  He almost died Sunday night.

Now I look at my husband, who always has been somewhat larger than life to me.  He is sedated, but not truly asleep.  The ventilator sighs, sounding so much like water hissing up on a rocky shoreline.  His feet float under the sheet; hands wave gently in the air in a strange, Jacksonian dance, reflex to reflexive posture.  Expressions move across his face, cloud shadows over a sun filled landscape, the land of coma.  The barrel chest rises and falls evenly, so much more smoothly than the horrified, screaming gasping, struggling for air and for life.

We are all walking the razor's edge, but most of the time are not aware of it.  Now, I see the exquisite danger in every single step, the gift and threat of life.