Posted by:
finallygetsit
(
)
Date: September 27, 2016 10:54PM
In April I thought that my husband had had a mild stroke. For the first week after noticing that he sometimes would forget a word, or two, there wasn't much change. I tried pretty much every day to get him to go to the hospital, but he refused. The following two weeks his symptoms worsened at an alarming rate, but he still would not let me take him to the hospital.
Finally, on May 1st he let me take him in, and it was then that my husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It was 3 weeks from the time that I first noticed the symptoms to the time that he allowed me to take him to the hospital.
After his diagnosis, I learned that he had another earlier symptom that (at the time) I didn't realize was a symptom: A couple of months before his "stroke-like" symptoms, I noticed that he had stopped wearing his glasses. When I asked him why he wasn't wearing his glasses, he told me that they weren't working for him any more. I assumed that he just needed to get some new glasses because it had been several years since he'd gotten his current pair, so I told him to make an appointment to have his eyes checked. He never did.
If there were any other symptoms that he was aware of before that time, he never let me know about them.
He had brain surgery on May 5th, and was in the hospital recovering & getting physical therapy for a few weeks, and then we brought him home. He seemed to improve a little for a few more weeks, but then after a rapid decline, he passed away on July 13th. Just 2 days after our 35th anniversary.
In the meantime, my mom (who had been fighting cancer for 4 years) passed away on June 30th. I had planned to come visit her in May, knowing that she would be gone soon... had in fact purchased a plane ticket before I realized that my husband was ill. When I realized that there was something wrong with my husband, I told my mom that I would have to cancel - knowing that I would never see her again. She understood.
Two of the most important people in my life were gone in less than two weeks of each other. It is astounding to me that the sun is able to keep rising, day after day; how (aside from my own sadness) life seems so ordinary. I continue to work, try to pay the bills, and miss him terribly. I wish I could talk to him again. I wish I could talk to my mom again, too.