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He was in the hospital for four or five days. It’s hard to remember exactly. Time didn’t seem to be following its regular steady pattern then. Some days a second felt like an hour, and on other days hours flew by like seconds as I tried to keep up with the normal routine of life and spend as much time at the hospital with Steven as was possible.

Some images from that time are still very vivid for me. I recall the evenings when Steven was in the hospital. After our daughter, all of five years old, had been put to bed, and I finished my chores, I’d get into bed myself, emotionally and physically weary, and I would cry. Violent sobs escaped from my mouth, and I tried to muffle them with my hand, afraid that daughter might wake and want to know why I was crying. I’d lay there, arms crossed in front of my chest squeezing my upper arms, trying without much success to feel that I was being held and comforted. “Perhaps he’ll need an operation, perhaps he’ll need an operation, perhaps he’ll need an operation,” I said silently to myself, seeing brain surgery not as something to fear but rather the potential answer to my prayers. I prayed that Steven would be well. I wanted to know what was happening to his body. I wanted an answer. I wanted whatever was wrong to be made right. Eventually I would fall asleep and wake in the morning as tired as I had been when I went to bed.

There are some memories from that time that are more than vivid. They are imprinted on my heart forever. The moment I heard Steven’s diagnosis is one of them. The details are still crystal clear, even though it happened more than 30 years ago.

It was a crisp, sunny day in October, I had gone to the hospital and as I was getting off the elevator the attending physician on duty came over to me. “I was hoping I would see you,” he said, guiding me to the waiting area, a rather public and very uninviting space furnished with cheap plastic molded chairs that were lined up in rows facing each other.

“Your husband has multiple sclerosis,” he continued with¬out emotion. “MS is a degenerative and incurable neurological disease. I’m sorry.” An image from childhood flashed through my mind, the image of a neighbor who had MS. I would see her, on sunny days, sitting on her front porch, in a wheelchair as I walked up the street with the jaunty step of a preteen on the way to play with a friend. I don’t recall if I ever said hello. I hope I did. I now envisioned Steven in a wheelchair wrapped up in a blanket the way Mrs. Burns always was, waiting for someone to bring her a glass of water with a straw, or wheel her back into the house. It was so terrifying it took my breath away. I was twenty-eight years old when Steven was diagnosed with MS. He was thirty-one. From that moment on, our lives were irrevocably changed.