Young Widow’s Muse

We are molded from experiences. Pain and joy have breezed through my life. At 26 I had a cancer diagnosis. With an unwavering husband and a precious 2 year old daughter to tend to, I beat the beast. My husband and I experienced the pure happiness of raising our son and daughter. We reveled in our seemingly ordinary existences.
When he was 49, my husband, my soulmate was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. He was ripped from our arms and this earth 10 months later.
Exactly 18 months later I went in for a surgery on my lung- complications from radiation treatment 20 years prior. It was supposed to be routine-4 days in hospital, a couple of weeks recovery and then back to work.
I awoke a month plus later-awoke is not the right word. I slowly emerged from another universe. I learned I had gone into respiratory failure. I had ARDS, and sepsis. I had been on ECMO life support, had a tracheotomy and was on a ventilator, and had a feeding tube to keep me alive. I spent 55 days in thoracic ICU. I weighed 84 pounds at my sickest. I had to learn to talk, breathe on my own, walk and do simple tasks like write, and take care of myself from the beginning. I had numerous surgeries, countless other procedures and did not get back to my house for 6 months. I was in hospital from August 14,2015- March 1, 2016. Somehow my children and I made it back from this madness. I wouldn’t be here without them. I suffered a setback in December 2016 when I had a pulmonary pseudo aneurysm in my “good lung”. I was coughing up copious amounts of blood. My 20 year old son saved my life. I was back in hospital for another month and came home with another feeding tube.
I am back to work, tube free and closely monitored by doctors. It would be a happy ending to say all is well, but you can’t suffer what my family and I have been through and not have permanent scars. My external scars are many but my internal scars are infinite. Ptsd, loneliness and fear of another health setback are my constant companions. My friends and coworkers marvel at my “resilience, my strength and my composure”. It’s all a masquerade.
Writing is therapeutic for me. The only way I can chip away at the pain inside and let some of it go.