I found this article on salon.com today, and couldn't help but think it applies here as well...
In sickness and in health
My husband is sleeping in another room tonight, not an unusual event. Phil is very, very sick, and this is my new reality. But I still don't like the fact that he chooses to go to bed somewhere without me.
Tonight he's coughing so loudly, I wonder if I'll find a dusty lung deposited outside his room tomorrow morning.
Many of you have snoring, coughing, irritating husbands, and it's not such a big, hairy deal. But mine is recuperating from a bone marrow transplant and so ... with every cough I wonder whether I will soon become a widow.
I have a love like the ones in the movies. Not so much Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster, but Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner, very "King and I," very much the older, sexy, crazy king falling in love with a younger, yappy chick who gives him "what for." I have actually seen my guy pinch his chin, musing, "She's a puzzlement," as he wanders around our house, trying to figure out whether he wants to kick me to the curb or f*%$ me. Very dreamy and insane and painful -- and that's even before he fell ill with not one but two rare blood disorders.
I can't believe it's been only two years since he collapsed on our kitchen floor, in the best shape of his life, clad only in a cunning pair of Hugo Boss boxer briefs. Only to be released from the hospital three months later, after having his blood swept clean every day like Keith Richards at his worst. While he was in the hospital suffering from this weird blood disorder, we found out that in fact he had another, worse disease that the docs wanted to keep him from knowing about till he was "better." That disease is the one he is suffering from now, again rare and incurable -- the only famous person to die of it is Carl Sagan. To cut a long story short, a bone marrow transplant followed, and my lovely guy is doing really well except for the fact that he is in the downstairs bedroom coughing his guts out.
Marriage is the subject. And how married I am. I wish I could find words to explain it. How his body feels like it's mine. How I wish that we could have issues to deal with like infidelity and boredom. Those problems would be so much easier to contend with than whether he's going to live or not. How weird it is to lie beside someone, even if they're starting to resemble Jerry Lewis because of Prednisone excess, and love them so much and worry that maybe this time next year all you'll be left with is your memories.
When he was first in a coma, I used to gaze at his body, running my eyes over it like a pornographer, or at least a theater director -- his big dancer's thighs, his newly buff biceps, his prematurely gray but refusing-to-recede hairline, his fit body lying inert in a short, paisley-sprigged shift, a wheezing ventilator clapped over his once-sensual lips. I would try to find some part of him that was not be-plasticked or be-hosed, usually his ear or his foot, and I would caress it and kiss it, yes, I would.
Now he's gone from underweight to overweight, his body betraying him over and over again. He's still bitchin' handsome and sexy and swell, but he's tired of being so sick.
My husband is sick enough to die. I haven't had sex in over two years. But he is my partner. He is my love, my life. There is nothing more important to me than this man. I would give anything, anything, to have him well. We want to live together for as long as we've got. By the sea. With coffee and newspapers -- and maybe some sex. That's what marriage is to me. -- Susan Duligal
In sickness and in health
My husband is sleeping in another room tonight, not an unusual event. Phil is very, very sick, and this is my new reality. But I still don't like the fact that he chooses to go to bed somewhere without me.
Tonight he's coughing so loudly, I wonder if I'll find a dusty lung deposited outside his room tomorrow morning.
Many of you have snoring, coughing, irritating husbands, and it's not such a big, hairy deal. But mine is recuperating from a bone marrow transplant and so ... with every cough I wonder whether I will soon become a widow.
I have a love like the ones in the movies. Not so much Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster, but Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner, very "King and I," very much the older, sexy, crazy king falling in love with a younger, yappy chick who gives him "what for." I have actually seen my guy pinch his chin, musing, "She's a puzzlement," as he wanders around our house, trying to figure out whether he wants to kick me to the curb or f*%$ me. Very dreamy and insane and painful -- and that's even before he fell ill with not one but two rare blood disorders.
I can't believe it's been only two years since he collapsed on our kitchen floor, in the best shape of his life, clad only in a cunning pair of Hugo Boss boxer briefs. Only to be released from the hospital three months later, after having his blood swept clean every day like Keith Richards at his worst. While he was in the hospital suffering from this weird blood disorder, we found out that in fact he had another, worse disease that the docs wanted to keep him from knowing about till he was "better." That disease is the one he is suffering from now, again rare and incurable -- the only famous person to die of it is Carl Sagan. To cut a long story short, a bone marrow transplant followed, and my lovely guy is doing really well except for the fact that he is in the downstairs bedroom coughing his guts out.
Marriage is the subject. And how married I am. I wish I could find words to explain it. How his body feels like it's mine. How I wish that we could have issues to deal with like infidelity and boredom. Those problems would be so much easier to contend with than whether he's going to live or not. How weird it is to lie beside someone, even if they're starting to resemble Jerry Lewis because of Prednisone excess, and love them so much and worry that maybe this time next year all you'll be left with is your memories.
When he was first in a coma, I used to gaze at his body, running my eyes over it like a pornographer, or at least a theater director -- his big dancer's thighs, his newly buff biceps, his prematurely gray but refusing-to-recede hairline, his fit body lying inert in a short, paisley-sprigged shift, a wheezing ventilator clapped over his once-sensual lips. I would try to find some part of him that was not be-plasticked or be-hosed, usually his ear or his foot, and I would caress it and kiss it, yes, I would.
Now he's gone from underweight to overweight, his body betraying him over and over again. He's still bitchin' handsome and sexy and swell, but he's tired of being so sick.
My husband is sick enough to die. I haven't had sex in over two years. But he is my partner. He is my love, my life. There is nothing more important to me than this man. I would give anything, anything, to have him well. We want to live together for as long as we've got. By the sea. With coffee and newspapers -- and maybe some sex. That's what marriage is to me. -- Susan Duligal
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