My day

I had a dream last night. I was at the hospital with Jeff's dad. Jeff and Jane had gone home and left me there to watch over him. We had already made the decision to remove the feeding tube and stop dialysis. Even in my dream it felt surreal. I sat by his bedside, holding his hand in mine, rubbing my thumb in circles over his knotted veins. I wanted to talk, to say all the things that were there, waiting. But the silence was too loud. He stirred. I looked up and there he was, awake. "What am I doing here?" he asked. My dream self was stunned. "You fell in the shower and you've been in a coma for weeks and, and..." He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Let's go," he said. "But we can't. We took out the feeding tube, you'll die." "Of course I'm going to die, that hasn't changed. Now let's go home." And so we did. We walked right out the back door of that sad, gray building and I drove him home. Jeff and Jane weren't even phased as we walked in the door. He laid on the couch and we all talked, like old times. He started to doze and I panicked. I knew that if he fell asleep he would be gone. And I wasn't ready. He looked so good, so alive. He couldn't fall asleep again, couldn't. And then I woke up. I couldn't remember right away if it had really happened that way or not. The dream was so vivid. I felt like he had just been beside me, alive, talking, breathing. But he wasn't. It was such a strange feeling. And I was filled with regret all over again, wishing I had those extra minutes to say the things I needed to say.

After I woke up I rushed through a shower and out the door. Jeffrey had an appointment with Dr. Tagge, the ENT we saw last month. The same ENT that finally diagnosed Jeffrey's hearing loss and told us that he would be able to have surgery that would allow him to hear again. He would need to remove one of the bones in Jeffrey's ear and put in a prosthetic. There was some risk, but if all went well he would BE ABLE TO HEAR. Jeffrey wanted to schedule his surgery for the next day. We were brimming over with excitement. In his exam he found that Jeffrey had an ear infection so he prescribed an antibiotic and scheduled us to come back in 6 weeks so he could get a good look at his ear without an infection. I was cautiously ecstatic. Ear doctors seem to change their story a little too often for my liking. But he seemed sure, it was so obvious to him. Except for this morning when he went back and studied Jeffrey's audio gram again and it wasn't quite so obvious anymore. This time Jeffrey's hearing loss was in two areas, bone and nerve. Bone you can fix, nerve you cannot. And even if we did the surgery and fixed the bone, he would still need an aid for the loss in the nerve. This was the same audio gram the Dr. was looking at 6 weeks ago when he told my little boy he could have a surgery that would fix his ears and make him hear again. I wanted to scream. Right there in that tiny sterile room I wanted to scream at this man in his ridiculous black turtleneck. He had no idea, no idea what he had done to my son. That he had built his hopes up and then sent them crashing down without even a thought. Jeffrey will get over it. He will get used to the idea again, that he will have to wear hearing aids all of his life. And I will get over it too. Just not yet.