For nearly three weeks, my sweetie had been dealing with gout. He was taking medication for it, and although it was helping one problem, it seemed to be creating others. He didn’t feel like himself. He was tired, uncomfortable, and frustrated by how long everything was lingering.
To his credit, he listened to his body. He nearly stopped drinking altogether, rested when he could, took the medication as prescribed, and did all the sensible things you’re supposed to do when your body is asking for attention. Still, he struggled.
When he finished the medication, a headache arrived.
And stayed.
Nothing seemed to touch it.
He mentioned several times how badly his head hurt, and he began sleeping more than usual. We both thought he might have the flu or some other virus making its way through his system. The trouble was that he was still being himself. He continued to power through rehearsals and gigs, and because I’m an early riser, I was frequently asleep or nearly asleep by the time he came home. Our interactions during those days were often brief.
At night, when he got up to use the bathroom, I noticed that he seemed to stumble slightly toward the left. He was unusually sleepy. Sometimes he seemed a little off in ways I couldn’t quite name, but I attributed most of it to the headache, exhaustion, and whatever illness we assumed he was fighting.
Then, on the 12th, I did a general reading for him.
I have done a great many readings in my life, and this one stopped me. It was, quite literally, the worst reading I had ever done. Bad enough that I wrote it down. Bad enough that I had to consciously soften my reaction before talking to him.
I didn’t want to frighten him, and I also didn’t want to pretend I hadn’t seen what I had seen. I suggested that he contact his doctor, perhaps have the medications reviewed, and get her opinion about what was going on.
The next day, the 13th, he left early for two rehearsals about ninety minutes away from home.
He was very sleepy when he left and he was gone all day. When he walked in, he told me that he had fallen asleep three times while driving home.
Three times.
Then he said, “I’m tired,” and immediately went to bed. That was the moment I became genuinely concerned.
It was too late in the day to call his doctor’s office, and I didn’t want to leave him alone, so I stayed home and waited for him to wake. I ordered soup to be delivered because, even then, part of me was still working with the idea that he was sick. Flu. Virus. Medication reaction. Something ordinary enough to explain what I was seeing.
He slept for hours.
I had been texting with my best friend and mentioned that perhaps I should sleep in my office that night so the dogs and I wouldn’t disturb him. He needed rest, after all.
She told me she thought I should stay beside him just in case he needed me. In case something happened.
So I did and when the dogs and I went into the bedroom, we woke him. He got up, watched television for about an hour, and eventually came back to bed.
I saw him lean toward the left again.
Still, we slept.
The next morning, he was exhausted.
I called his doctor as soon as I could. The earliest appointment she had was three o’clock that afternoon, so I decided to let him sleep until 2:30. I also found a substitute for his gig that night, because at that point there was no question in my mind that he wasn’t going anywhere.
His doctor examined him and suggested that I take him to the emergency room for a CAT scan. She explained that going through the usual insurance process could mean waiting a week, while the ER would allow them to look at his brain immediately.
So that’s what we did.
At the hospital, they asked whether he had hit his head. To the best of my knowledge, he hadn’t.
There had been no fall or accident. Nothing had happened that I knew of that could explain what was unfolding.
The doctor was convinced there had been some kind of trauma, but by then the question of how it happened was beginning to matter less than what was happening right in front of me.
He no longer knew what month it was.
He began talking about things that hadn’t happened. At one point he said that we had gone to Yosemite that morning.
From there, things seemed to change quickly. The day before, he had driven himself to rehearsals. Now he was confused about the month, where he had been, and what had actually happened.
The hospital moved him to ICU for monitoring and further testing.
At first, they weren’t completely certain that surgery would be necessary. They planned to watch him overnight and reassess in the morning.
I assumed surgery was coming anyway.
I also knew I needed to tell his children.
I put together a group chat with the boys and their mom so that everyone could receive the same information at the same time. His eldest son said he would come in the morning to be with us.
Meanwhile, my sweetie became increasingly confused.
He kept trying to get out of bed. He pulled at the lines and equipment attached to him. He tried to leave.
Eventually, they had to restrain him.
That broke me.
Anyone who knows him knows how deeply he hates restraint of any kind. Being trapped, held down, unable to move freely—this was his own personal hell, and there was nothing I could do except stay beside him and understand that the nurses were trying to keep him safe.
I couldn’t sleep.
Somewhere during those long hours, the life we had been living only a few days earlier had vanished.
Looking back, the warning signs had been gathering for days: the gout, the headache, the sleepiness, the strange gait, the terrible reading, and the drive home he could barely stay awake for. One thing led quietly into the next until we found ourselves at a doctor’s appointment, and then in the emergency room.
And now I was sitting in an ICU beside my husband, watching machines monitor him while he struggled against restraints and tried to understand a world that no longer made sense to him.
At that point, I still didn’t know exactly what the next morning would bring. I only knew that something was very wrong, and whatever came next, I would stay beside him.