Courage Under Fever
A cancer mom’s fight to go home.
It was a beautifully dreary Saturday morning. Cold. Slightly gray. Easy. I engaged in playful banter with the security staff at the hospital as I flashed my ID and vax card and exchanged the previous night’s security bracelet for today’s.
Day five in this joint had a certain weird serenity to it. Until it didn’t.
The funny thing about hospitals is that Mondays are busy like any other business. Saturdays are quiet. There are fewer patients, the pace is slower, and there’s premium parking for guests like me. I brought playing cards because today promised to be better than all the other days. Until it wasn’t.
My wife Alicia was in her cell…er…bed, sitting upright, working on her computer when I arrived.
“I’m kinda tired,” she told me. “Well, they haven’t let you sleep since Monday night,” I replied. “Relax, close your eyes. I’ll be here all day.” She dozed for a bit.
If you run a sprint against cancer, it will own your ass. The cancer battle is a slow, hard grind.
Alicia has Hairy Cell Leukemia (HCL), and she finished her chemotherapy three weeks prior. What HCL didn’t gobble up of her immune system, chemo obliterated. She had been in the hospital for five nights, going on six with neutropenic fever.
Medically, this is an emergency for a cancer patient as she cannot fight off infections. For five nights, she was unable to beat down 103-degree fevers. Infections can turn into sepsis, a life-threatening condition. Septic shock is the leading cause of death in chemotherapy-treated patients with neutropenia. We didn’t know that on Saturday.
A lot of the cancer-fighting talk is all bluster and bravado. It’s a pep talk meant more for a boxer than a mom unknowingly staring death in its vacant eyes. If you run a sprint against cancer, it will own your ass. The cancer battle is a slow, hard grind. Alicia was on the grind, and this was her do-or-die moment. Literally. Alicia was being treated for septic shock.
Funny thing about Saturdays at the hospital, you tend to notice when your one nurse turns into four. The math is simple: something ain’t right. Alicia’s skin was gray. She stopped talking. The sparkle in her giant brown eyes was muted and hazed. She didn’t look like my wife.
That is courage. Not a reckless charge into danger fueled by the ignorance of invincibility, but rather knowing the odds are against you, that your suffering will continue, but pushing forward anyway.
The new faces in her room were from the ICU. Dazed, as I packed her stuff in a hurry to change rooms, they took her. There I was, literally left holding the bags, trying to understand what the hell just happened.
As they wheeled her into the ICU, she had already endured five sleepless nights in the hospital. She’d been jabbed for IVs and blood draws, pumped full of every “anti” such-and-such drug, and put through every multi-million dollar medical machine Kaiser owns, in most cases twice. She could only eat spoonfuls of what I DoorDashed in and had a total of one shower.
She was suffering.
You can go home when you’re fever-free for 24-hours they told her. It’s the equivalent of me telling my kids I’ll take them to the Beach Boardwalk “soon.” She wanted to be home with her family more than she wanted to be better. It wasn’t happening.
Each fever was a crushing defeat for her. Twenty-four more hours until you can see your babies. Bill Murray was less frustrated in Groundhog’s Day. She wanted to give up, and I couldn’t blame her.
In our darkest moments, however, came our brightest lights. The ICU staff was nothing short of amazing. Her ICU nurse took over, professionally brushing Alicia’s nurses to the side. With a calm, steady voice, he said hello to me by name, cracked a joke to Alicia, and introduced the doctor. The doctor patiently explained that they were going to take over for a bit.
They did.
Within an hour and a half, my wife was back with flush skin and full of laughter. Alicia, her nurse, and I cracked wise for an hour. In that time, he was building her confidence to continue the battle. More fevers. More tests. More machines. Hell, even a spinal tap in the morning.
Through this ordeal, Alicia sacrificed her body to her medical team. She was treated as more of an object than a person. Her last few nights in the hospital, she slept maybe an hour a night, had IVs in each arm, oxygen in her nose, and monitors on her chest.
To those who say that the cancer fight is “mostly mental,” I say you’re wrong. It’s all mental. Seeing someone in physical pain is difficult. However, It is absolutely heartbreaking to see someone’s mind and will stretched beyond normal bounds. As Alicia’s fatigue and helplessness set in, my heart broke.
“Patient was seen crying, saying she just wanted to go home to her kids.” It’s in the nurses’ notes for day seven. With a lack of sleep and nourishment, Alicia felt she would never be well enough to go home. But she pushed on.
Despite extreme fatigue and pain killers that scrambled her thoughts and brought on hallucinations, she finally beat down those fevers.
That is courage. Not a reckless charge into danger fueled by the ignorance of invincibility, but rather knowing the odds are against you, that your suffering will continue, and you push forward anyway. Not for you. No, for others.
Alicia just wanted to come home. To us. She wanted to come home to her teenage daughters brimming with beauty and potential. She wanted to come home to her babies, who were overflowing with life’s curiosity and sweetness of heart. She wanted to come home to me. The guy, as she says, “who knows me best but loves me anyway.”
There are no medals for sacrificing yourself to be with your family. Maybe there should be.
Alicia went through absolute hell to come back to us. I do not know how she endured that torture. I’m certainly glad she did because when I look at her today, I respect and love her more than I ever have. I love that and will be forever grateful for her courage under fever.
Read more about navigating the caregiver role for a spouse with cancer below:
