by Richard Anderson
July 5, 2009

Everyone Has Their Own Story, Sunday, July 05, 2009

Last week my current wife got out of hospital, after hip replacement surgery. I visited her every day during her 3-day stay, and at times felt I was reliving one of the many hospitalizations my first wife endured. I can make comparisons for myself and how I was feeling, then and now; but it doesn't help one to make comparisons between ill partners.

Everyone has their story to tell, if only there is someone to listen. And I discovered this, as I was leaving the hospital, the night before my wife was due to go home. By pure coincidence, just as I was getting on the 5th-floor elevator a woman came along, so I held the door open for her.

She was wearing a robe over the hospital "inmate's" garb of gown and plastic wrist bracelet, and we could have traveled down in silence, strangers momentarily crossing one another's path. Instead, feeling some kind of kinship, I chose to speak.

-- How long have you been here?

-- Two weeks already, and at least two or three more to go. I'm already tired of it. I have lupus, and also have had bouts with cancer, and now they're treating my blood, to get the toxins out.

This was a serious chronic illness, and I thought of my first wife, whose scleroderma, a rare internal form, had done so much damage to her organs.

-- Yes I know a little about lupus, it's like scleroderma, that my first wife had. How long have you had lupus?

-- Since my early twenties.

-- Wow! That's a long time. Well I'm here because my current wife just had hip replacement surgery.

By this time we had reached the ground floor, and I could have just said, "Good luck!", waved goodbye, and walked out of there with my free "Get out of Jail" card. I could see she had a pack of cigarettes in her hand, and she spoke up.

-- I just have to get out of here, I feel like I've been cooped up so long.

-- I'll walk with you.

We escaped together. Seeing the cigarettes, at that point I could have rushed to judgment, and felt virtuous, thinking how she was in part responsible for her own health troubles, by being a smoker - which I am not. And I needed to get home in time to swim in our condo complex pool.

Instead, I chose to stay and talk for few minutes. We sat down on a low stone wall near the hospital entrance, and she lit up, and told me about her two children, son and a daughter now grown up, and how the son's wife had just had a baby, so she was a grandmother for the second time. And I had guessed she looked to be in her thirties, or early forties.

-- I have a lot of pain. That's the hardest thing.

-- Yes, I know that from my first wife, she also suffered much pain.
I told her a little more about me.

--I was married to her for 31 years, and she had the chronic illness for the last 29 years.

--And you're going through it again!

--Yep! One day at a time. That's all you can do. Do you have a husband, or boyfriend?

--Yes, my partner and I have been together 16 years.

--How does he take it, I mean your illness? I know it's hard at times because I've been through it.

--He gets angry sometimes, especially when I'm in pain. I hate it, and I know he hates it, too.

--Yes, because there's nothing he can do about it.

--Yeah. He works long shifts during the week, so we don't have a lot of time together, mainly the weekends. Often during the week I go to my mother's place, to give him a break. And she gets mad at me too, because she can't stop the pain, either.

The story was familiar, yet unique. Everyone's is. As a way to help her and her partner, I told her about the Well Spouse Association, and gave her my "elevator speech."

--The spousal caregiver, like the ill spouse, has to deal with the loss of intimacy that chronic illness or disability can bring. There's ways around, but it changes the relationship between the two. So it's different than other family caregivers. And it's normal for your boyfriend to feel angry at times, even as he tries to take care of you.

I gave her my card, to give to him.

--The Well Spouse Association Online Forum is a safe place for the spousal caregiver to talk about their own feelings, in a way that they just cannot do with their ill spouse, their family or friends.

--Thanks, I'll pass it on to him!

And so, with her cigarette finished, and my swim beckoning, we arose, shook hands and said goodbye and good luck. I felt as if I had reached out, and been rewarded with a precious gift - another human being's unique story, as a part of the vast tapestry of events and feelings and coincidences we call life.