For Better and for Worse and for Butt-Ugly

An apology to my wife of 45 years after I just spent a few weeks out of my mind.

I’ve decided to share with you a letter I wrote to my wife after my most recent surgery because I think too often we patients don’t give enough acknowledgement and appreciation to what our caregivers, spouses, family members go through during our medical crises. Not only do those who love us risk losing us, we, patients, often are challenging and difficult to take care of. I know I have been. So I am publicly sending Kate this big bouquet of gratitude and hoping other readers who have been given extraordinary care and nurture by their loved ones will pass their appreciation on to them. Actually, I think I’ll order up a real bouquet of flowers right now.

Dearest Kate,

I think a public apology is in order. When I woke up prematurely from my recent open heart surgery and had a violent spasm in my back and no way to tell the nurses because I had a tube shoved down my throat and my wrists tied at my side, I went out of my mind with fear and anger. For the rest of my hospital stay, I couldn’t keep myself from being agitated, entitled, self pitying, paranoid and rage-full at everyone. And this in your hospital of thirty years where you a renowned and beloved physician and teacher. I must have been a total embarrassment to you.

Then I came home, still perseverating on what went wrong with my hospital stay and angry and blaming. You did the best you could to not take my outburst personally but within the first week of being home, while still overwhelmed with pain and pain medication, I began to take my anger out on you, my dearest wife, love of my life, who has stood by me for almost four decades and who has also been a fierce and loving advocate for me medically and has insured that I have had the best possible medical care on the planet throughout my cancer, orthopedic surgeries, and now my double by-pass surgery.

In my rage, I said some very mean, hurtful and frankly abusive things to you. I am so sorry. I know that I can’t take it back. I know I can’t apologize it away. I know that I hurt you terribly.

Last fall, I was helping a couple in the final phases of their fight with cancer. She was dying of ovarian. Her husband was an incredibly sweet, loving, and attentive man. I was there when she went nuts and began to rage at him. I saw the withering way she took out her anger at her dreadful fate on the one person she loved the most. I never would have imagined that I could do the same to you.

This year we will celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary. We’ve been at it long enough so that we don’t refer to good and bad days, but good and bad decades. We are soul-mates. We have brought each other up. We have raised two good kind sons. And we’ve struggled and hurt each other, and been, at times, a disappointment to each other. We have scars.

But know this dear one, I love you with all my damaged heart and I am so sorry I was such a raging asshole in the weeks post-op. I feel like I am back. I hope you will forgive me.

All of me loves all of you,

David

PS. Just so you know, gentle reader, I did ask for Kate’s permission to share this with you. When she read it she put in this caveat, “Yes, David was pretty dreadful and hurtful, but I knew he was out of his mind and that sooner or later he would get better. And the good news is, he finally is, better. At least most of the time. What was frankly hardest for me was how I alone I felt. The man I depend on for support was totally not there. On the other hand, we are so lucky.”