Feb. 9th
A month ago she went
into the hospital. She got up that morning and went to work but soon realized
all was not well. She was taken to the hospital but there was no sense, from
what Chris says, that the pain was life-threatening. And then the doctors
decided she needed a CT scan…
People have asked me
about the medical details. What did the autopsy find? Have the medical staff
been called to account? Was there really nothing
else they could have done?
I don’t know the
answers to any of these questions and I don’t want to trouble Chris with them.
I’ve done some cursory searching for information on the Internet, but I’ve seen
contradictory statements. Nothing satisfies, although the more reliable medical
websites tend to say no, there was really no way of knowing she had this
allergy.
One site said one in
75,000 people have an allergy of this intensity to the contrast dye. If that is
true, that seems like more people than I would have thought. It means there is
another person in this city with the same allergy, several within the wider
region. I pray for them all that they never need a CT scan.
Why do the tests if
the dye can kill anyone at all? I suppose someone has weighed the costs and the
benefits—they save the lives of far, far more people than they kill. You are
told the risks before you have the test; you sign a form. But who ever declines
to sign? K.B. was in pain and thought the test would help the doctors figure
out how to stop it. Why would you say no if you were in her place?
But I don’t dwell on
any of these medical questions. I don’t think more details would help me now.
There is no point, at least not for me, in asking myself why no doctor or nurse
was able to stop the unthinkable from happening. It did happen. A month of
denying that truth has gotten me nowhere.
I STILL, even now, have to remind myself that there is no going back. It can't be undone, no matter how much we learn. And when I break through that denial (and "magical thinking") I get angry. And then I heave a sigh. All in very quick succession.
ReplyDeleteJust yesterday I was reading through some of our vast e-mail correspondence, going over e-mails about getting together for tea or what sorts of dance classes to sign up for, just everyday things. And it was very, very hard to tell myself that I will never get one of those e-mails (or phone calls, or texts) from her ever again. Most days I feel like I am not doing very well on the acceptance front.
ReplyDeleteThe anger rises up quite regularly for me, too, although it is not a very specific anger in terms of who it is directed towards (I don't feel angry at God, or at the medical staff). I think it is more a generalized feeling of intense, impassioned frustration at how, and at what stage in her life, she was taken from us.