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Care Partner of the Month -September/October
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Ted Levy
Jupiter, Florida

She was behind glass doors in the Intensive Care Trauma Unit all hooked up to electronic devices that monitored her constantly. When I asked the staff if she showed signs of improvement they didn’t seem to know. ICU is a place they see the unimaginable each and every day. I guess that they had no positive answers. I was a basket case. They offered no hope and very little discussion. I refused to leave the ICU area in the hospital. I remember the sound of those automatic doors as they opened and closed. I kept talking to her, hoping beyond hope that her eyes would open and everything would be all right. I refused to accept it. I refused to go home. I abused myself to the limit! I had lost my mind. Helaine, my love, lay near death and I was helpless. None of the doctors seemed to want to commit to her prognosis. It was the worst day of my life. I will never get over it!

After a week, I slept from exhaustion but awoke constantly throughout the night. I thought it was all a bad dream and that I would wake and find her next to me as always. For most of my life I never prayed, but I prayed then. I asked God not to take her from me; I prayed for her to live no matter how.

The third week Helaine was put into the step down unit. She was unconscious and still hooked up with tubes and wires everywhere. It seemed as though her body was there but she wasn’t. I was unable to think or function. One of the social service nurses with that odious medical superiority attitude showed no compassion by saying to me: “You might as well face it, your wife will be in a nursing home for the rest of her life.” She handed me a card from a local nursing home and walked away leaving me totally devastated. I wondered how could she make that determination when the neurologist had not made his medical evaluation. I had a nervous breakdown during that period. I was an emotional mess. I took any communication from the hospital staff as fact. I was totally vulnerable. Oddly enough, when I shared this story with other caregivers from different states, they related similar experiences. How strange!

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