May 22, 2009

It's Friday, May 22, 2009.  With Jason's parents now in town, I decided to go to work on Friday and spend the day catching up on all the work I had left behind the last week while taking care of Jason.  He and his dad, in the meantime, spent the day at the hospital getting the necessary fluids - blood, platelets, etc - that he needed.  Little did I know they were also running some other tests on him...results I'd find out later.

I spent the day at work trying to focus on my job.  However, when the love of your life is dying literally before your eyes, it's hard to focus on anything but that.  The boys at work did their best to make me laugh, but there was an air hanging in the room that day, and everyone knew it.  I made it through the work-day and sprinted out of there as soon as I could.

I arrived home before Jason & his dad did.  I found his mom there alone, and we had a nice chat just the two of us.  The boys got home around 6pm, literally seconds before the 1st hospice nurse arrived to check in.  I met Jason at the door, and he gave me a look... a look that said "I don't have good news."  My heart sank, but I hid it as best I could from everyone else.  We sat and chatted with the hospice nurse for a while.  She ran her tests on Jason, wrote the results down, and then was out the door.  Jason's parents had stepped out to the backyard during this, so we took a few minutes to ourselves after the nurse left.  That's when he dropped the bomb.

His kidneys had begun to shut down, and they told him it would now be a matter of days...not weeks.  Can you even begin to imagine when the man you love is sitting in front you telling you he's going to be dead in days?  It's something I wish I never heard...but it's something I'll never forget.  I told him we needed to tell his parents (his Dad had been told to leave the room when Jason initially got the news).  He agreed, begrudgingly.  We invited his parents back in, sat them down, and Jason told them the news.  It was like an out of body experience...sitting there watching him tell his parents that their only son was going to be gone soon.

We invited a couple of his friends out to dinner that night and filled them in on the situation as well.  Things were going to start happening fast, and we needed everyone to be on the same page.  But fast doesn't even begin to describe how quickly things started to go downhill the next few days.

Six Days Left.