Love Story Lessons of Caregiving

• Posted on 28th March 2018
• in divorce & remarriage, Love Story
• by Ben

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Here’s a love story of a different kind.

In November 2015 my wife, Elizabeth, began having discomfort in her abdomen. Three doctors, no diagnosis. Five days after Christmas the pain was so bad that we went to the (dreaded) ER at Mt. Sinai. (Best ER in town) Among the tests they did was an MRI which showed a tumor that was involved with her aorta, hence “inoperable”. A biopsy confirmed the suspected malignancy.

Thus began round three between my Beloved and the Big C. And my career as a pretty much full time caregiver.

I will spare you the details of the next nineteen months but it was a marathon of different doctors running from MSK to a Nigerian Herbalist and different treatments leading to the winner, Doctor Richard Sollazzo who found the chemical key and erased the tumor down to a smudge which was fried by Mt. Sinai’s Doctor Buckstein and his magic radiological beam.

By the last day of Spring 2017 Elizabeth was out of the woods and beginning to get back her mojo. Four months of recovery and strengthening moved her ahead. By autumn she was finally feeling good. And I was back to being a regular (well as much as “regular” ever applied to me) person.

November first I’m at my Mac editing a video and she’s in the bedroom sorting out her cold weather wardrobe and suddenly I hear, “SHIT!”

Somehow, moving a box of clothes, she had hurt her back. No big deal, it’s happened to us all at one time or another and we ache for a day or two and get better.

Not this time. As I write in March (’18) E is still in pain. Seven doctors, a massage therapist and six acupuncture treatments and two back braces plus several creams and liniments and with two steps forward and one (sometimes three) steps back she is still in pain. Not only that, she is virtually immobilized. I have to help her get out of a chair and walk her to wherever she needs to go and be ready twenty-four hours a day. Elizabeth can’t even lie in bed, she sleeps in her luxurious leather chair.

She will get better. We don’t know how but we’re both on the case and we know that the solution will be found. However her battles with both cancer and pain are not what this essay is about.

Since December of 2015 I have been a full-time caregiver. This a role for which I am bad casting but the expression “love conquers all” applies and I have become reasonably good at it.

And I have learned a lot in the process. Which stores have the best price on this or that, best time of day to go to Whole Foods and Health Nuts; that kind of stuff, sure. The real stuff I’ve learned and continue to learn is about myself.

My selfishness and ability to shut out another’s discomfort when I want to are taking some big hits. These characteristics are being challenged and that has been a stimulus for self-examination. Our love story is a long one, we’ve been together for over fifty years and when I say that Elizabeth is the center of my life it is simply statement of fact. And when she is in her normal state of athletic, vigorous good health we share the household chores. The tasks seemed to divide themselves by interest, muscle requirements and talent which means that, except for eggs and toast, she cooks. I clean up. My Dad used to say, “I run things around here, the dishwasher, the laundry machines…”. He was ahead of his time and that was a valuable lesson for me.

So when E was fighting cancer she was between 80% and 95% of her normal self and performed to some extent most of her normal activities. But the “bad back”? Basically, I have to do everything. This is exhausting but one does what is necessary, lazy and selfish or not.

We often think that the way we express the physical aspect of love is sex. Believe me when I tell you that is not the only way and not even the most important. Making (sexual) love is fun, satisfying to both partners and essential to a happy marriage but what I have been doing and continue to do is way more important. It is not fun. It is work. Caregiving to a beloved who is incapacitated is a real act of selfless love.

I hope you never find it necessary but if and when you do, remember all your spouse means to you, all she/he has done for you and how much you have benefited from the relationship and be happy to get out of bed at three in the morning to help your sweetheart get to the bathroom.

You will be a better person from the experience.

If you’d like to read more about our many adventures together click here and get one or all three of my memoirs.