Unconditional Love

This thing they call “WAITING”, was beginning to wear on me and the kids. My husband was in the fight of his life during this surgery. Not knowing if he would even make it through had all of us scared. My son was exhausted and fell right to sleep, my daughter and I could hardly contain our emotions. I kept looking at the photo I took of Joe being wheeled down the corridor to the OR room, it was haunting. The tears kept streaming down my face. I couldn’t control them. As I was crying, my daughter was fighting back her tears. As she cried, I fought back mine. Michael, my son-in-law had arrived to the hospital after getting the grandkids to where they needed to be. We all tried to play cards, a bowling game or just bury our faces in the internet on our phones. I couldn’t keep my mind from thinking the worst. I think I made several trips to the bathroom just to cry.

The clock seemed as if it never moved, each hour took even longer to get too. As it approached the 6th hour of surgery my mind, my heart and my soul just kept thinking the worst. Why hadn’t they come out yet? Why was it taking so long? Did he die? Did the doctors not want to come tell us the bad news? What if I never got to see my husband alive again, the terrible thoughts kept flooding my mind and I couldn’t make them stop. Then as if the whole world seemed to stop around us, the doctor was walking toward us. His eyes made contact with mine, he looked down, he made eye contact again and my heart sank. I wasn’t ready to hear anything from him, I wasn’t ready but there he was in front of me, as he talked the look on his face was forever imbedded in my mind and the look was as if he was going to tell me my husband was gone. But instead he said that there were complications and that Joe could of had a stroke because of calcification on his aorta. Would he survive? What did that mean? I was numb, I didn’t understand and he said that if they had known the calcification was there he would of never agreed to do this surgery it would of been to big of a risk. My daughter ran to the bathroom, my son and son-in-law didn’t know what to say, we were standing there as if we were punched in the face. How did they miss this? Now what? What will happen to my husband? Why is it that we were here in this situation in the first place? I couldn’t keep it together, I needed to see my husband. It was several hours later and we were still WAITING, this day will forever be the worst day of my life.