Bill was a very good doctor and a very good husband. And toward the end of his life, he realized that all of his degrees, along with money and material possessions, didn’t matter. They were nothing. He just wanted to have me with him. We loved each other very deeply, and we wanted to share our last days and moments together, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
When we got to the second hospital, my husband was in the emergency room from about 7:00 p.m. until about 6:00 a.m. the next morning. At some point, he started to develop a hypertensive crisis, and the staff could not bring his blood pressure down. They started an IV medication, which required that he be monitored closely in the intensive care unit (ICU).
Of course, I went with him as he was transferred from emergency to ICU. When we got to the ICU door, I was told, “Now, just go into the waiting room. We’re going to settle your husband, and then we’ll come and get you.”
I was a nervous wreck while I waited. I knew my husband had been pretty sick while in emergency. What if he got more confused? What if he lost even this current level of functioning and wouldn’t
remember me? The longer I waited, the more my anxiety grew.
The waiting room was a small area, with chairs around the perimeter, except by the locked door. After an hour with no news, I saw a phone on the wall and called. I said to the voice on the other end, “My name is Mrs. Gruzenski. I was informed that my husband was going to be settled and that someone would come and get me.”
The next thing I knew a young, perky nurse came out, greeted me, and then directed me totally away from my husband, away from the door to the ICU, to a little room. She proceeded to give me the strict policies and procedures for the ICU, including that visitation was allowed only four times a day for thirty minutes each time.
Not believing what I was hearing, I said, “But my husband is going to be worried that I am not with him. We are the center of each other’s lives—we are only apart when we are at work!” Her response was, “Well, you can’t be with him. Those are the rules.”
I lived ten miles away. What was I supposed to do between these widely spaced thirty-minute visits? I felt I had to play by the rules. I was afraid that if I questioned too much or was abrupt with someone, they would treat my husband meanly. And because he was behind a locked door, I would never know.
I didn’t know what else to do and so, shortly before 8:00 a.m., I went home to get some rest. Ironically, just after I got home and started to settle after our long night in the ER, I got a flurry of calls from different residents who wanted information about my husband. They never said, “Come over and visit. He’s missing you.” They called because they needed the information I could give them, but they kept me locked out.