Today, May 6, a day, that after 1998, will always have a special significance to me. I can not seem to regard it just as another day on the calendar or in the case of this year, just another Sunday.
At 11:45 pm, May 6, 1998, my Ken breathed his last breath on this earth and passed beyond the veil. He left that mortal body behind and his spirit went to dwell in the next stage of existence. Throughout his entire sickness I was stunned as we moved from day to day, stage to stage of the most bizarre deterioration of a healthy body that one can imagine. I was stunned and bewildered as I sought a cause and a cure from the best medical help that I could find. About one dozen doctors together tried to find the cause, each with their own specialty comparing symptoms, medications, tests, and results. They, too, were frustrated.
I watched as an otherwise healthy man went down to a brain wasting disease in the most cruel way imaginable. My hands seemed tied. From week to week he seemed to lose functions like being able to tie his tie, a task he could always do beautifully, having learned as a very young man and having served in the military (where it had to be perfect.) That is just one example.
He thought he was depressed and told me perhaps a thousand times that "the old devil" was trying to destroy him. To this day I have never figured out what he was trying to say. But as a result, I never left him alone. Either I was with him or a relative or friend if I absolutely had something I had to do. I even took him to school with me every day. He read in an area where I could keep my eye on him.
He went through many, many physical changes as this dreadful disease progressed. Eventually he had to be hospitalized and developed pneumonia. His primary cause of death is listed as pneumonia. However, after his death, the conclusion of those professionals who treated him is that they had witnessed a rare case of a prion caused case of CJD -- some type of variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. There is no cure -- once the disease manifests itself the individual has little time left.
For a long while I felt paralyzed by what I had seen and experienced. To say it broke my heart for him is but a trite expression. This was a terrible, horrible thing to watch and not to be able to help. We always want to think we can help. This time, I couldn't. I couldn't help the man I loved most -- my soul mate.
Just a few of the reasons May 6 is not an ordinary day -- for me --- ever again.
