The Day My DH's Heart Stopped

I need to do a post all about Mexico :) but for some reason the last few days this subject has been on my mind. Perhaps it's because I've been crabby with him the last couple days (thank you AF!) or because we were spending so much time together on vacation but I have been thinking about that day a lot...

No, I'm not talking about the day he met me! *wink, wink* I'm talking about the day his heart literally stopped and he had to be brought back by nurses and doctors. And do I remember the exact date? Nope, he does but for the life of me I can't remember! Here's the story...

I'll start at the beginning: It was the Summer of 2003, I had just graduated from college and moved about an hour away from our college town where he was still living. I had my first "real" job and of course he came down almost every weekend to visit me and my crazy roommates. We partied, we played, we went camping, we had fun. But we were noticing he had to "go" a lot more and he was starting to lose weight. And when he "went" it was becoming bloody. I won't get much more graphic than that but, long story long, he was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis right before he went back to school in the Fall.

Now if you don't know anything about UC (and I didn't) it's a pretty bad auto-immune disease. Related to Crohn's. His Dad also has it too but my DH has an extremely bad case. It's literally ulcers in your colon and intestines that are inflamed, bleeding and cause an insane amount of cramping. In a matter of months my big, burly 220lb boyfriend turned into a very sick, weak 160lb boyfriend. He couldn't eat, he couldn't go to school, he had zero energy and didn't ever leave his house. I started visiting him on weekends since he couldn't make the drive to my house. It didn't help that he had pretty much dismissed the symptoms for the whole Summer. By the time he was diagnosed it was out of control.

In late September I was leaving his house on a Sunday evening. Damn real job and work on Monday mornings! He was feeling especially bad and had been complaining that his leg and groin area hurt. We didn't think anything of it - it seemed that everyday he was hurting somewhere new. Until he woke up Monday morning and his leg and man bits were extremely swollen. After spending the day in the ER they found he had a blood clot. And not just any old blood clot, it extended from his groin to his foot. His WHOLE leg.

So what do these genius doctors do? They put him on Coumadin (blood thinner) to treat the clot. Did they think about the fact that he was losing TONS of blood every day in his stools? Nope, didn't give it a 2nd thought. The medicine they gave him pretty much caused him to bleed out over a couple of days. 2 weeks in the hospital and 8 blood transfusions later he still wasn't getting better. During a particularly bad day he was sitting on his portable toilet, feeling sick, feeling dizzy, feeling very off - and it happened. He coded, his heart stopped and he crashed onto the floor, toilet and all. They were able to revive him pretty quickly and thankfully his Dad was there when he woke up. I was in the car on my way up to visit him. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the hospital about 20 minutes later to be told by his tearful Dad that I couldn't see him for awhile and his heart had stopped? It was one of the worst moments of my life. We spent the evening together alone in his room crying. It was so scary.

So that's my story. And writing it down and thinking about it so much this week makes me want to hug and kiss him and tell him how thankful I am that he is here with me, not just a boyfriend anymore, but my husband. I WILL do that this evening when he gets home from work. :)