able to go out and have a great dinner, avoid certain foods and drinks, and never see
a symptom pop up whatsoever. You could, however, be driven to a TV night, constantly
asking what you can do to help, only to realize shutting up will help just fine. I must
admit, the early and easy days seem so far away to me. In all honesty, the “good days”
were few and far between. What I remember most is watching my girlfriend deteriorate
right in front of my eyes. The hardest thing is watching the disease killing her from the
inside and not being able to do one thing to help, at all.
We found ourselves in a different situation than most. While we both live in the same
city, we were not yet living together. There was really not a day that went by where I would
not see her, we essentially lived together. However, her health got so bad, so quickly,
that she ended up having to go back home with her parents (two hours north). I have
a full-time job in Columbus, which meant I only had time to see her on the weekends.
During that time, I was also working part-time as a bartender for some side money. In
hindsight, I should have quit that job right when she had to go home due to her health
so that I could be with her every weekend. A part of me thinks, now, that I was trying to
distract myself with work to keep my mind off of how completely powerless I was in her
treatment. That was completely selfish behavior on my part. The only thing I can think of
at this time, is that it was a very poor way of coping with the situation.
During her worst, I would see her after possibly weeks had gone by. I remember vividly,
to this day, the day that I came home after two or three weeks without seeing her. Our
communication was rare. Unbeknownst to me, she was so physically ill she could barely
find the strength to pick up a phone to send a text message. I was ignorant to any of this
information, due to my selfish ways. Walking into her room, I could see a frail, skeleton
of a person in the fetal position on the far end of the bed. My girlfriend was lying there,
a shell of her former self. In no way had I thought the disease could physically beat
someone into the state I saw her in. To this day, she loves having me rub her back to
make her feel better; I immediately began to rub her back, based on habit. Every single
rib and vertebrae was painfully visible throughout her entire back, from the base of her
neck down to the swell of her back. She did not even have the strength to turn around
and look at me in the eyes to acknowledge me seeing her after a lengthy time away. The
only thing she could do with any energy she had was save it to make her 30-some odd
trips to the bathroom a day.
There was an emptiness in my stomach. A feeling came over me that I have never
described to anyone in that time. For the first time in my life, I was certain I was speaking
to someone for one of the last times and all I could do was pretend it would be okay. I
wholeheartedly thought she was going to lose the fight, the evidence was right there.
There are a lot of emotions that you fight with being the healthy one in a relationship,
where your loved one is wasting away before your eyes. In no way could I begin to try to
describe every individual feeling that comes when you are experiencing this. Looking back
on where we are now, the best way to describe that blur of time is, “helpless”. If I have
to use one word, for the sake of boring you, I would say I felt completely helpless during
that time. With everything in your heart you want to be there for your girlfriend, stick
up for her, comfort her, tell her it will be okay, and make it okay. All of those words are
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