Dr. Auburn Sheaffer - While Our Hearts Still Beat

 

 

Let me start with talking about home and what a really complicated relationship I have with the idea of home since the year 2009 when I got a phone call from Akron General Hospital saying that “My husband had been assaulted, and was in the ICU in a coma and may not make it through the night. Well, we'd been living two hours apart for the last seven years. It had been a long-distance relationship. And the year before, while it was still long distance, we married, but we had never had our home together ever. We'd never spent more than a few days together ever in all the years that we knew each other. 

 

I was raising my son. We were finishing high school for him. He was two weeks away from going to college at a full ride football athlete. And this was going to be our time together. I had just given the keys to our home to the people who were going to rent it.” And I got the call from Akron General, “Are you so and so? You need to sit down? Do you have any family near you? We need to tell you that your husband is unconscious.” And I was like, “Yeah. Okay.” My first thought, he's going to wake up, right? I'm waiting for them to say, but “He'll be fine and you'll be able to take him home in a few hours.” And I said, and he's going to be fine, right? He's going to be fine? They wouldn't answer that. I said, ss he going to die? And they wouldn't answer that, and that's when I knew it was heavy. 

 

I was literally wearing a pair of sweatpants. Left Ohio, the side of Ohio I was living on, drove to Akron. And there he was in the ICU. He had been trying tow a car from a rental property he owned, and a guy who didn't live there had parked it there was drunk and assaulted him. He punched him in the head, and his head hit a brick wall right behind him. And so, it was like a high-speed car wreck, the velocity of it. Well, they said, they'd know in the next three days if he'd live or not, depending on how much his brain swelled up. 

 

That night, my husband, the one that I knew, the guy that I did know did die, but we were left with this man in a coma. And so, my first home with my husband was in the ICU of Akron General Hospital. And then, they moved him from the ICU to a coma hospital where he was completely on life support. I sleep on this couch near him. That felt like home. At least his body was there and he was breathing. And then, there was a day when he opened his eyes, but he didn't look in any particular direction. Just blank. But that was, there were his eyes, those blue eyes. 

 

What I missed the most was his laughter. Man, he just had this laugh. Any room he'd enter, you'd know Chuck was there because of his laugh. What I missed more than anything was that laugh of his. And so, damn it, he wasn't coming out of this coma. I was waiting for this movie, Hallmark movie moment where he opened his eyes and said, “Oh, here you are.” Another week went by, and another week went by, and another week went by, and he's starting to curl up and he's starting to shrink up and he's not waking up. 

 

But I stayed with him night and day, because he was so vulnerable. I made my home, his body, and I made sure they washed it, and I made sure they turned it and I made sure they sat him up. When they washed him, they thought I was weird. But I got in there and I had touch his skin, I needed touch him. It was all I had of him. It was home. He still wasn't waking up. They sent him to a nursing home, and he's starting to shrink up and he was starting to move. 

 

There was this night in the nursing home where I was able to crawl. His bed was about this wide. I crawled into the bed right next to him, and I put his arm around my shoulder, and I curled up into his chest, and I cried like a baby, because even though he wasn't conscious, I was back in his arms and that felt like home. Well, I could tell about eight weeks into this, I could tell when he came back into his body-- Nobody else could tell, but I could tell when his spirit came back into his body. About a week or two after that, he said his own name. And then, a day or two after that, someone said, “Hey, do you know who that is?” And he said, “Well, that's my wife.” And they said, “How long have you known and loved your wife?” And he said, “From the beginning of time.” 

 

He's still very heavily impaired, my husband, severe traumatic brain injury. We've lost all kinds of material things, but he laughs again. We have loved each other so completely without words, just in our spirits. We are so grateful for every part of him that is back that I've learned that even though I've been on hospital beds, couches, floors, air mattresses, I've been 15 different places in the last four years, home is where anybody's heart is open to mine, and where we see each other, and hear each other and can trust each other. Thank you.