Pleading His Case

I love my husband. I love him for so many reasons. But there is one reason that makes me laugh out loud just by thinking about it.

John, like myself, suffers from what I like to call first-child syndrome. It’s the syndrome that a first born child in a family develops simply by having no one to go before him. With this comes some wonderful character traits that become very beneficial in adult life. Things like responsibility, focus, determination, loyalty, and independence (if used correctly). But it also comes with things that can end up driving you and other people crazy like perfectionism, tenacity, stubbornness, and simply being anal retentive. Again, I know this from experience with myself.

Well, the saying “as stubborn as a mule” does not even begin to describe John at times. And don’t get me wrong, right now this trait is coming in handy as he fights to work, heal, and basically stay alive. And it will be even more helpful after his transplant as he fights to get better. So I am very grateful for this part of John. It makes him who he is and why I love him.

On Monday of this week we called his doctor yet again. It has become a cycle that we’ve become accustomed to of John feeling bad, getting a change in medication, feeling better, and then feeling bad again making the cycle start all over. That is why his doctor knows he’s getting worse, and it is time to consider an ICU stay until a heart becomes available. So we were instructed to change his medication again and call his doctor back on Wednesday so that we could make the tough decision of whether to begin the ICU stay.

All day yesterday was spent in deep contemplation by both of us as to what decision we need to make. It seemed that the closer I moved to knowing that ICU was the best choice, the further John moved away from the idea. Each hour I could see in his face that he was becoming more determined to plead his case the next day with his doctor. His jaw was getting tighter, his forehead more wrinkled, and his heals were digging in. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t blame him a bit. It is a big decision and one that can’t be made quickly. It was what he asked me to do next that made me bust out laughing.

John and I went on the UNOS website to look at the data of wait times for transplant recipients with O blood type. We were trying to determine whether it was better for him to wait at home longer before he goes into the ICU and goes up a level in status, or if it wouldn’t matter because his wait time would start over when he goes up in status.

So we formulated these spreadsheets of data at a regional level and at the hospital level (This is John’s analytical, numbers based, all facts mind coming through), and he says to me, “I want you to go upstairs and print these for me”. What? “So you’re going to take these to show the doctor tomorrow?” I asked him. He said, “Yes.”

I just started laughing out loud. I told him I bet he’s the first patient ever to bring spreadsheets into the doctor’s office before going into ICU. And as expected, when his doctor walked in the next day he thought the same thing. He says to John with a perplexed look on his face, “What do you have in your hands there, buddy?” I think it was a first for all of us, but that’s John. Nobody is going to put him in the hospital without a serious case built.