Rose’s Disease

The Doctor was beginning to realize the gravity of the situation surrounding his wife’s illness. Years before when Rose mentioned that she thought something was wrong with her health, he had brushed her concerns aside, attributing them to her neurotic personality or the vagueness of her symptoms. But now the Doctor was admitting to himself that his wife was indeed sick and something had to be done. He could clearly see that his wife’s condition was declining—she lost her balance with more frequency, her energy level was quickly depleted, she couldn’t drive anymore. All of these things were causing her to rely on her husband’s assistance more regularly.

Being in the medical profession, the Doctor wanted to find out the exact condition she suffered from and how it might be treated. Together they visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he watched his wife take a number of tests and sat in on interviews with medical specialists. The final diagnosis was that Rose had the rare neurological disorder, Multiple Systems Atrophy, a variant of Parkinson’s disease. There was some speculation concerning the toxic chemicals that Rose had been using in her art studio, but the doctors at Mayo Clinic eventually dismissed this conjecture in favor of the opinion that her disease was most likely hereditary. They gave her approximately five years to live.

After learning of his wife’s degenerative disease, there was a sensation in the Doctor’s gut, a sort of dropping out of the abdomen from the inside. This uncomfortable roller-coaster sensation reminded the Doctor of when he first fell in love with Rose. He remembered a vacation they took before they got married, a vacation to Marco Beach. He couldn’t stop himself from talking about the future, words leapt out of his mouth, promises about marriage and kids. And she believed him. She wanted to marry him. After that, he couldn’t break her heart and tell her it was all a lie.

He knew Rose’s expectations. She didn’t even have to say anything—he felt her dependence on him.

And what were his options? He had to assume the role of caretaker; he didn’t have a choice. Luckily, he was good at taking care of people; that was his profession.

A Talk

One evening, Rose asked her husband to sit with her in the bedroom. He propped his wife’s back up against a couple of throw pillows, and she extended her legs on the mattress. He noticed her thighs were bulbous and pale.

At first she didn’t speak. Her chest heaved up and down with difficult breathing. Her glasses fell down to the tip of her nose and stayed there. Her small eyes darted for a moment and then rested on her husband. The bedroom had been cleaned that morning and the scent of citronella radiated off the carpet. Outside in the yard, the setting sun was casting shadows on the lawn, a small blackbird was cooing in the tall elm tree.

The Doctor perched on the edge of the bed, barely sitting. It seemed as though he might get up at any moment. Rose was much calmer but her calm was weighted down with a slight sadness. She still had not said a word. He waited silently, anxiously, hoping she would at last produce one of her sighs and say something.

“We’ll have to put some money aside for my health.” She said.

“What do mean?” Her husband asked.

“Maybe I’ll need people to take care of me. You know, eventually.”

“That won’t be necessary. I told you I’m going to help out.”

“But it might be longer than five years—”

“I told you I’m planning on taking care of you.”

“And what about the children?”

The Doctor’s face furrowed. “Isn’t it a little premature to say anything to them?”

“Premature? They need to know about their mother.”

“But is it necessary to tell them right this minute?”

“There’s nothing to keep secret, Salem. I’m sick.”

“I know you’re sick—”

“I don’t think you do. You’ve ignored my illness for the last two years.”

“What are you talking about?’

“Before the doctors diagnosed me, I told you I was sick. I told you I couldn’t keep up with you on vacations. I needed to rest all the time and you blamed me as if it were my fault.”

“You don’t have to tell me this, honey. I know you’re sick.”

“I could be dead in five years. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Please relax. You’re getting all worked up about this.”

“Salem, you don’t understand. I’m sick.”

At the Arts Festival

Downtown Albuquerque is a motley place with cobbled streets and Pueblo-revival architecture. In the month of September, the downtown area fills with an odd mixture of tourists and locals, as hundreds of artists and artisans set up booths in open plazas and along Gold Avenue and Fourth. The buildings are decorated with lights and colorful tapestries. The showcases include jewelry, painting, ceramics, photography, sculpture, wood-making, metalwork, and pastels. You can hear Native American flutes and bongo drums playing in the streets. The local food shops bring out an assortment of their finest soups and sandwiches. Venders sell trinkets and balloons. As in the crowded streets of a Turkish bazaar, the atmosphere is humming with vibrancy and perpetual movement.

Rose had mentioned the Arts Festival in Albuquerque to her husband before, but this was the first year he suggested they go. His attitude toward the arts was changing. In fact, now he took pride in having a wife who was an established artist. Just recently her artwork had been shown publicly for the first time, and she was written up in three Chicago magazines.

The Festival was in full swing when they arrived. This was the largest outdoor arts festival that Rose had ever been too. On side stages, music and dancing caught their attention, and both were enchanted by the eccentric artwork and media-displays. Rose told her husband that she wanted to meet some of the artists.

As Rose mingled with the local artists, the Doctor saw that his wife was at home in this community. He could see how comfortable and relaxed she was among the creative types. He glimpsed a side of her character he had not seen before. She was enjoying herself immensely, opening and closing her wings, as if she were a lush, transparent butterfly delighting in its surroundings. After all these years he finally understood his wife. She belonged to this community of artists. Here in Albuquerque, New Mexico Rose was celebrating herself, and the Doctor had the pleasure to partake in this celebration also.

Up in the sky, more than a dozen hot-air balloons loomed over the city. The silky reds, bright yellows, and hot pinks seemed to correspond to his amazement and awe with his wife’s purpose. As the massive floaters climbed into the blue heights, Rose turned to her husband, and squeezing his hand, she said, “The International Balloon Competition. I completely forgot.”

That weekend Rose and her husband fell mysteriously in love again. Their lovemaking had the fleeting splendor of youth. They relished each other’s company for the first time in over fifteen years.

The last day, as they were leaving the Guadalupe Chapel after a tour, Rose lost her balance and fell face forward onto the cobblestones. Within seconds the Doctor bent down to lift Rose’s head up from the ground. Her glasses were smashed and her face was cut in three places. A large group of people was forming around them and a man in a Safari jacket was calling an ambulance on his cell phone. When the ambulance arrived, the Doctor told the medic, “She has Multiple System Atrophy—it may be getting worse—this has never happened before.”

While the Doctor sat in the hospital waiting room, he replayed the accident over and over again in his mind. She had fallen straight onto the cobblestones. Her reflexes were so bad that she couldn’t even hold up her hands to block her face. “What’s happening to her?” He thought. “She’s completely vulnerable without me.” He pictured her face with its bruises and cuts from the fall—a torrent of sympathy broke inside of him. He couldn’t stop this disease from happening to her. She wasn’t going to get better. Things were only going to get worse.

A Colossal task

On some nights the Doctor waited forty-five or fifty minutes for his wife to urinate. On some nights she couldn’t urinate at all. She seemed to think that she had to go to the bathroom. But maybe she was wrong. As he waited for her, the Doctor remembered the surgeries he had scheduled for the next day, his meetings with other doctors, and matters pertaining to his office staff. In the depths of his mind, he could hear the ceaseless electric current of frenzied thoughts racing.

He worked nearly ten hours a day, and then came home in the evenings to take care of his wife. Soon he was overwhelmed, exhausted and unhappy. There was little communication between the two of them—only the heavy looks and feelings of resentment as the Doctor grudgingly obeyed his wife’s orders. He almost felt as though she were imposing her medical condition on him.

Meanwhile, a horrible spell of insomnia was taking its toll. Lying in bed, unable to sleep, he worried endlessly about what he had to do for the next day. He obsessed over his lack of sleep and his inability to perform his duties at work. Then his wife roused him out of a daze of semi-consciousness, pleading for help. In a sullen mood, he led her to the little chamber, cloddishly lowering her onto the toilet seat.

With less and less sleep, the Doctor was losing his patience and ability to concentrate at work. In the operating room, he lashed out at the nurses for not giving him the right instruments, or he complained to the anesthesiologist for not being on time. The administrative position that he had taken up was also adding to the amount of stress in his life. For some reason, he had the impression that his colleagues on the hospital board were not respecting his opinions. They wanted to push their own agendas, rather than concede to his beliefs. Despite the fact that he was expected to be president of the medical staff next year, he had the sense that he was slowly becoming surrounded by enemies.

By the end of the day, after numberless irritations, the Doctor made his forty-five minute drive home. He narrowly averted accidents on the highway more than once, falling asleep at the wheel.

Table of Contents