To the Husband I Lost at 24
By: Sarah Mcbride
Tags: Family, Cancer, LGBT, Love

I love you, too.

The next morning, by the grace of God, Andy was able to make it down to the car for the forty-minute drive to Johns Hopkins Hospital with me and his ex-girlfriend, Heather, to begin treatment that was meant to perpetuate his life.

We arrived at Hopkins to meet his oncologist. As the doctor walked into the exam room, we knew things had changed. He hadn’t yet known about Andy’s episodes, but the previous week’s blood work showed some concerning signs. The doctor warned us that we may not be able to proceed with chemotherapy that day, but he would send Andy up to the infusion room for some liquid — since he was, despite my attempts to prevent it, clearly dehydrated. After a few hours, he would re-evaluate Andy and determine what, if any treatment, he could give him.

As we waited for more information, Andy’s situation deteriorated. In just a few hours, his oxygen hunger had increased dramatically. I heard whispers from the nurses outside our station that one of the patients would need to be admitted. I stepped outside and approached his infusion nurse to ask what was happening. She said they were going to have to admit Andy today. We knew being admitted would make it highly unlikely that he was healthy enough for life-perpetuating medical care.

I offered to tell him the news I knew would shatter him. As I walked back, I opened the curtain with the nurse following behind. I tried as gently as possible to tell him that they were going to admit him. Ever the optimist, he knew what that meant, but he didn’t give up hope. He talked about how they could try to stabilize him again so he could be ready for chemotherapy. Just as he gave me a wink of assurance, the medical oncologist returned and informed us that some of the tests had come back. The numbers had jumped higher.

A few minutes later, I met with the oncologist outside of Andy’s station. He said that intubation, or the process of putting Andy on a respirator, was possibly imminent. He asked if Andy had any wishes on that front. He didn’t have to say what that meant as the fly-killing doctor from two weeks ago had already painted the grim picture: if intubated, Andy would never be able to be weaned off, nor would he likely ever wake up. I asked the oncologist how long we had to have that conversation. After all, he had just been given the news that he was being admitted. Couldn’t I give him some time?

“Unfortunately, no.”

After Andy had been “upgraded rooms,” as I’d jokingly put it to him during the admittance process, I said that for “precautionary reasons,” we needed to talk about the question of intubation. The nurse brought us a blank advance directive and we sat down for the first extended conversation since our wedding: whether or not he would want his life continued in a persistent vegetative state.

He stared at the paper for a good ten minutes. He asked if we had to talk about it now, but Heather and I informed him that the doctor said we needed to, again, “as a precaution.” He sat with his pen for another few minutes and finally marked the box that said, “If my doctors certify that I am in a persistent vegetative state… and there is no reasonable expectation that I will ever regain consciousness…Keep me comfortable and allow natural death to occur.”

I called our family and friends to ask them to travel to Baltimore to be with us. His mother, step-father, father, and my mother came immediately. For the next two days, a rotating group of ten to twenty people stuck by our side at the hospital. The same group that had organized our celebration of love just three days before stood by in a circle of love in his hospital room as he slept more and more.

A day after he was admitted, he was unconscious nearly always. Every once in a while, he would regain consciousness, smile at us, squeeze our hands, and ask that his oxygen be turned up. He would rotate his fingers with a look of urgency in his eyes, signaling his desire for more oxygen. Each time, we would have to inform him that the oxygen was as high as it could go.

Wednesday the 27th was the last day Andrew was awake. Just before he went back to sleep for the final time, I told him, “I love you.” He raised his eyebrows and mustered the energy to say four words. These words would be his last. “I love you, too.”

The next morning, we were told it was probably only a matter of time. And echoing a conversation I’d had the night before with one of our best friends, the nurse said that sometimes you have to lean in and tell the person that it is “okay to go” because they are afraid of disappointing people. We looked at each other and all thought, “that is so Andy.” So one by one we all leaned in and told Andy that it was “okay to go.”

I was both the first and last to convey this message to him. I leaned in both times and said, “I love you, beanie, I’m going to miss you every day, but it’s okay for you to go. No one is going to be mad at you.” I then slipped a handwritten note into his clenched fist, which by then had become fairly cold. “You are loved,” it read.

Three hours later, his vitals began to drop. I called for everyone in the lounge to come in. We all stood there as his oxygenation level — the key stat for someone battling cancer in the lungs — dropped from a reasonably health 95 to 85. Then to 75. Then to 65. His numbers were reaching fatal levels.

Crying, we gathered around Andy in that circle of love which remained constant throughout his final stay in the hospital. A rainbow of family — gay and straight, trans and cisgender — held tightly onto him. His breathing diminished. His heart rate slowed. And at 3:30 PM on Thursday the 28th, with the gifts from our wedding five days earlier still unwrapped back in our apartment, Andy passed away.

That night, the group, which gathered to plan our wedding, gathered to plan his funeral. Bishop Gene, who had officiated at our wedding, would preside. Those who had stood at his bedside with me would eulogize him. The family of relatives and friends would join together again to mourn his passing.