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THEN SHE WAS GONE

Writer's picture: Scott FegleyScott Fegley

Endocarditis. A bacterial infection of the inner lining of the heart and the surface of its valves. Bacteria from other parts of the body travel through the bloodstream and attach to a damaged area of the heart lining like lint getting caught on rough fabric. If not treated timely with antibiotics or surgery, it can be deadly.


Damaged area of the heart? But when had that happened?


Its symptoms can be many or few, severe or not, and because early symptoms can present like so many other illnesses, endocarditis is notoriously difficult to diagnose.


When was it she started feeling poorly? July? August? A cough. Shortness of breath. She had trouble keeping up with us on campus when we moved Diana in. But then again, she had trouble keeping up with my self-guided walking tour of Paris in 2013.


She went to an Urgent Care center three times. Bronchitis, they said. Upper respiratory infection. Initially, she felt better after taking the prescribed antibiotics, but then her fatigue worsened. She slept more than usual. When she skipped Courtney's Parents Weekend at Hofstra, I knew something was very wrong. "Carolyn, see someone who cares."


On November 9, 2018, she agreed to see my family physician. His nurse practitioner examined her and immediately sent us to the emergency room at St. Mary Medical Center where she was admitted with an initial diagnosis of congestive heart failure. Bad, my family physician told me, but easily treatable. Not to worry. Except Carolyn did not respond to the treatment. She was retaining a large amount of fluid.


On November 10, I returned to St. Mary's to find they had moved Carolyn from the room where I had left her that morning into the cardiac critical care unit. She was still in good spirits. There was a paper a doctor had left with her. For the first time, I read about endocarditis. I read it could be life threatening. She had read it, too. "I'm scared," she said. I didn't want to leave her that evening, but the kids were home. "Don't worry," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow."


Sunday morning, November 11th. She called me to ask when I was coming to see her. They had scheduled her for heart valve replacement surgery the following day. Geez! Heart surgery? Our conversation was cut short by the arrival of her doctor. I stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the way to the hospital to get us some real coffee and donuts and I will forever wish I hadn't. If I had arrived at the hospital fifteen minutes earlier. maybe I would have been there to hold her hand, to at least be by her side in that moment to say goodbye.


I can still see the flashing blue light. I knew what it meant. I knew someone's life was in trouble as I walked toward Carolyn's room still clutching the coffee and donuts. It had just come on, just at the moment I came down the hallway. I kept walking thinking her room was just one past. It wasn't that room, not the one filling with doctors and nurses, until one of the nurses stopped me. "I'm sorry. You can't go in there."


They worked to revive her for over an hour til finally one of the doctors came to the lounge and told me my wife and the mother of my children had "expired" like she was some out-of-date medicine that had to be taken off the shelf. Carolyn was gone. My Carolyn. And I was inconsolable.




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