And as I sat there, I realized that the questions intersecting life, death, and meaning, questions that all people face at some point, usually arise in a medical context.
God help the hospital that finds a member of the Krouse/Rosenthal family checking in as a patient.
Rudyard Kipling once observed, “For the strength of the pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the pack.” And whatever our family was doing—from getting together on Sunday afternoons to swim, play games, talk, and eat to hibernating in Michigan, coloring, reading, and walking in the ravines, to supporting each other through a hospital experience—we gathered as a pack. We’d already ridden out ten births together, a couple of heart procedures, one bout of lung cancer, and several knee surgeries (four on my right knee alone!).
We probably overwhelmed a few hospital staffs, maybe even provided a little levity, in the way we didn’t just assemble in waiting rooms but took them over.
On September 26, 2015, we overtook—or, to be more precise, hunkered down en masse in—a waiting room at the University of Chicago Hospital for a day none of our previous experiences had prepared us for: the endurance test that was Amy’s surgery. They don’t call them “waiting rooms” for nothing. We knew we had a long wait ahead of us, we just had no idea how long.
The day was a bit of a fog. For the most part, my confidence in the surgical team superseded those dark, occasional, inevitable “What if . . .” thoughts, and all of us in that room did an admirable job of buoying one another up with a steady stream of positive thoughts.
Amy was so strong; surely she could defy the odds. For years, after all, she had been a practicing yogi, dedicated to her ashtanga practice. She swam regularly at various times in her life. Her calves! She had strong legs that propelled her on walks, sometimes as long as two hours, carrying her from one part of the city to the other. Other than the potato chip addiction she inherited from her mother and a heavy hand with mayonnaise, she lived a healthy lifestyle.
Then, as the hours dragged on, there would be those long silences when we all withdrew into our own thoughts and overwrought nerves, and I’d pull out my notes and study the list of new medical terms that had suddenly invaded our vocabulary:
Total abdominal hysterectomy
Bilateral oophorectomy
Omentectomy
Lymph node dissection
Tumor debulking
Possible appendectomy
Potential damage to surrounding structures . . . bowel
Lymphedema
That’s a lot of ectomys for one operation. The etymology of the suffix ectomy, I’d learned, is from the Greek ektomia, “a cutting out of.” Amy was little, five-one when she stood up very straight, and weighing in just north of one hundred pounds. How much could that tiny body handle? And why did it have to take so damned long?
Several millennia—i.e., nine hours—later there was a group exhale when Dr. Lengyel appeared, and a few of us were herded into a small consultation room.
He patiently, articulately explained everything.
All I heard was “Amy made it through surgery.”
It still humbles me to look back on that man, that extraordinary doctor who’d had the focus and dedication to devote nine hours to increasing the chances of Amy living with a chronic disease, best-case scenario, rather than dying of cancer. Now, that’s important work. That’s worthwhile. That’s essential. . . . While I was doing what with my life, exactly? Okay, I’d helped some people in my thirtysomething years as a lawyer, but had I come anywhere close to saving a life? No, I couldn’t really say I had. But there are how many Dr. Ernst Lengyels? Not enough. He’s a rare breed, and we were blessed that he was there for Amy when we so desperately needed him.
I don’t think I really started breathing again until Amy opened her eyes in the recovery room. She was back. I never doubted it (except in those dark, awful “What if . . .” moments), but I couldn’t believe it, either. I won’t even pretend to know what it was like for her to wake up from having her insides removed and rearranged; I just knew that whatever it took for her to recover, and however long, I’d be right there with her. Because Amy was who she was, we both fed off the intensity of her determination to be her strong, healthy, vibrant self again.
We took our cues from her doctors when it came to her physically healing at the right pace. It started with walking a few steps down the hallway and slowly progressed as the days went by to walking down the hall, touching the door at the end, and making the loop up the hall again until she was back in her bed. Baby steps, but every one of them seemed like a miracle.
Oh, there was one unexpected bump in the road—as a result of the lengthy surgery, Amy had suffered a femoral nerve injury. Translation: her leg was messed up, and she had limited use of it. While her doctors assured us that it wasn’t an uncommon side effect of such intense surgical procedures and she’d very probably make a full recovery, it felt like just one more thing to be concerned about. We were optimistic at this point that Amy would beat ovarian cancer, but did this nerve injury mean she might end up being a cancer survivor with a permanent limp?
In the big picture, though, we agreed that we had much bigger fish to fry than worrying about the possibility of a limp. Dr. Lengyel’s team included the brilliant and genteel Dr. John Moroney, who, even with the crazy busy schedule he maintained, took the time to meet our three children when they themselves wanted to talk about Amy’s exact diagnosis. They had an honest conversation about her chances of survival and other questions on their minds. What a gift to have such a caring and talented man on our team.
Before long it was time for the next recommended course of treatment—chemotherapy. Ideally, chemotherapy in a warm climate. The duration of the protocol advised by the medical team: sixteen weeks. Sixteen weeks would plunge us into the heart of winter. In Chicago. Which no one in their right mind has ever described as a warm climate. If what Amy needed was going through chemo where it was warm, where she could build up her strength by being outdoors taking walks, maybe even swimming, that’s exactly what Amy would get, if we had to move heaven and earth to make it happen.
Again, we’re lucky people: Amy’s folks, Ann and Paul, were Florida residents. Our oncologist gave us a referral there, and we researched to find her the best facility and health-care provider Florida had to offer.
The thought of not being right by Amy’s side every minute of those sixteen weeks was almost unfathomable to me. But this wasn’t about me, it was all about her, and whatever she needed. Ann and Paul were thrilled at the opportunity to care for her, and Amy was enormously relieved and grateful to have her parents’ open, adoring arms waiting for her in the Sunshine State. As for me, I’d just have to make some adjustments, shift some priorities, and make it work. I’d commute to Florida every chance I got, which would turn out to be every weekend, and an occasional week here and there. Yes, my work would suffer. Yes, there would definitely be some financial stress. And yes, in the big picture, with the stakes being Amy’s illness and ultimately her life, those concerns were beside the point.
We flew to Florida—Amy, me, and our loyal family dog Cougar by Amy’s side.
Time out for a brief, important, long-overdue introduction:
The kids were roughly eleven, nine, and seven when Amy’s assistant at the time, Emily, rescued a beautiful black Lab mix puppy from a homeless woman who was selling puppies out of a box at a gas station for $15 apiece. Justin had a dog-walking business at the time and discovered Cougar sitting in Emily’s car outside our house. As it turned out, Emily couldn’t keep him in her apartment, for some roommate- or landlord-related reason. So . . . she asked if we could care for the little guy until she was able to make other arrangements. I’m sure you can hear Justin now: “Mom, Dad, can we pleeeeeeeeeease?!” We agreed to keep the puppy for the night, but Amy and Justin were leaving town the next day. Amy trusted me to make the right decision while they were gone. You know the rest—we fell hopelessly in love with him, we named him Cougar, and from that first night on there were six “Rosies” instead of five.
Drawing of the 6 “Rosies.”
I’d been struggling with insomnia for years, so it came as no surprise that sleep was even harder now. Only instead of the imagined problems I used to worry about, I had something far more substantial and real to focus on in Amy’s illness. I’d kick myself for all the stupid things I used to worry about that were irrelevant, unimportant, and downright trivial compared to what was going on now. And it was impossible to think about what was happening to her without adding in uncertainty about whether what I was doing was what I should be doing with the limited time I had left in this life. I know that many men my age, even those who haven’t been sucker punched with the devastating illness of a loved one, go through the existential struggle about what really matters in life. I’d been battling mine for years, but after this brief separation from Amy, I knew I needed to stop thinking about it and start taking some kind of positive step away from the emptiness of work and toward the things that really mattered in life.
Letting go began with ending my regular attendance at my office in downtown Chicago. It’s a large space I shared with other lawyers who, like me, were solo practitioners or had small partnerships. This is a truly amazing group of professionals and human beings. From the moment the news of Amy’s diagnosis spread through the office, every one of those people had my back. They offered to stand in for me at court appearances, my staff took over the day-to-day requirements of running a law practice, and they regularly checked in to ask how Amy and I were doing and what they could do to help. What wonderful people they are, stepping up like that for someone in need. I hope I’ve sufficiently thanked them for lending a hand during this difficult stretch and keeping me going when I wasn’t one bit sure I had it in me.
Once I’d loosened up on my office hours and Amy had settled in to her new chemo routine in Florida, I became a professional commuter. I’d spend a few days a week in Chicago taking care of unavoidable business and checking in with our kids, family, and friends. Then I’d be off to Florida for the rest of the week. It was demanding and stressful on the body and the mind, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Those Florida visits involved a lot more than just throwing some clothes in a suitcase and hopping on a plane. If it was even possible, my already incalculable love and admiration for Amy were growing stronger with every minute of every day.
I never went to see her without bringing her an illustrated book. Art helped to fill her up, and she was incredibly connected to the illustrators she used for her own books.
Some of the books I brought to Amy in Florida.
Courtesy of Brooke Hummer
I recently came across a note I wrote to her when I’d decided to be by her side regardless of life and work in Chicago:
You asked me recently if there is anything I want to tell you in light of the shitstorm that has hit us. I want to say I love you. Not in the way I say it every day, like “love you,” as in “see you after work and remember while I am gone that I truly love you.” But in the way that I never have loved nor will ever love anyone again in my life. In the way that you complete me fully. In the sense that you gave me support and confidence and intimacy in a way that those three words are the only way to explain it. In a way that allows me to be me and you to be you because of the love I have for you. Meaning, you are my soul and it would be nice if we can beat this battle and love each other for a long time—as our love should be.
I will be with you for this round of treatment, because I love you.