He was admitted to the hospital and went thru chemotherapy for Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. He got very sick so Joyce and her daughter (who was eight years old) were able to stay in the hospital in a private room for five months with him. Joyce worked nights and then spent her days in the hospital with her husband (I forgot to get his name). He tried to make videotapes for his daughter but was so tired that he could not make many. So the daughter would pick up the video recorder and say, “Dad, just talk.” So he would just talk. He got sicker and sicker and more despondent about dying in the hospital. So Joyce said to the doctors, “if he stays in the hospital how much more time does he have?” She was told five months. She then asked how long he had if she took him home. They told her he had about a week at home.
They both made the decision to go home. He died two days later at home. And he died last year on 9/11 (remember he was a paramedic!). Then she went on to say that her own father had died of leukemia when she was eight years old! I asked her if she had seen him since he had died. She looked at me with a strange look and then said, “I have never told anyone this but I have seen him four times since he died. “Twice in dreams that were as real as if you were awake and twice when I was not asleep.” She described the dreams and other times she saw him and I sat there trying to hold back the tears told by a stranger about a man I had never met.
Then she stopped what she was doing, turned and looked right at me and laughed and said, “I bet you never expected a story like that huh?” I choked back the tears and told her how I had been sitting there feeling sorry for myself but how could I feel bad after hearing her story???!!! She told me to go home and spend as much time with my loved ones as possible because if she could have the time back with her husband she would have changed how much time she had spent working! Whew! The interesting thing is Joyce usually works nights but had come in early because the ICU was short so I should not have met her at all!
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