Guest Column

A Fight Well Fought, A Wife Remembered

By James Utt

The Edison Company had a scheduled power outage that was running hours past the time they said it would be over. My wife Kathy and I sat talking by candlelight, sipping wine and nearly running out of things to say. Finally the power came back on and we noticed the flashing red signal on our landline that told us we had a voicemail. The message had, of course, been left several hours earlier and was from the oncologist.

My wife’s first mastectomy was in 2000 and was a huge success, with a marvelous reconstruction and five years of Tamoxifen as a precaution. We moved to Laguna Beach and life was good. For a while. In 2009, cancer was discovered in her other breast; another mastectomy and a not so good reconstruction. We both found it harder to bounce back from this one. Lots of chemo at that dreary place on Old Newport Road where 20 other people were hooked up to drips. After a period of time, the doctor gave us a cautious all clear and we tried to resume a normal life.

But not two years later, we learned that apparently a tiny part of the cancer had escaped and found a home on my wife’s liver. More chemo and when the cancer had decreased in size enough, a procedure called an ablation, to effectively destroy it. This, too, was deemed a success. The third time was the charm. Only it wasn’t, as the late night message told us. The cancer that refused to die was back and it was serious.

More and different chemo drugs were dripped into her in five-hour sessions. She researched each one and learned that these were last ditch efforts, despite our oncologist’s reassurance that, “We’ve had great success with this one.” My wife battled on in a fashion more bravely than I could ever imagine myself doing under similar circumstances. She continued to work full time even though her pain was often excruciating, eschewing medical marijuana for the medical martini.

We would watch television with our drinks until she became sleepy and then turn in. One night, she said, “I can’t stand up.” More desperate treatments, more trips to the hospital and a growing pessimism from our doctor. The wheelchair made its appearance. And finally, the oncologist said what we both knew he would say, “We have to concentrate on your comfort now because there is nothing more we can do to stop your decline. I am very sorry.” His staff would arrange for hospice people to contact us at once. He told my wife she had between four and six months to live.  She died in three weeks. If the hospice people had the power to keep someone alive, my wife would have lived forever. They were the kindest, most helpful and supportive people I have ever come in contact with, but even they could not arrest her decline. A hospital bed she could never get comfortable in, searing pain that morphine could not dampen, humiliating failures to get to the toilet in time. I would like to think that those last three weeks brought us closer together as the past few years had seemed to drive a wedge between us. I hope so, but I will never know.

As the French were celebrating Bastille Day on July 14, some nice people from McCormick’s Mortuary came and took my wife’s body away, her suffering over. The last I saw of the woman I had shared nearly 40 years of my life with was wrapped in a sheet and taken to a waiting van. It has been said before that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

Sometimes, late at night, I put on a little of my wife’s perfume and try to recapture a small slice of our life together.

James Utt is a retired high school teacher who has lived in Laguna Beach for 15 years.