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    Now Comes the Hard Part: Reflections on Navigating a Husband’s Terminal Hepatitis C
    Now Comes the Hard Part: Reflections on Navigating a Husband’s Terminal Hepatitis C
    Now Comes the Hard Part: Reflections on Navigating a Husband’s Terminal Hepatitis C
    Ebook89 pages1 hour

    Now Comes the Hard Part: Reflections on Navigating a Husband’s Terminal Hepatitis C

    By Sheryl Isaacson McGough

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    Jim contracted Hepatitis C through a blood transfusion after being wounded in Vietnam; forty years later, the virus began taking him down. Now Comes the Hard Part reveals the stress, grief, and guilt his wife experienced as she watched cirrhosis and liver cancer rob her husband of his vitality. This memoir enlightens readers whose loved ones currently carry a Hepatitis C diagnosis, who ask questions never fully answered by medical professionals: “What happens next?” “What does this mean?” and “How long does he have?"
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateApr 21, 2014
    ISBN9781483525082
    Now Comes the Hard Part: Reflections on Navigating a Husband’s Terminal Hepatitis C

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      Book preview

      Now Comes the Hard Part - Sheryl Isaacson McGough

      you.

      Chapter 1: The Beginning

      Jim was 19 when he volunteered for the Army in 1970, in the midst of the Vietnam war. He grew up on an Iowa farm, went off to one of the state universities, and was protected from the draft by his student deferment, but he spent too much time coming home, first on weekends and then on weeknights, to see me. When the university put him on academic probation, Jim understood it was only a matter of time before he lost his draft deferment. Maybe, just maybe, amiable young men with some college who voluntarily entered the service would end up in Germany instead of Vietnam?

      A few years later, Jim and I would laugh when he recalled filling out a questionnaire to help determine the direction of his advanced individual training (AIT).

      Do you like to camp? Check.

      Do you like to hike? Check.

      Do you like to hunt? Check.

      They put him in the infantry. No wonder he was sent to 'Nam.

      When Jim first arrived in-country, he was given a typing job, far removed from the war front. Day in and day out, he typed commendation forms for soldiers who had been wounded in the line of duty. Six weeks into Jim's tour, he'd had enough, and he requested a meeting with his superior officer.

      I want you to send me into the jungle to do what I'm trained to do he said.

      He usually walked point, clearing the path through the undergrowth. It meant he always went first. First into unknown territory and first into the range of enemy fire.

      But one day he refused. I had a bad feeling that day, he told me. Instead of walking point, he trailed slightly behind. They were climbing a hill near the DMZ, in the low mountains at the border of South and North Vietnam, when shots mowed down the point man. Jim dove to the ground and then heard the thunk of a grenade landing in front of him. He yelled Chi-com, tucked, and rolled down the hill, but the grenade went off before he could scramble outside its range.

      If it'd been one of ours, I'd be dead, he said. As it was, shrapnel peppered his lower body, with the worst damage leveled at his calves and feet.

      A medevac helicopter took Jim to a field hospital and then to Okinawa, where he was given a blood transfusion during surgery to repair his right calf and both ankles. He turned 20 as he recovered in bed. His injuries rendered him unable to wear combat boots, so he was shipped back to the states as soon as he could walk, where he finished out his tour of duty at Fort Riley, Kansas.

      No one suspected that the blood that saved Jim's life in February 1971 harbored the undetectable Hepatitis C virus that would claim his life decades later.

      Chapter 2: Within the Grasp

      Jim and I were married in June of 1972; I was eighteen and he was twenty-one. We rarely spoke of Vietnam; it was my impression that early marriage and children were decisive steps on Jim's part to put the war behind him. First Jim worked construction. Later he sold real estate and managed the office. Eventually he worked his way into a good position with a corporation and enjoyed the mental challenges that came with the job. He was hard-working, fit, and handsome.

      And he was a great guy. It was commonly expected that, when we went out for dinner with a group of friends, the rest of us would be at the table, ordering drinks, while Jim would still be holding the restaurant door open for total strangers.

      Yes, he had flaws. He was frustratingly stubborn and dangerously impulsive. It was his impulsive nature that landed him in Vietnam and on the front lines. And that same impulsiveness propelled him to surprise me with a new, 1980 Chevrolet Malibu for Christmas, when we should have been saving for a rainy day. It propelled him to leave a good job in the 1980s to go back to school, when he was the sole provider for me and our two young daughters. And it propelled him to shower me with gifts and trinkets, tokens of his love, for all of our married life.

      On a clear summer day in the mid-1990s, a letter showed up in our mailbox from the American Red Cross. It announced that Jim should no longer donate his blood through his company's semi-annual blood drives. It explained that a new antigen had been used to screen the most recent donations; it uncovered Hepatitis C lurking in Jim's system. The letter said he should consult his physician immediately.

      At the time, we were relatively young and undeniably strong. After some bad patches in our marriage, we were back on track. Jim and I had jobs we loved, a comfortable home, and grown daughters who were doing well. We had traveled across the US and we'd been to Europe, a couple times. We spent evenings laughing with friends and holidays hosting our family. It seemed everything we had ever wanted was within our grasp.

      So it was with a dash of disbelief that we visited the gastroenterologist. The doctor was solemn but hopeful. This is a non-progressive form of Hepatitis C, he explained. In his professional opinion, we should be cautious, watch it, but we need not panic.

      I was a medical optimist. I reasoned that the virus had lain dormant in Jim's body since he was infected, more than two decades earlier; of course, it would continue to lie dormant. Besides, compared to what Jim had already survived in battle, this seemed rather trivial. And we'd faced challenges, nearly destroyed our marriage, and come through it all for the better. Our recent victories assured me that we could beat just about anything; we certainly could beat this.

      I wasn't really worried. Not now. Not yet.

      But time was not on our side.

      A few years later, Jim fought his way through a nasty bout with diverticulitis, an infection so robust that two surgeries were required to repair the damage. While his system was fighting off the intestinal infection, the Hepatitis C virus apparently took advantage of Jim's weakened condition and gained momentum. Blood tests revealed a moderate escalation in his AST and ALT levels. AST and ALT are enzymes normally found in small amounts in the blood, but when the liver is injured or distressed, abnormally high amounts are released. Jim's increasing levels indicated that his liver was likely inflamed; he was probably developing fibrosis. An MRI confirmed it. But Jim was symptom free.

      Over the next few years, Jim was watched carefully. In 1999 he was referred to a new doctor, one armed with several additional years' experience with Hepatitis C, who scoffed when Jim explained he had the non-progressive form of the disease. There is no such thing as non-progressive Hep-C,

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