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A Conversation with Rick and Jeannett Rydalch
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Rick with Chris, Aubrey and Alison
on
a camping trip, 1997 © KUED |
Continued...
Q:What's your typical day like?
Rick: My day. I just try to keep from being weird, I guess. So I'm okay that way. I try to keep from sleeping all the time. I sleep a lot and that's bad.
Jeannett: We just basically walk around and try to function. We clean up here and there and do lunch - just basic things. I'm having a hard time, so after dinner somebody might come over and volunteer to sit with Rick while I go and visit my mom or take the kids to the park. Then bedtime comes, he goes to bed, the kids go to bed and I just kind of wander. I've had a really hard time sleeping.
Q: Why aren't you sleeping?
Jeannett: I've always had a hard time sleeping because when I lay down my mind works like crazy. It works overtime. I think about this, I think about that...the funeral, the kids, basically everything. I just think about everything and I can't sleep. A lot of times I am praying for a little bit of relief. I go to bed at about 3 a.m.
Q: How about you Rick, do you feel anxious or nervous or are you just trying to stay awake and do what you're doing or do you have a lot of thoughts going through your head?
Jeannett: We argue a lot about things. I was trying to figure out the whole funeral thing because I feel like he has this terminal brain tumor, we're on hospice and I feel like we need to make arrangements. But he doesn't believe it's going to happen. .
Rick: Well I feel like it, I feel good right now so that's why I feel that way.
Q: Do you feel like you've a lot of stress on you, like you've got to make all those decisions now that you're alone?
Jeannett: Well I need to make a lot of decisions and I am totally stressed out. The kids can't think for themselves and he can't think for himself, so I'm thinking for the kids and thinking for him and I'm thinking for myself and taking care of everything that goes on during the day. I've never been one that has just wanted to take care of everything. It's just really hard. I expect the kids to say, "Oh mom, what should I do now?" or "What should I do with this?" or "How do I do this?" but it's really hard when your spouse, the one who's supposed to be helping you figure all this out, is asking me the same things. "Well what should I have for lunch?" or "How do I do this?" or "Can you help me with this?" and, "What's the reason for this?" But then he's also an adult which makes it that much harder because he says, "Well, I can do that" or "If you just ask me, I would've done it."
Q: On top of the emotional stress you are going through right now, you must have a lot of financial worries. What are you concerned about?
Jeannett: Well , I had to quit my job to take care of Rick. It's going to be really hard financially. We're going to be very poor and it's going to be very hard and very scary. But, we'll have a roof over our heads and we'll have food to eat and we'll be together. And that's all that's important. We won't be out on the streets. We won't have any extra money, but that's okay. We'll survive.
It's hard for him because he feels guilty but he has to realize that it's not his fault. It's the disease, it has nothing to do with anything that he did or anything that he can control anyway even if he wanted to.
Rick: I'd like to feel better.
Q: Was it hard for you to make that transition to accept Hospice?
Jeannett: On May 5th, I come home from work and he was really really sick and out of it. We we're planning his birthday party, we were all excited and when we came home and he could barely even stand up. He didn't know who anybody was - he was really incoherent. So I took him to the hospital and they said that he could have a brain hemorrhage. It just happened all of a sudden. The doctor referred us to hospice, and I was so eager to come home and be in our house, so I accepted it. I figured that if we went on hospice and things started to get better we could always go off and come back on it later, but the time frame that they gave us was really hard for me to take. They told us six months, but than less than a week before they were telling me he could live four to five years.
It's hard to take hospice because you feel like you're giving up on the disease. We've been fighting it for seven years, and to say that there's nothing else we're going to do for it... I had a lot of struggles thinking that I was just giving up. But I go to the Cancer Wellness group, and it helps to talk through things. I talked to the hospice doctor about it and he talked to a couple of other doctors, and all three doctors were in agreement that there's really nothing we can do. That helped me to accept it a little bit more - I'm not giving up, I'm just thinking about Rick's quality of life.
Q: Is it important to you to be home right now and not in a hospital?
Rick: Well, it's very nice to be home. I would probably be better if I worked though. But I can't work. Having her (Jeannett) around is nice. And my kids.
Q: Is that important to you to do this at home?
Jeannett: It's very important to me...it's a lot easier because I'm not wearing myself out by going to and from the hospital and doctors' offices every week. It's just a lot easier for me to have him home and take care of him at home. It's a lot easier taking care of the kids and it's nice that we're all right here where everybody's familiar. When he was in the hospital, the kids couldn't go see him because he was in the intensive care unit.
Q: Has anything good come of all this?
Jeannett: No. It's really hard to think of anything good that come out of this whole situation. I'm losing my best friend. My kids are losing a father, and I feel like I'm turning into a complaining hag. I feel like I'm always complaining and I don't like the person that I've become. I really have a hard time finding anything good out of this. We've always been a really close family. I guess if we weren't really a close family I could say it brought us closer together, but we've always been close and there's just so many trials and struggles with this. I feel like I'm a failure as a person because I feel this way. I feel like I'm just failing because there has to be a purpose, and for me not to be able to see it...I feel like I'm just an idiot. I've become a lot closer to his family. That's the good that's come out of it. And his family's become a lot closer to him.
Q: Does hospice come in and address some of your needs?
Jeannett: Yes, the nurses have been incredible. At times when I've really been at my wits end, they've been really caring and compassionate towards me. The social worker has come in and tried to help me go through some of the things have. They have all helped me work through some things.
Q: Is there anything you want to add? What do you think people should know about?
Jeannett: It's real. One of the problems that I have is that he looks normal, and people just don't realize how things are. They wonder why I can't deal with things that are going on because he looks fine - he's able to walk, he talks okay.
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