CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED?®
by MARGERY D. ROSEN
“OIUTR’S SON IS DUSisAabPlAedRTAND Tearing ”
Her Turn:
“I used to think Brad and I
could get through anything,” said Kim, 41, a former securities analyst
who now stays home with her children, Kyle, 9,
Luke, 7, and twins Mark and Mia, 5. “We were so
close we’d finish each other’s sentences. But our son
Luke is severely handicapped, and the stress of caring for him is destroying us.
“We still don’t know exactly what happened. I’d
had a normal pregnancy, but during Luke’s birth,
something went horribly wrong. He was rushed to
a high-risk infant ICU while doctors worked to stop
me from hemorrhaging to death. At the end of the
week, the doctors told us Luke was permanently
brain damaged. He can’t see, hear, think or move;
he’s fed through a tube in his stomach. We read and
sing to him, but I doubt he even knows we’re there.
“We couldn’t bear the idea of putting this poor
defenseless baby in an institution, so we decided to
care for him at home. We turned the downstairs
den into a hospital room and learned how to clean
his feeding tube, turn him every few hours and suction his throat every 10 minutes. He gets seizures
for no apparent reason, so we have to watch him 24
hours a day. After we battled the insurance companies, they agreed to cover 10 hours of home care
daily; anything beyond that comes out of our
pocket. One nurse comes from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., and
another from 11 P.M. until 7 A.M. The rest of the
time, it’s just us. Sometimes my mom comes over so
I can go to a church fund-raising committee meeting or take the kids to activities. You need an air
traffic controller to figure it all out!
“Given our situation, a lot of people thought we
were nuts to have another child. But we always
wanted a large family and needed more joy in the
house. Before I got pregnant again, I made sure
Brad understood how much help I’d need. He
swore I could count on him. But once the twins
were born—perfectly healthy, thank God—he forgot
all about his promise. He started working even
longer hours and stopped helping. I CONTINUED
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