The days moved at a snail’s pace while we waited for Lou’s body to heal.
He had one or two check ups during our first week on campus, but it was pretty clear that the doctors were in no rush for Lou to get on a plane to go back to Dallas. He was still passing a lot of blood, and as long as his urine wasn’t clear, the catheter needed to stay in.
It was exhausting to sit around and wait for Lou’s body to magically get better. And when your inner spirit animal turns out to be an OCD Chihuahua named Juanita, and you’re in charge of emptying your loved one’s catheter bag all the time, you never really get a full stretch of sleep. So I remember always feeling tired and wired at the same time.
We also tried our best to keep our wrinkle cream team on track. But things were starting to fall apart on us. Lou simply didn’t have the energy to do all of the recruiting calls, and his focus was really spotty. The stress of everything had compounded over the past couple of months, and I was noticing how drained Lou’s spirits had gotten. He couldn’t rally as easily as he did before — and that was scary.
So I tried to jump in and recruit.
Remembering how sloppy and awkward I was when I tried to take over hurts my heart now when I look back on it. Lou had recruited such great people into our organization, and they deserved more from me than I knew how to give. I have a very vivid memory of trying to type a long email to Brice and Debbie on our iPad. I just felt so awful about the fact that Lou and I were letting them down after all they did to support us. But it was getting more and more obvious that Lou and I were in too big of a ditch to do more than just maintain what we’d already built.
It felt like we were failing people right in the midst of trying our best to survive — which made our situation feel even more depressing. But we couldn’t do much to change things. We had to accept that Lou’s health was our first priority, and if we were going to get through this, we had to find ways to cope and stay positive.
So we planned little outings every day. Of course I had to bring that obnoxious golden donut everywhere we went, but eventually, neither of us cared what anyone thought.
In fact, Lou was pretty open about what was going on. There was a very dingy diner (down Juanita!) about two blocks from our dorm that served cheap food, and catered to adults more than students. So, many mornings, Lou would chitchat with men around his age over bacon and eggs. They’d swap stories about sports, glory days, and how awful it is to get old. I would catch myself nodding is solemn agreement, because for me, it was pretty awful for Lou to get old.
One crisp day, Lou and I were walking down the middle of campus, and we heard music and commotion that seemed within walking distance for Lou. So we followed the noise and discovered a huge swap meet featuring every kind of UM Golden Gopher gear you could imagine. Lou and I only had a very few things with us, and the weather was starting to grow quite chilly, so we each dug through the tables marked with our sizes, and came away with a new golden wardrobe.
We were doing our best to blend in and take on the school spirit, and a few new T-shirts and sweatpants did just the trick. After we made our purchases, we placed the donut on a sturdy bench, and did some people watching.
As slow as the time was creeping by for us, it did feel like it was just yesterday that we were each in college. That kind of time went by fast; this kind of time didn’t. There was a home football game that weekend, and the campus was alive with Golden Gopher spirit! I know if Lou had been feeling better, he would’ve wanted to go to the game. But we were not there to join in. We were there to get well and then move on with our lives.
By the end of the second week, I think Lou and I were both looking for ways we could fake some sort of miraculous healing! But you can’t fake your way out of our situation. So we endured it as best we could.
