Tammy McClelland

The last 10 days or so have been extremely difficult.  It is funny how your heart remembers things that your head is not really focusing on.  October 9th marked a year ago that I took Travis to the ER.  He spent 10 days in NICU at TGH and then came home on the 19th.  Despite my best efforts to distract myself, my heart has relived every moment of those 10 days a year ago.  At the time, I do not really remember crying that much.  I remember just trying to hold it together, thinking that whatever we found out, it just would not be that bad.  Now that I am relieving those 10 days in hindsight, the tears fall very freely.

I did not even realize that October 9th would be significant to me.  I do not even remember where I was when it hit me what that date meant.  The correlation did not even occur to me until just a few days before the date.  Someone said the date aloud to me in reference to something else and it sucked the breath right out of me.  I remember the first thought being, “That can’t be true.  It couldn’t have been a year ago that I took him to the ER.”  The next thought was, “I never had any idea that when we walked into that ER, a year later I would be here without him.”  Then the tears started falling.

For 6 weeks, Travis had a continuous headache that never seemed to go away.  I would causally mention from time-to-time that he should probably see a doctor because that really wasn’t normal.  I didn’t really think it was very serious.  He was still working and participating in church and our family activities.  We had been through a lot in the previous 2 years.  We had followed a call that God had given us and things had not worked out they way we thought.  Things are not always easy when you follow God.  We knew that but those 2 years had been extremely difficult.  I knew that Travis, most of the time, felt very much like a failure as a provider for his family during that 2 years.  Looking back now, I can see other symptoms of the brain tumor.  Forgetfulness, lack on concentration, slight personality changes.  I remember thinking and even remarking to close friends that I thought he was depressed.  I can’t tell you how often I wish that had been the case.

The Thursday before the ER visit, he came home from work and began to vomit.  That was the first time that I began to think that maybe this was something serious.  The vomiting resolved though and he seemed to be okay.  As a person who suffers from migraines, I know how pain can make you sick so I chalked it up to that.  Friday, he was fine.

October 9th–Saturday morning, I was getting ready to head out for a meeting and I was going to be gone most of the day.  I was 10 minutes from walking out the door.  I came out of our bedroom to find Travis vomiting in the kitchen.  Something inside me really registered then and I had this very strong feeling that I needed to take him to the ER.  If you know Travis personally, then you know that was no easy task.  Thankfully, he didn’t fight me much on it.

Even as we waited in the ER, Travis would make remarks like, “They have an hour to figure it out and then I’m going home.”  The scans began to come back and it appeared there was something going on in his brain but no one seemed to be able to tell what.  A casual reference to being admitted to the hospital came up and Travis said, “I am not staying here.  I am going home tonight.”  After it became clear that he was going to be admitted, Travis words were, “They have one day to figure it out.  I’m going home tomorrow.”  I remember Travis’ parents arriving on that Sunday or Monday and his dad walked over to Travis’ bed in NICU and said to him, “I only have one question for you.  How big was the 2×4 that Tammy had to use to get you here?”  Everyone laughed because it was not really far from the truth.  Even in NICU, he kept assuring everyone that he would be home in a few days.

As the days dragged on and I left him in NICU every night and drove home to sleep alone, I kept questioning God.  ”What are you doing?  What is going on?  Why aren’t you showing the doctors what’s wrong?”  I don’t really remember having a lot of peace or answers.  I remember trying very hard to keep my fears at bay.  That was pretty easy to do because Travis was healthy.  He had never been sick a day in his life.  Until that hospital stay, he had never had an MRI, CAT scan or anything else.  No one seemed to have answers for us.  It seemed to me that even God was not answering me.  I remember the day Travis had a spinal tap.  They allowed me to stay in the room with him.  I was at the head of the bed, holding his hands and stroking his head during the procedure.  Inside, I was crying out to God to do something, to end this now and let me go home with my husband.

Our children were scared, understandably.  One of the things that Travis said very early in that hospital stay was that we were not going to hide anything from the children.  We were going to tell them everything we knew.  I glad we made that decision then and that I honored that decision throughout the next 10 months.  The children will tell you that all they were really thinking everyday was that dad would come home tomorrow.

There was still no answer as to the cause.  Because Travis presented with no other symptoms but a headache, they had started with a long list of possible causes and began to rule them out one-by-one.  All the while, they continued to say to me “it is highly unlikely that it is a tumor.”  Even as the list grew shorter, I never entertained the tumor idea.  I was actually hopeful because I thought that we were getting closer to answer.

October 14th–I remember the day they told us that needed to put a shunt in.  The CSF buildup had begun to put pressure on the optic nerve and they were afraid of permanent damage if they did not do something.  Travis was very reluctant to have the surgery.  He did not want to do it but the outcome of not doing it did not seem that great either.  They let me into NICU early that morning so that I could be with him and walk with him down to the OR.  My heart was in my throat and I couldn’t seem to breath.  I did not see any of the surgeons before the surgery but I was not that worried because we had already discussed the procedure.  They had performed a different type of scan on Travis the day before, something I had been aware of.  It is not a scan used very often.  What I was not aware of was the fact that they had crossed everything off the list except tumor.  I also was not aware that the scan showed possible signs of tumor and the decision had been made to do a small biopsy when they did the shunt.  I received all this information after the surgery.  I remember being stunned.  I remember the doctor telling me that Travis would be the 1oth person documented to have a tumor in that specific region of the brain.  I think I went into denial mode pretty early, telling myself we would just wait for the lab results.  After all, maybe they were wrong.  I would not say anything to the children or anyone else until we knew.

October 16th–I was at the hospital with Travis when a doctor came in and introduced himself.  He was a oncologist and wanted to talk to us about radiation.  I remember feeling like I had been doused with cold water in the face.  If they were sending in an oncologist, then this was serious and they were pretty certain even without the lab results.  I remember panicking a little a that point.  I think I told him that I didn’t want to talk to him until we had the lab results.  He looked at me funny but respected my wishes and left.  As Travis slept, I realized that I needed to probably talk to the children sooner rather than later.

October 17th–That Sunday, I gathered the children in the living room.  I had asked some close friends to come.  Friends that I knew would be there for my children emotionally, no matter what.  I remember feeling dazed and outside of myself.  It was almost as if I was on the outside watching myself tell my children that their dad had an inoperable brain tumor.  There was a lot of shock that day and tears.  The question came that day for the first time, “Is dad going to die?”  Everything in me wanted to reassure them and tell them “no” but I knew that I needed to be honest as much as it pained me to do so.  My answer simply was, “I don’t know but we are going to try to do everything we can to help him live.”

The days after the surgery, Travis had been completely changed.  He was not responding like he had been before.  I think we lost our first piece of him then.  The surgery seemed to aggravate the tumor and that seemed to affect abilities that he had before the surgery.

October 19th–We came home that evening to our children and friends.  The children had made a sign welcoming Travis home.  A sign that hung in our yard for a while until it finally tore.  Some wonderful friends had agreed to be on hand to help get Travis up the stairs and in bed.  He had lost a lot of muscle tone and strength from the hospital stay.  I remember laying in bed that night with him next to me for the first time in 10 days.  It felt so good to have him home, to have him with me and the children but I was terrified.  I cried a long time that night because I didn’t have a clue as to what the next few days, weeks or months would look like for us and the ultimate possibility seemed unfathomable.

This is what my heart has been reliving for the past 10 days.  All the feelings of unfairness, loss, unjustness, anger and everything else hit me full force.  After the realization about the dates hit me, my heart was drawn a few days later to go to Lake Rogers Park.  This park has a very special place in my heart.  Travis would go to this park to talk to God.  Sometimes he did that as he walked around the lake.  Other times, he had a favorite bench that he sat on.  I always called it Travis’ bench.  This bench is where my heart was drawing me.

View from Travis' bench

I cried and sobbed on that bench that day.  I journaled a little but mostly I talked to Travis.  I felt closer to him there then I had felt to him since he passed away.  I miss him more everyday.