TRANSPLANT WIFE SPEAKS OUT

[Guest guest]

'Maybe I've been this strong all along'

BY KELLY MUCHA

Shortly after 3 p.m. on March 25, my very best friend and greatest love of my life was gone. Standing at his side, holding his hand and kissing him in the hospital, I was positive that I couldn't go on. Seven months earlier, my husband, Mark Mucha, was telling me that he knew he had cancer but just felt too good to have a disease that could kill him. The way we handled his illness still amazes me. Aside from all the testing, we tried to continue our life as usual. Mark kept working; I juggled a part-time job as a speech pathologist with taking care of our son, . Getting stuck at the "why us?" stage, we reasoned, only would drive us crazy. That's not to say that we weren't scared and sometimes irrational. After Mark's diagnosis on Aug. 17, 2000, I silently prayed every night that we could trade places. I broke into tears telling him how I felt after one of his many hospital stays. I remember his response like it was 10 minutes ago. "My pain is now and will end if I die. Yours started the day I was diagnosed and will never go away," he said. "If and when I die, I will be in heaven without pain or worry. You will be left here to pick up the pieces and move on. "It's a helluva lot easier being me, Kel. . . . If it were you, I couldn't function the way you do." His words completely astonished me. Mark--despite vowing never to stop fighting--considered dying a real possibility. Moreover, he thought I was the strong one. Every time he came home, we would be encouraged that he was getting better. Even treating and dressing his chest wound after a particularly bad hospitalization became part of our regular routine. We would laugh that my hands were inside his chest and our bedroom looked like a hospital storage closet. I teased him that this is more of him than I ever expected to see. The level of devastation at losing Mark after doing such things is beyond words. I spent 16 days straight sleeping at the hospital to support Mark. I agonized over leaving Jake with my parents, but I knew it was important to do everything possible to help save his dad. None of it worked. The wake was excruciating. All I wanted was for everyone to go away so I could try to cope. But looking back on it, I'm glad 1,200 people--the most the funeral directors had ever seen in one night--came. The experience helped give me the strength to speak to everybody at Mark's funeral. "Mark handled every step forward, and setback, with grace and courage of which I am amazed and in deep admiration," I said. "Mark and I had more in 12 years than most people attain in a lifetime. . . . Jake and I will carry this strength through and be OK." On many days, I doubt the last part. But Jake is the force that drives me, and I am trying to carve out a new life for us. Mark made me promise him that, if he died, my life would go on. If it had been up to him, I'd be remarried by now. That's not something I'm worried about at this point, but I can tell you that I'm learning to find some joy in parts of my new life. I am going out with friends, meeting new people and making the best of what I have. I can tell Mark is with me; he's helping me along the way. Mark and I decided that after this ordeal, we would buy a house with a backyard for Jake. Jake now has that backyard, in which he plays with his neighborhood buddy, Jack. I'm back working part time as a speech pathologist at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn and am considering a position with the transplant team that cared for Mark at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center. It is exciting to think I might be able to help somebody else survive what I've gone through. I feel good about those things, but there's still a lot of uncertainty about the future. Some days, bill collectors call. They ask for Mark, seeking information about the hospital bills for his potential donors. I tell them he had a transplant and that he's no longer with us. Single-parenthood also is challenging. Sometimes Jake gets carted off on errands with me; sometimes I ask friends or family to watch him. I miss having Mark around to reassure me that I am making the right decisions about Jake. Even though our little boy isn't old enough to understand, I tell him stories about his dad and how his birth was the happiest day of Mark's life. As he grows up, Jake will know a terrific father through the memories that my family, friends and I have. Besides raising Jake, there are days when I'm forced to look like I'm doing well with all of this, but it's really tearing me apart inside. It's not in my nature to crawl into bed, so I get through those times by forcing myself to function. When Mark was first diagnosed, I told him I wanted the two of us to run far and fast. It just felt like if we could distance ourselves from this, it might go away. It didn't. Now, I've been forced to start a different race--one I never thought I could run without Mark but am running every day. My husband was a good judge of character. Maybe I've been this strong all along.