I made a note for the idea behind this poem when my wife was dying from refeeding syndrome in 2018. At the time, I was way too close to the matter to even think about writing a poem like this. But, now some time has passed, and my wife survived to regain her health again.
In Sickness
If I knew then what now I know,
would I still take the vows?
Would I still pledge my life to you
beneath the cherry boughs?
Your arms are like a skeleton;
your face is gaunt and frail.
A bag is taped against your side
collecting what you spill.
Would I still bear the looming loss
if somehow then I knew
what “sickness” meant so long ago
within that heavy vow?
You vomit everything you eat;
your heart rate will not slow.
Each day it seems you’re nearer yet
the place we all must go.
The truth is, I have no idea—
The man I was back then
might well have taken every step
to circumvent this end.
The doctors at the hospital—
They have no reason why
you will not stabilize and heal—
I fight back bitter sighs.
But he is not the man that’s here.
For all my fear and grief,
I will not turn away from you
so long as you draw breath.
Turns out there is a fairly high percentage of cancer patients who die from refeeding syndrome—a metabolic cascade failure that ends in death—especially with large stage 3 tumors. This is because the tumor takes all the body’s nutrients, essentially starving the patient. When the tumor is gone, the effect can be just like the prisoner of war returning to a normal diet for the first time after rescue, which can trigger the syndrome.
Unfortunately, it seems most doctors don’t know to look for this. It was pure chance that someone on my wife’s medical team realized what was happening and started the protocol for saving her life—parenteral nutrition. This means being fed intravenously until the body remembers how to correctly metabolize food through the digestive system on its own.
