For better or worse, and worse, and worse ...

When you say, “I do,” you imagine the best possible future together. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * When you say, “I do,” you imagine the best possible future together. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? Opinion When you say, “I do,” you imagine the best possible future together.

And when you say, “in sickness and in health,” you don’t expect to be honouring those vows one month later and for the next 15 years. But that’s what happened to my husband, Brent, and me. Exactly one month after we got married in a September ceremony at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, my health would blow up and our marriage and lives would never be the same.



Health was something I struggled with my entire life, but the struggle would take on a whole new scale and intensity. At first, we didn’t know what was in store for us. I would acquire a new lexicon and learn all about tube feeds, total parenteral nutrition (TPN), PICC lines, patient-controlled analgesia and what it’s like to be a long-stay hospital patient.

I didn’t know it then, but when I went home about a month later in October 2009, it would be the last time I went home without a feeding tube or central line. I was still sick, but there was still hope. Things would get better.

Give it time, they said. Recovery from the major surgery I had would take a while. Things didn’t get better.

They got worse. I was in and out of emergency with dehydration constantly, due to throwing up. I couldn’t eat or drink.

I was losing weight. I was also still trying to work full-time at the WRHA and complete my master’s degree in health leadership. I was also president of the local chapter of the public relations society.

I was on the board of Bravestone (formerly known as WISH) and the Canadian Liver Foundation’s designer handbag fundraiser, What a Girl Wants. In hindsight, I don’t know how I did it all. Then, I got a phone call one morning at work in April 2010.

It was my surgeon’s office telling me they were holding a bed on the surgery ward at St. Boniface Hospital. They expected me by 1 p.

m. I had severe malnutrition and my electrolytes were abnormal. I needed TPN again and hydration.

I was in danger. They suggested I tell work I did not know when I would be back. I asked Brent to meet me at home and take me to the hospital.

I packed a small suitcase not knowing really how long I would be there. When I left the house we were renting in the West End, I didn’t know it would be my last time being there. It was a restored character house I adored.

Throughout my journey, I have been robbed of opportunities to say goodbye to many things and places, and even to my late, beloved pet cat, Sammy. Our first year of marriage was a total dumpster fire. I was worried we would not make it.

Everything we had planned went sideways. There was no honeymoon, either. What we ended up with were two more big surgeries, a six-month hospitalization, me on long-term disability, and then having to move in with my in-laws because of my care needs and our strained finances resulting from me being unable to work.

We desperately needed help. And something would happen in September 2010 that would leave me even more in need. The six-month hospital stay ended with being discharged with both a central line and a feeding tube.

Nobody told us what to look for in terms of infections. My central line was infected within two weeks — I thought it was the flu. It also got dismissed as the flu at the IV clinic I was going to for line care once a week.

I said I felt really funny and they gave me a barf bag and sent me on my way without checking my vitals. I went into septic shock at home alone and was found unresponsive on the floor by my sister-in-law hours later. The last thing I remember was crawling, trying to get to a phone.

I knew something was horribly wrong. But I passed out before I could call for help. I would end up in the ICU at St.

Boniface Hospital in a coma, fighting for my life for almost two weeks. I endured a number of horrific complications — respiratory failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome, multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, ventilator pneumonia, ICU psychosis, disseminated intravascular clotting and a bowel infarction that would require emergency surgery. I was circling the drain.

Nobody would say whether I would survive this. I was only 27. This close call put things into perspective for Brent and me.

We never again took each other or a day together for granted. Unfortunately, I have revisited the ICU. It doesn’t get easier.

Brent spent months after I got out of the ICU helping me relearn how to do everything, from walking to writing my name to using a spoon. This brought us even closer together. Our love for each other grew.

We are a team in everything, including my illnesses. He was my primary caregiver for years, to the detriment of his own health. He encourages me to keep going when I think I can’t do this anymore.

When I ask him to be there, he shows up. He supports me always. I see him every day, but I miss him.

Not being able to live together never gets easier or less lonely. What I would give to just cuddle in our bed and watch TV. Or to go grocery shopping.

Or go for coffee. Take a car ride. Simple things.

These are the things I miss the most — the things most couples don’t think about and take for granted. Monday mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. We got remarried in June 2017.

We jokingly said we should say “in sickness and in sickness.” People probably don’t appreciate the significance of remarrying in our situation. It’s an affirmation that we love one another no matter how hard things are.

No matter what obstacles are put in our way. I would marry him a third time. A fourth and a fifth time.

Brent is my person and I am his. And no illness or living arrangement can take that from us. Our hearts go out to the many other couples throughout Manitoba who are forced to live apart because of medical conditions.

You are all a testament to what love is really about. It’s about showing up and being there — no matter what. So here’s to 15 years still standing.

We’re not divorced and no one was murdered. I am giving you grey hair — sorry. But otherwise, I think we’re doing pretty good.

Shawna (Shoshana) Forester Smith is a 41-year-old chronically ill, disabled Ojibwe writer and health-care advocate who lives on a chronic-care unit at Deer Lodge Centre. shawna.forestersmith@freepress.

mb.ca Shawna (Shoshana) Forester Smith is a 41-year-old chronically ill, disabled Ojibwe writer and health-care advocate who lives on a chronic-care unit at Deer Lodge Centre. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism.

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Shawna (Shoshana) Forester Smith is a 41-year-old chronically ill, disabled Ojibwe writer and health-care advocate who lives on a chronic-care unit at Deer Lodge Centre. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider .

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