Foiled by a low-dose aspirin

Liam Peters always thought he knew better than his wife, Cherie. He loved her, but she got on his nerves, always telling him what to do as if he were a child. Sure, she had been accurate when he had to pee a lot, and she said it was diabetes, but since then, she would not let up.

The doctor had told him to walk at least a mile every day, and she had mapped out a routine for morning and night that would give him two miles. He had refused to walk even though the doctor said it would regrow blood vessels and heal peripheral artery disease.

By the time he gave in to his wife's nagging, a decade later, his legs hurt so bad he could only walk about half a mile twice a week. Now Cherie was on his case about aspirin.

He was taking a small 81mg daily, and she pointed out that a man on as TV commercial said he missed his aspirin and three days later had a stroke. Now she was telling him that a man in an online commercial said he missed one aspirin and had a heart attack the following day.

He assured her he would keep up with all of his meds and did not need constant reminders. Not long after this, Cherie realized that Liam had not asked her to crush his medications for 3 or 4 days, and she had not seen him take his aspirin. She asked him what was going on. He replied he would resume his medication soon,

A few more days went by, and she told their adult children their dad was not taking his medication. They all said the same thing, which was that you cannot control a grown man. She told his brother and sister, and they responded in the same manner. Cherie was the only on who was troubled.

She had heard stories of older men who were diabetics who stopped taking their meds and eventually died. Their families were left devastated. One man was only 24, and he said he was tired of the routine of injecting insulin and checking his blood sugar twice a day. He was found dead in his home after a wellness check.

Cherie was frantic as she did not desire this outcome for her husband. She and Liam had been childhood sweethearts since age 13. They had been married for 63 years and worked the farm together. She had a feeling this situation would not end well, and she felt helpless. Even praying did not give her the peace it once did.

She knew she could not force her husband to take his medication and that she was powerless to change the outcome of this situation. She watched as days turned into two weeks. Could God be healing him, she wondered when no heart attack or stroke happened going into week three.

One evening, a few days later, Liam began walking unsteadily, but said he was OK and did not need a doctor. Later in the night, his speech was slurred, his left hand closed, and his arm curled. She knew it was a stroke and called 911.

When it took the paramedics 27 minutes to arrive for a 10-minute car ride, she knew things were not going to end well. A feeling of doom came over her because nothing was going as it should.

Instead of getting Liam into the ambulance, they kept asking questions, which took another 15 minutes. Because this was during the COVID-19 outbreak, she could not ride with her husband.

Their car was in the shop, so she had to wait for their son to come and use his vehicle. This took an additional twenty minutes, and by the time she got to the hospital, an entire hour had gone by.

Liam recognized her but was turning his head as if she were on his right. She was actually sitting in a chair to his right. He grabbed his left arm with his right hand and asked her, "Whose hand am I holding?"

That's when she realized he had no feeling in his left arm, and she began to cry. Liam raised his head up and said matter-of-factly, "The doctor said there is nothing they can do."

It had been explained that if he had gotten to the hospital earlier in the evening, they could have given him medication to break up the blood clot they found. Again, it seemed everything was going wrong, and she could not stop it. She tried to humor him by saying he always beats every illness and returns home.

Liam stared into space and said, "I guess I should have taken the aspirin." Cherie did not know whether to hug him or hit him, laugh or cry. He r husbad finally realized she was only looking out for him and not trying to control him, but it was too late.

She knew in her heart and soul that this hospital visit would not end in triumph as the others had, and she was right. A few days later, Liam had a massive stroke that left him unable to see, hear, or speak.

He was basically a vegetable and was sent to an out-of-town rehab center, where she could only visit once a week. Cherie knew the final countdown had begun. Liam had survived years of health problems, including a heart attack, severe pneumonia, blood sugar that spiked at 600, and an infection that raged for 28 days, with doctors giving up.

He even walked away from a car accident where the driver's side window shattered. Glass was all over the passenger side, but Liam was unscathed. The blood on him was from the driver of the moped that ran the stop sign and hit the jeep. He had ended up in the hospital, but Liam walked away.

Now, what she knew would be his final sentence haunted her. "I guess I should have taken the aspirin." There would be no do-over. They could not go back in time and walk together a mile a day. There would be no more chances to take the aspirin or other meds.

He had been granted three weeks longer than the men who gave their testimonies. A happy marriage and a good life would be destroyed because of a low-dose 81 mg aspirin.

Prescription meds and aspirin would not undo the damage now. Doctors began talking about palliative care and hospice rather than recovery. They were giving her no hope that this outcome could be prayed away, and five months later, things didn't end well.

Cherie would live the rest of her life haunted by her husband's final words. He finally got it. Liam understood that what he had interpreted as her being a Know-it-all was his wife trying to save his life.

He was in heaven on streets of gold, and she was left with the knowledge that a tiny aspirin did what a heart attack, a car wreck, raging infection, and out-of-control blood sugar could not.