For Craig
Craig Allen Hull · 1972 – 1999
Us · The House · February · About HCM · October
My name is Dawn Hull. I'm 25 and I'm a dental assistant here in Tulsa. My husband, Craig, died on
February 16 of this year, while he was playing basketball with the men's league at church. He was
twenty-six years old. He had a heart condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, HCM for short,
and none of us knew it until after he was gone. Not him, not me, not his doctor, not his family.
I've started this page three times since March and deleted it every time. My friend Kim said just
write it like you're telling me. So that's what I'm doing. It's for Craig. And it's for you, if you have
a son or a husband or a brother who plays ball, because I want you to read the part about HCM even if
you skip everything else.
~ Us ~
I met Craig at a youth group car wash at Hope Hill Baptist Church in the summer of 1988. I was fourteen
and he was fifteen. He sprayed me with the hose, on purpose, and then acted like it was an accident, and
then he did it again. I told my mom that night that there was a boy at church who was a complete idiot.
She says she knew right then.
We were friends for three years before he finally asked me out. It was the fall of my senior year, and he
took me for pizza at a place by the mall and spent the whole time talking about air conditioners, because he'd
just started his training and he was so proud of it. I thought it was the sweetest thing I had ever heard.
I still don't know anything about air conditioners. He tried for eight years.
Craig fixed heating and air for a living. He was good at it. In July he'd work sixty hours a week and come
home sunburned and soaked and happy, because he'd gotten somebody's grandma cool again. Old ladies loved
him. One of them still sends me a card every month.
We got married on Saturday, October 12, 1996, at Hope Hill, with the same youth pastor who'd been there
the day of the car wash, Pastor Ben Graybill, doing the ceremony. Craig cried before I did. His little
brother Nate was his best man and Kim was my maid of honor, and the reception was cake and punch in the
fellowship hall, and it was perfect. We spent three days in a cabin in the Ozarks and it rained the whole
time and we didn't care at all.
~ The House ~
In the spring of 1998 we bought our house. It's little and it's yellow and it needed everything, and Craig
said that was the best part. He put in all new ductwork himself (of course). He was going to build a deck
this summer.
There are some things in the house I can't move yet. People have been kind about it.
His work boots are still by the back door, where he kicked them off. The left one is on its side.
His model truck is still on the card table in the spare room, about half built. It's a '56 Ford pickup,
the same as the one his grandpa had. The little tubes of paint are lined up beside it with the caps on,
and the instructions are open to step 14.
His ball cap is on the hook in the hall, and his coffee cup, the chipped one from his first company Christmas
party, is in the cabinet. I use a different one.
His voice is still on the answering machine. I know I need to change it. People have told me it's hard to
hear when they call. I'm sorry. Not yet.
|
~ February ~
I'm not going to write much about that night. I wasn't there. I was at home making chili for when he got
back. He went down during the second half, and his friends and the paramedics did everything anybody could
do. Pastor Ben was the one who called me. I want to say thank you, again, to Michael Stickney and the other
guys on the team, who have carried that night around with them ever since. It was not your fault. There was
nothing you could have done that you didn't do.
Afterward, the doctors told us his heart muscle was much thicker than it should be. That's HCM. He'd had it
probably his whole life. He'd passed every school sports physical he ever had. He never once complained of
chest pain. He was the healthiest person I knew.
More than six hundred people came to the funeral. A lot of them were people whose air conditioners he'd
fixed.
~ What I Want You to Know About HCM ~
I am not a doctor. I work for a dentist. But I have read everything I could get my hands on since February,
and I've asked Craig's doctors a hundred questions, and they've been patient with me. Here is what I've
learned. Please talk to your own doctor about any of it.
What it is. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy means the heart muscle is abnormally thick, usually the wall
in the middle of the heart. A thick heart can have trouble pumping, and it can go into a dangerous rhythm,
especially during hard exercise.
It often has no warning signs. Many people with HCM feel completely fine. Sometimes the very first sign
is the worst one. It is one of the most common causes of sudden death in young athletes.
When there are signs, they can include chest pain, fainting or nearly fainting during exercise, being
short of breath more than you should be, or a heart that races or pounds. If your child has any of these,
don't let anybody tell you it's nothing. Get it checked.
It can run in families. HCM is often inherited. If a parent has it, each child has about a fifty-fifty
chance of having it too. If anyone in your family died suddenly and young, or was ever told they had an enlarged
heart or a heart murmur, tell your doctor.
It can be found. A test called an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of the heart, can show the
thickened muscle. It doesn't hurt and it doesn't take long. An EKG can sometimes show signs of it too.
It can be treated. People who know they have it can be watched by a heart doctor, take medicine, stay
out of the hardest kinds of sports, and in some cases have a device put in that can shock the heart back into
rhythm. Knowing is everything.
|
After Craig died, his whole family got tested. His parents, Andrew and Margaret, and his brother Nate all had
echocardiograms in April. Nate's came back normal, thank God, and so did his mom's and dad's. The cardiologist
says Nate should be checked again every few years anyway, because it can show up later, and he's promised me he
will. I'm holding him to it.
If you have a teenager who plays sports, or a husband who still plays ball on Tuesday nights, please ask your
doctor if an echocardiogram makes sense for him. It might be nothing. I pray it's nothing. But please ask.
~ October ~
In two and a half weeks, on October 12, it will be our third anniversary. The first one without him.
I've thought a lot about what to do that day. Kim offered to take me out of town. My mom offered to have me
over. What I think I'm going to do is take the day off, get a large pepperoni with jalapeños from that same pizza
place by the mall, eat the whole thing like he would have, and then go sit in the spare room and finish step 14 on
that truck. Maybe step 15. I don't know how to build a model. He'd laugh at me. That's okay.
Thank you to everyone who has prayed for me and for Craig's family. Thank you to the ladies at work, who
covered for me for weeks. Thank you to everyone who has e-mailed. I read every one. I'm sorry I'm slow to
write back.
I wrote this in June, at the kitchen table, at two in the morning. It's not very good. It's for him.
Your boots are by the door
as if you're coming in,
as if the screen will slam
and you'll say hey, babe, again.
I leave the porch light on.
I know. I know you're home,
a better home than ours,
and I'm the one who's gone
a little ways from you
for now, for just a while.
Keep the light on there.
Save me that crooked smile.
— Dawn, June 1999
|
    
people have visited Craig's page since June
[email protected]
Last updated Thursday, September 23, 1999
|
|
GeoCities.us
» Paris » Montmartre
