John Gaffigan initially thought confident that his wife Jeannie might be able to manage mind surgery.
While medical practitioners had discovered a 6-cm tumor, how big is a pear on her behalf mind stem in March 2017? Jeannie and John were hopeful about her recovery? “This is also the person that delivered an infant and then one hour later created morning meal for all,” John, 53, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “Do do you know what I am talking about?”
But following the tumor was successfully removed in April, Jeannie, 49, endured issues from the surgery. She had nerve damage that remaining her struggling to swallow any such thing, actually water, as well as bilateral pneumonia. She needed to be put on a breathing and serving tube to survive.
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“The doctor said, ‘This is concerning,’ and I found anxiety in his experience,” John recalls. “That was the afternoon I was many frightened. It was certainly an interval wherever I was like, ‘Okay, I am probably going to be always an average single father of five.”
Now Jeannie is checking about her wellness discouragement in a new book When Life Offers You Pears. “The fact remains, that weekend I knew I needed mind surgery, and I did not understand what my life would end up like a while later,” she says. While John became the primary sitter for his wife and their five kids, Jeannie had to release and give attention to recovery.
For more from Jeannie and John Gaffigan, grab this week’s dilemma of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday.
“He had to do everything without understanding what it was,” claims Jeannie, who had a tracheostomy for a month and the serving tube for four months. “He was learning the schedule, and he was the boss. He was becoming me.” During probably the most annoying moments, “I believe I just ate,” John adds. “I do not know. It was a no-win situation.”
Now more than a couple of years post-surgery, Jeannie continues to be coping with the surgery results — she is currently being handled for a paralyzed vocal note — but she’s back again to work and more thankful than ever for her husband and their family.
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“I would not have known that being away from my kids would be so heartbreaking. Now my center explodes when I am together,” she says. “And I am thankful that I understand just why God offered me probably the largest, loving, amazing, and funniest husband in the world.”