LOVE, AND LIFE
Playwright gave up on love, now he lives it every day
Twelve years ago, Terry Teachout walked into a Baltimore restaurant and fell in love. At 49, he’d given up on love, as had Hilary, the woman he met that night and married two years later.
“We had accepted that we would spend the rest of our lives alone and suddenly, we were together,” said Teachout, whose play “Billy and Me” premiered last week at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach.
But it wasn’t all unshadowed bliss.
Two years before they met, she was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, a type of high blood pressure that affects the arteries of the lungs and the right side of the heart. The condition restricts blood flow and starves the body of oxygen. If left untreated, it’s fatal.
At the time, Hilary Teachout’s life expectancy was two to five years. New medications have extended her life, but now she needs a double lung transplant and heart surgery.
Her condition worsened just as Teachout was preparing to go to
West Palm Beach to rehearse “Billy and Me.” Usually, she accompanies him, but she’s too sick now to travel.
She insisted he go because he and William Hayes, Dramaworks’ producing artistic director, who’s directing the show, have been working on the play for nearly two years.
Plus, “I wanted him to have time away from me and not think about me 24-7,” she said from their home in Connecticut.
Teachout occasionally refers to “Mrs. T” in his blog, About Last Night. But she barred him from writing about her illness until last month, when he dis
closed it in his blog.
“I’m a very private person,” she said. “I didn’t want people to l ook at me and think of the illness before the person.”
The Teachouts were astounded when his post generated nearly 15,000 hits in two days. Many respondentss aid his words moved them to sign up as organ donors.
That’s gratifying to the Teachouts, because the reason she allowed him to write about her illness was to pub- licize the shortage of donor organs.
The average wait time for lungs in the United States is three to four months, but availability varies widely, depending on where the patient lives, said Hilary Teachout’s doctor, Selim Arcasoy, medical program director of the Columbia University Medical Center lung transplantation program. In New York City, the wait time is six to seven months.
“People who are sickest get the organs first, but you can’t be too sick,” Hilary Teachout said. “It’s possible I will be too sick to get lungs.” The Teachouts must be ready to respond immediately when an organ becomes available.
Even with a transplant, there’s a chance of rejection and a long recovery time. At Dramaworks’ rehearsal hall, Teachout said he has mixed feelings about the separation.
“When I’m in this room I’m not thinking about her. When I leave this room, I feel guilty about having spent six to eight hours not thinking about her.”
It’s because of her that he’s a playwright, he said.
“I can’t imagine I’d have the nerve to do this had I not had come into my life a partner who inspired me to do the things I’d never tried to do.”
Although Hilary Teachout’s lif ei s severely restricted by her illness — she’s tethered to an oxygen tank, for one thing — she still considers herself an active person.
She prides hers e lf on her independence and has enjoyed testing it during her husband’s absence. She likes to read, watch movies, visit museums and spend weekends at nearby bed and breakfasts with her husband. Until this year, the Teachouts took a long vacation each winter at their favorite retreat, Sanibel Island.
Teachout plans to return home this week.
“When it’s over, I’ll say goodbye with great reluctance,” he said. “But I’m also going back to my love and getting her through the great task that is to come, which means so much more than a play.”
The Teachouts already have a list of things they want to do after she recovers from the transplant. Sanibel Island is at the top of the list.