Valentine’s Day Wedding Brings Cheer to Hospital as Patients Exchange Vows

They met in a chronic obstruction pulmonary disease rehabilitation program at UC San Diego Medical Center, meaning they suffer from a savage combination of asthma, bronchitis and emphysema.

Tuesday morning, they celebrated St. Valentine’s Day by getting married--each for the third time--in a hospital dining room packed with well-wishers who are fellow sufferers and enough media representatives to make it look like a VIP press conference.

Dave Belcher, 72, asked Myrl Boyle, 71, if she would spend the rest of her life with him, and she said yes.

He couldn’t be happier.

So how did the groom propose?

Would Get Insurance Benefits

“He told me not long ago if I married him, I’d have Kaiser insurance benefits,” said Boyle, who met Belcher in the spring of 1986. “I said, ‘Yes, but I’d miss my washer and dryer.’ Well, then he decided to buy a house, which, of course, came equipped with a washer and dryer. I had no idea he had me as an ulterior motive for buying the house. He asked me to move in, and, of course, I had to say yes.”

Belcher has trouble breathing. That doesn’t mean he has trouble feeling or romanticizing or loving.

He said he loves her not only for who she is--for her gentleness and intelligence--but also for understanding the pain that he’s endured, since she’s been through it, too. Both are COPD (chronic obstruction pulmonary disease) survivors, and despite the torture and the scary days and nights, they wear the fact that they’ve weathered it--and weathered it well--like a hard-won badge of honor.

Neither Belcher nor Boyle requires a nasal tube attached to a portable oxygen tank for breathing, as do many of their friends, but the affliction has been anything but easy. Belcher credits the rehabilitation program not just for letting him meet his wife but also for helping him verbalize and attack his fear.

Stopped Three Times

“Can you imagine how much energy you have when you can’t breathe?” said Belcher, who taught business courses at San Diego State University for 35 years before retiring. “You have very little reserve--for breathing. We walked over to the hospital this morning--we wanted to do that for our wedding--and even in a block and a half, we had to stop three times to catch our breath.”

Even the minister performing the ceremony--the Rev. Jesus DeJerez, a retired Methodist preacher, suffers from COPD. The Spring Valley resident met the couple in the same rehabilitation program, which he said cuts down not just the fear but the anger, infusing the COPD carrier with the prospect of hope and renewal.

“To me, their commitment at this age is just a tremendous thing,” DeJerez said Tuesday. “They could have said, ‘Why don’t we just live together and forget it?’ I had no idea they wanted to get married this soon. I was at home yesterday when I got the call. I was thrilled to come down and do the ceremony. It makes all of this worthwhile.”

DeJerez quoted more from Kahlil Gibran than he did from the Scripture, which seemed to suit everyone just fine. Many in the elderly circle of friends shed a few tears while clinging to the long, thin tubes that ran from their nostrils to the oxygen tanks nearby.

Look of Contentment

Belcher wore a red shirt and a Western tie and a look of almost-beatific contentment. His silver hair was matched by a silver sport coat, which sported a white rose. Boyle wore large heart-shaped earrings and sniffled throughout the vows, which lasted only a few minutes but had more than a few guests matching her tear for tear.

Roseann Myers, a registered nurse who works in the rehab program, said a romance followed by a wedding was just about the best punctuation she could think of to cap off a program that can be unpleasant, difficult and, initially, packed with fear.

She said it teaches breathing techniques, as well as when and how to take medication, when to call the doctor, how to exercise and how to cope with feelings of sadness, depression and anger that inevitably result. The victims of COPD tend to blame themselves, she said, since many are former smokers who can trace that pack-a-day habit to what they’re struggling with now.

A friend of Belcher’s and Boyle’s, who asked not to be quoted by name, sat nearby, fingering the tube that led from her nose to the tank. She said that for just a few moments, she could forget her troubles and those of the others in the room and focus on the sweetness of the words and the promises being exchanged.

She said it was the best Valentine’s Day she could have had.