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What a wordy bunch of blah that was.
tl;dr gotta say something, anything sometimes
As some of you may know already, my wife has had serious complications from a Roux-en-Y bypass (got her stomach stapled). Her initial surgery was on November 11. Since that day, she has been back home about 4 and 1/2 days. The interim has been spent in the hospital - 2 surgical clinic visits, 3 readmissions back to the hospital, 2 of which were direct admissions through the Emergency Department, 2 additional surgeries, 1 "procedure", 4 days in the surgical intensive care unit while being intubated, sepsis, leakage from the g-tube (sort of like a colostomy tube, but coming directly out of the stomach) which she's had in for the past 3 weeks.
This is not to mention the usual degradation and misery that comes with being in the hospital - butt hanging out, beeping machines that won't shut up, dry mouth, pain, sweating, pain, nausea, the occasional nasty nurse, strange odors, surgical rounds where you wake up at 6AM surrounded by doctors peering at you, fatigue, isolation, backaches, crappy sheets - I could go on for days. I've been there, done that. Now I have to be on the other side of watching a loved one go through the process.
I was going to say it's easier to be a patient loaded up on dilaudid or fentanyl, peeing in a bag and going through all that crap of an extended stay in a hospital than to be the on the other side of the bedpan, but I'm not so sure. Both sides suck.
As I alluded, I've been in a similar situation of a prolonged "visit".
November 21, 1997, Jen and myself were living in sin in an apartment in NYC. We had plane tickets and reservations to spend Thanksgiving (the next week) in Paris with her father and stepmother. That Saturday morning, I went to run some errands, one of which was to pick up some book boxes from a moving company as we were going to paint our apartment and needed to get all of our books out of the way.
As I was loading up the cardboard boxes into the car, a tractor trailer jackknifed and hit the car crushing my legs between it and the car next to me, dragging me underneath. I was extraordinarily fortunate. I only had a compound fracture of a femur, chipped some teeth, dislocated some fingers, broke my nose, got safety glass embedded in my forehead and lips, and had crush injuries on both legs. Only a few seconds prior, I had been twirling my keys around my finger and dropped them on the ground. I bent over, picked them up, and as I stood up I saw this towering chrome grill of the truck. Freightliner.
Cue the cartoon of my eyes popping out of my head on stalks and "fuck", I never had a chance. There wasn't time to move.
Time just slowed to a crawl.
It was like being at the beach and getting hit, then dragged under by a big wave. Inexorably pulling you down, initially gentle but powerful just the same. But then it sped up and became violent thrashing, pulling in many directions. So so fast. But then just as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
By all accounts I blacked out only for a couple of seconds.
I was first aware of the pavement on my face. It was gray and cool. Much cleaner than I'd expect from Amsterdam Avenue (thank god the street sweeper hadn't just come through - barf). My face was numb, and there was a warm feeling trickling down my leg like honey.
I could see across the avenue underneath the car and truck some guy in a yellow down jacket running and yelling "Oh Shit! Homeboy is fucked up!" I assumed I was the homeboy as the puddle of blood enveloped me expanding, replacing the matte gray of the pavement with the glossy bright red blood.
Goes without saying that I lived. Made the Metro section of the Times.
Does this truck make me look fat?
Several years prior to my accident, nearly to the day, my wife's mother had committed suicide. We were hanging out on the couch, eating KFC, watching "The Simpsons" when she got the call from the coroner. I will never forget her face as she was told the news, I am still thankful that I didn't have to see her face that morning when she got the other call from a stranger that her boyfriend was laying on the street underneath a car and a tractor trailer bleeding out.
Flash forward to 2 weeks ago today. Jen has just come out of ICU, and I have to tell her that our beloved beagle dog Darwin has suddenly, unexpectedly died.
Two months prior, though expected, but not anticipated, our Lab, Chester finally succumbed to the cancer that he'd been living with for the past year and a half.
So again, I will try to sleep and try not to think about the fact that my wife is 2 hours away in a hospital bed recovering from yet another surgery.
This has been a crushing, traumatic season for us. Bowed, crushed, overwhelmed, miserable, afraid that the slightest motion is going hurt.
But we still stand.
Sometimes that is all you can do. Just stand.