So I'm sitting here in my room now eating popcorn and having a vodka and grapefruit juice. I wound up having to take a Xanax today. Xanax doesn't mix very well with grapefruit juice so this will probably knock my ass out in about an hour or so. I'm really trying to stay off these drugs as much as I possibly can because 1) they make my mind a little fuzzy and I'm off my "game" and 2) they clog up your colon and I'll wind up passing a small child in about a week and probably break the toilet. Yeah..that's graphic. But anybody contemplating taking this stuff needs to know that they better own a plunger.
I'm tempted by very little food because I don't have much of an appetite. Now anyone that knows me knows that I live to eat instead of eat to live so if my appetite's off I've really got some serious issues. I could be in the middle of a divorce and crying my eyes out over my plate and STILL suck down some veal parmesan in between blowing my nose. The only things that have been tempting me are chocolate cake and coffee. I forced myself to eat some greens last night, and popcorn is SORT of a vegetable.
So I didn't get out to go see Jim until about noon today. I called first because they had told me last night they might be moving him today and with my luck I'd go through all that trouble trying to get into the ICU and he wouldn't be there. They told me they were moving him in two hours. When I got there they were starting to move him, but then the two nurses took off and left him half in and half out of the unit for over an hour.
They finally got him up to a room, and it turned out that it was a regular room...not a step-down. And it's really nice. The unit was just built last year so it's state of the art. And I actually can get there via ONE elevator and don't need TomTom to do it. Jim's off the morphine now and more awake, but looks just pitiful. Some plusses: the doctor said his face might droop to one side permanently. It's not. It actually is more symmetrical than it is when he gets an abcess in a tooth. The doctor said he might not be able to move his tongue and it would hang out of the side of his mouth: It's not. He can actually move it forward and back a little, but he doesn't have full control of it. They said he might not be able to close his mouth again. Right now he's more comfortable with it open but he is able to close it all the way. They said his shoulder might droop to one side and would get weak. His shoulders are even and both his hands are strong.
Since I was such a bitch yesterday, the doctor came down to see me. I asked him about Jim's future ability to swallow, because I know Jim well enough that if he comes through this having to be fed through a feeding tube for the rest of his life because he can't swallow, he'll ask me to put a bullet in his head. The doctor said, "Oh no- don't do that." Well, of COURSE I can't do that, but that's what Jim would want. The doctor said that only time will tell. He may have to be fed with a feeding tube for awhile, but the neurologist is confident that everything will heal. I'm just not going to feel comfortable until he can do it, though. Once that day comes I'll be doing cartwheels, and I was never able to do cartwheels before so I'll probably hurt myself really bad trying.
The doctor also explained to me about Jim's larynx (for those of you who don't know, that's a voicebox). Now, I'm an expert on larynx's because mine's all messed up and I've had larynx surgery so I've seen mine in photographs and know exactly how they work. There's two sides to the thing and when you're breathing normally it kind if looks like two sides of a curtain on a rod. They meet at the top of the "pole" and drape down to the left and right with an opening in the middle. When you talk or sing, the two sides meet together and vibrate. Have you ever tried to talk and drink at the same time and you start choking because your drink "went down the wrong pipe?" That's because you're larynx was open when you drank and the fluid went through when it wasn't supposed to. When you have nodes on your vocal chords or chronic laryngitis, the two sides of the larynx can't meet together all the way down and vibrate properly and that's why you sound hoarse. Apparently, the tumor that Jim had originated in nerve number 12 which controls one side of the larynx, and that DID have to be cut (so the doctor lied his ass off to me before, but maybe that's because I was hysterical the other day and he just didn't want to listen me). So one side doesn't move at all and the other one moves but was so screwed up by the surgery and the breathing tube that was down his throat. They're afraid to try and give Jim any kind of fluid right now because he can't close his larynk. The doctor says that they may be able to stick a piece of teflon on the side that won't move, but he's still got a lot of healing to do before they come up with a game plan. TEFLON? Shit....mine's all screwed up too. How come nobody mentioned any teflon to me? I want to get teflon and then maybe I can get my vocal range back AND fried eggs won't stick to my throat! So they're going to conduct a swallowing assessment on Jim this Monday (because they don't do those on the weekends) and then we'll know more.
So I saw Jim get settled in his new room. Now for the really disgusting part. Because he's had surgery and been drugged for awhile and asleep for a long time and was a smoker for a lot of years and has a slight case of asthma, there's all kinds of crap coming out of his lungs. You know how when you get a cold and you hock up a loogie? It's like that every 10 seconds. Jim's got his own little suction thing that he holds and he's CONSTANTLY making the most disgusting gagging noises and sucking the loogie's out of his throat. He's also got to suck the spit out of his mouth because he can't swallow at all. It's a good thing I've had cats for twenty years and am very familiar with what a cat choking up a hairball sounds like or I wouldn't be able to take that noise. It makes your stomach turn. And it's a good thing all the rooms at Lahey are private rooms because if I were his roomate I might choke him in the middle of the night myself just to shut him up. Ever hear the story about how the Emperor Caligula had the head of his nephew Marcellus chopped off because he couldn't take the sound of him coughing anymore? So Jim's loogies are extra nasty because they also contain all the years of nicotine that have built up in his lungs which he would have been choking up naturally if he had quit smoking on his own.
I left around 3 o'clock to go to the mall because I'm running out of underwear, and I'll tell you....I was getting so profoundly depressed at the mall. Here's all these people running around and all they're concerned about is what clothes to buy and what to eat and what to drink and my poor husband may never live a normal life again. I passed the pretzel stand that he used to love...he would get so happy over one of those pretzels...with the cheese sauce to dip it in...and the cookies and the ice cream...and he may never be able to have any of that again. And all I could do was just walk around very, very slowly and finally went into the bathroom and cried. And I can't help but think that the wonderful life we had together is now over and we didn't have enough of it. And now all that Jimmy will have is a Dad who walks around with his mouth hanging open having to be fed with a tube and Mom is a shell of her former self and maybe the poor kid would be better without us. But then I thought of the line that Tom Hanks says in "Sleepless in Seatle":
"I'm going to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out all day. And after a while I won't have to remind myself to do it. And then after a while I won't remember how perfect things were."
And I thought, well- that's all I can do. That's absolutely all I can do. And I thought about what will happen if Jim can't work anymore...how will I pay the mortgage? Will we lose the house? Will I be able to take care of him?
So that's when I decided that a Xanax was in order. And I had a sweatshirt made that says "I went to Lahey Clinic to get my tumor removed and all I got was this lousy sweatshirt." And I remembered all the shit I've been through over the past twenty-odd years and I'm still here, dammit. And I just have to be patient, patient, patient. I'm going to miss the sound of his voice, but then again, I sound like a man in drag and it doesn't bother Jim, so I guess I'll have to get used to it.
So please don't call the cookoo wagon for me yet. I'll be o.k. For now. Maybe it's the Xanax and grapefruit juice talking and tomorrow I'll wake up and say, "Damn...I was really fucked up yesterday!"
So I saw Jim again tonight and he was sitting up in a chair, but still has a million tubes coming out of him and can't walk around yet or go to the bathroom on his own for the shear myriad of plastic tubing sticking out and winding all over the place. I'll see him again tomorrow. They have this fancy TV thing that swings around in from of his bed and he can get his Comcast e-mail on it and play games and watch HBO and all kinds of stuff. When I left he was half-heartedly putzing with it, so maybe he's coming back to life. If anyone wants to send him and e-mail to his Comcast address it's jimp1102@comcast.net. I don't how up to checking it he'll be, but it's worth a shot.
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