I'm doing the post early tonight because, man, I've got to get to bed earlier. I don't know if it's the tension, the meds I'm on, the fact that my body's trying to catch up on 16 years of sleep deprivation, or a little bit of all three. Plus when Jim's in the ICU you're stuck going to visit him on the NURSES' schedule and it's very restrictive. I just don't want to have to get back to the hotel at 10 PM again tonight. Plus Rome is on tonight at 9 and Jim, I love you babe, but I really want to catch Rome, and you're feeling better so I think you can make it an evening without me.
I went this afternoon (I'm sooooooo SICK of that place...I'm sick of the look of it, the smell of it, the fact that I know almost all of the nurses...EVERYTHING) and Jim's still saying he feels good, but the nurse told me this morning that his white blood cell count is up, so that scared me to death. I paged his doctor, because they NEVER call with any updates and they won't allow family in the room while the doctor's are doing rounds, so you can't find anything out unless you page these people. The doctor says he looks good, don't worry about his white blood cell count going up...it's just a natural reaction to the body fighting off infection, yadda yadda yadda. I told her I'm scared to death about the condition of his neck and any more ateries going bad. She said, well- right now he's out of arteries. They've all been tied off. I also spoke to his vascuar surgeon, Dr. Jewell, and asked how he liked the look of Jim's throat. He says it looks good. I told him that according to Jim he says his throat feels better than it ever did since he's been here, and Dr. Jewell said a lot of times the patient knows more than the doctor, so I should take that as a good sign. (Yeah- the patient's WIFE sometimes knows more than the doctor too, but no one listens to ME.) I'm still on pins and needles- just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I had to pop a valium today for my nerves. I can't go through another surgery. Although my mother says if God forbid he needs one that yes- I'll take it because I have to. Perish the thought. Okay Mom....SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
Jim's throat, on the inside, is still sore because of the intubation. He flunked his swallowing test today, but the doctors said they're not surprised so soon after surgery. The funny thing is, he passed the swallowing test for solids, but not for liquids, which makes no sense. But if he passed it once he'll pass it again. We just have to wait a couple more days for them to repeat the test.
The infectious disease guy came in today while I was there and said he was reducing Jim's antibiotics down from four to two, so I guess THAT's a good sign, too. He thinks it was a yeast infection in his blood that ate the artery. Well, I happen to know that it's possible to get a yeast infection from your bad teeth so I still think his teeth had somthing to do with this. I can't WAIT for that biopsy to come back at the end of the week.
And now for something really stupid: So when I go to see him, because he has this staph infection, they make me put on a paper gown and gloves before I can go into the room to see him now. But they let me take my purse and my belongings in with me. So if Jim is so contaminated and they need to take such precautions, I'm spreading the staph infection around on my purse. They even let me bring in his portable dvd player yesterday so we could watch Borat, and Jim touched the thing, then I carried it back to the hotel with me. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I think this paper gown thing is meaningless. But if it will help Jim get better I'd gladly take his staph infection from him. I can handle it. I wish I could do something like in the Green Mile where that big dude just sucked the sickness out of you and then spit it at bad people in little flying dust particles. I'd spit mine at Little Miss Sunshine. No, better yet- Miss Dingledong from Aetna. Then I'd say, "Sorry- we can't treat you yet. We have to go back to the beginning".
So a few people now have asked me about what bipolar is exactly. It's kind of like highs and lows to an extreme, extreme degree. I mean, everyone has highs and lows- that's just life. But when you're low you want to kill yourself, and when you're high you're mind is racing, racing, racing, and you can't stop it. Sometimes you can even get misdiagnosed with schizophrenia because it's possible to have hallucinations. When I was a child I did have hallucinations (yes Mom- I never told you because you would have thought I was crazy) like the devil's head floating over me and talking to me, all kinds of crazy shit. But they didn't really scare me, I felt I could conquer them because I was stronger than them, and I did well in school...no problems (I was a pretty good kid)...and luckily that all went away by puberty. My bipolar was a little odd because I spent 10 years depressed and 16 years manic. Most people are more cyclical than that. It really doesn't have anything to do with your childhood or things that happened to you. It just happens, and may be genetic. Well, there's some certifiable people on both sides of my family so I definitely got the raw end of the gene pool. When you're manic you can also get overly aggressive (as anyone who's witnessed my phone conversations with some vendors will attest to- but they deserved it...bipolar or not) and some people even wind up in jail. I would focus on the most stupid stuff and obsess and obsses about it, for no good reason. I KNEW I had no good reason, but couldn't stop. But I figured- hey- I can't be that bad....I've never been fired from a job. Thermador kept my crazy ass around for 8 1/2 years and Miele's kept my crazy ass around for 12. I even TRIED to get fired from a summer job once as a short-order cook...I tried SO hard for them to fire me, but they just thought I was hysterically funny and kept me around. I thought if I got treated I'd lose my "edge", my sense of humor, my ability to work well. But this latest stress just sent me crashing to the bottom again (which it would do for any normal person) but to the extreme, and I knew I had to finally face up to it and get treated. And I'm not afraid to talk about it because let's face it...other people may have similar problems too and are struggling. Talk about it. Don't hide it under a rug and keep it a secret. You wouldn't hide the fact that you had diabetes or any other disease, right?
Tomorrow will be somewhat interesting because they're allowing me to pick up a copy of the 3D scan they did of Jim's tumor. They give it to you on a cd so I hope there's a way I can get a real life picture of it on this blog. It was about as big as the palm of your hand. Before he went for his surgery Jim drew a really wacky picture of the tumor busting out of his neck. I've added it to this blog.
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