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.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Saturday February 17, 2007 11:20 a.m
Ooooooo….that baby aspirin helped. I managed to get my socks on sitting upright. I can go across the whole room now instead of just two feet. Well, if one baby aspirin is good then two will be better. I’m going to head to Lahey and get in a fight with some bitches now.
Saturday February 17, 2007 11:04 am
My body’s really cryin’ for help this morning….big time. I got up at 8:30 and it’s taking me forever to get showered and dressed. My chest feels like someone’s leaning on it….not too bad but not comfortable either. I take a shower, then lay down. Walk from the bathroom to the bedroom, and lay down. Walk to the drawer to get my underwear….lay down. Go to the bathroom to comb my hair….lay down. If I move two feet I’m winded. And I’m dizzy. So I lay on the bed again face down and talk to my body….”Listen, when we get back to Jersey I PROMISE I’ll take care of you, okay? I promise…I promise. We’ll get that stress test. I’m sorry I had to cancel it for Monday. You’ve got to keep going for me, o.k.? C’mon- you’ve come this far….you can make it till March, right?” and my body says, “Maybe you should go to the Emergency Room- we’re in the right place,” and I say “We’ll never get any respect in the emergency room- besides, we’ll wind up picking up some nasty shit from all the other sick people and then we’ll be worse off than we are NOW. How about I just take a baby aspirin?” And my body says, “Well, you’d better do SOMETHING for me because I’m getting tired of you pushing me around. You think this is like a video game and where someone shoots your ass and you just re-spawn? I don’t think so.” So I took a baby aspirin. Just keep taking deeeeep breaths.
Friday February 16, 2007 11:15 PM First surgery
So I’m sitting here in bed exhausted out of my fucking mind and apparently going through valium withdrawal….(gee- I was supposed to taper off that shit instead of going cold turkey? Oh well. Too late now….) and I decided I’m just going to vent about my wonderful experiences of the past few days. My husband won’t remember a goddamn thing when he finally comes to so he can read the written record when it’s all done. He already knows his wife is nuts anyway. When the deacon in Vegas rattled on about “in sickness and in health” he sure wasn’t fucking kidding. I guess since I’ve got a good job and a nice house and a healthy, smart kid and a few bucks in the bank and a decent credit score I owe some kind of cosmic payback.
Note to the administration at the Lahey Clinic: I could put on a burka, strap a bomb to my skinny ass, scream “la la la la la la la la……..Allah Akbah!” and get on a transcontinental flight with no identification easier than I can get my wifely ass into the ICU unit to see my fucking husband. First of all, here’s how you physically get to the ICU unit….you park your car in the behemoth parking garage, go down four flights of stairs with 50-mile-an-hour winds whipping across your frozen body, try not to get hit by an ambulance speeding past the front door because they don’t bother to stop for pedestrians, go into the East wing of this small city they call Lahey clinic, walk a mile down the hall, go down the elevator one floor, because the elevator doesn’t GO down two floors in that wing because that would make WAY too much sense, get off the elevator, walk another half-mile to the end of the hall to take the stairs down another floor, walk another half mile down another hallway, go OUTSIDE again to get whipped by the winds some more because there IS no way to get from one side of the second floor in the East wing to the other side of the second floor in the east wing without going OUTSIDE, walk around to the back of the building, go back INSIDE another door, make a right into the “family waiting room” (they sure as hell got the “waiting” part right), then pick up the phone on the wall and dial one of a myriad of extensions. There’s a sign posted by the phone that says something like this: “For patients in SICU rooms 1 through 6, dial 814678. For patients is SICU rooms 6 through 9 but excluding 7 on odd days, dial 913457800. For patients in SICU2146789 on even-numbered Tuesdays when the Pope is in town but he’s not wearing the purple robe but the black shoes with the gel inner soles, go fuck yourself and leave us alone.” You get the idea. When someone finally picks up the phone after 20 rings you have to play nice-nice and beg to see your loved one. After giving your name, social security number, bra size, mother’s maiden name and grandfather’s favorite flavor of ice cream, they transfer you somewhere else, where the phone rings another 20 times until someone answers and you repeat step one.
After all that you’ve got maybe a 20 percent shot at actually being granted permission to come inside. There’s always some kind of excuse. My favorite yesterday was, “They’re washing him up right now. Call back in about 20 minutes.” So I park my ass in one of the chairs and to play it safe I wait 30 minutes, because these people are on metric time, not American. So now I pick up the phone and repeat AGAIN. “Oh- they’re not done washing him up yet.” I told the woman, “You know…I AM his wife and I’ve seen his naked ass before. He really won’t mind if I see it again.” I actually got her to crack a slight laugh at that one, but still no go. So I wait another 15 minutes and they’re STILL washing him up. Well, where the hell did they take him? Elizabeth Arden? Did he go to the SPA to get his ass washed? And he has a LITTLE ass! How long does that take to wash, anyway? There just isn’t a lot of square footage there. They could have stuck a probe up there and cleaned out his entire colon in that amount of time.
Every now and then I’ll sit in that waiting room and a “newbie” family will show up. I ask them, “Is this your first time?” and they say “Yes”, and I just chuckle a sinister laugh like Vincent Price on crack. Talk to me tomorrow honey and we can swap some stories. Heh heh heh heh heh….
So the Queen of the ICU finally grants me access to the Elizabethan Court and now I’ve got to go BACK down the hallway another half mile to the double doors and hope that someone actually remembered to UNLOCK them, and if not I go BACK to the family waiting room and repeat the process.
When I finally get in, Jim looks like something out of “Trauma- Life in the ER” but thank God I’ve watched enough reality shows in my lifetime so I don’t pass out on the floor….not that they’d notice if that happened anyway….and his nurse, Little Miss Sunshine…tries her best to act like I’m annoying the piss out of her. Jim can’t talk and he’s pretty drugged up but he can manage to nod his head a little and roll his eyes and squeeze my hand, so I know he’s glad I’m there. He’s trying to tell me something and of course I can’t understand, so I give him a piece of paper and a pen. Little Miss Sunshine is not too happy with this because then maybe Jim will be able to write about what a cunt she really is and the jig will be up because he knows I’ll be happy top choke the bitch for him if he wants me to (I’ll be nice and sanitize my hands first) but I just ignore Little Miss Sunshine.
He writes, “Did they get the tumor out?” Now, I had told him this already the day before but the drugs are clouding his mind so he can’t remember, and I tell him, “Yes- they got the whole thing out, and they didn’t have to cut any vital nerves but they had to stretch the shit out of them so you’re in for a long healing process, but the neurologist thinks you’ll be o.k.” He rolls his eyes in great relief. So I sit with him a few more minutes and suddenly he starts violently banging his hand. “What? What?” I ask. And I give him the paper and pen again. “Can’t breathe!” he writes. I go get Little Miss Sunshine and I tell her that he says he can’t breathe. She’s putzing with the IV and all the other equipment but never touches his breathing tube. He writes again, “Can’t BREATHE!” and I tell Little Miss Sunshine and in the meantime I’m trying to calm him down. “Jim…you’re on a respirator. It’s breathing for you. Try not to panic…it will be o.k.” But he’s still pounding his fist and looking absolutely pitiful and panicked. Little Miss Sunshine finally comes over and says she’s going to try suctioning out the tube in his nose. I get the hell out of the way because that’s really gross to watch and I don’t need to be vomiting on the floor in the middle of all this. She tried this three times and he’s still not comfortable.
Now I’m worried as hell. My husband can’t breathe! Why isn’t she calling someone who knows their ass from their elbow? I don’t say anything to her because if I piss her off I’ll NEVER get in to see my husband again but now she gets nasty with me and says “You’ve exited him too much. You have to leave NOW Pam!” And in my mind I’m thinking, now you listen to ME bitch….number one, he wants me here, and number two, I don’t want to leave until I know he’s o.k. But I don’t have a choice in the matter and I pick up my shit and storm out.
So I go on another two mile trek to the cafeteria and get myself a coffee and vent to everyone I can on the cell phone. I wait for the shift to change and I go back. Again I get excuses why I can’t go back in….they’re clipping his toenails, he had a hair out of place, the game is on and we have to check the score, baby peas are on sale at Stop and Shop, yadda yadda yadda, but then they finally let me in.
So Jim looks more comfortable now and he’s sleeping, and there’s a new nurse on duty. I also noticed that Little Miss Sunshine took Jim’s pen and paper away. Now how is the man supposed to communicate? With some kind of Martian mind-meld? A minute or so later the resident who works with Jim’s surgeon comes in and introduces herself. I pulled the nurse and the resident aside and told them I needed to talk to them.
I was very pleasant and non-confrontational (because I’m at these bitches mercy) and I played like I was half-joking, but they got the point that I’m serious as a heart-attack. I gave them the Reader’s Digest version of what had just happened. I said, “Look….I know that the nurses’ job is to take care of the patient, and the patient comes first. But every patient comes with baggage, and that baggage is their family. And they want to see their family. And you people make it extremely difficult to do that. I’m sure there was a chapter in the nurses’ textbook about sensitivity….you know- the book you had to read before you got your nurses’ license? I think Little Miss Sunshine needs to crack that book open again and do a little review. The patient’s family has gone through trauma, too, and I am NOT going to be talked to and treated like that. If she wanted me out of the way I would have been very happy to hang back and sit and read my book…this is a big room so there’s plenty of space for me. Or she could have asked me to step outside in the hallway for a minute. Or if she was having a bad day she could have come back into the waiting room and had the decency to apologize to me. Now, I’m the only family my husband has up here, and the rest of his family has heard this story and they’re just ITCHIN’ to get in the car right now and come up here, and if you think I’m a problem, let me tell you right now….the rest of his family make Tony Soprano look like Mister Rodgers…so if you’d like them to stay out of your hair you’d better make nice-nice with ME. Got it? Now, who’s working tomorrow, because I’m not dealing with that bitch anymore.”
Well, the two of them were very sweet and apologetic. Needless to say, I came back this morning, and Jim got a new nurse.
So that’s my nurses’ story. There’s a doctor story, too, but I’ll save that one for another day because it’s 1:04 a.m. now and I’m beat. Plus I’m sure there’ll be lots more stories before this mess is done. In the meantime, it doesn't look like I'm getting out of Boston until at least mid next week. They finally took the respirator out and now they're just waiting to make sure his airway doesn’t swell up. If all goes well, he'll move into a step-down unit (kind of like ICU-lite) tomorrow.
Note to the administration at the Lahey Clinic: I could put on a burka, strap a bomb to my skinny ass, scream “la la la la la la la la……..Allah Akbah!” and get on a transcontinental flight with no identification easier than I can get my wifely ass into the ICU unit to see my fucking husband. First of all, here’s how you physically get to the ICU unit….you park your car in the behemoth parking garage, go down four flights of stairs with 50-mile-an-hour winds whipping across your frozen body, try not to get hit by an ambulance speeding past the front door because they don’t bother to stop for pedestrians, go into the East wing of this small city they call Lahey clinic, walk a mile down the hall, go down the elevator one floor, because the elevator doesn’t GO down two floors in that wing because that would make WAY too much sense, get off the elevator, walk another half-mile to the end of the hall to take the stairs down another floor, walk another half mile down another hallway, go OUTSIDE again to get whipped by the winds some more because there IS no way to get from one side of the second floor in the East wing to the other side of the second floor in the east wing without going OUTSIDE, walk around to the back of the building, go back INSIDE another door, make a right into the “family waiting room” (they sure as hell got the “waiting” part right), then pick up the phone on the wall and dial one of a myriad of extensions. There’s a sign posted by the phone that says something like this: “For patients in SICU rooms 1 through 6, dial 814678. For patients is SICU rooms 6 through 9 but excluding 7 on odd days, dial 913457800. For patients in SICU2146789 on even-numbered Tuesdays when the Pope is in town but he’s not wearing the purple robe but the black shoes with the gel inner soles, go fuck yourself and leave us alone.” You get the idea. When someone finally picks up the phone after 20 rings you have to play nice-nice and beg to see your loved one. After giving your name, social security number, bra size, mother’s maiden name and grandfather’s favorite flavor of ice cream, they transfer you somewhere else, where the phone rings another 20 times until someone answers and you repeat step one.
After all that you’ve got maybe a 20 percent shot at actually being granted permission to come inside. There’s always some kind of excuse. My favorite yesterday was, “They’re washing him up right now. Call back in about 20 minutes.” So I park my ass in one of the chairs and to play it safe I wait 30 minutes, because these people are on metric time, not American. So now I pick up the phone and repeat AGAIN. “Oh- they’re not done washing him up yet.” I told the woman, “You know…I AM his wife and I’ve seen his naked ass before. He really won’t mind if I see it again.” I actually got her to crack a slight laugh at that one, but still no go. So I wait another 15 minutes and they’re STILL washing him up. Well, where the hell did they take him? Elizabeth Arden? Did he go to the SPA to get his ass washed? And he has a LITTLE ass! How long does that take to wash, anyway? There just isn’t a lot of square footage there. They could have stuck a probe up there and cleaned out his entire colon in that amount of time.
Every now and then I’ll sit in that waiting room and a “newbie” family will show up. I ask them, “Is this your first time?” and they say “Yes”, and I just chuckle a sinister laugh like Vincent Price on crack. Talk to me tomorrow honey and we can swap some stories. Heh heh heh heh heh….
So the Queen of the ICU finally grants me access to the Elizabethan Court and now I’ve got to go BACK down the hallway another half mile to the double doors and hope that someone actually remembered to UNLOCK them, and if not I go BACK to the family waiting room and repeat the process.
When I finally get in, Jim looks like something out of “Trauma- Life in the ER” but thank God I’ve watched enough reality shows in my lifetime so I don’t pass out on the floor….not that they’d notice if that happened anyway….and his nurse, Little Miss Sunshine…tries her best to act like I’m annoying the piss out of her. Jim can’t talk and he’s pretty drugged up but he can manage to nod his head a little and roll his eyes and squeeze my hand, so I know he’s glad I’m there. He’s trying to tell me something and of course I can’t understand, so I give him a piece of paper and a pen. Little Miss Sunshine is not too happy with this because then maybe Jim will be able to write about what a cunt she really is and the jig will be up because he knows I’ll be happy top choke the bitch for him if he wants me to (I’ll be nice and sanitize my hands first) but I just ignore Little Miss Sunshine.
He writes, “Did they get the tumor out?” Now, I had told him this already the day before but the drugs are clouding his mind so he can’t remember, and I tell him, “Yes- they got the whole thing out, and they didn’t have to cut any vital nerves but they had to stretch the shit out of them so you’re in for a long healing process, but the neurologist thinks you’ll be o.k.” He rolls his eyes in great relief. So I sit with him a few more minutes and suddenly he starts violently banging his hand. “What? What?” I ask. And I give him the paper and pen again. “Can’t breathe!” he writes. I go get Little Miss Sunshine and I tell her that he says he can’t breathe. She’s putzing with the IV and all the other equipment but never touches his breathing tube. He writes again, “Can’t BREATHE!” and I tell Little Miss Sunshine and in the meantime I’m trying to calm him down. “Jim…you’re on a respirator. It’s breathing for you. Try not to panic…it will be o.k.” But he’s still pounding his fist and looking absolutely pitiful and panicked. Little Miss Sunshine finally comes over and says she’s going to try suctioning out the tube in his nose. I get the hell out of the way because that’s really gross to watch and I don’t need to be vomiting on the floor in the middle of all this. She tried this three times and he’s still not comfortable.
Now I’m worried as hell. My husband can’t breathe! Why isn’t she calling someone who knows their ass from their elbow? I don’t say anything to her because if I piss her off I’ll NEVER get in to see my husband again but now she gets nasty with me and says “You’ve exited him too much. You have to leave NOW Pam!” And in my mind I’m thinking, now you listen to ME bitch….number one, he wants me here, and number two, I don’t want to leave until I know he’s o.k. But I don’t have a choice in the matter and I pick up my shit and storm out.
So I go on another two mile trek to the cafeteria and get myself a coffee and vent to everyone I can on the cell phone. I wait for the shift to change and I go back. Again I get excuses why I can’t go back in….they’re clipping his toenails, he had a hair out of place, the game is on and we have to check the score, baby peas are on sale at Stop and Shop, yadda yadda yadda, but then they finally let me in.
So Jim looks more comfortable now and he’s sleeping, and there’s a new nurse on duty. I also noticed that Little Miss Sunshine took Jim’s pen and paper away. Now how is the man supposed to communicate? With some kind of Martian mind-meld? A minute or so later the resident who works with Jim’s surgeon comes in and introduces herself. I pulled the nurse and the resident aside and told them I needed to talk to them.
I was very pleasant and non-confrontational (because I’m at these bitches mercy) and I played like I was half-joking, but they got the point that I’m serious as a heart-attack. I gave them the Reader’s Digest version of what had just happened. I said, “Look….I know that the nurses’ job is to take care of the patient, and the patient comes first. But every patient comes with baggage, and that baggage is their family. And they want to see their family. And you people make it extremely difficult to do that. I’m sure there was a chapter in the nurses’ textbook about sensitivity….you know- the book you had to read before you got your nurses’ license? I think Little Miss Sunshine needs to crack that book open again and do a little review. The patient’s family has gone through trauma, too, and I am NOT going to be talked to and treated like that. If she wanted me out of the way I would have been very happy to hang back and sit and read my book…this is a big room so there’s plenty of space for me. Or she could have asked me to step outside in the hallway for a minute. Or if she was having a bad day she could have come back into the waiting room and had the decency to apologize to me. Now, I’m the only family my husband has up here, and the rest of his family has heard this story and they’re just ITCHIN’ to get in the car right now and come up here, and if you think I’m a problem, let me tell you right now….the rest of his family make Tony Soprano look like Mister Rodgers…so if you’d like them to stay out of your hair you’d better make nice-nice with ME. Got it? Now, who’s working tomorrow, because I’m not dealing with that bitch anymore.”
Well, the two of them were very sweet and apologetic. Needless to say, I came back this morning, and Jim got a new nurse.
So that’s my nurses’ story. There’s a doctor story, too, but I’ll save that one for another day because it’s 1:04 a.m. now and I’m beat. Plus I’m sure there’ll be lots more stories before this mess is done. In the meantime, it doesn't look like I'm getting out of Boston until at least mid next week. They finally took the respirator out and now they're just waiting to make sure his airway doesn’t swell up. If all goes well, he'll move into a step-down unit (kind of like ICU-lite) tomorrow.
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