Do you have a wife? Maybe you lost her a few years ago, after years of marriage, or maybe she’s with you. Maybe you never found somebody, but spent years trying.
I’m 28, and I’ve been married for 10 years to the girl in the bed.
we are supposed to have 50 or so more years.
I told you as politely as I could that I wasn’t interested in the badges. I’m following your visiting hours, despite what you complained about to the nurse when, on my advice, you went to talk to her. 10, 1, 3, 5.30, 8.30. I’m not in your fucking hospital, breathing your fucking air, when its not those times. AT those times, I will be with my wife. I will not leave my wife. Her parents will be with her. My mother will be with her. We will not crowd her, or pull teh wires.
We are not stupid children, who will push buttons, or spill drinks on the floor.
If you get between me and my wife, my wrath will come out. It will be ugly, and it will be UNCONTROLLABLE.
Do not make me waste the time we have right now, talking to you about your fucking badges. Or about your fucking list.
Do not go to the nurse and say “We have a problem”.
What I told you was “Please go talk to linda, I’m not intrested in the administration procedures.”
That is exactly my words.
Oh, old man, grief can change. I feel it now, in my blood, that I want to ake teh WHY and the HOW and the OH GOD MY WIFE IS DYING and find somebody to blame.
I am a mammal, and you came between me and my mate.
Oh, old man, please don’t do that again. I’m not going to wait in your watiing room,with the people talking about weather, or football. With the TV playing election news.
Oh old man, how dare you change the subject from BJ to your rules, and whatever baggage you have about just looking the other way when a griving, 28 year old husband talks to his beauty.
Hey folks. 7 hours without an update here, its been eating me up.
I’m tired. I want to take a nap, but its only 48 minutes until I can see her again, so it’ll wait.
She’s sweet. I took some pictures of her, safe ones, to show MastaG. He tells me that helps a lot. He’s going back to school tomorrow. He wants to lay out, but its for the same reason he’d want to lay out anytime, I think. What fourth grader wouldn’t take a free day out of school?
Yeah, its over tomorrow. He’s so funny, and so helpful. He’s also a sarcastic, quick witted, smart assed little punk. He has a picture of her in his pocket, he and I picked out a good one, and stuck it in. We printed 9 wallet sized pictures with that stupid XP print thing, on our cheap assed $40 walmart special printer, and he gave one to everybody in the quiet room.
It was the right thing to do for his Mamaw, and showing him his mother was the right thing to do. The picture was too small to see anything horrific, just to see his mother, and the efforts of the doctors and nurses to save her.
While she hates pictures of herself, I’ll give it to you guys too.
For obvious reasons, you don’t get the ones of her today. If she wants to show you later, I’ll let her make that choice.
This was supposed to be a short post, so I could rest my eyes, but hell with that.
I haven’t cried today, except for one moment when I was overwhemled after dropping Pigpen off at school. As we pulled out of the driveway, he asked “Wheres my mommy?”
I told him she’s safe. That she’s still sick, but that God would look after her. I asked if he’d like to pray, and he did.
He likes to repeat what i say after I say it, and thats sweet. The kids make talking to God easier, makes me feel less self consious about doing what my brain has told me doesn’t work for so long.
—
Anyway, heres the facts as they stand.
Good news:
BP - 110
Pulse - 134 (because of some of the medications)
Kidneys- Producing 150 ccs of urine an hour. Dark, yellow, puss-ey (almost sayed pussy, the’d be different, and get us spamblocked, d’oh) urine. Not nearly whats getting into her, but a step.
Heart - Still beating along. Good rhythm.
Liver - Enzymes down, good news. No quantification, if I heard the number I forgot.
Calcium - At a good level - meaning the vascular system isn’t losing fluids as much
She’s off one of the blood pressure drips, as I mentioned last night.
Everything is trucking along just fine.
Bad news:
Lungs aren’t oxygenating well. Hovered around 90 (O2 level), should be 96. The fluids are constricting her lungs, they’re just not taking the oxygen well.
Fever is 102, without the cooling blanket. This is as a result of some of the medication used to work her kidneys.
Dialysis is on the menu again. They’re waiting for special equipment to become available, or doctors to do some voodoo, or something, and then they’re going to try a different sort of dialysis.
She bled through in her thigh, where they connect the machine, yesterday. I hope she doesn’t today.
She was deep in sedation today. While she knew we were there, and she squeezed my hand as desperately as she could, the eyebrows didn’t tell me as much. My mantra still seems to sooth her, but I bet she’s getting sick of it. She always gets sick of my little dumassities.
Thats one of the things I love about her.
We are two people who are damn near opposites, who sustain each other in such an amazing way. While we’ve had fights, we’ve never had moments of weaknesses, even in hard times, that led us to consider ending our union. Even the fights were her giving me the quiet treatment, and me sulking, or pouting.
I have hope. It goes so quickly tho. I had hope yesterday morning, and it went after the 10 AM visit, and it was hard. I had never been down that low. I want to put hope, and low, aside, but I refuse to do that for her.
Today I’m not thinking about anything but right now. Thats how I tend to live, and thats how I’ll do this.
Ug, 12:30. I’d like to read some of your comments, now that things are working nicely, but I have to call Lucky, and I have to check my email. I told her school friends about her today, and that was hard. Not as hard as yesterday, or the day before, tho.
Thats hope for you.
I love you, BJ. I love you so strongly, and so uniquely, and so very deeply.
Just called Gary, she’s OK. BPs in 80s-90s, white blood cell count is back down to 27000. Calcium is at acceptable levels, which is such welcome news. It means her vascular system is putting it where it belongs, and that wasn’t happening 24 hours ago.
Today will be another day filled with more pain and sadness and grief than should exist. Fear, hope. I’ll have weaknesses and make mistakes.
My sweet one. She weighs 35 pounds more than I do, and I’m a considerably large person. She’s a considerably small person (5′2″ vs my 6′4″), and she out weighs me by a margin right now because of the fluids.
But another good sign is that her urine output is up, her kidneys are trying.
Maybe they’ll try diyalisis again ( don’t think I spell that the same way twice). I think I can get behind that, but I’m usless.
I’ve rested, 5 hours, which is almost a full nights sleep. I’ll cry until my face feels hollow, and then I’ll be drained again tonight.
Please, BJ, don’t get worse again today. Please don’t give me reason to accept your death.
Just got off the phone with Gary, and manoman, things are getting better.
BP is 110. She’s getting off three drips, bicarb, one of the pressors, and a nutrient thing that looks like the blood of the android in Alien (we watched it together in the ER Thursday, before all this. I guess it was our last movie, so far).
HER HEART PROBLEMS ARE RESOLVED. Well, as resolved as possible now. They put her on medication today, and it made that stuff better. Real scientific, I know, but thats all I can tell you at 12:28, with Beck’s Mutations playing on this computer, and my arms straining to keep typing in a laying position.
I asked for the bad news, and he said right now there isn’t much (more of that relativity thing, as my soulmate lays in puddles of blood, yadda yadda yadda… GAC’ll accuse me of Emo when this is all over). All signs point to yes.
I wish I could congratulate her. Sometimes I think “hey, she should be here” , but not often.
Lindas taking over again tomorrow, and I say bleah. I’ll just not talk to her, and let her do what she gets paid to do.
Another day of 10, 1, 3, 5:30, and 8:30.
I’m drained. Today was the hardest one yet. Time to end this ugly day, on this piece of good news.
I LOVE YOU, BJ. I love you so much. Come back to me, sweet thing, precious girl, my angel, and I will baby you and pamper you for all of the days and nights to come.
