So, I find myself overwhelmed in my educational career and life in general and I thought perhaps I might cyber bitch about it.
You see, America, I wear many hats. I'm a student, a wife, an employee, a daughter, a feminist, an activist, a cook, a baker and a candlestick maker. Just kidding about the candle sticks, but the rest is true.
Lets start with my most newly acquired status as a wife. I'm the wife of a man with congestive heart failure, and it is a full time job all by itself. I'll tell you, if you ever want to know what the truly fail safe birth control method is, become intimately involved with a chronically ill man. You will find that you have so little time for yourself even with an adult in the house you can't even wrap your head around the idea of changing a small person's diaper.
Yes, I've changed big people's diapers. No, they did not belong to my husband.
But I digress.
So, Bobby (the husband) and I started dating early last year. I've been unlucky my entire life, and so has he, as I'm sure you could imagine a 25 year old with heart failure would be. Earlier this month, we decided to legally combine the giant crap storms that are eachother's lives, until death do we part. He has been in and out of the hospital since last semester, when our apartment burned down ( a story for another blog) and has been deteriorating more rapidly ever since.
I've missed at least 6 days of school this semester to be with him in the hospital. Nothing I do seems to be good enough, you see. He's working with a special cardiology team in the bay area, so I decided we could move there for his care. He can't work, so I started hunting for a job in the neighborhood. He went to the ER for having such low blood pressure they could barely draw blood 2 days before I had my interview. We weren't near his special doctors in the good hospital and he could have died because of it. I wasn't quick enough to get the job and move.
After he got out of the hospital, he seemed to be feeling better. We proceeded with our wedding. Oh, didn't I mention that this happened one week before our wedding? We thought he might be an absentee groom. Anyways, we got married, beautiful ceremony. It was on a baseball field, I wore blue, he wore an 80's tux with sneakers, and his Italian Catholic grandma wore a frown.
We went on our honeymoon and were in wedded bliss, for a few days. Then we went on a whale watching trip and, oddly enough, I got sick! That's new for us. When we returned to the condo (on loan from a friend's boss) we discovered we had been robbed! See, almost missing our wedding because of almost dying wasn't good enough, because it was just almost. Life likes to give me stories to tell where I can say, "this really happened", not almost.
The very next day, we were back in the hospital. What fun! This time we had lights and sirens and a big show of it (and we honeymooned close to his special doctors in the good hospital). Bobby convinced them to wait to admit him until the honeymoon was over, and they did.
I went back to school, he seemed to feel better, again, and life went on for about a week. Then he had his follow up and his kidney's failed. They admitted him and now we are scheduling open heart surgery.
How does this relate to the title? As I said, I've missed at least 6 days of school this semester. My classes are only 2 days per week, that means a total of 3 weeks of school missed. I missed an entire week this last time in the hospital, and the timing of the surgery puts him coming home during finals week.
You see, my faithful readers, all four of you, I don't know what to do? I have pulled 'A's in all my classes, on the work I've done, but I can't get attendance points if I'm not there, and I can't make up in class activities. I am being a crappy student in order to be a mediocre wife. I still haven't been able to secure a place for us to live near his doctors and we will have to spend his recovery at his grandma's house. (The one who wore the frown. More on her soon.)
I promise to try to keep this correspondence to all you random strangers out there light and funny, but today it's just not in me. I'm stretched to thin, like so many of my fellow egg carriers out there, and I'm floundering. I never thought I'd identify myself as a good wife, I'm not big on gender stereotyping, but I at least want to be a good friend. I am supposed to be my husband's best friend, and I will be leaving him alone as he gets his sternum cracked open and his most important life giving organ artificially manipulated on a large steel table. And if I don't leave him alone, I will be giving up my education, abandoning all that I held dear before I met him, and sacrificing (or at least delaying) a future of higher earning potential that could provide for, you guessed it, the husband.
Post comments if you have any advice, world. I hope that my experiences will be inspiring for the most part, but tonight I just need to get the words out of my head.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
My First Valentine's Day
This past Valentine's Day was the first ever I got to spend with my now husband, Bobby. I say the first I got to spend with him because, though we new each other the previous year, he spent it on a date with my best friend and future bridesmaid, a story for another blog.
So, being as this was a special day, we made plans with another couple we know to go to a romantic Italian dinner. Let me set the mood.
We are driving to our friend's house and I begin to notice that Bobby's talking a little funny. I ask him if he's feeling ok, but his response is a bit slurred. I begin asking the standard questions, did you drink anything? smoke anything? what day is it? year is it? whose the president? Bobby got quite angry with me for giving him the '3rd degree'. I told him I'd stop asking questions as soon as he got one right!
After informing me it was Wednesday, February 13, 2008, the president was Sarah Palin who ran against Joe Biden and that we were on our way home, we discovered that he had mixed up his heart medication with his sleeping medication. Oh yeah, he has heart problems.
So, we continue on and figure he'll just be a little sleepy at dinner. If only this were true!
We picked up our friends, Kevin and Devin (yes, their names rhyme, no, they are not both men). Bobby got a little more tired on the way to the restaurant until we got inside, and needed some help reading the menu and ordering.
Here's where the real fun begins.
The waitress informed us when Kevin and Devin each ordered a beer that she was not allowed to serve alcohol to people already intoxicated, referring to Bobby. On five separate occasions, he said he was going to the bathroom and, a number of minutes later, we found him wandering around outside or just staring at the streetlamp. A few times, he didn't say anything at all, just got up and wandered around. He tried to eat, he really did, but his fork just couldn't find his tired little mouth. After repeatedly stabbing the table next to his plate, attempting to acquire food, he finally got an entire piece of veal on it. After this massive piece of meat fell into his lap, he continued to shove the empty fork into his mouth, completely unaware that the rest of us are scrambling to hold napkins under him and avoid peeing ourselves with laughter. We asked if he'd like to leave, but he said he was feeling fine, and I'd have to say he was probably feeling pretty good.
Bobby insisted on ordering dessert, so we extended the show. He put an entire ice cream sundae, whipped cream and all, on a spoon and in and around his mouth. Really more around seeing as he forgot to open his mouth.
Upon taking our friends back home, I told them that we should probably be going to get Bobby to bed. Of course, Bobby was quite frustrated that I made this decision for him, promptly forgot what we were talking about and leaned in for a kiss, missed, and drooled on my shoulder.
When we arrived home, I put Bobby to bed. I took off his shoes and his pants and his coat and put the covers on him and reflect on the day. I think about how much I love him and how interesting this chapter will be in the book I write one day, and then I feel something in his coat pocket.
Inside Bobby's jacket pocket is a piece of pizza.
We did not order pizza at the restaurant, but they do serve it. I sat in awe and wonder, knowing he took it off someones table. My questions go unanswered to this day, because he does not remember the nights events. Was there someone sitting at the table he took it from? Were they done with their meal? Was this the only item, or just the only one he saved? Was it from the restaurant we were eating at, or the pizza place across the parking lot? Answers we'll never know, but I will laugh every time I see him eat pizza.
Stay tuned for the next story, maybe tragic, maybe ironic, maybe just weird, but always funny and true.
So, being as this was a special day, we made plans with another couple we know to go to a romantic Italian dinner. Let me set the mood.
We are driving to our friend's house and I begin to notice that Bobby's talking a little funny. I ask him if he's feeling ok, but his response is a bit slurred. I begin asking the standard questions, did you drink anything? smoke anything? what day is it? year is it? whose the president? Bobby got quite angry with me for giving him the '3rd degree'. I told him I'd stop asking questions as soon as he got one right!
After informing me it was Wednesday, February 13, 2008, the president was Sarah Palin who ran against Joe Biden and that we were on our way home, we discovered that he had mixed up his heart medication with his sleeping medication. Oh yeah, he has heart problems.
So, we continue on and figure he'll just be a little sleepy at dinner. If only this were true!
We picked up our friends, Kevin and Devin (yes, their names rhyme, no, they are not both men). Bobby got a little more tired on the way to the restaurant until we got inside, and needed some help reading the menu and ordering.
Here's where the real fun begins.
The waitress informed us when Kevin and Devin each ordered a beer that she was not allowed to serve alcohol to people already intoxicated, referring to Bobby. On five separate occasions, he said he was going to the bathroom and, a number of minutes later, we found him wandering around outside or just staring at the streetlamp. A few times, he didn't say anything at all, just got up and wandered around. He tried to eat, he really did, but his fork just couldn't find his tired little mouth. After repeatedly stabbing the table next to his plate, attempting to acquire food, he finally got an entire piece of veal on it. After this massive piece of meat fell into his lap, he continued to shove the empty fork into his mouth, completely unaware that the rest of us are scrambling to hold napkins under him and avoid peeing ourselves with laughter. We asked if he'd like to leave, but he said he was feeling fine, and I'd have to say he was probably feeling pretty good.
Bobby insisted on ordering dessert, so we extended the show. He put an entire ice cream sundae, whipped cream and all, on a spoon and in and around his mouth. Really more around seeing as he forgot to open his mouth.
Upon taking our friends back home, I told them that we should probably be going to get Bobby to bed. Of course, Bobby was quite frustrated that I made this decision for him, promptly forgot what we were talking about and leaned in for a kiss, missed, and drooled on my shoulder.
When we arrived home, I put Bobby to bed. I took off his shoes and his pants and his coat and put the covers on him and reflect on the day. I think about how much I love him and how interesting this chapter will be in the book I write one day, and then I feel something in his coat pocket.
Inside Bobby's jacket pocket is a piece of pizza.
We did not order pizza at the restaurant, but they do serve it. I sat in awe and wonder, knowing he took it off someones table. My questions go unanswered to this day, because he does not remember the nights events. Was there someone sitting at the table he took it from? Were they done with their meal? Was this the only item, or just the only one he saved? Was it from the restaurant we were eating at, or the pizza place across the parking lot? Answers we'll never know, but I will laugh every time I see him eat pizza.
Stay tuned for the next story, maybe tragic, maybe ironic, maybe just weird, but always funny and true.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)