Damn Sickies

I know a recurring theme of my writings has been the upcoming surgery of my husband. It was to be on Thursday, the day after tomorrow. I had finally resigned myself to this fact and come to accept that it was for the best. I arranged time off work, his mom and dad arranged time off work. Now it is to be delayed by some bullshit infection that isn't even life threatening.

Isn't it funny how when someone is in the hospital for a dire illness, something that is potentially life threatening and very severe, you are consumed with nothing but good thoughts for them, worry, love and a somehow frantic sense of helplessness? But when someone is in the hospital for something minor, something that requires inpatient treatment but is in no way life threatening, doesn't even threaten long term symptoms or recover, you're just annoyed.

It started on Friday morning. Bobby said his ankle was a little sore. We thought nothing of it, he's a fragile guy and joint pain is nothing out of the ordinary. When I came home from work that night, he said is was worse. Again, no big deal. He had driven to a friends house that day in a car with a manual transmission and then spent the afternoon working on a different car. Of course if you spend an hour pushing in a clutch and then don't rest even when you're done driving it will worsen joint pain.

On Saturday morning swelling commenced with a bruise. Still not to concerned. It looked like maybe he had banged it on something, he should keep it elevated and ice it. His aunt offered to drive him to the doctor before she went to visit her mother (an hour away) just to make sure everything was ok. The reason he didn't have his surgery last month was, after all, because of a sprained ankle. (You can't be on crutches after heart surgery because they crack your sternum open.) He turned her down, thought it wasn't necessary.

By Saturday night the swelling had migrated down to his foot and we thought maybe, when he banged it, it had broken a bone. Those bones in your feet are tiny and easily fractured. He couldn't walk and we were concerned that if he needed crutches, we'd have to delay the surgery.

On Sunday, his aunt came back from her mom's house and took him to the ER. (I was working during all this time like a good wife.) Unfortunately, Bobby has a tendency to get sick on the weekends so that he has to go to the ER because it can't wait until Monday even when it isn't an emergency.

Guess what it turned out to be. An Infection! Can you believe it?! It wasn't even an injury. He has celulitis, some weird flesh eating bacterial infection! What the *&^% is this about? This guy should be in the Guinness book for unluckiest man ever. So now he has to be in the hospital for several days getting IV antibiotics even though he feels fine. (It sucks even more to be stuck in the hospital when you feel fine.) And he has to reschedule his surgery, all the family has to rework their schedules. So lame.

Ever the optimist, I have found the silver lining in this situation though. (Aside from the super cool pics I got of his foot looking like a poorly preserved ham, you know, the kind that's been cooked, ground, pressed into what the manufacturer thinks is the right shape for a ham and then packed in water.) That silver lining is the show we got in the ER.

I was still at work when I got the call that he was being admitted. My boss was kind enough to let me go early to be there with him. He was still in the ER when I got to the hospital, so that's where I went. At first security wouldn't let me go back because they were having 'an issue' in 'A' unit. This means that someone is going crazy and they can't take the risk of letting people not covered by worker's comp back there.

I was so curious I just had to get back there! Luckily, the security man had already made me my badge (they give you a sticker with your picture on it before you go back). When someone came out of the buzzing doors, I just went in. (I'm pretty familiar with how to get around an ER at this point.) I first went to C unit, where Bobby was, to check on him and bring him his blanket from home. (Again, like a good wife.) The crazy lady had wandered over to his unit, what luck!

Let me just say before going on that the humanitarian in me feels bad about making fun of this woman. Clearly she was in a tragic and desperate situation, from her point of view, and needed psychiatric attention which was not being made available to her. Were I a politician, this would be an issue that would sit on the forefront of my platform.

That being said, we already know that I'm a huge supporter of inappropriate humor. Even the humanitarian in me is crass, rude, and can find the funny in all crappy situations.

This woman was short and round with thinning curls shooting out of her head like snakes. We'll call her Medusa. She had a full smile with at least a piece of each tooth left, leather like olive skin eyes so wide I thought they might fall out of her face. Her expression reminiscent of the one's on horses face when there is a fight scene in an old fashioned movie- teeth bared and eyes rolling with violent fear and rage. All this with a Hawaiian shirt and cute little capri pants!

There was nothing obviously wrong with Medusa's physical health. I couldn't figure out if she was there for herself of someone else accept that staff kept telling her to go back to her own room. She was wandering around screaming in a language I could not decipher (I'm not confident it was a language that anyone but her speaks.) She was clearly pleading with the people in charge for help but could not form words. After a bit of being ignored, she started to make herself at home. She layed down in the middle of the hallway and was almost run over by a crash cart. She sat down in a vacant chair in the nurse's station and started playing with the computer. She walked up to a patient waiting in the hallway, sleeping, and began braiding the woman's hair. This went on for well over an hour, probably the reason that it took so long to get Bobby admitted into the hospital.

Eventually, they got the woman out of the ER. I spoke to a nurse who told me that they just discharged her back onto the street. They couldn't find anything wrong with her and she wasn't a kaiser member, so they let her loose. Now the story gets sad again. Her actions were funny while I watched them, but couldn't they at least call the police? She was clearly chargeable for disturbing the peace. This would put her 'in the system', making it possible for the state to pick up the tab for at least a 72 hour watch in a mental facility.

You know, I always just ramble on in these things (blogs). Everything goes straight from my head to the computer. I really thought at the beginning of this that it was going to be about my frustration with the delay of Bobby's surgery for something much less worrisome than his heart problem. Then I thought I would lighten it up a bit with the funny crazy lady. It ended up being a social commentary about a very real problem in this country with the way the medical industry (and it is an industry) is run. Funny how the mind works.

Maybe I should get in touch with Michael Moore