ThanksGiving part two

but first i got to tip my hat to my home land
in honour of ST ANDREWS DAY



so now to continue ...

we left off with me heading to the hospital

damn that trip seemed to take for ever

i was slowly building up ever more horrific images in my mind

hubby number two had had an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm about a year before id gotten ill

which was a scary time, and that had him hooked up in a very nightmare inspiring i.c.u unit with tubes flowing in and out of him, bleeping machines that kept screaming out alarms, and his skin just hanging, looking like a flaccid pasty, dough.

I swear he looked like a corpse, not the kind you see in funeral homes but the type you see on horror movies .. the kinda that turn into bloody flesh eating zombies

(course if id know then what i know now, and if id realised what an abusive git he was going transform into, i would of been unhooking half of the tubes and wires there and then and saving myself from a lot of pain later on down the road)

any way

i kept getting flashbacks to that kind of image except instead of hubby number two it was my latest victim laying on the bed looking deathly pale... and yes i know i was letting my imagination run away with me and hell i know panic was just exaggerating crap ... but shit i had no "real" info to go on so my mind was filling in the blanks, ya know i get the feeling my mind really doesn't like me very much

the poor Craig's list driver

(complete with bodyguard companion)

 kept turning on the radio.. possibly in an effort to hint that should perhaps cease my constant stream of nervous inane babble ..

he was of course far to kind and polite to tell me to shut the fuck up, you know i knew i should, but just couldn't.

we get to the hospital and they say lots of nice kind soothing reassuring things, all of which went totally over my head at the time cuz hell id worked myself up into a state, i pretty much threw the money at them,

not in a rude way you understand

but in a

"i cant think straight and i don't got a second to spare"

kinda way.

 i ran into the hospital... kinda wondering if at that point the Craig's list guy +1 breathed a sigh of relief to be getting rid of the crazy Scottish lady

(brief intermission whilst my mind wanders off for a second)

"dashing through the ward

like a woman ready to slay,

oer the floor we go

rushing all the way...

(the ha ha ha that's usually inserted here in the original song would possibly be as a result of total hysteria in this case)"

sorry bout that it just popped into my head ..

any way to continue on 

i was expecting some crap about getting in to see my latest victim because i don't have that stupid bit of paper that says I'm legally bound to him...

 (not through his lack of trying to get me to agree to marriage i hasten to add)

but any way i stormed through the doors into the reception area ready to do battle if they attempted to pull the legal next of kin crap on me 

(i had heard many horror story's of that happening to folk over here)

but sigggh of relief they didn't try it, but instead very speedily directed me towards where he was

(not sure if that was down to procedure or whether id just scared the crap out of the poor soul

I'm a damned scary sight when i bristle)

i practically ran through the damned security doors and was speeding through the halls so fast i damn near fell arse over tit... walked past where i should of been going then on out through some other security doors ..

(which of course wouldnt let me back in)

at which point i figured id better take a deep breath and calm myself the fuck down ...

(feel free to strike meditation pose and chant OMMmmm)

so ... lets try this again .. more slowly... and i walked the whole circuit again, picking up some rather odd looks as i do ... this time i actually him

no tubes other than the i.v ... huge sigh of relief that's got to be a good sign right?

neck brace .. kinda worrying

moans of pain... bloody terrifying

seems conscious .. good sign

now fer some damned reason I'm kinda nervous about approaching the bed, not sure why, possibly i was scared of what id be told

after deep breath and bracing myself i get to his bedside .. and I'm not sure who breathed the loudest sigh of relief my latest victim or myself.. he looked damned glad to see me, i felt kinda awful that he'd been going through this on his own it must of been bloody scary as hell for him

 he doesn't do well under stress

holding his hand i get told he has a fractured spine

theres a phrase you don't want to hear

you get immediate flashes of wheel chairs and so forth flying through yer head.

(oddly enough no one mentioned concussion, from the way he sounded as he spoke both when id heard him on the phone and now I'm kinda surprised they didn't mention the possibilities of that)

his face was flickering between agony, and fear and bizarrely enough remorse .. poor sod was as worried about the truck and his job as he was about himself ... i didn't know whether to hug him and try to comfort him or slap the crap out of him and scream fuck the truck and the job its you were got to be concerned about

i reassured him the company knew

(they'd gotten back to me and i had been requested to keep them informed)

and that they had their side of things under control

as you know the rest of story is going to be hours of waiting wondering, paranoia and brief flashes of hope

finally a Dr appeared and gave us a little more info

the scan he'd had before i arrived had shown a compression fracture on the L1 vertebra

his vital signs were good and there appeared to be no other damage...

(huge ass sigh of relief and damn near collapsed with the weight of stress being removed)

they were assessing whether or not to operate ....

what ? huh? back the fuck up... w.t.f operate????

so much for relief

damn

its that bad????

now im willing to conceed that i might of just had unussaly crap experiances with health care here but....

fuck operations here are only done in extreme cases int they? hell iv got tumors popping up like daisys and they wont opperate yet.. and they want to opperate on him?

so now iv got images of his vertebra being so badly fractured its likely to dissintegrate

"were going to admit him mean while"

whoa wait a minute this is America they don't admit they never admit

unless yer like one stage from deaths door... fuck they discharge you from the er here even if they've just had to ram yer innards back into your abdomen ...

hell only reason they kept last hubby admitted in i.c.u fer any length of time was because he developed a bloody infection that could kill him, other wise he'd of been out after a day or so.. heck prior to op he hadn't even been admitted, even though they told us the AAA was a ticking time bomb that could explode any time(the added caveat of .. oh and if it does you have three minuets to get him to the hospital wasn't too fucking reassuring either i can tell ya) 

now they are telling me they want to admit my latest victim shit its got to be bad right????

so now I'm back to being terrified .. course what i didn't realise at the time was him being on workmans comp meant a better standard of care.. i really wish id known that at the time cuz the prospect of him being admitted scared the crap out of me more than the prospect of a possible operation

so hes wheeled up to the neurology ward ,... that's one scary term .. neurology it has a kind of your screwed inflection to it

now i got to admit from here on in i kinda lose track of time and what days what but we were there from around mid day thanksgiving till mid day Sunday..

hes thirsty as hell but on nil by mouth in case they decide to operate...

hes fading in and out thanks to morphine

when hes awake hes in huge amounts of pain and still freaking about the god damned truck and his job ... seriously w.t.f

I'm keeping to myself that I'm not only freaking out about him his health his possible recovery and future mobility .. but I'm also trying to figure out how to get the car back, how the hell to pay the rent, and the rest of the bills .. cuz i know damned well that hell even if by some miracle jobs not lost he sure as hell wont be able to work for months

nurses drs and the neurology guy all drift in and out of the room taking vitals examining him and so forth and a plan is arrived at ... after a certain amount of observation and if they are happy with how hes doing they are swinging towards seeing if he can tolerate a back brace first, if he can then the plan is to let nature do its thing and allow the body to fix its self .. this will take longer but if it works will give a stronger more reliable mend than surgery would, and with less risk.

surgery's not off the table yet, but is looking a little less likely

now they let him drink and allow for the possibility of eating, until they make up their mind for definite .. its evening by now,

they remove the neck brace... pheeeeeeeeeew that thing scared the crap out of me merely by implication.

hes over joyed at prospect of eating .. fucking typical guy

lol though to be fair being that this all happened before sunup and he hadn't eaten since before work the day before i guess we cant blame him there

this is getting rather long again huh and iv got shit to do and a fella to tend to so i guess we will be moving to a part three