Pain and Patience

Things that make me cry: the part in Armageddon where Bruce Willis tells his daughter he’s not coming back (don’t judge me, you know you do it too), the Olympics (2 weeks of straight sobbing), that time I sobbed through “Halley’s Comet” at that Baker’s Dozen Phish show, and yesterday. I’m not usually a crier, because I did a lot of that when I was a kid (and a teen, and in my 20s) and I might have used up my lifetime allowance. I’m more of a “set things on fire” sort of person these days.

But yesterday was bad.

This morning wasn’t looking good, either. When I got up to his room, he was sitting on the bed, just totally out to lunch. He’s still recovering from yesterday’s surgery, obviously, and it was a bit warm in that room so he was sweaty and even more uncomfortable than usual. He’s not as sensitive to light as he has been, but his headache is still pretty bad. This is all to be expected, and so far, none of the doctors or nurses have expressed undue concern about it.

Obviously, he didn’t come home today. The doctors want him to be a bit more steady on his feet, be more compliant with the splint on his nose (he keeps pulling it off) and the one on his hand, and to have his pain come down a few notches. The OT came in and he is able to stand up and walk and he even stepped into and out of the shower but even that small bit of activity left him exhausted and so he called for pain meds and fell asleep. They are telling me “maybe tomorrow, but probably Tuesday” which seems reasonable. They want him to be in good enough shape that he can be entrusted to my half-assed care (with the support of visiting nurses, etc).

I want him home because the chairs available to me at the hospital might possibly be the least comfortable seating surfaces ever designed. And also, he will get far better rest here at home than he does in the hospital, which is an inherently noisy place. Everything beeps, the guy in the other bed in that room snores like a cow with a sinus infection, it’s never truly dark, and there are nurses coming in every now and again to poke and prod and take vitals and generally be cheerfully but therapeutically irritating.

I folded some laundry today, which felt like a huge accomplishment. I can get Jillian to do some things around the house, but only if I leave her incredibly detailed instructions and offer some kind of reward because she’s a teenager and that’s how they operate. Sometimes it’s just easier to let it go for now, which is the way I’ve done my housekeeping for 25 or so years. You’d never know there was something going on because my house always looks like this. It’s nice to not have that stress of worrying what people might think.

The pets are depressed. Well, Piper is. She is Daddy’s dog and since Daddy hasn’t been around for the past week, she is very upset. Ellie is more my dog but I’m not sure she’d notice if I were gone for a week as long as she continued to get fed. Ellie is not super-smart but that’s okay because she’s pretty. Carl is definitely eating his feelings – I had to send a friend out to Petco to get cat food because I forgot to order it on my Chewy order and Carl is hoovering up everything in sight. They’ll all be fine, though. Pets are pretty resilient.

I am doing okay. Like I said yesterday, I come from a long line of women who look at the chaos around them and just get on with it. Life is generally doused with insanity sauce and you can either drown in it or figure out a way to live with it. I am controlling the things I can control and doing the things I can do. Everything else can wait.

I know I owe a TON of people text message updates but I’m so very tired of having my phone in my hand so you will all have to just harness the power of the grapevine and keep each other updated for now. Tomorrow we’ll see what’s happening and if it’s good news, I’ll send all the texts. Until then, talk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic: Gene Hackman was the producers’ first choice to play Mike Brady. How would the world have been different if that had come to pass?

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