Rollercoaster

I have never been an easy person to be around. There’s a lot happening in here and I’m not always the best at what a normal person would call “having a filter” or “self control.” I am, and probably always will be, a bit of a rollercoaster.

Freddie and I were friends for years before we started dating so he KNEW what he was getting into. He knew! He was FULLY BRIEFED on what life was going to be like with me and he chose to buy the ticket anyway. He’s super-brave. And our life together has not disappointed – for all the high highs, we have had some pretty low lows and everything in between. So for our 20th anniversary this year, we went to Cedar Point for the weekend to ride rollercoasters. Seemed like a fitting way to honor the past two decades of me going “hold my beer, wheeeeeeeee” and him going “oh god, what now.”

We never meant for HIM to take a turn being the problem child! That’s MY JOB, dammit! But here we are. Today was, to belabor the point, a rollercoaster.

I arrived this morning to see him in the chair again, which was awesome. They have also provided him with a cane, which we are definitely going to switch out for something cooler, such as a cane that is also a hidden sword. They took the “hey don’t get up” alarm off the chair, which is helpful because who wants a chair that screams at you when you stand up? No one, that’s who. As usual, he was cheerful and happy to see me.

Raise your hand if you’re shocked that the strawberry-flavored Ensure was NOT as big a hit as he thought it was going to be. No one? Thought so. On we go!

He is REALLY getting antsy about getting out of there, though. Mornings in the hospital are busy with doctors checking in and nurses swinging by and the physical therapist comes and the speech therapist comes and the other this and that and the other thing. He gets tired after all that and has been taking a quick nap after the morning crew is done asking him questions like “what year is it” and “who is this lady sitting on your bed and why is she dressed like a giant toddler?” Today, however, he was determined to stay up and awake in that chair until the doctors came back and [maybe] let him go home.

NO DICE.

Instead, they told him that he needed to stay put until they did the surgery. He suggested they let him go home and he’d come back. After all, I’m sitting right there, fully ready and able to drive him anywhere he needed to go! No can do, they said. Most of the people were very apologetic because they totally understand, but one nurse (who I secretly like a lot) was like “dude, they are not scheduling things at YOUR convenience. If they can’t do your surgery until Tuesday, you’re staying here until then.” I think he wanted to stab that nurse and yeeeeah we could have done without her saying THAT but she had a point.

That was when he decided he was just gonna leave! “That’s it, I’m LEAVING. NOW.”
Me: Oh, you are?
Him: I want to go home. NOW.
Me: I understand, but you can’t.
Him: I will start screaming.
Me: Go ahead and do it. You’ll find yourself on the ward with doors that lock. See how you like that.
Him: [GRUMPY NOISES]

Poor guy.

I really thought he was going to lose his mind when the guy in the next bed was being discharged. It was a prolonged process because apparently his clothes were misplaced and so he couldn’t go anywhere and didn’t have anyone to bring him anything. I thought maybe Our Boy Wonder had stolen the dude’s outfit, but he didn’t. I bet it occurred to him, though. Eventually the guy’s clothes were located and he was whisked away, but that was not a fun part of my afternoon.

He spent the rest of the day trying to micromanage me replacing his glasses. I called our eye doctor, but no answer. Not surprising, it’s a Covid Friday so I’m sure he didn’t bother opening the office if he didn’t have to. So then I called Pearlevision, which is where he actually gets the glasses from (way less $$ than doing it through the eye doctor) to see if they had a copy of his prescription. They did! And that’s awesome! But it would take them 3-4 WEEKS to make a new pair of glasses and that is decidedly NOT awesome. So my current orders are to take the Rx from Pearlevision and drive it over to the Lenscrafters in the mall and see what I can find out about getting a quick and dirty pair of glasses for my insane husband.

BUT WAIT, PLOT TWIST – it turns out, we did in fact find more than just a single lens of his glasses. We have not only the frames, but… WAIT FOR IT… the left lens! It’s scratched all the way to hell and back but the right lens is basically clear and in a stroke of massive good fortune, he is wearing an eye patch over his left eye so something is going my way in this situation, finally!! I am slightly more excited about this development than I normally would be but right now we are taking our celebrations where we can get them.

Right around dinnertime (mmmm strained soup), the surgeon rolled back in and said “tomorrow afternoon, my friend!” HOORAY, FINALLY, JEEZ. His mood did a complete about-face, which was helpful because it was going toward a pretty dark place for about an hour there. I had to use “Kathy Bates” as a verb, which… if you know, you can tell how bad it was getting.

As a reward for not stabbing a nurse or screaming, I let him talk to a few people on the phone. I think that helped a lot, just to talk to other people WHO ARE NOT ME for a few minutes. He settled down a lot and seemed to accept the fact that he has two more nights in the joint before we can spring him. As I left, I said “Shawshank is not a how-to video. Stay put. Also, you can’t eat anything after midnight so get a move on with that soup there, bud.”

Tomorrow they will put my husband’s face back together so he doesn’t end up looking like Sloth from the Goonies, even though I am doing my level best to look like Chunk. And they loved each other, right?