Deep breaths.
Freddie looked much better yesterday. The swelling is going down and the blood (there was so much blood) has stopped welling up. Things are turning red and black and purple in anticipation of further healing when things turn green and yellow and brown. Homeboy is a one-man Pride parade float.
He is starting to retain information a bit better, so he knows where he is and kind of how he got there. He’s starting to FEEL EVERYTHING which is not a pleasant sensation, and they took him off the super-high-powered opiates so all he gets now is Big Tylenol for the pain. This is a good thing, overall, because the last thing we need to get out of this is an addict, meaning I will have to figure out where to score. Oh wait – Jill starts high school today, I can probably just ask her. I’ve heard rumors about that place. This is the suburbs, after all.
Freddie wasn’t interested in eating when I was there with him which is understandable given the pain he’s in. Maybe today will be better on that front. He did say he wanted to stand up but we all chuckled at him and said “how about trying to sit up first?” So we did that and it didn’t go well. Again, maybe today will be better. The last thing we need is for him to walk around with his ass hanging out of the hospital gown and maybe take a fall and land on the other side of his face. Oooh, but maybe I could request the “Jude Law” package from the surgeon. Let me check on that.
My hope is that today we will get some news about a timeframe for surgery. If they can do it sooner rather than later, that would be best for EVERYONE, but it depends on his condition. They told me yesterday that there is a possibility that he might be able to come home sometime this week and then go back for surgery later, but I’m not sure I want the responsibility of caring for a dude with half a liquid face, especially when he is not very good at being taken care of. This is a Man Cold writ large.
But we’ll do whatever the doctors think is appropriate. I suppose once he can get up and walk around and do bathroom stuff unassisted, he’ll be closer to coming home and then we’ll see. I know he’ll be more comfortable here, surrounded by all his stuff and his dogs and without things beeping all fucking day.
The concussion is something that concerns me and I’m not going to go down an internet rabbit hole reading about it because I don’t want to know any more than I already know right now. He has a pretty severe headache and is sensitive to light, which is why we moved him to a room with a slightly smaller window yesterday. Hospital rooms (the surgical ICU, at least) don’t have window blinds? Seems odd to me but also makes sense. He’s a bit close to the part of the building where the helicopters land, which is noisy but there isn’t anything we can do about that. One landed while I was there and I said “hey, your ride’s here!” and he didn’t get it because he just doesn’t remember yet. My hope is that he won’t remember the crash or the immediate aftermath because I will and that’s already too much.
I hope the long-term effects of this are minimal. I think they will be, once we get all his pieces stuck back together. He’ll probably need some physical therapy after having been laid up for awhile, and he will definitely need speech therapy once his jaw is reattached to the rest of his head. I wonder if I can slip the speech therapist a fiver and get them to make him NOT SHOUT ON THE PHONE. We’d miss Shouty Man, but… we wouldn’t miss Shouty Man, you know? That’s how loud he is.
But… we’ll see. That’s all I really have right now. I know he’s in the best possible place and he has good doctors and nurses taking care of him but so much of this is “well, we’ll see.” So we wait.