Tuesday, August 21, 2007

A Night (and day) in the Life

(begin stress venting session)

If you've ever been in the hospital, you will chuckle to yourself as you read this. Hospital life at its finest. And the poor souls to whom I refer only have the best of intentions at heart. But still.. gotta love hospital life. Julie's hospital visit was very similar. Almost humorous, it is. But it's all for the benefit of Andy. All to make Andy better......

and of course, I'm only discussing the negatives here since it's a stress venting session. there's a lotta positives i'm not even gonna talk about because i'm in the mood to complain, and dammit i deserve it. so does andy, but he can't complain, so i'm taking care of both of us.

So without further adieu, here's why Andy and I are so tired every time you call.

It's 9:00pm. Andy's screaming because he's overly-tired. He hasn't slept in 13 hours. Yep. 13 hours.

He finally fell asleep just in time for the nurse to take his vitals. Like 7 minutes before. No, I'm not exaggerating. I could have asked her to take his vitals earlier, but when he will finally fall asleep is a craps shoot, so no point in making her go out of her way. I can't asker her to hold off, better to rouse him now than let him fall in a deep sleep. So now he's screaming. I can't do anything, and he's slapping bottles away from me when I try to give one to him.

He and I will eventually fall asleep sometime within the next 20 minutes to 2 hours. Again, I'm not exaggerating.

We will both be woken up by the beeping of an IV pump or his alarms (respiration rate, heart rate, etc.) a minimum of 7 times between midnight and 6:00am. No, again, not exaggerating. 7 times at least. I've counted. It will take him just minutes to fall back asleep, about 30 minutes for me. Maybe tonight since we're both exhausted we won't wake up from the beeps. Who am I kidding, we'll wake up.

At 1:00am, he will wake up again when the nurse gets vitals. It will take 30 minutes to an hour to fall asleep again... for him. Even longer for me. Then again, this could be exaggerated, as time stretches and contracts in situations such as this.

At 5:00am, he will wake up again, this time to a lab tech getting blood from a finger prick since his port is irritated. This time he won't go back to sleep until 6:30. 7:00 for me. I asked the nurse to push this off as late in the morning as possible, but got the impression that it will still be early, although maybe not as early as usual.

At this point, the parade begins. Every time one person leaves, another comes in and asks the same questions, only for a different purpose and from different angles. And again, the people asking the questions only have the best intentions at heart, so in no way am I upset with any doctors, nurses, or anyone else who needs to come into the room. I smile, answer their questions, and try to avoid small talk so that Andy and I can squeeze in a power nap before the next line of questioning begins.

At some point the phone, cell phone, and/or pager will start going nuts.

Finally at around 8:00, he and I will both decide it's pointless to try to get anymore sleep, and we're up for the day.

He will once again be unable to take a nap between interruptions and just plain anxiety. And once again he will be awake for 13 hours, and we'll have to repeat it all over again.

Because I am back to work, I will be unable to nap throughout the day because I have a job to do. If I don't do my job, I don't get the insurance to cover this, and we lose the house, vehicles, everything. So I do what I gotta do. Worse yet, I need to be able to maintain the same level of service I provided before this all happened, which puts additional pressure on me and causes even more anxiety, making me even more exhausted and in need of a nap. Not gonna happen, Billy Bob. I still have a job to do, and I take a lot of pride (too much pride sometimes) in my job, so I must maintain my same level of service as always.

This is what it's like to be in the hospital. There's nothing we can really do about it, because it is all for a purpose, but... Yeah, that's life.

I can't wait until our next parole hearing.

Screw parole, I can't wait for our sentence to be over and life to return to normal, tumor-free. I want my life back. So does Andy. Oh my God, so does Andy. Poor little guy. He doesn't deserve to have to go through this. But at least he won't remember it when he's older.

So does Mommy for that matter. She's been wonderful through this. *claps for Mommy*

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to watching The Number 23 now that Andy's asleep. This will be a weird movie to fall asleep to. ;)

nite all.

(end stress venting session)

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