Monday night, August 7
"(She don’t try to hide it) / People say she's crazy. She got diamonds on the soles of her shoes. Well that’s one way to lose these walking blues: diamonds on the soles of her shoes. She was physically forgotten then she slipped into my pocket with my car keys. She said you've taken me for granted, because I please you wearing these diamonds..." -- Paul Simon
The things we all take for granted. They give mom sponge baths, but whether they wash her feet or not, it seems as though she’s been wearing the same pair of skid proof periwinkle sock/booties with blue diamonds on since last week. Probably another $5 added onto the room service bill, as it were, but she's got a new pair and the others will be washed out.
Another routine right of ours is swallowing. Still on the ice chips. she may be able to swallow water again in a few days. But one tube out, several more to go. One taped and retaped and retaped has been taken out of her nose. She still has one nostril nuisance for oxygen support but not one draining ... one odd looking fluid or another.
She thinks by now she's seen the head of every department. Of course. By now they all know how special you are. (And please don't sue us for negligence/malpractice.)
One day mom's tall dark and handsome caretaker has a name tag that says "James," the next it says he's "Eddie." Same guy. It sees after a few months working shifts there he reveals to his coworkers that they've been calling him the wrong name all along. James it is. [I appreciate the charm of this. Whenever I see a stack of "HELLO, MY NAME IS" adhesive name tags, want to (and occasionally do) write "Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die."] I do ask his other nurse for the night, (who says "He'll always be 'Eddie' to me") which of "James" or "Eddie" is the evil twin. She laughs as we both watch "Days of our Lives."
She gets a kick out of the fact that there's one doctor on the show who specializes in everything from triage to fertility and DNA to pediatric organ transplants. (Dr. Lexie is a former cop, who studied for, though may not have ever spent a day at med school.) My soap habit stretches back to my own time in the hospital with a ruptured appendix (Friday the 13th September 1985). Distracting me from my own pain were "Jeopardy!" in the afternoons, new episodes of "Fame" on the weekend, "The Wuzzles" cartoon (I did get mom to buy me the hybrid EleRoo stuffed toy a purple and orange striped half elephant/half kangaroo the morning I saw it) Rock Hudson is rapidly dying of AIDS on the newscasts (Oh God, did I have a blood transfusion?), and hey who's that guy in the pirate eyepatch stalking the blonde woman... 21 years later, "Days of our Lives" still gives me something to talk about with women.
Mom's new roommate just got married on Saturday. The scruffy looking groom wanders in to see his betrothed in bed #2. As he asks "hey, you got a snack yet?," I'm really hoping he's the groom. I flash back to the times we'd visit my bipolar Korean War vet uncle at Veterans Administration hospital at Fort Meade outside Sturgis. Disheveled men in a variety of official gowns and moth-eaten bathrobes would roam the halls bumming cigarettes or coffee machine funds or hitting on visitors and/or their wives and daughters with material from Bob Hope specials. Even before VCRs or DVD players, somehow M*A*S*H was always playing on a 9 inch black and white screen in every common room. The happy (well, in theory) couple is here on the same hospital floor because of the Sturgis motorcycle rally and a motorcycle collision.
We're told that once mom does head home (which we really aren't prepared for yet with moving of furniture or packing away clothing) she'll be on a colostomy bag for six months. Mom asks, "Won't be fun helping me change all these dressings and emptying colostomy bags?" "That’s why she has a loving husband," I respond. But not a loving son," counters dad."Get the older loving son to do all this first," I dare. "He lives farther away from her than you do." Yeah, why do you suppose that is?"
On the way out of the hospital, I notice the worn sign in the elevator that tells us that in the rare emergency situation that we are trapped inside, "PLEASE BE PATIENT." That's the direct opposite of our plan at the moment.
"(She don’t try to hide it) / People say she's crazy. She got diamonds on the soles of her shoes. Well that’s one way to lose these walking blues: diamonds on the soles of her shoes. She was physically forgotten then she slipped into my pocket with my car keys. She said you've taken me for granted, because I please you wearing these diamonds..." -- Paul Simon
The things we all take for granted. They give mom sponge baths, but whether they wash her feet or not, it seems as though she’s been wearing the same pair of skid proof periwinkle sock/booties with blue diamonds on since last week. Probably another $5 added onto the room service bill, as it were, but she's got a new pair and the others will be washed out.
Another routine right of ours is swallowing. Still on the ice chips. she may be able to swallow water again in a few days. But one tube out, several more to go. One taped and retaped and retaped has been taken out of her nose. She still has one nostril nuisance for oxygen support but not one draining ... one odd looking fluid or another.
She thinks by now she's seen the head of every department. Of course. By now they all know how special you are. (And please don't sue us for negligence/malpractice.)
One day mom's tall dark and handsome caretaker has a name tag that says "James," the next it says he's "Eddie." Same guy. It sees after a few months working shifts there he reveals to his coworkers that they've been calling him the wrong name all along. James it is. [I appreciate the charm of this. Whenever I see a stack of "HELLO, MY NAME IS" adhesive name tags, want to (and occasionally do) write "Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die."] I do ask his other nurse for the night, (who says "He'll always be 'Eddie' to me") which of "James" or "Eddie" is the evil twin. She laughs as we both watch "Days of our Lives."
She gets a kick out of the fact that there's one doctor on the show who specializes in everything from triage to fertility and DNA to pediatric organ transplants. (Dr. Lexie is a former cop, who studied for, though may not have ever spent a day at med school.) My soap habit stretches back to my own time in the hospital with a ruptured appendix (Friday the 13th September 1985). Distracting me from my own pain were "Jeopardy!" in the afternoons, new episodes of "Fame" on the weekend, "The Wuzzles" cartoon (I did get mom to buy me the hybrid EleRoo stuffed toy a purple and orange striped half elephant/half kangaroo the morning I saw it) Rock Hudson is rapidly dying of AIDS on the newscasts (Oh God, did I have a blood transfusion?), and hey who's that guy in the pirate eyepatch stalking the blonde woman... 21 years later, "Days of our Lives" still gives me something to talk about with women.
Mom's new roommate just got married on Saturday. The scruffy looking groom wanders in to see his betrothed in bed #2. As he asks "hey, you got a snack yet?," I'm really hoping he's the groom. I flash back to the times we'd visit my bipolar Korean War vet uncle at Veterans Administration hospital at Fort Meade outside Sturgis. Disheveled men in a variety of official gowns and moth-eaten bathrobes would roam the halls bumming cigarettes or coffee machine funds or hitting on visitors and/or their wives and daughters with material from Bob Hope specials. Even before VCRs or DVD players, somehow M*A*S*H was always playing on a 9 inch black and white screen in every common room. The happy (well, in theory) couple is here on the same hospital floor because of the Sturgis motorcycle rally and a motorcycle collision.
We're told that once mom does head home (which we really aren't prepared for yet with moving of furniture or packing away clothing) she'll be on a colostomy bag for six months. Mom asks, "Won't be fun helping me change all these dressings and emptying colostomy bags?" "That’s why she has a loving husband," I respond. But not a loving son," counters dad."Get the older loving son to do all this first," I dare. "He lives farther away from her than you do." Yeah, why do you suppose that is?"
On the way out of the hospital, I notice the worn sign in the elevator that tells us that in the rare emergency situation that we are trapped inside, "PLEASE BE PATIENT." That's the direct opposite of our plan at the moment.
posted by Thomas @ 3:55 PM
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