Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving.
D had surgery on Tuesday, so we had already planned to reschedule our Thanksgiving for sometime next week. Surgery went well. He was sick for a bit afterwords and wasn't released until today. Last I talked to him, he was getting ready to be discharged. That was several hours ago, so I assume he is home now. I'll call him in a bit and get the report.
This is the pump that they replaced. It is a Medtronic infusion pump. It is kind of like having an IV on board in your body. In his case, it delivers a medication called Baclofen, which helps control spasticity. Since his spinal cord injury is incomplete, it means that his brain does get messages from his body, they are just the wrong messages. It is kind of weird. He can think about moving his toe and his toe won't move but he says it feels all tingly. When things touch his legs and stuff, sometimes his brain will get the message that it is dangerous, like when you touch something hot and your hand automatically spasms and springs back. So, he is having these spasms all the time for no real reason. It is uncomfortable and annoying, so thus the Baclofen. This new pump will only have to be filled every three months rather than every month, so that is a good thing. To refill it, it is a big rigmarole where he has to call ahead to order the meds and go to the doctor and they have to stick a needle in and empty all the meds that are left and refill it. It's just one more thing that has to be done, so it will be nice to have to do it less often.
So that went okay, but it complicated the matters yet to come. On Monday night, I was just getting ready to get the kids to bed and I scooped up Aaron while he had all his accoutrement's that he needs for bed in his hands. (Trucks, trains, blankets, etc. Aaron travels with many, many necessities.) He was in a good mood and didn't do this on purpose, in fact, I can't quite tell you what he did exactly, but in his usual squirminess he smacked me in the face with something. In the eye to be exact. In the right eye, the only eye I have that's still barely worth a shit. I remember dropping him and falling to the ground. Very. Bad. Pain. Indeed.
I was hoping it would fade in a few minutes, but it didn't. I couldn't see anything and I immediately got some lubricating drops and flushed my eye out. After a million surgeries, my eyes don't tear up right anymore and are a breeding ground for infection. And who knows where Aaron's slimy little hand had been, you know?
I spent 20 minutes trying to recover, no dice. I finally put the kids in bed. Very angrily as a matter of fact, but they weren't cooperating and I NEEDED them to cooperate. So, that wasn't a proud parenting moment.
Every few years it seems like I get some sort of abrasion on my eye. I don't know why it happens to me so often when it seems to happen to other people, like, never--but maybe it is because I am no good at ducking? I don't know. But anyway, I knew the drill. So, and don't get on my ass about this--I'm a professional, damn it--I remembered that our cat Scrapper had a scrip for an NSAID eye drop and an antibiotic ointment for eyes before she died. It was terramycin, which is a little more for rickets and shigella than the macrobiotic I really needed, but I figured it couldn't hurt. I med up my eye, and fashion an eye patch out of Kleenex and an old cataract eye shield I had. And took about oh, 6 Tylenol PMs and went to bed. Thinking, this will be better in the morning.
Nope. I wake up in horrible pain at around 4:30am. It is so bad I can't hardly breathe and my hands are shaking. I Know that D has to be at the hospital for his surgery at 5:30am. I briefly consider tagging along and going to emergency, but I know that it will just stress everyone out. So I rule that out. Then, my next idea is to get the kids and take the train down to a nearby smaller hospital emergency. That emergency room is quick quick quick as far as emergency rooms go in this town, (heh, I know them all), and easy to get to. Its only two blocks from the train station. But I have two concerns. First, my insurance could decide not to pay if they determine that I had a nonemergency. Second, even though I could see nothing, the two blocks and the train worried me. It wasn't the not seeing so much as the fact that I was in that amount of pain where you are just so easily distracted. My "Samurai Awareness" was gone. I didn't feel like I could manage the kids and dealing with strangers in this amount of pain. It also seemed like one of those things that if I did it, everyone was going to think I was weird and get on my ass about it.
So, I waited, and waited and waited until 8 am. I was going to call someone and see if they could take me to an urgent care or watch the kids while I went or something. Next systems failure. My computer. Something was wrong with it. It wasn't working or talking to me or nothing. It was an easy fix later on, but at that time, I couldn't figure it out. Too distracted, no vision at all and no ability to problem solve. So all my phone numbers, gone. I can't see a phone book and usually have trouble with directory assistance.
So I wrung my hands for an hour and agonized over my hatred of calling people for help. Finally, I looked through some Braille numbers that I had made three years ago when I was blind and had no computer after the kids were born. I found someone from church that I really don't know that well, but she has always been very nice and she gave me her number back then "if I ever needed anything." So, I called her at 8. She answered but she didn't have a car available and a good hour and probably a bunch of phone calls from her later, I had a ride from my wonderful RE who was at the church at work that day. Actually, she came to my house and we drove my dad's car. Car seats and all that.
So, that is my long story about how I asked for help. Which I still hate. You know one thing I hate? When you call someone asking for help, trying to be cool about it and not just bawl on the phone and freak them out, and they can't help you so they go through 100 options that you've already thought of. I mean, I'm not saying I'm mad at them, but it is just like, okay, for me to be calling you, who I barely know?...I've already thought of a neighbor, a family member, a friend, D, calling the pharmacy for scrips, the lift van, etc. I'm calling you out of wits end sheer desperation and I can't explain why I can't just call Casey Eye Institute and get one of my 55 doctors to give me a scrip. If I call there and even tell them I'm blinking funny they will haul me in and run 25 day-long tests on me. I was trying to not have to go ALL THE WAY downtown, but yet still see an ophthalmologist so I wasn't completely negligent. Compromise with me here. But okay. She meant well. My point is, asking for help is hard and it sucks.
But Sara, the woman who ended up helping me, was totally lovely and let me direct the goings on and was very wonderful with the boys and had no problem driving my dad's car and is just an all around wonderful person that really, consciously puts the UU principles into action better than pretty much anyone else I know. She drove me to an urgent care, they shipped me to an ophthalmologist in the same building, I got an anesthetic (Oh, thank all the gods, finally), and he gave me a better broad spectrum antibiotic and packed up my eye like only an eye doctor can and I was outta there in under two hours. Sara and the boys waited in the lobby area where they could watch bulldozers at a construction site and so that was just neato mosquito for them. So, it worked out.
Then when I came home, I did something I don't think I've really done since before I was pregnant. I slept and slept and slept. It was like my body shut down and spent all its energy on healing my eye. I didn't take any pain scrips specifically so I wouldn't sleep and so I could still take care of the kids. But my body decided for me. I have been sleeping for almost three days now. the pain was still bad and the only way to deal with it was to turn all the lights off and sit quietly and not move my eyes at all. My right eye was patched shut so I couldn't open it, but even moving my left eye around made my right eye move and that killed. I put on just enough lights for the kids to barely be able to see, and we spent three days with me being totally blind and them pretty much as well.
I cannot even count the number of TV hours my kids took in. TV saved us, I'll say it. I love TV. At least when I'm sick. I would get up, get them dressed and fed, get a pillow and blanket and lay on the couch while they watched TV. They watched Noggin from around 9 to 12, and then I would get up and feed them and stuff. Then more Noggin from 1-3, then I would get up and give them a snack and turn Noggin (which changes to the "N" at 3, a teenage channel) to PBS. Then let them watch kids shows on PBS from 3 to 5:30. No nap because they weren't tired. Then get up and feed them, play with them for an hour, put on a DVD and bed at 7 or 8. Then I went to bed. And this actually worked! They were SOOO good! I was amazed. They knew dad was in the hospital (or hopisal, as Naim says) and that mama had an owie on her eye and a BIG BANDAID on it. And they cooperated. No messes, no fighting, they would play while they watched TV. Sometimes they would come over and lay with me and snuggle while they watched TV. It was so helpful, yet kinda scary!
I did go feed the cat and D's house. But even there, when I got there, I slept while they played, and then we came back home. D's dad was nice enough to go and get me the rest of my antibiotics so that saved me a trip up there and gave me more time to sleep. (oh, the Dx was two big, huge abrasions on my eye...just as I expected.) And that way I didn't have to smile politely with my big, pathetic eye patch on when Naim told strangers (like I knew he would), that "mama's got an owie on her eye and daddy's in the hopisal having surgety.") Love those conversations. Those always lead to my fear of DCS being called on us.
My eye feels about 75 percent better today. I still haven't gotten my vision back yet. I have some of it, I'm not walking around with the lights off anymore completely blind, but it still isn't as good as it was. I'd give it a couple of more days, but by then if it doesn't improve, I will probably have to adjust to it being this way permanently. Whenever I lose vision, I just adjust in silence. No one ever seems to get that it is still hard and a big adjustment when I lose vision or hearing. I think they think I'm too far gone so what is a little more? It was kind of the same way when D lost his foot. No one seemed to really get that he would have to relearn how to transfer and balance and how to do different things again. It was just, oh, he doesn't need it. So, if my vision doesn't improve in the next couple of days, I will be going through my usual adjustments and adaptations privately and no one else will notice. Its probably for the best. If they did notice, they'd probably just think there is even more stuff I couldn't do.
I was going to invite my friend J over for a non-Thanksgiving something or other today. A meal that isn't turkey or something. But that didn't happen. And now I have 60, yes 60 emails to go through. So, if you sent me something, I'll get to it eventually.
Despite all this unpleasantness, I'm very thankful for many, many things. That D and I are still reasonably healthy and that he made it through the surgery OK. That I had friends who were willing to help when I needed them and that I found the good sense to call them. That I had my dad's car and that we didn't crash it or anything. That my eye wasn't worse and didn't need some kind of major hospitalization or something. That my kids were WONDERFUL, absolutely WONDERFUL the last few days and they have enough intuition to know when they need to be caring and step up and be a little better behaved. That next week sometime, we will all sit down as a family and have turkey and apple pie and all the other yum yums. And that vision or even less vision, I have the resourcefulness and the skills to get our family together and care for them and make a big meal and eat it and all that good stuff.
Sounds like more adventures at once than anyone needed. I hope your eye recovers completely! Very cool that the boys were so good when you needed them to be. I have painful memories of having stomach flu when my kids were little and my husband was out of town and that sounds much simpler than the situation you faced here. Wish I wasn't on the other side of the country.
Posted by: leslie | November 23, 2007 at 06:30 AM
Oh, Lisa! So sorry about your eye. I'm glad that the boys have been good for you and let you rest.
Good that D's surgery went well.
May your postponed Thankgiving celebration be systems-failure -free.
Oh, and good work asking for help. I'm terrible at it, too.
Posted by: snickollet | November 23, 2007 at 05:32 PM
I'm praying for full recovery of your eye, and a wonderful Thanksgiving for your family. You are just an amazing person. It makes sense that the boys would behave so well while you were down -- they have your gift of adapting to difficult circumstances!
Posted by: Meredith | November 23, 2007 at 07:07 PM
Oh, wow - you have a wonderful attitude about dealing with all that. I'm sorry you had to go through it, though. Give those good boys a kiss for me - and tell them to send some good boy vibes my direction, please. I'll be thinking about you and D as you recover.
Posted by: Emmie (Better Make It A Double) | November 23, 2007 at 09:41 PM
Even a little further loss of vision makes a big difference. People seem to act the same way toward me when I tell them that my vision is getting worse.
That really sucks for you.
I am glad your kids were good to you
It seems like kids know when they need to stop causeing trouble
When I get upset my son always comes over to me and says “hug” as to say mom you are upset give me a hug and it will be all better.
Posted by: Angela | November 24, 2007 at 08:37 PM
Lisa, I'm so sorry that happened. I'm sorry you have to balance all that stuff when considering whether to go to the hospital. I have to say though, you are amazing. I lose some of my critical thinking skills when I'm scared and in pain, and it sounds like you did really well. I mean, I know you have to, but it's still admirable. I hope your vision comes back, you have enough to deal with without compensating for a new loss.
Posted by: cherylc | November 25, 2007 at 08:49 AM