Monday Memories # 14 (My Marriage By Rebound)

Thank-you all so kindly for welcoming me back, also being patient and understanding. I'm realizing that before I moved I was getting myself frazzled by fretting too much on all the wrong subjects. It's like I always do, try and cram all the knowledge into my brain until it explodes! Now I'm a lot calmer and plan on just getting my posts out there, whatever happens, will just have to happen at its own pace.

I was now six days overdue from my due date. My mother took matters into her own hands taking me for a very bumpy ride in our Volkswagon which I laughed the whole time. 

Later on, after she dropped me off at home I felt that first cramp go searing through my body. My water didn't break instead my mucus plug came out,(sorry to gross you out) so I called my mom telling her it was 'that time.' When my mother arrived I had taken a shower and she was like, "You could have had that baby in the shower" which I replied but I didn't and off we sped to the hospital.

It was important to me to have my baby natural, no drugs. Eighteen hours later I was exhausted, my husband couldn't take the pain I was in and had left the birthing room, I had dilated to a four and stayed there. You're supposed to dilate to  a ten. The last thing I heard was my doctor saying she needs a C-section.

I was woken by my nurse telling me I had a baby girl to which I replied, "No I didn't" I was so groggy until my brand new baby girl was laid on my chest. My love for this tiny being totally consumed me as I gazed into her little face. I was a mother.

Little did I know I would only have four years with her. 

I'm going to end with that for my heart hurts a lot at the moment. I will pick up the story next Monday. Until then stay safe where ever you are.

Just when we thought it was over...

We got back from the Dartmouth hospital last nite. In another 45 mins. husband's nurse will be here. I had to check the day...yup it IS Saturday. No rest for the helpful people aka nurses.

This hospital is so huge it would put some of those big malls out in California to shame. I heard that the floors used to have colored arrows taking you where you had to go, but I guess everyone was looking down and kept bumping into each other. That's why bars have their arrows going towards the bathrooms on the walls.

We all get there for you know this is a "family excursion" (we are getting out of town yeah) and I find myself following our nurse for we share everything to the prep room. I have had oh around 2 hours of sleep because lately I've been keeping vampire time so my morning was pretty much on autopilot.

When the nurse asked if we needed anything I tried for a hammock but settled for the warmed up blanket instead clutching my long sparkly pillow I dragged with me. Now we are watching for the woman who does Reiki. She comes every Friday and sure enough she goes by. Then she comes back and is as delighted to see us as we are to see her.

She dims the lights and begins her magic. When the nurse gets back in the room husband's IV goes right in the "first" time. Husband has Superman skin so more often then not its poke, poke, poke while his veins play hide and seek.

For some reason, I'm more alert but not by much. This was the 2nd day of my on again off again insomnia. Finally after around 2 hours he's finally wheeled in for his much-anticipated skin graft we all have been looking forward too.

Meanwhile, it's dinner time so my mother in law and I make our way (where's an arrow when you need one?) to where they sell food and a much-needed coffee. On the way back the timer goes off that lets you know the patient is done and continues to beep, beep, beep. We are only halfway back (no arrows to follow damn it) not to mention a lack of sleep and a full belly was making me looking around for that hammock, I threaten to throw that "hockey putt" out the window. As I'm setting down the two coffee's I was carrying my mother-in-law has already fished said beeping "hockey putt" and wisely turned it off.

We get up to the waiting room and find out that the much-anticipated skin graft we all have been looking forward too was a bust. He has a 6-inch canal-woven underneath his skin that was and is very infected. So now as I type a nurse is packing the area and if all goes well after the 29th when he sees his surgeon we'll get to do this all over again. 

Toast and Ancient Aliens

After 5 days, I have a husband home again. This is a hospital's idea of going home the following day...

So the patient knows what to bring and the family knows what's going to happen as far as bringing patient home.

Patient- Do you know how long I will be here?
Doctor- If all goes well and I don't see any problem here, the next day.
Wife- Oh good, I won't pack anything extra for him, just clothes.
Family- Its only a 1 and a half hour drive, no problem. We will be here.
Doctor- Comes out after surgery and tells family all went well, the family is relieved, wife grabs packed the bag, after all, the patient won't need it says the nurse. (At this point family had to leave and the patient is still in recovery). Wife is sad.

5 days later husband is finally well enough to come home with a home nurse coming 3 times a week for a couple of weeks. Then he gets to go back for the grafting and do this all over again.

But the surgery went well. They removed the boils from his hidradenitis around his groin area and he has a vacuum-pack attached sucking out all the poisons and is extremely uncomfortable.

A very nice male nurse is here as we speak working on him now. My husband is mostly a champ about all this, but it does catch up with him. I try and help the best I can making him toast for breakfast and found his favorite show on Netflix called Ancient Aliens.

HiHo HiHo Its off to the hospital I go...

Tomorrow is a long-awaited day of surgery. Hidradenitis is a god awful disease which my husband has suffered from for many years.

He has already has had more surgeries than we care to remember to which the infected area will be cut out.

So here we go again with the "no food after midnight" which normally who eats after midnight but not being able to makes you hungry. So 15 minutes to midnight you eat a huge meal...weird but true.

Then the "nothing but clear fluids" and we already have a can of concentrated apple juice thawing on the counter. That's when out of nowhere you want anything but clear liquids.

The "no smoking" rule which he can crow excitingly haha already quit six months now. That's one rule out of the way.

There's the "no aspirin" which in my husband's case he takes one a day to avoid a heart attack so we stay quite calm for 2 weeks. Yoga anyone?

"No coffee" the morning of surgery which I personally hate and I myself was actually sent home  once because I had drunk some coffee the morning of my own surgery without thinking. Had to do the prep all over again which sucked.

And we all know that after we wake up from surgery and are given ice chips and we all know how good those ice chips are, we are starving and want food and hopefully we get anything but jello.

I wish he didn't have to go through all this and I'm not looking forward to spending the day at the hospital but its my wifely duty and I will be right there by his side when he wakes up.

Happy August

The month ending of summer. Wet, sticky, humid heat. Thunderclouds & thunderstorms. For me, my first grandchild due September. And...

School shopping.

Parents and little children clogging up Walmart's aisles. I have been the shoppe, the shopper, and the clerk during Back to School days of sales and its safe to say...

I'm so glad to be on the outside looking in.

It was fun while it lasted having the print out of school supplies you got from somewhere...and checking off each item getting closer and closer to the end.

The kids were older now and in higher grades not needing mummy around as much. Sad days for me ~aw~ So I decided on another type of volunteering and applied at the Goodall Hospital.

They gratefully accepted me and put me in the E.R. Needless to say I was never bored and found I could look up anyone I knew through their filing system.

So I ran the E.R. desk, helped with patients and their paperwork. I ran blood samples up to the blood lab. I once was in the elevator leaving the blood lab and this poor elderly man got in. He was so sad. Found out his wife had died so I consoled him a little.

I'm glad he was put in my path.

If you are working near lunch hour, you can have a free lunch which I just loved being an advocate for all things free. The salads were delicious.

I worked at the Goodall for the months of summer. Going home, I would find a flower on my dashboard of my car.

I had a suitor...

Come to find out my suitor was my co-worker's/friend's ex-boyfriend complete with all the horror stories someone tells you after a fresh break-up so I had my danger red flags all lined up in a little row.

We stayed friends...all three of us.

http://www.volunteermatch.org/volunteers/

Spinal Meningitis #FixThePlus *

I just got done reading that my new blogger friend, Salty Bug is in the hospital. I was instantly alert thinking to myself, I just met this woman. Oh no! Her story reminded me of my story of a long stay in the hospital and separation for the very first time with my kids. I had contracted spinal meningitis. Here is my story.

I had moved around the corner to another apartment being convinced that moving there would be this life-changing miracle by the women living there. Life changing yes, miracle, also yes, that I was alive that is. 
It must have been summer since I had both my kids and they were both little. 

Ariel was four and Tysen was eight. They were running around the apartment playing while I was laying on my couch feeling tired. Out of the blue came this stabbing pain in my spine causing me to arch my back. What the heck was that I thought to myself as the pain ebbed and stopped. 

Now I was fortunate that I had friends who would stop by to say hello or whatever and one woman I had met at the local food kitchen knocked on the door to which I hollered come in! 

The pain in my back was acting like labor pains by now so I asked her if she 

could get me some extra strength Tylenol. She said sure so I gave her some money and off she went. By now the pain was traveling up my spine. It felt like a spear was stabbing me in my back so when she got back, I quickly gulped down three pills hollering as another pain shot through my spine. 

By now I was wearing out and had no other thoughts in my head except how to stop this pain so my friend asked if I wanted  my daughter's father to stop in to check on me, to which I whispered if he wants to and headed for my bedroom to lay down telling the kids to play until mommy gets better.

As I lay down this horrible migraine starts up, I'm holding my head and my friend Mike comes in, looks at me and asks are you okay to which I replied yeah like a dummy. So he left saying he would be back later.
I lay back down, roll on my side and promptly power puke over the side of the bed. Then everything went black...

Three days later I woke up. I had been in a coma. That was the weirdest feeling I had ever had the loss of time. Not knowing exactly why I started pulling out all the tubes that were stuck into me hollering where the hell my kids were and ended up being tied down by the nurses so I wouldn't hurt myself.

Finally, I calm down and remember as I was coming to it had felt like I was in a soft glow light bulb with sparks everywhere and coming back to consciousness was like bursting up out of the water.

Ten days I was in that hospital. St. Marys Hospital in Maine saved my life. Ten days of missing my children desperately and knowing how frightened my little daughter was and every day we would talk on the phone I would hang up crying. Tysen had gone with his father so Ariel was left with a friend that I trusted, but she missed me. 

I think that was the hardest time of my life, staying in that hospital for as long as I did. But we all survived. I survived only I ended up with long and short term memory loss which I had no idea until I was sent to Dartmouth Hospital in New Hampshire.

All in all, we were all reunited and never again have I had to go so long in a hospital again.

Have you ever shared something traumatic in your life to help another?