I impose a Monday deadline on myself because when I was younger, I never did my homework on time. I spent a great many afternoons in 6th grade sitting in detention and finishing my science labs. It only got worse as I got older. It wasn’t until my fateful year at college that I learned to work with deadlines, and I try to impose them on myself to keep my life in order. I am a procrastinator from way back, and it’s difficult to change one’s stripes, so I am always trying. Thus, I imposed a deadline for my blog. Every Monday, I will post something, whether profound or not, just something so I can hold myself accountable. However, deadlines are made to be broken.
I have written this before. I have also written the same excuse for this broken deadline, because it is always the same excuse…it is difficult to write with an IV in one’s arm, or as the case was Monday, one’s foot.
I don’t like to write about getting sick because I have a lot of emotions attached to it, mostly anger and rage. Mostly failure. Like, I know I did nothing to end up in the hospital on Monday morning. I took my pills. I followed my diet. And yet my stomach rebelled, as it is wont to do, and landed me back at good old Mercy hospital.
First, there’s the waiting room, which has at best lasted thirty seconds and at worst lasted eight hours. We were somewhere in the middle on this one. Then there’s triage, where they try to find a vein, fail miserably, give up and put me in a room. They send another nurse, the “vein whisperer,” if you will, and she pulls out all the stops. Still, nothing, and they go to the foot. Finally, they’re taking blood. Finally, I can get some meds. Compazine and Zofran and Ativan and Morphine…and then there is sleep.
I wake up and they tell me I can’t leave, my blood sugar is too high, because of course diabetes wants to come out and play, too. They will keep me overnight for observation, which sounds simple but means I probably won’t be out until at least supper time. I wake up in the night in pain, more morphine; I wake up nauseated, more Zofran. Someone brings a breakfast I don’t touch. Someone takes my blood. Someone else brings fresh water, and that tastes remarkable. My blood sugar is normal again, and if I eat, they’ll take out my IV. I do as I’m told between sleeps.
Eventually a doctor comes around the same time as my lunch tray and tells me I can go home if I eat soup a little soupier than that they just gave me. I wait longer for food. I eat, I don’t throw up, so I call my nurse and tell her I want to go home. I wait. Three hours later, she takes the IV out of my foot, tests my blood sugar, and sends me on my way.
This is a short visit. This isn’t the nine days I spent in June, and it doesn’t feel like October when I went back three times in a week. This is just one day that throws me off by a century. I wake up this morning with pain in my stomach and a faulty gag reflex and run to the bathroom, terrified that we will be going back for round two. I take my meds and pray they stay down. I eat a cracker. I wait. Eventually the pain subsides and I don’t feel the urge to puke, so I eat another cracker. I wait.
There’s a lot of waiting.
Now, I sit at my desk which is downright buried under stuff, because of course the house looks like four child-sized tornados went through it. Cleanup is also the thing I do on Mondays, right after posting my blog, and it is the thing I will be doing this Wednesday, despite my body being tired from retching and my brain foggy from medications. I have to do it though, because I need that normalcy in my life. I need that to hold onto when I lose a day, or three, to a broken gut.
Ham 'N Eggs 