Wake Me Up Inside

This is a standing joke with my husband and I.

Our bedroom is right off the family room and my husband likes to come home from work and watch TV while laying on the bed.

As we have different interests in what we watch (me: British comedy, hubby: anything but), this is not an issue.

It has, however, given rise to one problem.

Hubby wants to be waited on.

Drives me nuts. “GET IT YOURSELF” is repeated so many times in my house I think my youngest daughter thought it was her dad’s name for years.

Now mind you, this is prior to his illness.

One day, as a joke, he asked me to bring home a urinal from the hosptial so that he would never have to leave his bed for anything.

He’s lucky I was just holding a pillow or he would have had a subdural hematoma that would have made a neurosurgeon quake.

But….now he actually has one.

A urinal, not a subdural hematoma.

He doesn’t use it, of course.

But I did offer to have it bronzed.

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Under stress, things become surrealistic.

Cholecystitis doesn’t not, as a rule throw me for a loop.

The diabetes diagnosis did.

I was so stunned by the sight of my husband in a hospital gown, either in pain or sedated, at first I was unable to feel anything as I waited. And waited. And waited.

Then came the dread. That heavy, sinking feeling that shoves your spinal cord against your chair and make every breath an effort. Worst-case scenario thinking. How long has he been diabetic? What damage has already been done? Amputations, retinal damage, renal failure, coma……

And the horrible realization that you have taken him for granted.

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I moved through various stages of emotions. Not the normal denial, depression bargaining, acceptance stages.

My brain stopped working.

If I wasn’t in John’s presence, I was crying. I couldn’t stop.

I did crazy things.

I ordered a 21-piece meal from KFC. For three people.

I went to get medication from my pharmacy. In a tank top I put on backwards.

I bought my elderly cat Tasha special cat food. She’s been dead for eight months.

I couldn’t focus on TV or conversations.

I felt overwhelmed. John was in no condition to discuss what he had been told or to even comprehend what was happening. I was exhausted but could not sleep. Family was calling from all over the west coast to see how he was doing. Every five minutes the phone rang.

In front of John, I was a rock of stability.

He asked me at least three times if the diabetes would go away when his gallbladder came out. And how they would cure it. He asked the same questions to every doctor that crossed his path.

I guess I did bargain somewhat. I had visions of me working full-time so that John would have less stress. That he should quit his job. That if I did this he would not die and I would not be a widow.

(Good grief, woman. The man has adult-onset diabetes and a rock in his gallbladder.

He isn’t at death’s door.

Pull yourself together.

“Dammit Jim, I’m a Nurse not a soggy mass of emotional blubber!”)

Oh yes I was.

As I drove home after midnight the day of admission, all I could think of was “write Amy….write Amy”. Amy runs DiabetesMine. She’d know. She’d understand.

She did and she does.

Later I realized that in a crisis I ran straight to a blogger.

Bloggers ROCK!

It’s a new world, folks.

And the next day, we were to discover just how screwed up this new world is where hospitals are concerned.