Still kickin’
But K, not so much. So, here’s the whole story…
Last Monday, I wasn’t able to leave work until almost five o’clock. I’d had a couple of meetings and was looking forward to just getting home and relaxing. My routine as I’m leaving is to turn my cell phone back on as I’m packing up to go. If I have any messages, I check them as I’m walking out to my car. So, I go through this usual routine and have a message from K saying that his coworker is driving him to the emergency room. No explanation. Not even a time frame for when he left the message.
Once I get to my car, I call his cell phone. He actually answered, but he sounded horrible. I only got enough information out of him to find out which hospital he was at. I didn’t even bother asking him for directions. Instead, I called my mom to tell her what was going on and to ask her to look up the directions for me. I still got lost a couple of times, and then couldn’t find out where K was. I wasn’t sure if he was in the ER, but I also couldn’t even find the ER, and for some reason, no one could tell me how to get there, including the guy at the information desk at the entrance! Eventually, I found my way there, through the back way, with people telling me that I’m not supposed to go that way. Well, it wouldn’t have happened if anyone had been able to direct me!
Thankfully, I got there after a doctor had already seen him and he had been given some morphine, so he was more comfortable and could also explain to me what they thought might be going on. He told me that about an hour after lunch, he’d developed exrutiating pain in his lower abdominal area. He was goind to just wait it out to see if it went away, but his coworker suggested that he call Kaiser. They told him to come in immediately. When he arrived at the ER, the nurses saw him in the waiting room and decided that they needed to take him right away–his nurse told me that he was positively white. So, when I got there, they were loading him up with a juice/fluid to prepare him for a CT scan to see if he had appendicitis.
It took two hours for the fluid to take effect, during which time his pain decreased, but the nausea increased. Then the anti-nausea meds knocked him out. I never did manage to get him to drink all the fluid he was supposed to, but apparently, what he did drink was enough. It was about ten o’clock when he went in for the CT. He came back about twenty minutes later, and we waited about another half our before the results were in and the surgeon was able to see us. At eleven o’clock, the surgeon told us that he did indeed have appendicitis, though it was still in its early stages, and that if he had just gone home as he’d planned, he just would have gotten sicker and sicker. The surprising news was that she was ready to get him into the OR as soon as the current surgery was over in about half an hour. An hour later, they were wheeling him into the ER and showing me to the lobby to wait.
Now, K had asked me to wait to call his parents until we were sure what was going on. As soon as we had talked to the surgeon, I gave them a call. Well, apparently, they got in the car and started driving up shortly after I spoke with them. They arrived only about 5-10 minutes after I got to the lobby…just as I was about ready to collapse with worry and fatigue. It was nice to have them there. His mom even sent Mr. L out to find something for me to eat, since I hadn’t had anything since eating a few snacks at one of my meetings.
At about 1:30 in the morning, two of K’s surgeons came out to let us know that the surgery had gone perfectly and the K was recovering. Obviously, we couldn’t see him in the recovery room, and once they moved him to a hospital room, we’d have to come back to see him during visiting hours. To my shock and horror, his mom starts asking if she can rent a cot or if she can stay in K’s hospital room. When they say that’s not possible, she says she will just sleep in the lobby. Ai! Thankfully, the surgeons were able to convince here that K is fine and that she should just go home and get some sleep. Yay!
So, I get home at about 2 in the morning. I call the sub system and then leave a message for the office manager letting her know what is going on and that she will need to give the sub a set of my emergency lesson plans. Then, I went to bed and completely crashed.
I get a call at six o’clock. His mom asks if I’m back at the hospital or if I’m on my way. Um…no. She is nearly frantic, saying that she shouldn’t have left the hospital, that she didn’t sleep at all, and that she was going to head back there now. Ai!–again. I told here that I needed to get more sleep and that I’d head to the hospital later.
Of course, after that, I couldn’t really get back to sleep. I just sort of rested for another hour and then got up. I took my shower, got dressed and everything. Then, I needed to get my progress report grades turned in. Thankfully, it’s all online with this job, so I just had to call the office manager to get the codes for the comments I needed to leave with the bad grades, since I didn’t have the code sheet. After that, it only took me about 30 minutes to get the grades finished and submitted.
I then had to walk to the BART station, with a pit stop at Target. (In the ER, he’d been doped up and still had the presence of mind to ask me to buy Batman on Blu-ray for him in the morning. Yikes.) So, after getting his movie for him, I hopped on BART to K’s work to pick up his car. I got his car and then headed over to the hospital. I got there just before visiting hours started. Surprisingly, the person at the info desk who told me what room he was in didn’t mention anything about visiting hours not having started. So, I just walked up there like I knew what I was doing.
He was still asleep…or asleep again. So, I just made myself comfortable and worked on a knitting project I had brought. Within and hour, he was pretty much awake and asking for me to help him with things like getting him more water or opening the jello he hadn’t finished for breakfast. By one o’clock, his nurse came in with his discharge paperwork, and as soon as he was finished with lunch, we were on our way home.
He is actually doing very well, considering. He is still in a little bit of pain, possibly more like discomfort, but he managed to go back to work today. The difficult part of recovery has been his parents.
His mother decided that he should be on a liquid-only diet. We tried to explain to her that the doctor said he should be on his regular diet, but she was determined. So, she showed up at our house on Wednesday with a bunch of food she considered acceptable. When she tried to put everything in the fridge, she decided that my fridge was too dirty and started cleaning it. As my in-laws were giving my fridge an overhaul, they decided that my kitchen sink drains too slowly. K’s dad comes back the next day with a contractor who not only installs a garbage disposal, but also changes out our faucet because the water doesn’t come out fast enough. Both days I get a call from K saying his parents are here and are “moving things.” It is stressing him and the cats out. Could I please come home and get rid of them. Aiya! As if there were any force of nature or man that could get that train off course!
I love that his parents have really wonderful intentions. I just wish they had a better sense of timing and of what American’s consider appropriate and inappropriate.
Well, that’s it for now. I did get my latest costume project finished and wore it to Dickens, but I’ll post about that after I make it through this week of work. 
December 16, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized
2 Responses
T, Wow! What a week you and Kevin have had. I’m glad he’s doing so well after the surgery and that you are hanging in there with everything. Sorry I missed you when you called the other day. We will be praying for Kevin;s recovery.
Love,
Liz
I’m really going to start listening to those voices in my head that say “CALL TERESA!”
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