I woke up Thursday afternoon to a slight commotion with Sweary Man, in which my scattered dreams thought he might have made a run for it. Then I slept again, and when I next woke up I heard there was a large male nurse caring for him who had also managed to get the medicine into him. So it was a much calmer afternoon than morning.
The main doctor on my case came in the evening to let me know I was likely to stay another day. She said Friday, the next day, would be the earliest possible day I could go home, but it would depend on the specialists and what my blood draw in the morning showed.
I was still completely wiped from the stress test, and didn't have much trouble sleeping that night. Being able to eat and drink helped a lot, too. Strange how that works.
Friday morning I was still very tired, even after a decent night of sleep only interrupted by nurses taking vital signs every four hours. I kept looking at my arms and all the bruises from blood draws, and hoping they wouldn't take forever to heal. I was definitely running out of places to get blood from.
Sweary Man woke up at about 8:30am and started shouting indistinctly. At first he said nothing crude, then went back to form. I heard "stupid wimmin!" repeatedly. Then I heard the male nurse from before talking with him, and while Sweary Man was still loud enough to hear, he was considerably calmer. He talked about the war, I'm not sure which war, but I think it must have been Vietnam. I think he was mentally there, not in this century or continent. I truly think he thought he was still in the war and was scared and trying to protect the people around him but unable to do so because he was helpless and sick. It made some of his comments about the nurses make a little more sense - if he thought they were putting themselves in danger for him he wanted them away.
Again, I don't think he'd want my pity. But it's a shame what we've done to that entire generation of men. And sadly, generations before and after.
My blood draw came back with a downturn in kidney functions, so the specialist decided to hold me in the hospital for one more day. I ended up sleeping pretty much the entire day. The stress test really took a lot out of me. By evening the fluid restriction was getting genuinely painful. The nurses gave me small ice cubes to suck on to help with the thirst.
And so to bed...
0 comments:
Post a Comment