Queasy Rider
Sunday and today have been windy again, complete with flickering electricity. It was giving me fits this morn as I tried to do laundry. During dry season it's not unusual to have cuts to our water, to have weak pressure and not much water between 10 am and 4 pm. Which means a morning mad scramble to do laundry, water plants and take showers. Add in having to stop and turn the washer back on every time the lights flickered.
Jim got up and his left leg, the one with the huge patch of scraped off skin that didn't bleed I puzzled over, was hot and red. Not a good sign. One several hour trip to the clinic, lots of scraped off flesh later we're a couple of hundred bucks lighter, too many antibiotics and Jim was in agony even with a pain shot.
The good news is all the scraped dinged up bits I'd cleaned and applied Bag Balm to were healing. There is likely no damage to the shoulder he had surgery on. The bad news is that weird patch with no skin that didn't bleed was actually a burn mark caused by the exhaust. It looked like no burn I've seen, I thought he'd scraped the skin off against part of the bike. It was infected. The same leg he just about lost fifteen years ago.
I know one thing. I am no nurse. I gag, I feel sick, I get weird when I must nurse an ill family member. I do it, but it's hard and I dislike every oozing, squicky moment. Even when Jim had cancer, parathyroid tumors and just about lost his leg. Even when my kids were little and Laura was sick with ITP. I have always found of all the roles I play that of nursing others to be one of the ones I inwardly struggle with the most. I carry it off, I squirm every moment. I hate that it's that way for me, that I don't inwardly embrace the role like Florence Nightingale or Mother Theresa. My only thoughts are on getting through it in one piece.
Thankfully at the clinic I can sit in the corner and read while they're doing the debriding and bandaging. Pretend it's not happening.
We were both pretty exhausted by the ordeal. He with the pain, me with the mental anguish and cringing. Tonight we both went to bed early, watching the LSU game.
Wasn' t it Rhett Butler from "Gone With The Wind" that told Scarlett she was not made for sick men? Yep, inwardly I am running away from the operating theater watching men get their legs sawed off.
Jim got up and his left leg, the one with the huge patch of scraped off skin that didn't bleed I puzzled over, was hot and red. Not a good sign. One several hour trip to the clinic, lots of scraped off flesh later we're a couple of hundred bucks lighter, too many antibiotics and Jim was in agony even with a pain shot.
The good news is all the scraped dinged up bits I'd cleaned and applied Bag Balm to were healing. There is likely no damage to the shoulder he had surgery on. The bad news is that weird patch with no skin that didn't bleed was actually a burn mark caused by the exhaust. It looked like no burn I've seen, I thought he'd scraped the skin off against part of the bike. It was infected. The same leg he just about lost fifteen years ago.
I know one thing. I am no nurse. I gag, I feel sick, I get weird when I must nurse an ill family member. I do it, but it's hard and I dislike every oozing, squicky moment. Even when Jim had cancer, parathyroid tumors and just about lost his leg. Even when my kids were little and Laura was sick with ITP. I have always found of all the roles I play that of nursing others to be one of the ones I inwardly struggle with the most. I carry it off, I squirm every moment. I hate that it's that way for me, that I don't inwardly embrace the role like Florence Nightingale or Mother Theresa. My only thoughts are on getting through it in one piece.
Thankfully at the clinic I can sit in the corner and read while they're doing the debriding and bandaging. Pretend it's not happening.
We were both pretty exhausted by the ordeal. He with the pain, me with the mental anguish and cringing. Tonight we both went to bed early, watching the LSU game.
Wasn' t it Rhett Butler from "Gone With The Wind" that told Scarlett she was not made for sick men? Yep, inwardly I am running away from the operating theater watching men get their legs sawed off.
Comments
I can deal with it but not happily.
Had bladder surgery and have orders to pee every 3 hours. That means lots of liquids going into the body. I was 1.5 hours late going into the OR, Didn't eat anything since 7PM last night and got to Day Surgery at 8AM and left at 445. All NPO. Not a happy camper.