CB #13
Its a Tuesday, the 24th of June, 2008
Dave has been in the hospital almost a week now. He is desperate to get out and I’m desperate to not be sitting in a hard chair all day long, but… the pain is really tough. He is having a hard time emotionally taking all these pain meds and they aren’t really handling all his pain. He’s tired of feeling lethargic and in a drug haze. He’s never been sick before, he’s never been in the hospital or had to take pain meds. He’s an inexperienced patient – very inexperienced. Whenever the nurses ask what his pain in on a 1-10 scale the HIGHEST number he ever gave was a 4. Now he does this while grimacing and writhing in pain. Dan was there one time and said, “LOOK! He’s a 10! He’s totally lying!” We all laughed. I later learned that all the nurses were adding +3 to whatever number he gave because the numbers were so low they wouldn’t even qualify for them to give him anything. It became the joke on the ward. But in reality, Dave kept thinking the pain would go away, so he preferred to wait to see if he was still in pain. This is not the kind of situation where you do that, but he just didn’t know. He found himself constantly in the position of what is often called, “chasing the pain”. It is not desirable or advised. It made it hard for me too. Here all my life I was a non drug, natural remedy kind of person and I’ve turned into a drug pusher. Then he was worried about getting addicted. I finally had to break it to him. “You are going to get addicted. But you are not of an addict mind and we will deal with that issue later. Your doctor will help us with that. Please Dave, you can’t be in this kind of pain all the time.” He was emotional. We both were. This was just terrible.
So we wanted to break out, but Dave wasn’t sure he could manage the pain at home on his own. The doctor said he could leave when he wanted. Dave decided we could manage and he was tired of snorting, snoring, farting, rambunctious roommates that kept him all night along with the early morning blood suckers who wake him up to take blood. We decide, we’re going. I tell the nurses and they are like deer caught in the headlights. Oh crap, paperwork! I stand firm, “I’m sure you can make it happen.” Around 7 pm that night we break out! Its a slow, slow, slow process to physically get Dave out of the hospital and in the car, but we did it. It felt fabulous.
Later on that night as I laid down in Dan & Sarah’s beautiful guest room, where Dave had been living for 6 months, I was comforted to be laying next to my husband of 26+ years. We hadn’t slept in the same bed but a couple of times while he was away and this crisis brought a lot of emotions. As I laid next to him, it was so comforting to just be gently snuggled up against him while he slept. It was intoxicating and overwhelming actually.
Somehow, we’ll be OK. We always are…
