Saturday, September 1, 2012 – One Hellacious Week
I thought we’d be busy this weekend getting ready for our
trip to San Francisco. Instead,
all of the reservations are cancelled and we’re hoping for a scaled-down
“staycation” when some of Elliott’s medical problems are resolved. The past 8-9 days easily qualify as The
Week from Hell. And, yes, I know a
week is only 7 days, but that wasn’t enough time to contain all of the
hellacious happenings. If I wrote
a book about it, I’d include chapters with these headings: Medical Transcription for Dummies;
Cursing and Swearing 101; The Potty Chronicles (Shit Happens – or Doesn’t);
Reflections on Screaming;
Moon-gazing in Mantua; ET
in the ER, episodes 1 & 2.
Finally, the epilogue would be called Chilling Out.
As you may already know from my August 28 post (Sleep,
Interrupted), Elliott recently had a bad reaction to a new medication. The situation improved briefly, then
the whole cycle started again when he tried another new medication. While Elliott suffers through his
various pains, I get to deal with the agony of watching him suffer, truly one
of life’s worst experiences. As a
result, we’ve been on a roller coaster of feelings ranging from anger,
resentment, and frustration to sheer emotional exhaustion.
The pain meds that Elliott has been taking are powerful,
scary, and downright toxic. At
some point, their side effects were so debilitating that they were worse than
the pain itself. Furthermore, I
could tell that either individually or in combination, they were muddling
Elliott’s otherwise clear mind.
That complicated the situation. Going off pain meds completely isn’t an option because he has
constant pain from the degeneration of his spine.
During the past week, I constantly monitored his condition
and kept notes, in order to give his doctors as much information as
possible. It became a non-stop
activity. From one moment to the
next, he didn’t know what to expect.
This, of course, added to his anxiety. He wasn’t sleeping, he wasn’t
eating, and as his pains increased, so did his sense of dependency.
I managed to get a little break from my Elliott-centered
routine when I went into Annandale High at mid-day on Thursday. I stayed long enough to have lunch and
sort out some materials from my former classroom. Believe it or not, the insanity of teacher workweek was a
welcome relief from the stresses at home.
But the escape didn’t last very long.
By Thursday evening, everything seemed to be spiraling out
of control. We’d just made the
decision to cancel the California trip.
We’d knock down one problem only to have two others spring up to take
its place. On my way over to the
24-hour pharmacy yet again, I was contemplating driving off the closest
cliff. In retrospect, I certainly
picked an awful time to go off of my anti-depressant. Without their influence, I’ve become a devoted practitioner
of scream therapy, and its corollary, creative cursing (but only when alone in
the car).
In the end, what saved me from doing something drastic was
August’s blue moon. I looked up in
the parking lot of CVS on Route 50 and saw a gorgeous full moon looking down on
me with infinite calm.
It reminded me to stop and enjoy the beauty of the world around me and
to forgive myself for occasionally losing my patience. Instead of searching for
a cliff to drive off of, I went home and immediately kidnapped Elliott. Without telling where I was taking him,
I drove him to a nearby spot in Mantua where we’d have an unimpeded view of the
sky, and then presented him with that breathtaking moon.
After our impromptu moon-gazing expedition, I thought all
was well when we went to bed Thursday evening. Wrong. Elliott
had taken a new pain medication for the first time at dinner and woke up in the
middle of the night with a strong reaction to it. I looked at the fine-print insert that came in the box, and
the first thing that jumped out was a caution about using it in elderly
patients. In addition, respiratory
suppression was at the top of the list of side effects. Elliott was acting very strange and
making no sense whatsoever. After speaking to the 911 operator around 6:30 a.m.
and debating what to do, we decided to have the EMTs check him out and then
take him to the emergency room at Fairfax Hospital.
Flashing lights and sirens announced the arrival of an
entire EMT squadron. Elliott got
to ride in the ambulance; I followed in the car. The ER waiting room was eerily deserted, but there was
plenty of activity going on behind the scenes. Once Elliott was settled in to his own ER “roomette,” with
about a dozen blankets piled on top of his shivering body (the air-conditioning
was in the arctic range), testing began in earnest.
While he was going through the X-rays, scans, and blood and
urine tests, I went in search of breakfast. You’d think that a hospital cafeteria would offer only healthy
food choices. Think again. I bypassed the pastry display and hot
food counter – eggs, biscuits, gravy, bacon and sausage – and satisfied my
hunger with a couple of hard boiled eggs, a slice of quasi-whole wheat bread,
and a few chunks of melon. Actually,
the eggs looked so forlorn once I’d peeled them that I couldn’t resist making
an open-faced sandwich: spread
mustard (the bright yellow kind was all they had) on a piece of toast, top with
sliced hard-boiled eggs, garnish with a squiggle of ketchup. Yum? No, but at least I wasn’t starving anymore.
Over the course of the morning, we learned that the most
serious thing going on was a touch of pneumonia, something we never
suspected. Otherwise, the ER
physician concluded that he was simply having an unpleasant, but not
life-threatening, reaction to the new medication. It was already noon on Friday when he was discharged from
the ER. Since then, he’s been making
progress. He’s back on the old
meds for pain. And now that he’s also taking antibiotics (lovely turquoise and
purple capsules with their legendary diarrhea inducing properties), he may not
need to worry about the constipating side effects of the Oxycontin, at least
for a little while.
As far as vacation plans go, we’ll wait a while to
reschedule. But in the meantime,
I’m determined to squeeze as much fun as possible into the next couple of
weeks. For starters, I’ve decided
to have lunch or dinner out everyday.
If Elliott isn’t able or willing to join me, my Kindle Fire will be my
dining companion. And now that
I’ll be staying at home, I can go back to editing some of Joel’s newest MedTrek
chapters. Personally, I could use
a little Med (that’s Mediterranean, not medication) in my life.
Above all, we’ll follow the prescription our family
physician gave Elliott at yesterday’s appointment: rest, relax, get your confidence back, and enjoy life. In other words, just chill out.
