One Hellacious Week

 

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.