Tuesday, April 06, 2004
saturday, part 1
I'm not sure I'm ready to write about this yet. That is largely the reason why today's earlier entry is an anecdote about the past. For the sake of catharsis, letting go, and moving on, I shall try. I'm sure my therapist agrees. Or would, if I had one.
Saturday evening I simply freaked out. Period.
Last fall, I bought t-shirt that parodies the Dairy Queen logo and says "Drama Queen". "How ironically appropriate for me," I thought. I disposed of all of the drama in my life almost five years ago when I divorced the first wife.
The Dude became a role model because, "The Dude abides."
Ob la di, ob la da, life goes on. . .
Since the start of this year, I got married. Great! I have passionately loved The Wife for years already, and will do so 'til time's end.
The Wife quit her job, in part at the advice of the State Child Protection Agency in charge of The Boy, and in part to return to school full time so that she can get her RN license. More good things. Money's a little tighter, but we can get by with a moderate degree of care and planning. . . I'm neither careful nor a good planner.
In early March, I woke up one morning and was suddenly the foster, soon to be adoptive, father of a two year old boy with significant disabilities. Yes, another good thing. Something We have been working towards for almost a year, but wow oh fucking wow.
"What, you kiddin'. . . we got us a family. . ." - H.I. McDonnough
We have been in constant, daily contact with caseworkers from the State Child Protection Agency about the evil deeds of Ms. von Munchausen and her so-called Home for Children with Significant Medical Needs. Past and current employees call daily with more information. It shows neither sign of ending soon nor slowing down. Although her reign of terror has ended, it does not make for the most pleasant of conversations. We are expecting subpeonas any day now.
(How do they deliver subpeonas anyway? Is it like on "Law and Order" where someone walks up to you, says your name, and hands you a folded piece of light blue paper.)
A good night's sleep? Someday soon, I'm sure. At present I am not yet relaxed and comfortable enough to sleep soundly with The Boy asleep in the next room. New parent syndrome. Time is the cure.
Everyday except Sunday a nurse shows up at six o'clock in the morning to take care of The Boy and stays for 12 hours. The nurses are wonderful. We love them and are very grateful their help with and knowledge about The Boy. Vision, Occupational, Physical and Developmental Therapists come and go several times a week. Also wonderful people whom we are grateful to have help with The Boy.
However, we suddenly went from being people who were very private about our home life to people who have little private home life.
I've never been a rant and rave and scream loudly about the world type of person. Thanks to the discovery of this format I have found an outlet for those feelings.
This is apparently is not enough.
Saturday evening, around seven o'clock, while on the way to the grocery store, The Good Doctor Noyz officially and finally lost it.
I felt an increasing pain and pressure in my chest, like a balloon inflating, trying to burst through my ribcage. My hands were becoming numb and tingly. I felt dizzy, disoriented, stoned, but not in the good fun way.
In all honesty, it scared me to the point where I was concerned about me. "Heart attack? I don't know. What the fuck is wrong with me?" This has never happened before. I have never had symptoms like this before. And that made it worse.
So, off we go to the ER. I learned that if you walk into the emergency room complaining of chest pain and numbness in your hands you don't have to wait. I was lead straight to Crash Room #10. "Crash Room #10?" Okay, they might wanna work on the name. Not very reassuring.
I was directed to take off my shirt, put on the robe and left alone for a minute to do so. Promptly several people came back, both individually and together, asking the same questions about my symptoms, my pain ("on a scale of 1 to 10. . ."), and other basic information, medical and otherwise.
I remember for a moment feeling worried about The Boy and The Wife and feeling concern for their thoughts about me. In retrospect, and I find this almost embarrassing to admit, I found myself wondering what they would do if the doctor's discovered that there was really something wrong with me.
Or, and I shudder at the thought with guarded laughter at the absurdity of it all much more now than I did then, which is still not very much. . . what if this ends with something worse?
They were left behind in the waiting room. And I was in Crash Room #10.
I was connected to a machine that monitored all of my vital signs with five different connections on five different places.
Someone drove in a large machine and told me it was an EKG and was going to take a sort of picture of my heart. Someone else rolled in an X-Ray machine, aimed it at my chest and told me to take two slow deep breaths.
I was given oxygen through one of those little tubes, "a canula"?, that they strap to your face and go up your nose.
They took a blood sample from inside of my right elbow and then inserted an I.V. tube "just in case". "Just in case!!!" In case of what?
In a moment of sublime comedy, I was asked to submit a urine sample and everybody left.
Hells bells! Connected to all that shit I could barely move enough to get my fly down. Getting off the bed and assuming the usual standing position was not an option. Holding it steady enough to hit the seemingly too-narrow opening of the jug while sitting up on the bed connected to machines just seemed like a potentially very messy plan.
And, surprisingly (especially for those of you who know me) I didn't have to go.
So, what else could I do? I whipped it out and inserted it into the opening of the plastic specimen collection jug.
I sat there, in the cold of Crash Room #10. I was trembling so much I thought I might shake it out of the jug because the room really was really fucking cold, and because my attempts to remain calm were minimally successful at masking my fear.
Machines were beeping and whirring around me. Wires hung from my arms and chest. What could I do? Well, we do what were told. So I sat there, wishing, hoping, and praying I pissed before someone opened the door.
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Saturday evening I simply freaked out. Period.
Last fall, I bought t-shirt that parodies the Dairy Queen logo and says "Drama Queen". "How ironically appropriate for me," I thought. I disposed of all of the drama in my life almost five years ago when I divorced the first wife.
The Dude became a role model because, "The Dude abides."
Ob la di, ob la da, life goes on. . .
Since the start of this year, I got married. Great! I have passionately loved The Wife for years already, and will do so 'til time's end.
The Wife quit her job, in part at the advice of the State Child Protection Agency in charge of The Boy, and in part to return to school full time so that she can get her RN license. More good things. Money's a little tighter, but we can get by with a moderate degree of care and planning. . . I'm neither careful nor a good planner.
In early March, I woke up one morning and was suddenly the foster, soon to be adoptive, father of a two year old boy with significant disabilities. Yes, another good thing. Something We have been working towards for almost a year, but wow oh fucking wow.
"What, you kiddin'. . . we got us a family. . ." - H.I. McDonnough
We have been in constant, daily contact with caseworkers from the State Child Protection Agency about the evil deeds of Ms. von Munchausen and her so-called Home for Children with Significant Medical Needs. Past and current employees call daily with more information. It shows neither sign of ending soon nor slowing down. Although her reign of terror has ended, it does not make for the most pleasant of conversations. We are expecting subpeonas any day now.
(How do they deliver subpeonas anyway? Is it like on "Law and Order" where someone walks up to you, says your name, and hands you a folded piece of light blue paper.)
A good night's sleep? Someday soon, I'm sure. At present I am not yet relaxed and comfortable enough to sleep soundly with The Boy asleep in the next room. New parent syndrome. Time is the cure.
Everyday except Sunday a nurse shows up at six o'clock in the morning to take care of The Boy and stays for 12 hours. The nurses are wonderful. We love them and are very grateful their help with and knowledge about The Boy. Vision, Occupational, Physical and Developmental Therapists come and go several times a week. Also wonderful people whom we are grateful to have help with The Boy.
However, we suddenly went from being people who were very private about our home life to people who have little private home life.
I've never been a rant and rave and scream loudly about the world type of person. Thanks to the discovery of this format I have found an outlet for those feelings.
This is apparently is not enough.
Saturday evening, around seven o'clock, while on the way to the grocery store, The Good Doctor Noyz officially and finally lost it.
I felt an increasing pain and pressure in my chest, like a balloon inflating, trying to burst through my ribcage. My hands were becoming numb and tingly. I felt dizzy, disoriented, stoned, but not in the good fun way.
In all honesty, it scared me to the point where I was concerned about me. "Heart attack? I don't know. What the fuck is wrong with me?" This has never happened before. I have never had symptoms like this before. And that made it worse.
So, off we go to the ER. I learned that if you walk into the emergency room complaining of chest pain and numbness in your hands you don't have to wait. I was lead straight to Crash Room #10. "Crash Room #10?" Okay, they might wanna work on the name. Not very reassuring.
I was directed to take off my shirt, put on the robe and left alone for a minute to do so. Promptly several people came back, both individually and together, asking the same questions about my symptoms, my pain ("on a scale of 1 to 10. . ."), and other basic information, medical and otherwise.
I remember for a moment feeling worried about The Boy and The Wife and feeling concern for their thoughts about me. In retrospect, and I find this almost embarrassing to admit, I found myself wondering what they would do if the doctor's discovered that there was really something wrong with me.
Or, and I shudder at the thought with guarded laughter at the absurdity of it all much more now than I did then, which is still not very much. . . what if this ends with something worse?
They were left behind in the waiting room. And I was in Crash Room #10.
I was connected to a machine that monitored all of my vital signs with five different connections on five different places.
Someone drove in a large machine and told me it was an EKG and was going to take a sort of picture of my heart. Someone else rolled in an X-Ray machine, aimed it at my chest and told me to take two slow deep breaths.
I was given oxygen through one of those little tubes, "a canula"?, that they strap to your face and go up your nose.
They took a blood sample from inside of my right elbow and then inserted an I.V. tube "just in case". "Just in case!!!" In case of what?
In a moment of sublime comedy, I was asked to submit a urine sample and everybody left.
Hells bells! Connected to all that shit I could barely move enough to get my fly down. Getting off the bed and assuming the usual standing position was not an option. Holding it steady enough to hit the seemingly too-narrow opening of the jug while sitting up on the bed connected to machines just seemed like a potentially very messy plan.
And, surprisingly (especially for those of you who know me) I didn't have to go.
So, what else could I do? I whipped it out and inserted it into the opening of the plastic specimen collection jug.
I sat there, in the cold of Crash Room #10. I was trembling so much I thought I might shake it out of the jug because the room really was really fucking cold, and because my attempts to remain calm were minimally successful at masking my fear.
Machines were beeping and whirring around me. Wires hung from my arms and chest. What could I do? Well, we do what were told. So I sat there, wishing, hoping, and praying I pissed before someone opened the door.
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