Yearly Archives: 2011

Things that, given the opportunity, i will learn the hard way

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If you know about thrush, you’ve seen your husband develop it, and you know it adds to the pain of mouth wounds as well as epic bad breath, you should probably ask ahead for the medication to treat it. And by “ask ahead” we mean on antibiotic change #2 in 3 days, not change #4 in 6.

The admitting doctor at the ER is probably not the one you want doing the discharge paperwork, especially if she’s shown no penchant for common sense throughout the rest of the stay.

The first day you start to feel better (regardless of the injury or its cause) you will overexert yourself and feel like crap the next day – just in time to go home and overexert yourself again.

Talking, breathing, walking, and interacting require energy and should be respected. Anyone who says they’re struggling with any of those things should also be respected. A voice is a limited resource.

Just because you’re not in pain doesn’t mean you don’t still have some lingering symptoms of pneumonia. Slow down and take your time changing the sheets on the bed.

Despite belief to the contrary, you don’t actually want to see what the wounds look like, so stop looking.

It’s easy to pick right up with bad habits when you return home to your nice comfy husband, dogs, and bed. You’re still sick. Go to sleep, moron.

Pneumonia

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Oh, and hey, this might be a good time to mention that Wednesday morning I was admitted to the local hospital for pneumonia via the emergency room. I’m feeling much much better than I have really since the tonsillectomy on Monday.

As usual, my body decided that we had to go a long way out of our way to come back a short distance correctly.

In theory I get discharged Friday (dayshift today, in other words) but since that was yesterday’s theory too, I’m not putting much weight i not it until we get closer to it. I’d like to get discharged soon. I think life is a lot easier when I’m the caregiver and Nighthawk is the patient. Also, the dogs are only going to tolerate the kennel for so long before they take over.

But now I am tired, so I am going back to sleep.

OMG THE GLASS CLASSPIDS

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I was asleep when the alarm on my IV pole started going off. I woke up enough to read “GLASS CLASSPIDS” rolling across the marquee in red lettering. No clue what that meant so I hit the nurses’ station bell and tried to fall back to sleep.

Holly had only been in here 20 minutes before, to shut off an equally annoying IV alarm, and I knew it had taken her a few minutes to respond then because of another patient emergency, so I didn’t worry when she didn’t show up right away. I fell back to sleep, but the alarm continued to sound, so I didn’t get much more than a few fitful moments of rest before I was up staring at the GLASS CLASSPIDS alert again.

I tried ignoring it two or three more times, with no luck. Finally upon re-waking I realized that the IV pole’s manual was out on my bed, flipped open to the apart for GLASS CLASSPIDS.

It said:

TELL HOLLY YOU HAVE A SORE THROAT AND YOU NEED A DRINK OF WATER.

This woke me up firmly, and I realized there was no alert on the powerless IV pole, nor was the a manual. According to Google there’s no such thing as a glass classpid. There’s just my lizard brain trying to get the attention of the sleeping brain bits using whatever metaphors it thought would work in my current envoironment.

I drank two cups of water from the pitcher at my bedside and started typing this up… And my GLASS CLASSPIDS feel much better now, so I’m going back to sleep with the hope that lizard brain doesn’t find anything else to harass me about before 7am.