Off Course!

I'm probably too tired and cranky to be writing right now, but I don't know what today will bring so I want to get my thoughts on paper (or blog) before it all becomes part of the maze that has taken hold of my mind.

Parker's surgeon, Dr. Garcia, has gone away to visit his daughter for Easter, so his associate came in this morning. Dr. Associate said his instructions were to get through the weekend safely, the big goal being to remain stable enough for the CT scan on Monday. So the tube will stay in, Parker can still have ice chips and the occasional sip of water and that's about it. No chicken broth for Easter dinner.

Dr. Turner is the internist in charge of Parker. He looks so much like the Turner's in my family, sort of a combination of Turner Smith (my Aunt Peggy's son) and Max Turner, my brother's son. I wanted to ask if he were related to the Baltimore Quaker Turners. Didn't get the chance and now he is gone on vaca for a week. Vacation? Excuse me? Who does that?

Dr. Turner came yesterday while I was at Parker's house doing laundry, getting a shower and trying unsuccessfully to take a nap. He told Parker that he is very pleased with the change of direction, especially for someone who came in so critical only a week ago. He wouldn't say "out of the woods," but he did say changing course and hopefully going off in the right direction.

In the equestrian world, going off course is a bad thing.

I have to pause for a second to say that Parker is currently writing something in the air in his sleep. I asked him what he was writing and he said he was writing on top of cupcakes. I asked him whose birthday it was an he said it wasn't a birthday, but rather that he had just won top prize on America's Greatest Chefs. That's my boy! Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you'll land among the stars! :-)

I wish for the narcotic oblivion myself at times. The constant beep, beep, beeping of machines everywhere are like Chinese water torture. Every time the nurse leaves the room one of his machines starts beeping. I can either go out in the hallway and be a nuisance (I have discovered that at 2:am this often means breaking up a little coffee and pastry party the night nurses hold in the halls) and ask that they come back and fix it, I can try to figure out what it is and fix it myself, or I can wait till someone hears it.

In the beginning the noises were alarming, but it happens so often now, at least 15 times a day, I have come to know which beeps mean his blood pressure is too high vs he is laying on the tubes attached to him again and they have to untangle the jungle. Today's nurse told me that because Parker has so many attached to him, about 75% of the time it is because he has shifted his arm and is laying on it funny. She says this with a look of practiced patience, but my own patience is tested when I wonder why they don't have a system to keep that from happening. Surely he isn't the only patient who has thirty thousand wires, tubes and clips attached to him!

Last night for the second night in a row there was no sleep to be had. In the middle of the night they strapped Parker's arms to the bed rails because he kept trying to pull out the NG tube. They had to tape it back onto his nose three times and he now has tape stretching from cheek to cheek.

Next he started with the bed thing. I swear these narcotics might turn him into Rain Man. He raised it up and lowered it down, raised it up and lowered it down, raised it up and lowered it down, squeek, squeek, squeek, rattle, rattle, rattle, clamp, clamp, clamp. I tried to drown out the noise, but after 15 minutes I turned and snarled something at him.

"Sorry," he whispered. "I hurt." Guilt.

It started again, but this time the top half of the bed was going back and forth, back and forth, instead of up and down, but I couldn't say anything. I'm not the one living minute by minute trying to avoid physical pain.

It is Easter weekend. My brother Craig reminded me of how hard it must have been for Mary to endure watching her son be crucified on the cross until he died. Hers must have included a horror I can't even imagine, but what I do understand is that she would have traded places with him in a heart beat to spare him the pain. Of course she couldn't, neither can I. But as much grumbling, moaning and groaning I have done, I would.

I'm going to see if I can find a local Quaker Meeting to go to tomorrow.