September 17, 2004
Part Two of Husband's Bizarre Illness: EWWWWWW!
Not to brag, but last summer, they removed a ruptured appendix, 4 inches of intestine, and a mass the size of a softball through a 4-inch incision my abdomen. So I'm familiar with pain.
(And for your mental-viewing pleasure: Me turning down my waistband and measuring my scar, with a hot pink ruler, while sitting in my cubicle.)
I'm also familiar with the amount of complaining I did during my one-month illness (took that long for a diagnosis) and six-week recovery, which is approximately one-billionth of the complaining my husband has done in the past week. I say approximately because I'm still perfecting the algebraic formula to figure it out; I'm assuming it's closely related to the one I use to balance my checkbook.
But if Homer Simpson has taught us anything, it's that pain is funny when it happens to someone else. (I just realized how unfair that statement is, for Homer has taught us so much more than that.) And it's okay to laugh because I now know Hubby has a staph infection, and not West Nile or Lyme Disease.
Anyhoo, after the initial doubling of Husband's antibiotics, they finally upped it to the amount required to cure a grown elephant of leprosy, and the infection is responding. Woo-hoo! And yet this was not enough for the doctor. Nooooo, he wanted to lance the huge bump and see if anything came out. EWWWWWWWWWWWW!
And yet... I kind of understand this. Much like the satisfaction of popping a good, mirror-splattering zit. (Once, my boyfriend had a huge zit on his back - HUGE - and his sister and I argued over who got to pop it for him. She won, blood being thicker than other bodily fluids, apparently.)
However, if anyone wanted to stab an already-painful area on my body with a scalpel, I'd need a much better reason than curiosity. I'd also need some liocane. Lots and lots of liocane. But not Husband, no, he's no metrosexual. He said, "Just do it!" So the lump was lanced, and the doctor was perhaps overly excited about what issued forth.
Now for the icky part. Yes, even ickier than lancing pus-filled lumps. Husband had a stint or "pick" put into his arm. It's like an IV thing, only instead of just a needle into the vein, he's got a small tube going up his arm, across his chest and into his heart. GAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I can hardly write this without freaking out and doing the Get The Bugs Off Me Dance.
It'll stay in there for two weeks, so he can administer his own antibiotics once a day, instead of having an in-home nurse or going to the hospital every day. Which is kind of a cool thing, once you get past the whole IV-in-your-vein-all-the-time idea. Ewwwwwww!
The hardest part is not putting my fingers in my ears, closing my eyes and going "Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala!" whenever he's talking.
Monday: Part Three