In Sickness and Health The Finale

So I spent Saturday morning waiting for some test to be done and for my doctor to release me. In the meantime the nurse came by with pain medication. She brought liquid lortab, which I can't take because it makes me throw up. Now I'm not a doctor, I don't play one on tv and I didn't even sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I don't think throwing up is a good way to keep a cauterized throat from bleeding some more. When I told her that it would make me sick she offered crackers to settle my stomach. Yeah, 90 minutes of throat cauterizing, I'm sure a few packets of Saltines would really hit the spot. I explain all I could take was demerol and morphine. She called my doctor and came back to inform me it would have to be in shot form...like it was a punishment or something. Okey dokey.

Finally a blood person showed up to do a crazy test. The cut your arm and dab the blood every 30 seconds to see how long it takes for you to stop bleeding. She gave the range of average times and said that they kind of give up after 9 minutes. Sure enough nine minutes later I was still bleeding. She took some blood for testing and left. Mom and Bud were out getting a bite to eat, thus I didn't have anyone in the room with me who was coherent. I forgot to ask how I would get the results.

My doctor came in and I was expecting to be released, but he wanted to have me stay another night. Gahhhhh. I really don't like hospitals, and it was depressing. They don't have a wing for crazy complications so I was in the orthopedic surgery recovery area. The nurses didn't know what the heck to do with me. When my mom said she was visiting her daughter they tried to send her to maternity. Because when you are 31 you should be having babies, not tonsil problems.

Months prior to the debacle my brother got my mom tickets to Paul McCartney, I was suppose to go with her, but as luck would have it that was the day I was in the hospital. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to go, even before the doctor said I had to stay another night. So it was decided Bud would go with my mom. Their only concern was me being left alone in the hospital. My brother and almost SIL came to the hospital to sit with me. In my family you are not allowed to be sick or in the hospital by yourself to get rest, you must have constant companionship.

Now at this point Bud had only had 4 hours of sleep in the last 60 or so hours, and my mom had not slept all of friday night either. So they went to the concert and got lost on the way back to my moms. They were at a stop sign and had no idea which way to turn. They were one block from her house. They had to drive around for a while before finding it.

The next morning I was finally released. That night I started throwing up again! I used the trash can, and Bud picked through the trash to happily announce that there was no blood. For some reason I kept throwing up for a few weeks. I was in the bathroom peeing at one point and coughed, next thing I know the door is open and Bud was asking if I was ok. The whole thing really traumatized him. They never really figured out what the problem was, there was speculation about some ibuprofen I took for cramps. Who knows? I have never had problems since. I think my doctor was also traumatized, he said he had never seen anything like that in the 27 years he had been in practice.

It took me a few months to feel back to my old self. It took me even longer to gain back all the weight I lost, I had to wait until the last possible week to have my wedding dress fitted because I didn't want to it to be fitted when I had lost 15 or 20 pounds that I needed to gain back. Even with all that trouble I would still have chosen to have them taken out. When they were removed my doctor found a lot of dead tissue so they would have kept causing a lot of problems. I stopped getting sick as often once the tonsils were out.

But the biggest thing for me was seeing how Bud took care of me. It was so great knowing I was marrying someone who would take care of me, no matter how gross and nasty I was. It was the first time since I was a little girl that I could completely let myself go and know that he would handle everything. He gave me a sponge bath in the hospital so the nurse didn't have to, he held my hair when I threw up, he picked up prescriptions at the store, carried the TV up and down stairs depending on where I wanted to lay, he called my sub and coworkers everyday to make sure my students would have productive work each day. Knowing I would grow old with someone who would always be there for me was worth every bit of pain and suffering.