Monday, January 21, 2008

Hell of a Day

That was yesterday and it isn't going to get any better for days. If I was a superstitious man I'd say the universe was out to get us and Darcy agreed that it sure seemed like that. For the 6 months when she was mostly in the hospital and we weren't sure if she would live annoying crap kept happening, exactly when we (mostly me) didn't want to deal with it. Things like my very reliable Camry breaking down twice, which makes 3 times in the 11 years I've had it. And 3 or 4 annoying things would happen every week.

Yesterday was a doozie. Started out with Darcy waking up with a bad tooth-ache. She's had this for over a week and has been taking Amoxicillin, because she's immune compromised such things can be very dangerous. We went to the dentist last Monday and he couldn't find the infection. He thought the anti-biotic had taken care of it and it would just go away. So waking up with it swollen and hurting on Sunday was bad, especially since she had to be in the hospital Monday morning for an operation. So we went to the dentist's office and saw another of the 20 dentists they had there (I really hated the place as soon as we saw it). After waiting 2 hours the dentist comes in, takes one look at the x-rays, the very same ones the other doc saw on Monday, and immediately said she had a massive infection in a tooth that had a root canal done to it. That it called for major surgery because it was in the bone. At this point all we know is that one of these dentists is completely incompetent but don't know which one. Probably be both.

Earlier in the day we got a call from the home where my mom is staying, saying she went to the dentist with a tooth ache but it was so bad he sent her to the hospital for oral surgery. ARRGGHH!

Back to Darcy's dentist, who now refuses to operate until she has Darcy's doc sign off on it because she has so many serious conditions. This is standard procedure and Darcy had told them to get that last Monday when we were first in but the doc said he didn't need it and they hadn't done anything. I'm holding my temper, all I want at this point is to get out and never set foot in there again but Darcy is chewing them out big time. Her closing shot was “If anything bad happens it's your fault.” When we got to the car a little old Asian lady had followed us out and in broken English tried to say it was our fault they didn't have her doctor's permission to operate. At which point I lost it and started screaming at her at the top of my lungs, this didn't faze her at all and she just kept trying to insist it was our fault not theirs and I just drove off with her still talking. Her son must own the place.

So here it is Monday morning and Darcy has to head over at 7am to get her arm operated on, which should have been done 2 months ago but the docs blew it. They had put a fistula in her arm for the dialysis, but it needed 6 weeks to grow and they went ahead with emergency dialysis by putting a plastic tube down a vein in her neck. This is bad because it is more prone to infection than the fistula but we had no choice. By the end of November the vein surgeon wanted to operate again and move the fistula to a better position. It had already been 6 weeks at that point, now it's 2 months later and we'll have to wait for this operation to heal and the whole idea had been to get off the plastic tube as soon as humanly possible.

And I forgot to mention that when I went to turn the TV on so I could record the playoff games our very expensive HDTV was dead. This is a problem because the thing weighs a ton, I can't even lift half of it, it takes 2 VERY strong guys to move it with difficulty. In the meantime we can't watch any of our recorded shows and sitting down to watch TV at night is our time together since even going out to dinner is a major effort. The shows will keep recording and our DVR will just start erasing older shows automatically as the hard drive gets filled to capacity. And who the hell needs to deal with this now!

My mom, as of last night, was resting comfortably but one side of her face was swollen up. Her doc is Dr. Saran and I said that I hope he can wrap this up quickly. Darcy didn't laugh, she thinks the love of puns is a basic, male genetic flaw. But I'm going to have to go over to her hospital after Darcy gets out of surgery - they are going to keep her overnight - Darcy that is, Mom has already been kept overnight.

And I'm pretty sure a couple of emergency rushes are supposed to come in today at work. I'm sure they will call me when that happens.

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