Venting Venting Venting

It's after midnight and I just got home from the hospital. I should be going to bed but I need to let my brain seep out somewhere. And have a drink. Finally I can have a drink.

Scott and I have been together for 21 years. TWENTY ONE YEARS. People are always shocked when I tell them how long I've been married (20) and that I have a 19 year old in college. I'd hope that's because I look like I'm 19 myself (haha) but I'm sure it's more because well, people just don't stay together that long anymore.

But we have, so we know each other. I have been with him longer than I lived with my parents. If something has happened to him in the last 21 years I know about it. If it happened before that I probably know about that too because we are us. Together.

So when he's in the hospital and they are asking questions, I am the one that answers. It's always been like this. I used to be the one that called to make his doctor's appointments because he didn't feel comfortable doing it. He wears the pants in the family, but I pick out what pair.

I left him at the hospital today when the kids were getting out of school and came home to take care of them. Lay on the couch a bit and do silly things and do some homework. Make some juice with Trevor (he's addicted to the juicer) and help him get his homework done. The three of us made waffles together for dinner. After dinner I left again and went back to the hospital.

Not long after I got there this cardiologist doctor comes in. "So what did you do?" he asks Scott. Scott says I didn't do anything. "How did this happen" he has Scott. I don't know he answers.

Please Dr., tell me how one makes their blood clot up in their veins. I'd like to know. Do you have the answer? It's not from sitting around doing nothing. My man rides a bike a minimum of ten miles 5 days a week. Then at least three days a week he comes home and goes out running with me. It's not from eating unhealthy. He eats pretty good. It could be from the previous years of smoking, but he hasn't smoked in over a year.

If you look at his legs you can see he has ulcers. Ulcers from bad circulation and varicose veins. How long have you had these? Why didn't you do anything about them? It says here you are allergic to iodine, how do you know that? QUESTIONS QUESTIONS QUESTIONS all asked with a heavy accent. Quickly and hard to understand.

When we first got married he got a lump on his neck. It popped up real sudden like. It didn't hurt or anything but it came up so fast that he decided he better get it checked out. He had been just paying cash to see the doctor he had went to as a kid because that doctor wasn't on his insurance plan. When he went to see him that doctor told him he needed to go see the doctor that he had on his insurance because it was going to be too expensive to pay cash for. So he went over to that random doctor that he had just picked out of the book and he took one look at his neck and sent him straight across the street to the hospital.

I'm pretty sure he thought it was cancer. He sent him in to get a CT Scan (I think that's the name of the one he had) where they inject the iodine die into. When he went in he was laughing. When he came out he looked like someone had beat him up with a baseball bat. One of the people that had been running the test said that he had a reaction to the die. That they had to give him some benadryl to counteract it. He was allergic to the iodine. So that is how I know he is allergic to iodine.

That same doctor later gave him some medication with penicillin (allergic to that) and the something else that also had a bit of penicillin in it. I swear that doctor was trying to kill him. I had asked the nurse when the doctor was coming in because I wanted to talk to him about being released. The longer we were there the  more he was getting sick and he still had the lump on his neck. The nurse came and got me and said that hte doctor was on the phone and would talk to me. So I got on the phone in the nurses station and he started yelling at me that I was trying to tell him how to be a doctor and that if we left the hospital our insurance wouldn't pay because he didn't discharge him. I got pretty upset and later the hospital sent someone up to the room to do a report on it.

Thus my not so trusting nature of doctors in the hospital.

Eventually the lump went away. We self diagnosed it as cat scratch fever. We had rescued some kittens out of the attic and they had fleas. I think that's where it came from.

Around the time Melissa was born he got his first ulcer. We went to a few different doctors and no one could help with it. They didn't know what it was. Eventually he ended up getting a blood clot in his left leg (the day after Melissa turned 2 he went in the hospital). When Trevor was born he had a valve transplant in his left leg. He had had horrible swelling in that leg and that really helped. We had good insurance back then.

He still had the ulcers but we no longer had good insurance. We cannot afford to go get procedures done. They cost thousands of dollars and I know the insurance is not going to cover them because varicose veins are considered cosmetic. He takes care of them himself, they've just become part of his daily life.

This blood clot was a nasty little surprise, No warning. He just went to get up off the couch and his leg hurt. He called it right off the bat as a blood clot. We took the risk Sunday night and waited until the doctor's office opened so that we didn't have to go to the ER and have another bill. We tried that medicine that the doctor prescribed and it made him horribly sick. Super dizzy, lethargic. If you would have seen him this morning you would have thought he might be dying. It was that bad.

This cardiologist was like "how do you know it was the medicine making him sick" UM DUH because I watched it happen?? I'm not fucking stupid. He was fine, took the pills, they made him sick. So he wants to do all these test to make sure that he doesn't have a clot in his lungs (even though he's not short of breath)  and says he will be in the  hospital for maybe 7 days. Our insurance caps out at ten thousand dollars PER YEAR. I'm pretty sure they probably hit that at like noon today. I told the doctor that. I figure I should be up front right? I said that we don't have much insurance so if we really don't need test that insurance would usually pay for you know, maybe we shouldn't do it. Now I'm not saying that I don't want something that needs to be done done but if you are just doing it because maybe there is a small chance it might see something than maybe just maybe we should look at the big picture and all the symptoms and see if that's really necessary.  He told me they don't do unnecessary tests.

And I'm a natural born blonde and weight 100 pounds.

So remind me of this conversation when I get this guys bill and he won't negotiate his prices k?

They said they were going to move him to another room where they can monitor him better. They put this box thing on him with all these wires so it can monitor his heart and stuff. Then they come in to take his blood pressure over and over. Anyone else think that all those wires probably say what his blood pressure is?

Anyhow so I was waiting for him to change rooms before I left so I at least knew where he went. HOURS. HOURS AND HOURS before he changed rooms. I even went to the nurses station at one point to see if they were still doing it. I was tired and wanted to go home but I wanted to make sure he was settled first. FINALLY they come to change his room. "Can you walk?" the nurse asks? He wasn't even sure since he hadn't got out of "bed rest" since he got there. I was like maybe a wheel chair would be good? So they wheeled him over to his new room. There is no one else in the room so I don't know what the hell took so long. The room is FREEZING. I was like omg it's cold in here. Everyone ignores me.

The new nurse guy wants to take pictures of his ulcers on his legs.  I'm like so tired at this point I'm like why? WHY do you need to do that? I'm questioning everything. I'm FUCKING TIRED of this whole thing already. SEVEN DAYS? Are you kidding? He said so that the wound clinic people can see them. I'm like DUDE we've been around that block before. He looks hat me like I'm nuts.

One time when Scott was in the hospital they did this whole zinc something something all over his legs and wrapped them up all fancy. About ten minutes later he was pulling that shit off. IT DOES NOT WORK. And if I get a goddamn bill for it I'm going to tell them to eat shit. They can look at me like I'm crazy all they want but we've been dealing with this forever.

When they were giving him antibiotics I asked "that doesn't have penicillin in it right?" Scott gave me the eye like I was being a psycho. HEY DUDE do you not remember that one time back when they still had paper charts and it had a big red dot on it that said you were allergic to penicillin and then they gave you amoxicillin? DO YOU REMEMBER??? That's why I ask. It's ok. It's my job. You can roll your eyes at me all you want. I'm just watching out for you.

Ugh killed me to leave him there. I'm always so worried they are going to give him something that's going to make him sick. Kills


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