Suddenly from bad to worse…

When I wrote the post below it was already badly out of date. D had not only been admitted to the hospital, he’d been transferred by ambulance to the bigger hospital in the big town about 50 miles away. And when we finally arrived (after L had her eye surgery and couldn’t have safely driven) he was in the process of being transferred to a yet bigger hospital in the city far, far away.

Turns out he never had the flu, and he arguably should have been under a doctor’s care a week ago. He had an infected tooth pulled a bit over a week ago and got sick immediately afterward. Now he’s got sepsis through a bunch of major organs, and we’re hoping he’s going to live.

Imagine the stress on L. Bad enough she was getting an eyeball operated on for some sort of cyst. I have recent knowledge of how that’ll mess with your stress level. Then we walk into this hospital to find D in the ICU, in the middle of some sort of attack. He’s shivering uncontrollably, his heartrate is up above 125 and he can’t breathe. He was in full-blown panic, from which L was able to talk him down because he was stressing over expenses which are covered by their excellent (non-Obamacare) insurance and won’t break them. That didn’t change the fact that he’s probably got this infection all through a bunch of major organs, and I’m worried about him. And so is L, of course, but in the crisis she was a rock. With bloody gauze over one eye and still logy from anesthetic herself, she commenced to talking her husband down and getting his pulse and respiration under control. I was impressed.

She claimed to be all impressed by the way I drove her truck, this being my first time on pavement since the last time I drove a vehicle significant distance illegally, which is to say well over five years ago. But in fact it was no big gig for me. D&L have one of those absurdly large late model Ram pickups, which around here is the equivalent of a silver Mercedes on the coast: No cop is going to hassle you for laughs. Also it rained all afternoon, which gives you extra cop-kryptonite points. And anyway, if I got busted I knew I wasn’t going to be stuck with the fine. So the worst I risked was a little hassle. No problem. And it’s not as though I’ve forgotten how to drive.

But she is facing a long, sorry excuse for a week, looks like. He’s supposed to be transferred to the big city, as I said, so at some point later she’ll have to end up there as well. All the neighbors are on record as willing to give support, but I think I have first dibs on taking care of their horses and dogs since I’m closer, they know me, and I meet L’s rather exacting standards for who’s allowed to go near her horses. This is good: I owe D&L about twelve brazillion karma points, and haven’t forgotten it. Sure hope D turns out all right.