OK, so you know how my life is generally sort of drama-free, except maybe during
the travel episodes? Not so much yesterday.
On Tuesday Rudder left
phonemail around 2PM to tell me he was going home sick because his stomach hurt.
He hardly ever gets sick, but when he does he does it thoroughly. Also, he never
skips work or even working out unless he's more than half dead, so when he told me
his stomach hurt, I figured he meant in a writhing-in-pain sort of way. When I got
the message I did try to call and see how he was but eh didn't answer -- he can
sleep through a ringing phone. I got stuck in a last-mibute late meeting so it was
nearly 6:30 by the time I got home. He was still in pain, had puked once, and
couldn't get comfortable, so we considered options.
The doctor was
closed by then, so I tried this nifty call-a-nurse service my health insurance now
offers. She asked various questions to check whether it was any of the obvious
emergency things (appendix, hernia) and it wasn't, but she advised going to the
emergency room to be safe. My husband the stoic must have been hurting because he
didn't refuse outright, but we decided to wait an hour to see what happened. By
then he was alseep, and I certainly wasn't about to wake him. (The converse was
not true, however; he was tossing, turning, and waking up and taking a drink
enough to keep me awake half the night.
I skipped rowing in the
morning due to the lack of sleep. He seemed to be a little better when I called in
the morning, but when I called back in the afternoon he was hurting more again. I
tried to make a doctor's appointment and couldn't even get through on the phone (I
am going to have to change doctors. That's just ridiculous.) So I called Rudder
back and asked if he wanted me to come take him to an Urgent Care clinic. He just
sort of moaned at the awful stress of having to make a decision, so I made one. I
made a call and sent email to cancel the meeting I had in less than half an hour
with a Very Important Director, told the admin in my area I was leaving and sped
home.
[drivedrivedrivedrive not without a bit of resentment that he
wouldn't just let me take him the night before when I wouldn't have had to cancel
anything drivedrivedrive]
Fifty minutes later (and *why* are all
those people on the highway at two freaking forty-five in the afternoon????) I got
home, bundled him into the truck and we got to the Urget Care facility at maybe
3:45. I wanted to go to the hospital but he flat out refused. Don't let that word
"urgent" make you think things there move fast. Almost an hour later we finally
got to register (tell someone his symptoms and give our insurance info) and
another 15 minutes later he finally got to see a
doctor.
Unfortunately by then it was about 5:30. The other
complication I hadn't mentioned is that we had an appointment to do our taxes at 6
that night, and they're getting busy enough that I couldn't have rescheduled the
appointment sooner than about two weeks. That wouldn't be a problem except that we
couldn't decide what to do about redoing the pool until we knew how much money
we'd get back (or not). Which still wouldn't be a problem except that the only
reason we're redoing it now is that we have a broken pipe somewhere under the
cement. And until that's fixed we can't run the poop pump, which means the whole
thing will turn health-hazard green if we wait too long. All of which is why
Rudder especially wanted to get the taxes done as early as possible. (Yes, I know
we're weenies. We used to do our own taxes, but our finances are complex enough
that now we find having someone do them tends to ay for itself.)
Back
to Rudder, still on the examining table. The doctor diagnosed gastroenteritis or
some such and gave him a cocktail of lydocaine and other stuff to calm his stomach
lining and make it stop hurting, and they wanted to watch him for a little bit to
make sure it worked. He decided sitting in the clinic afterward wouldn't be any
worse than sitting anywhere else, and sent me off to the tax place on my own.
Fortunately it's right near the clinic.
I explained my situation to
the nice accountant lady, because to my mind sharing information is useful if it
will help expedite things. (Rudder would disagree just out of a sense of privacy.)
It did work. She knocked out all of our taxes in forty five minutes and sent me
back to the clinic with the forms for both of us to sign. I got Rudder, who had
been waiting for "only half an hour", stopped by the pharmacy to drop off his
prescription (something to fix the problem and something to make it quit hurting
meanwhile), dropped Rudder at home, picked up the prescription, picked up some
grasy bad-for-me fast food for dinner because it was almost 8 by then, picked up
the mail, and finally went home and ate.
Before going to bed I made
the spare room bed so I'd have an option if he was keeping me awake again. He was,
but this time only for a quarter of the night. (I put in earplugs at one point
because he was snoring and I was afraid if I got him to turn over he'd be less
comfortable.)
I skipped working out this morning too, on the theory
that I'd had enough running around lately.
On a different note, when
we were discussing communication skills in my review Tuesday, my crrent acting
boss suggested I aim to be more succinct. It's probably a good thing he doesn't
read this journal.