The alarms they put on hospital beds when a falling-risk patient gets up to go to the bathroom “unsupervised” are amazingly loud and annoying. We quickly discovered how to silence said alarm though, so score one for Team Holland!
Beyond the traitorous bed, things are going reasonably well for Annie. She’s being an absolute trooper. A storm trooper if you’re Bobby, our 8 y/o nephew. Today she amended her earlier statement about the ton of bricks on her chest, adding, “being carried by a Mack truck.” So that’s kinda sucking, but isn’t terribly surprising, as that is what’s said about this part of the recovery. The people saying such things seem particularly masochistic. Yet her doctor prescribed some reasonably effective drugs, keeping her pain somewhere between, “Ow!” and “Oh my god you have to be shitting me!”. That’s currently a combination of Dilaudid intravenously and orally.
The Dilaudid pills are like a well-aged, super smooth anejo tequila. It’s meant for sipping, lasts a good, long time, and is more or less time-released.
The IV drip, on the other hand, is like the Jose Cuervo you drank in college. It’s ready to party right now, doesn’t last very long, and you’ll get sick from having too much of it.
She’s also making important discoveries about her health care. To wit, the hospital’s chocolate chip cookies taste better than peanut butter cookies, and just as importantly, they’ll give you two if you ask. I’m pretty sure this is the reason our insurance premiums rose in 2017. Thanks a lot, cookies.
The goal at the moment is to help wean her off of IV medicine and on to oral medicine, and to get rid of that annoying side of effect of drinking too much Jose Cuervo–nausea. All this is likely to happen tomorrow. There’s suspicion among the cafeteria staff she’s hoping to extend her stay solely because of the cookies, but I think we’d all like to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she’d like to be back in her own bed as soon as possible. It is much more comfortable and spacious, and doesn’t alarm.
Recap: In a lot of pain but managing it well, nods off periodically, and still likes cookies.
Next update will likely be upon her return home, and then probably will be less frequent (but one never knows), lest these email updates end up in your spam folder. That’s a weird visual though, isn’t it? A folder full of spam? Somehow seems unsanitary.
Chat later, and thanks for reading…
Cookies Annie made for her Ta Ta to the Tata’s dinner party.