Well, That Sucked Sideways, and We Still Have to Go to Thanksgiving

You can skip the three posts below, if you like, unless you like cinema verite. So odd to me that here I thought my husband might be critically ill and I blogged about it. So strange. I don’t think before I write. Blah blah here are my guts.

But! Let me take you back to earlier this evening.

I got home early at 3:00, and Gary got home at 4:00. His jaw hurt. he was grim.

In forty-five minutes he:

Sprayed his inner jaw with ten shots of chloraseptic
Took three Advil
Tool one eight hour Tylenol
Painted his inner jaw with Orajel
Had three shots of Baileys

He was in the kitchen bathing his arms in cold water (he said it made him feel better). I was in the bedroom. He began screaming. I popped out to look at him and he was clutching his heart with one hand and clutching his head with the other. Oh, and then he screamed “I’m dying.” This was at 4:51, too late for the doctor.

Then he lost his vision. So I led him out to the car, got his cane, and off we went to the ER (which as I now know is a mere ten minutes away).

In that ten minutes, I began praying. Gary couldn’t even moan anymore, he just kept making inarticulate grunting noises. I was very relieved when he was able to say, “go faster,” because that showed a comforting level of bossiness. You know, “I know the date and the president and that you’re my bitch, woman.”

Oh, and then, when we were about five minutes away from the ER, he did stop moaning to tell me that Unum was in charge of his life insurance. I thought he meant medical, but no, he meant life insurance.

He staggered in with his cane and the groaning and he had drugs and a doctor in ten minutes. The doctor said with sudden headache they had to assume stroke, so they wheeled him off to get a CAT scan. I informed on him (“He drank Baileys! After taking Advil and stuff!”) and they said, probably not, let’s see what the CAT scan says.

The CAT scan said there was no blood in his brain, but the doctor said in one case out of a thousand the blood only shows up in the spinal fluid. So, spinal tap? Discuss. WE decided to do the tap.

Gary had a spinal tap when he was a kid and they tried to get fluid thirteen times before they called in a radiologist. Awful experience. That’s why we called it off after four punctures. Gary says I owe him a spinal tap now because it was “my” idea.

Of course, without a spinal tap to give us the one in a thousand easy answer, the next answer on the list was “freak migraine.” He was sensitive to light after his vision came back at the ER, but he wasn’t nauseated. He demanded I do iPhone searches. “Alternative treatment for migraine” and “What causes Migraine?” One link said “nerve inflammation can cause migraine,” and we have satisfied ourselves with that. Dental work leading to nerve inflammation leading to migraine. That, or a one in a thousand non-bleeding hemorrhagic stroke.

At 8:00, the second dose of drugs kicked in and he became Mad Impetuous Gary! For example:

He said: “It’s eight! Get my shirt. Get the nurse. I’m going.” “Well, we have to wait till – ” “NO GET THE NURSE NOW!”

I went out and whispered to the nurse that he was being strange and impatient and (again, comfortingly) bossy until he screamed “I CAN HEAR YOU, YOU KNOW. I’M RIGHT HERE!”

Oh, then they scampered to get him released, and he edited the white board in the room, so where they had written “Gary,” he added “The Man!” I reported this to the nurse and she seemed to think it was a little loopy but not excessive.

Then, we left and got him Vicodin. (“I have Vicodin! And a cane! I’m Doctor House!”) He refuses to take it or the anti-nausea drug, but he did take three Advil.

So, tonight is my Thanksgiving. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?