Life is Often Surreal

Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference. -- Virginia Satir

It's not often that I'm able to live my life from a surreal distance - something akin to watching it on a movie screen - but last weeks 3-night hospitalization proved to be just that. Surreal.

Dialysis seemed to go okay but practically immediately when Stacy arrived home she started vomiting
every 10 minutes. Made a phone call to the doctor. "What's her BP? Give her Promethazine and once her stomach settles down give her an additional BP med. and then about an hour later let me know how her
BP is." Yeah, right! Keeping a pill works really well when one is vomiting every 10 minutes . . .

Three hours later at 7:30 we were waiting to be seen in the ER. At 10pm lab tests were finally being run and I knew that it was time to send Mom home before she feel off of the stool. At 11pm it was decided that Stacy's BP, vomiting and migraine needed more attention so plans were made to stay overnight. At 1am we finally rolled into a room, the largest one I'd ever seen in the hospital, and I kept asking where my cot was. Talk about being a pest, but I'd spent most of the day in bed with vertigo and other dumb symptoms and was beyond being able to cope.

After a snack of crackers and peanut butter I fell into a deep sleep and was shocked to wake up at 5:30 in a cot in the hospital. Mom arrived at 9am and sent me home for some much needed sleep. Stacy was moved out of the fabulous suite like room into a broom-closet size room set up for dialysis. Wouldn't you think that dialysis patients required a large room?

Three nights in the hospital, new BP meds that finally lowered Stacy's BP and we were back home. It seemed more like a dream than another blip in the road.