Bitching about folks and stuff, continued. PART TWO. (The one where Sam forgets the clothes)

We drove directly from the valet at the hospital (yes, we have Valet parking at the hospital) to the valet at the resort, and I somehow staggered up to the front desk. The nurse had thought to cut off my hospital bracelets when I was discharged, so you would never know I was ill, except for the fact that I was walking doubled over with a limp, and my hand was bleeding from the bruise I got from the IV, my hair was standing on end, and I still had a lede from the heart monitor stuck to my shoulder.

I looked totally normal if normal people look like they just escaped from a hospital/war zone.

I rested both arms and my chin on the front desk and waited for someone to give me a room key.
I might have burped.

We went up to the room and after some confusion with housekeeping I was finally propped up in a lovely bed piled high with white linens, and an amazing view. All ready to recuperate. "You need anything?" Sam asked as the kids ran in circles around the room swatting each other with towels and rash guards. He leaned over and patted my leg sympathetically.

I sensed that this might become a theme of the weekend - Sam hovering in concern while the kids annoyed the shit out of me.

"I need you to leave me alone. I brought you all with me so you would have something  fun to do - not so that you would spend the day with me in this room."

"Um, okay. Geez, how do you really feel?"

"I feel like shit, man. I had my stomach cut open six times last night, and a bunch of stuff scraped out and now I just want to be left alone to clot."

"Right. Nice."

So they left, and I dozed off in front of the tv, waking up occasionally to hit refresh on facebook and check texts. The problem was that I was pretty drugged, and having trouble seeing straight. Eventually I gave up. That night we went downstairs for dinner, and I was nervous about eating. The nurse had assured me I could eat anything within reason, and just suggested I avoid fried or greasy foods.

So naturally I had the BLT Butterfish and the lamb. It was completely reasonable.

The next day I felt like hell, almost as though I had been stabbed repeatedly in the stomach. Go figure. The anesthesia was worn off completely, and I hadn't slept for more than an hour or two at a time since surgery, and that dinner was totally kicking my ass. I was restless and uncomfortable, alternating between pacing the pool area, and pacing our hotel room. Checkout was noon, and Sami wandered upstairs with the kids at 11:45am. As soon as Lucy was dressed, I took her with me and went down to the lobby to deal with the paperwork, leaving Sam in the room to pack up and get Max ready, and then take the bags down to valet and load the car.

We drove the hour home in silence. I was completely exhausted, and high on Vicodan.

Sam brought the bags inside, and asked if he should put the towels and bathing suits in the washing machine.

"Great, yeah, that would be a good idea." I nodded. "Wash them on cold, okay? And maybe put my dress from yesterday in there. Did you stick that in your suitcase or mine?"

"It's in the laundry bag."

"Okay, where's that?"

He stood there.
Deer in the headlights.

"Sam" I said slowly "where is the laundry? Where are our clothes, Sam?"

God bless him, he looked so confused. "Didn't you get them?" he asked.

For a split second I thought maybe I had. And then I remembered that NO I hadn't packed up his dirty laundry. I hadn't packed anything besides my own clothes as I changed out of them, because I had just had my stomach cut open. I had packed all of the clothes to go on the trip And made food. And done laundry. And changed sheets. And cleaned the fucking bathroom. And not for nothing, but I had just provided a completely free weekend in a six star oceanfront resort. But no. No, I hadn't packed up his dirty socks and underwear. My bad.

MY clothes were in my suitcase. Except for this dress that he had so helpfully put in some mythical laundry bag that he was now unable to locate. My eyes narrowed.
That dress was my favorite.
That dress was from Anthropologie.

Someone was going to die.

"Shit." he said.

Indeed.

He called the hotel, and they were able to locate the bag of dirty clothes that he had left on the floor of the hotel room. As I announced later on facebook, the man had zipped an empty suitcase shut and rolled it out of the hotel room. He had taken it downstairs, and put it in the car, and taken it out of the car, and carried it into the house, and it had never even ONCE crossed his mind that perhaps it felt......light. I mean, even taking his obvious brute strength into account, he didn't notice that the bag was empty?

He didn't notice that the bag was empty.

If I thought the drive home was quiet, well....the drive BACK TO THE RESORT was deafening.

"So tell me, at what point did you think that I was responsible for packing anything at the hotel? Was it when I was able to pee without assistance? Maybe when I was finally able to operate my cellphone without you typing the numbers for me because I couldn't see the screen?"

"No, I know, I was supposed to pack. I just forgot about that bag."

"You forgot about "that bag"? That bag had ALL THE CLOTHES. You forgot ALL THE CLOTHES. You did not, in fact, pack ANYTHING. You didn't forget anything. Except everything."

"That is not true."

"It is true!"

"No, I remembered to pack something."

"Really? What? WHAT DID YOU REMEMBER TO PACK?"

"I remembered to pack the toothbrushes."

"The toothbrushes? Really? Do you want to go there, Sam? Are we talking about the same toothbrushes you had to go out and BUY YESTERDAY because you LEFT OUR TOOTHBRUSHES AT HOME?"

"Well, yeah."

"Well then I guess I owe you an apology Sam."

He graciously decided to let it slide.

Screw the photo essay, I'm going back to bitching about stuff and folks. PART ONE

Judging by the precipitous decline in readership following my attempt at photojournalism, I can only conclude that you do not come here for my mad photography skills and clever captioning. You don't have to tell me twice - I read you LOUD AND CLEAR. Which is why today and tomorrow I will not be posting a single photo. No, instead, I am going to be unloading some seriously repressed emotions regarding the division of responsibility in my household, and how this weekend, I felt as though perhaps it was just COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY OUT OF BALANCE. Now, to be fair, I am emotional, and my nerves are frayed, and I am experiencing a serious hangover from the general anesthesia that was administered Friday afternoon, so perhaps my judgement is skewed.

Turns out that having extensive -albeit laparascopic - abdominal surgery leaves me feeling a bit out of sorts. Go figure.

Let me back up and start from the beginning.

On Wednesday, we decided that my gallbladder needed to come out. Sooner rather than later, actually. Sooner was Friday. The general surgeon was on board as soon as I told him I was feeling worse by the hour. And then another surgeon (who had already been planning on taking a look in there in a few weeks) cleared her schedule to get in on the action. And then a third surgeon wanted to put his own stamp on things. So one two three - THREE surgeons scrubbed in for the Daffodil Campbell version of an afternoon delight. I should have brought party favors and cupcakes, or at the very least, my flask - but I was sort of distracted and to be honest I had trouble choosing a theme. Then Sam flat-out refused to stop and pick up a pinata on our way to the hospital. He is no fun at all.

Surgery wasn't scheduled until 2:15pm Friday. I received my instructions Thursday night: nothing at all to eat or drink after midnight.

Nothing. For 13 hours.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not go for 13 hours without food. Ever. Even at my sickest, I have always managed to choke down some yogurt or something in the morning, because my blood sugar gets all wonky. But Friday morning it was strictly NPO all day long. So I did what any normal mother would do before going to the hospital.
I did the laundry.
I changed the sheets on all the beds.
I made meat sauce from scratch.
I vacuumed our bedroom and cleaned the bathroom.
And then - with 30 minutes until check in time at the hospital - I took a shower, hopped in the car, and zipped down to town. Sam dropped me off right in front of admitting, and I kissed him goodbye and told him I would have them call afterwards. He went to get the kids from school, I went to get my stomach cut open.

My anesthesiologist looked like Anthony Bourdain, which I found strangely comforting. Two of my surgeons were there before I went under to talk to me and reassure me that they were present and accounted for, and lucid, which I also found comforting. There was rock music playing in the OR and they put a warm blanket on me and started the drugs. And then they went ahead and got to work. While Sami drove the kids home and gave them snacks and walked the dog, the team removed my gallbladder. And detached my intestine from my liver. And found some fallopian tube that was left behind during my hysterectomy, and missed again during follow up surgery. I had a total of 6 incisions - but since they were able to do everything laparoscopically, it means much faster recovery, and much smaller (almost non-existant) scars. 

I was scheduled to go home that night - laparoscopic surgery doesn't require a hospital overnight - but they couldn't get me to wake up. I can't say I did it on purpose, but I haven't had a good night sleep in three months, so you can't really blame me for riding that anesthesia as far as I could.

The problem was, I had somewhere to be that night.

I had a pre-existing work commitment, and it was something I was really looking forward to. This whole surgery thing was planned sort of last-minute, and coincidentally right around  the time I was supposed to be released from the hospital, I was also supposed to be checking in for a staff retreat at a hotel on the other side of the island. And dammit, having my gallbladder removed was not going to keep me from a free weekend at a hotel. Sam knew that was my plan, and as the hour got later and later Friday evening, he started to panic a little bit. He certainly didn't want to be the one to tell me that instead of going to a hotel I was staying in the hospital on a plastic mattress with an IV that didn't even have a morphine pump. He kept calling to be absolutely sure they weren't gong to let me go home. He had the car packed, and the dog was already at the kennel for the night. Finally, at about 8:30pm, the nurse told him it couldn't be avoided. I was spending the night in the hospital. He suggested giving me some more medicine to insure that I actually didn't wake up at all until morning, for everyone's health and well-being.

She thought he was kidding.

When I finally woke up at 9pm and realized I wasn't going to the hotel that night to sleep in a luxury bed and have room service, I was pissed. The nurse brought me some broth and tea to make up for it. I was not amused. They added some jello, and it took everything I had to not wind up and throw it into the hallway. Then they told me I couldn't leave the hospital until I peed in the potty.

Fuck. That. Shit.

You need me to pee in the potty? Oh, I'LL PEE IN THAT POTTY.

I sat on that toilet off and on for almost 5 hours. Turns out, my brain would not let my body pee. It's a trick that general anesthesia plays on me - I am completely unable to pee for hours afterwards. But I persevered. Mind over matter. I sang, I watched youtube on my phone, I played solitaire, I drank endless cups of tea, and I walked in circles around the bathroom. At 2am I triumphantly staggered out into the hallway, clutching my IV rack, with my johnny untied and hanging open, and a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of my foot. "I peed." I announced. "I want to go home now."

The nurse coaxed me back into my room with a syringe of morphine, and I followed her like the pied piper. She got me settled in bed, dosed me liberally, and turned on the Food Network. I was just about to doze off, sort of woozy and cotton-mouthed, staring catatonic at Guy Fieri. And then my roommate woke up.

I think we can all agree that, even under the best of circumstances, it can be tough to have a roommate.

The hospital is not the best of circumstances.

I realized within 30 seconds that she was in the bathroom, and had not bothered to close the door. She was in there, peeing and farting and flushing - all with the door wide open. When she shuffled past again shortly thereafter, I was also aware that she had not bothered to wash her hands.

I immediately decided that I had to get the hell out of that room. But the morphine was kicking in, and I couldn't remember how to call the nurse, and they were making brisket on Food Network, so I decided to wait until I saw my nurse again to raise the red flag of bio-contamination.

And then I forgot.

I woke up at 7am WHEN SHE DID IT AGAIN. "That's it." I said to myself, struggling up out of the bed. "I am outta here." I texted Sam, and went and found a nurse and informed everyone that I was going home. I offered to take out my own IV, but they insisted on handling it themselves. Sami and the kids arrived as I was digging my clothes out of the plastic bag I had stuck them in the day before during pre-op.

"Hey." I greeted them with a smile. "Did you bring up my toothbrush?" Sami looked panicked. "Uh....did you pack a toothbrush?"
"I threw my whole kit in the overnight bag in case I got admitted yesterday. Remember?" He looked relieved and unzipped the bag he had dropped on the floor as he walked in the room. "I just told you to pack for the kids." The panicked look returned.
"The kids?"
"Yep, remember, I said 'I'm putting their clothes in here, but nothing else.'"
"Oh. Yeah."
"Do you need to go to the drugstore to buy toothbrushes now?"
"Yeah."
"Did you remember everything else?"
"Um, I think so, yeah."
Turns out, notsomuch.