Designated driver

On Monday, my friend A had her gallbladder removed. Anyone who has had to go through the process to figure out that they needed this surgery in the first place knows it isn't fun. It's usually months, if not years, of discomfort and pain. It's often enough to be miserable, but not often enough to go to the doctor and get any kind of concrete answer. I had this very same particular surgery done two decades ago when I was young. Mamoo, my older sister and most, if not all, of my aunts have had this same surgery. My family is either genetically predisposed to this particular problem, or we all eat the same crap that can contribute towards causing it. I'm betting it's a 40/60 split with the preference towards our diet. But I digress.

I took A in to the hospital Monday morning around 10:45. I'm not sure when her surgery was technically scheduled for but we needed to be there by 11:00 so I'm guessing around noonish. They didn't take her back until almost 1:00 at which point I went out and got myself a cheeseburger and a coffee at a nearby strip mall. Good thing I did since it was a long while before I ate again.

A's doctor came out to the waiting room to update me after he finished the surgery. This was around 2:15, about the amount of time I would have expected. He told me she had done well and was in the recovery room. Evidently she found the recovery room to her liking because she spent a good amount of time there. Usually time in recovery is 30-45 minutes before they ship you back to outpatient. Three hours and fifteen minutes later I was finally called back to outpatient. To their credit, the liaison nurse from recovery did come out frequently to give me updates. Most of them were along the lines of "Well, she's still in a lot of pain, it's going to be another 45 minutes to an hour." The final update was "She's back there discussing the superbowl commercials with the nurses." So I knew we were close at that point.

Finally at 5:25 they called me back to the outpatient area, which by the way, is exactly the same place as the inpatient area. So anyone coming in for surgery can get an inkling of the fun they'll be having after they wake up from their surgery. Probably not good planning if you think about it. But anyway, I head back and there's A, laying in her bed and not looking very happy. She was still in a lot of pain.

As a total side note here, everyone has a different pain threshold. Some people, myself included, have an exceedingly high pain tolerance. This is great for the fact that those people tend to have a really quick recovery time and be up and going about their business soon after surgery. Some people have an exceedingly low pain tolerance. In the case of A, per the nurse, she has "zero pain tolerance." So, they had to give her more medication than someone with a higher threshold would require. I tell you all of this just so you can have a better understanding of the rest of this story.

By the time I showed up in outpatient, A had had several doses of whatever they give you in the recovery room, but she's still exceedingly uncomfortable. About thirty minutes after I get into the room they give her two Percocets. She got a little sleepy so I got out my book to pass the time. After about fifteen minutes of quiet we get the following (out of the blue mind you)

A: You're my buddy!
M: (laughing) yeah, I know.
A: Seriously, you're so nice.
M: Yup. How about you rest for a little while?
A: Okay. But you're still my buddy.

We have quiet for a few minutes.

A: Did I tell you how much I appreciate you doing this?
M: Yep, you did. It's cool.
A: I'm so sappy right now.
M: Yes, you kinda are.
A: Buddy!

Shaking my head, going back to my book we get a few more minutes of quiet.

A: Hey, I should call my mom!
M: Okay.

I hand her her cell phone and she slurs through a conversation with her mom (Hi Mellon!) Eventually phone call gets disconnected and A passes back out.

Repeat the above interactions several times over before we get the final go ahead to leave the hospital. This is around 6:45. I go pull my vehicle to the patient loading zone and the nurse and I help pour A into it. As we pull away, I have her prescription in hand and have dug out her insurance card and debit card to get it filled. On the way to the pharmacy the conversation continues in it's previously established vein...

A: I love you man.
M: (Laughing) drugs kicking in nicely huh?
A: Yep. Good stuff.
M: I'm glad you're not in as much pain.
A: Nope.
A: I'm still really sappy though, and I'm just gonnna tell you that you're my buddy.
M: Okay, that's cool.
A: (Breaking into song) Oh! And then I shot my foot off!
M: What the hell?
A: It's a song! Jeff Dunham.
M: Oookkkaaayyy.
A: Yup! Jingle bombs! Jingle bombs! Jingle all the way!
M: Oh dear god, this isn't good.
A: No! It's really cool! It's Akmed the Terrorist and he blows himself up!
M: Hahaha! Dude, I feel like the designated driver taking my drunk friend home from the bar.
A: (back to singing) I got through checkpoint A, but not through checkpoint B, where are all the virgins that were promised me?
M: (shaking head) We're at the pharmacy, settle down for a few.
A: Okay! (to the car in front of me) Hey! Move it! Blocking up the line. (to me) you should go to the next line over.
M: They one that's blocked off?
A: Oh yeah, I didn't see that.
M: Also, there's no speaker or anything over there. I'd have to yell over to the first line and get out of my car to bring them the prescription.
A: Oh wow, I didn't even notice that there's nothing there.
M: That's not really surprising.
A: Oh! Jingle bombs! Jingle bombs! Your soldiers shot me dead!
M: Good lord.

And so it continued until I had dropped off the prescription at the window. We had a twenty minute wait so I left her in the car long enough to go inside and get her some apple juice. She tried to convince me to take her debit card for the transaction but I could just see how well that would go. Let's see, I've just dropped off a prescription for a narcotic at the window and now I'm inside using a debit card that's not my own, and the owner of the above mentioned debit card is singing loudly in the parking lot about terrorists. Yeah, I'm not going to jail for a bottle of apple juice, I'll buy this round thanks.

I finally got A home and on the couch where she passed out for several hours before I left. She's doing better today, although still in a lot of pain. She has stopped singing songs about terrorists and calling me her buddy. And as promised, I did not videotape her performance. Although I should have. I could have gotten some really good mileage from it.

Purrfectly lovely!

I got a few good shots of my friend A's two cats the other day. Seeing how much they look like two of my own it's no wonder we're friends. Also, I was supposed to send these to her when I got home that day and I keep forgetting. It's all good though, she knows I'm kind of ditzy like that and she puts up with me anyway.

Rusty



Daisy

Omaha

I went back to visit a good friend in Omaha a week ago. On Saturday, we took our cameras out and toured the city. Or at least the older areas of the city. One thing that Omaha has plenty of is history. I love the old brick buildings, the castle-like churches, brick paved streets and the advertisements that still adorn the sides of buildings. It's a photographer's haven. I'm not a great photographer, but I sure like to try.


Kountze Memorial Lutheran (est. 1857)





First Presbyterian Church (est. 1860, this building was built in 1915)



Memorial Chapel at First Presbyterian



The Rose Theater, originally opened in 1927 as the Riviera







Advertising on several of the buildings in the Old Market.







Lion at the Hindu temple (the temple was completed in 2004)



One of two elephants at the steps to the Hindu temple

Life going on..

Apparently, I've been very busy the past five days. Too busy to blog anything. Very busy indeed. Doing what? Ummm, I'm fairly sure I've made my bed a few times. I might have emptied the dishwasher once. There was coffee, walks, buying a fish...well, I'm sure there's more I accomplished. I just don't remember everything. I did manage to empty three more boxes and locate the bolts for Master J's bunk bed so I can sell it. That was a huge thing. I was starting to think I had lost those bolts and was going to have to go through all the packing paper that I had boxed up to find them. Turns out I'm just an idiot (again) and had set the bolts on top of a box. Which I then put another box on top of. I did search through the boxes but when I went to look through the bottom box, I lifted the top box and the lid to the bottom box at the same time. So I didn't see the bolts on the lid of the bottom box. Today I took the time to remove the top box and there they were. I also sold my moving boxes today as well. Half of them got picked up a few minutes ago and the other half will get picked up tomorrow when the guy's brother can lend him a pick up truck. I'm trying to get a few more things out there yet today so I can clear out some room and bring in some cash. My hope is that I can earn enough money to buy myself a bookshelf. Turns out that it's hard to get decent ones for not a lot of money. I've been searching. Anything under $150 is either made of press board or pre-dates the Hair bands of the 90s. All I want is a very specific size, solid wood bookshelf that will not look out of place in the same area as my dining room set. You'd think I was looking for a left kidney made out of gold. Ah well, I'll keep selling stuff until the amount of money I have matches the amount of money I need to get what I want.
In other news, I mentioned above how I bought a fish. Since I went to cichlids in my big tank, there was no way to put a betta in there. Since I've had a betta (or 2, or 75) for the last eight years, I just figured I'd get one and put it in it's own tank. So I went shopping and found a giant betta. These guys are pretty recent to the wholesale market (they've been available from breeders for a few years now). Anyway, I found a cool one and he's now sitting on the table. And guess who's sitting next to him to keep him company?

Yeah, she's very helpful that way!

I also finally spoke with a friend of mine that I've known for about 17 years. Turns out I should have called sooner, that way I could have gotten the bad news a little bit at a time instead of all at once.

First, her husband lost his job and is struggling to find a new one in this down market.

Second, they had to put her dog to sleep because he had gotten so sick recently.

And third, her thyroid cancer is back. She already had the surgery to remove the nodules on Halloween. Unfortunately that was the easy part. The hard part is coming up in January. It seems that in order for the radiation treatment to work, she has to go off her thyroid medication for at least a week. This gets all of the medicine out of her system and allows the radiation to work. But this is a miserable task. When she went through this before, all of her friends signed on to help out on different days just to try and help her though. We would bring her food and make her eat at least a little. We would take her for a walk as far as she could go (maybe a quarter mile, round trip, on a good day) just to get her moving. We would sit with her and talk and listen and know that whatever we had going on in our lives was nothing compared to what she was going through. Your thyroid affects so much that we don't even think about. When you get totally depleted like she's going to have to do, you aren't hungry but you want to eat. You're restless and exhausted but you don't have energy to move and you can't sleep either. You just float along and everything you should do, you can't. And it is miserable. And I wouldn't wish it on anyone. And this time, I can't even be there physically to help her out because I'm 1500 miles away. So I'll do the only thing I can do, I'll ask the God of my understanding to take care of her. And I'll send her cards while she's going through it that she won't appreciate until after she's gone through it and recovered. I'll call her and most likely talk with her husband about how she's doing. And I'll pray some more. Because that's what she'd do for me.

Trip Back, Part II

So the movers finally wrapped up around 4:30 and I then put all my frozen food into a box to bring to my friend Brandy that I was supposed to be meeting for dinner. I got over to her place right around the time that she was getting home from work which worked out very well. Now, we were supposed to be meeting our friend Kat for dinner right around that time so I called to tell her that we would be late. Only Kat was having an insulin reaction and couldn't feel her arms. I thought about telling her to suck it up and drive with her knees, but then thought to myself "Hey, now I can shower!" so I played nice and told her it was okay to just take care of herself and call us when she felt better. By the time I got done showering and Brandy got done getting ready, Kat was on the phone wondering when we were going to dinner because now she was hungry. Only none of us knew where we were going to eat and I still had to print out a power of attorney form to have Kat witness and Brandy notarize so Mister C can sign my name next week for the closing. I let the two of them sort it out while I fought with some word processing software over how the heck to get the poa modified and printed out. Finally, Brandy stepped in and did it for me. It really is nice to have friends with brains. Anyway, they had finally decided on a restaurant near Kat's house and Brandy and I headed down to it immediately with plans to call Kat when we were close so she didn't have to wait around for us. Turns out we should have told her we were almost there as we were actually walking out the door because while it took us 15 minutes to get there, it took Kat 30. Go figure. Guess it's sort of like church, the closer you live to it, the later you get there. The restaurant the girls had decided on was an old Italian style steakhouse. Which basically means that whatever you order comes with two side dishes that are really like main dishes. I chose spaghetti & a baked potato as my sides. It also means they bring you lots and lots of bread. The bread of course is just a tool to get the mounds of butter into you. We probably sat there eating and laughing for almost two hours. I'm surprised we didn't get kicked out, and I'm sure the patrons around us had quite a tale to tell later but we sure had a blast.

After dinner, we follow Kat home and she hopped in our car and we (we meaning Kat & I) decided to find a margarita bar, which apparently doesn't exist in that town. Now, Brandy said there was one. She claims to have gone to it. But there is no proof of this. Let's just say that after she called quite of few of the people in her phone, most of whom did not answer (umm, something we should know?) she still couldn't remember where this fantastic (fictional) margarita bar was. When she finally did get a hold of someone, at first he thought he might know what she was talking about, but eventually as she described in great detail everything about this place, he realized he did not in fact know what the heck she was talking about. Finally, we gave up and decided to go to a dive bar and regroup and hope that someone there had heard of Margarita Nirvana (they hadn't).

Ah, but the dive bar was another experience by itself. First of all, it's Tuesday, so it wasn't exactly packed. Secondly, the people that were in it, were socially inept. Not in a fun "how cute!" way either. No, while one member of a certain table was wheeling over to our table repeatedly saying such things as "My friend thinks I'm racist because I won't vote for Obama (he himself was black) and telling me that I laugh "like a black woman" (WTF does that mean?), his friend was running away to the bathroom to hide out of embarrassment. (For the record, none of us were there to pick up men, we really just wanted to find a place where we could talk and laugh raucously without being kicked out.) At one point the entire other table got up to use the restroom and we took that opportunity to bail out. Their margaritas had sucked badly enough that I hadn't drank more than 1/3 of it anyway so I wasn't upset to leave. We moved on to another place that supposedly had good margaritas, only as we're going to the door a man standing outside tells us that the place just locked the doors. He goes on to say that he and his party are moving on to a nearby bar that has great bartenders and we should follow. He seemed pretty normal so we decided that maybe that was a good idea. Yeah, not so much. We got over there and as we're walking in, Brandy & Kat are in front of me and Kat said something to Brandy to which Brandy replied "You think?". I walked in and the first thing I see is a platinum blond "woman" chatting with a guy at the bar. My first impression is that this is actually a guy, but I didn't say anything because what if I'm wrong? What if it's just a woman with a hormone issue and I'm judging? Besides, if it is a guy, I'm fairly sure that "she" could kick my ass so I'm not saying anything. Well, five minutes later Kat is telling us that we need to go and in the parking lot we figure out that she has seen our gentleman "snuggling" with another man. A man he has said was a "client". Oh great. Not only do we slide into a gay bar, we manage to find one that caters to "working" people. So out we go. We finally stopped at Mexican restaurant and hit their bar. We are the only three in there, which is probably a good thing. We stayed there about an hour before dragging Kat back to her home while Brandy & I went back to her place where I was spending the night. We got to bed after midnight and she was kind enough to let me sleep until 7:30 the next morning while she got ready for work. That was probably the best time I've had with friends in a long time. I don't think I've laughed that much in ages. Now we just have to figure out how to get together every few months even though we're 1500 miles apart.