Bravery isn’t about not feeling fear, it’s about doing what you have to even though you are afraid.
PHS, for what it’s worth, I am proud of all you have done.
This + 100.
I wonder if you should spend more time venting here.
The strain of this going on day after day and week after week and month after month would take a lot of people down.
I was a mess after Bill had his surgery, and quad by-pass heart surgery is very routine. The recovery is predictible, and Bill was motivated. I was still a mess.
I can’t imagine how hard it must be on you to have to have gone through this.
BTW…where is TOS going to be on Christmas? Isn’t it time for us to start sending Christmas cards to him? (And will you pay attention to the postmark? Because I send mine from Jackass Flats every year. This year will be the last time I can do it.)
Bumping flatlined off the bottom!
Is this the Jackass Flats in Nevada? Are they closing a post office or something? I know nothing about the place, except that I know dang well my dad would want to go there. 
And now I’m thinking we should have a Doper ‘postcard from WHERE?’ mail-a-thon, where folks look around and if there are any oddly-named towns nearby, send postcards from there.
And yay for TOS!!! I sure hope you keep venting to us, PHS, and I hope it helps even a little. {{Horseshoes}}
Well, he woke up this morning to find his favorite hat had disappeared. Then I came to see him to tell him that I’d just found out heads were rolling and my entire dept. was going through a corporate re-organd I started crying in his lap because I’m stressed and scared, and made his day that much worse. Yay.
In slightly better news, whatever they were giving him before wasn’t touching his pain so they switched him to Percocet, which he says has been helping quite a bit. So he at least isn’t as sore.
He’s supposed to have an MRI this afternoon to look for nerve damage in his spinal chord. He said he wasn’t worried, that he feels like that’s not the problem (his legs still not moving much or getting stronger) and shitballs do I hope he’s right.
You know what, feeling like he’s there for you and able to talk to you about what’s going on in life outside the hospital might make for a very short term worseness (that’s totally a word) but it also makes him feel like he’s contributing and in the long run it’s much better than trying to handle everything yourself and not lean on him.
I haven’t posted much in here because I feel like I have nothing useful to contribute, but I have been following along. Your pain breaks my heart, but then to see you are having to deal with job upheaval on top of this, I cannot imagine. My most heartfelt sympathies go to you and your family.
Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but first it might fuck you up for a little while.
I think some people are really afraid of their negative emotions. I’ve learned that sadness, grief, anger, loneliness, all of these are healthy and natural responses to the human condition. Giving into those emotions is not ‘‘falling apart,’’ it’s being human. I think when we truly fall apart is when we try to resist these bad feelings and they end up spilling all over the place. I’m just saying, you are under no obligation to bear this stoically. Your only job is to be human.
On preview: I definitely agree with Moonlitherial. You don’t have to be the strong one all the time. You can grieve together, and that can be healing. In fact, sharing your pain with him is probably one of the best things you can do for him, because we all need to feel needed.
Percocet is lovely. 
I have a feeling his hat will turn up. Probably got swept up in a linen change or something. Have you checked with the hospital’s Lost & Found or the laundry service?
Glad you’re finding comfort with each other - it will get you through this even stronger.
I’m sorry to hear of the re-org - you certainly do not need another set of stressors at this time.
Glad to hear the percosets help!
Good luck on the MRI.
(you are so strong! (ouch! stop kicking!) )
Thanks. One of the last bastions of sanity that I had in all this was: I could come to work, sit in my little space, and do my mostly-tedious job in relative peace. Click, type, copy-paste, click, type, copy-paste, click, type, copy-paste, click click click. Now even that’s being taken away from me, to be replaced by utter uncertainty and a complete upheaval in even the most mundane details of our day-to-day task flow.
I went cold turkey earlier to deal with what was turning into a drinking problem - as my husband lay dying, I really just couldn’t bring myself to give a flying fuck about myself, and when he got better and I didn’t want to anesthesize myself anymore I was alarmed to discoved how fast I’d gotten physically dependent - and that was a level of hell I’m unwilling to visit again. But goddamnfuckingshitAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH. There, I think that about covers it.
I found out about his MRI less than an hour after the bomb was dropped about our manager being laid off. We were being taken on a tour of our new office by our soon-to-be new boss at the exact same time he was scheduled for the scan. Un-fucking-real.
His mom found his hat - it had slipped between the mattress and the uber-complicated frame (the bed moves and shifts in all sorts of programmable ways) - but way down at the foot of the bed, somehow, so his dad and I had missed it in earlier searching.
MRI took hours; no results yet.
And, no, despite how desperate I sounded up there I didn’t touch a drop last night, nor will I tonight. Thanks for giving me a place to vent, though. Helps muchly.
{{ shoe }}
Hooray for finding the hat! I was going to let you know that Hats In The Belfrey has a 15% sale going on, but it seems it is unneeded.
Also: Wishing you continued success!
Fingers and toes crossed for a good MRI outcome and everything crossed for a good job outcome. That’s a whole lotta stress you do not need.
Vent with us. We’re good for it.
((((PHS))))))
Any updates? I sure could use a little positive news after this bleak weekend.
StG
Well, he’s supposed to ask this week about getting a day pass for Christmas Eve and/or Day. I’m hoping for both! For insurance reasons, he has to sleep overnight at the facility, otherwise he no longer counts as an inpatient. It’ll be nice to drive around and see the lights, re-introduce the cats to him, etc. There are a few minor items he wants that I can’t find, so he’ll just have to pay a visit to his own home and look for them his damn self! 
The main hitch is going to be that the house is old, with narrow doorframes, so this whole “wheelchair” thing [del]may[/del] will wind up being a pain in the ass.
However, I don’t have any insurance-related restrictions on where I sleep, so I spent Saturday night with him. (cue cheezy sitcom-style “Whoooooo!” from the audience) There’s a reclining chair in his room that gets almost all the way flat, and it was nice to wake up in the middle of the night and be able to reach out and touch his arm, hear him breathing contentedly or snoring instead of waking up alone wondering if he was awake, asleep, in pain, etc.
I suppose I should get him a Christmas gift, huh? I asked what he wanted and he said “To get out of here,” which I can’t exactly wrap up with a sparkly bow…
Bow chicka bow wow…
Put the big sparkly bow on the inside door handle.
You know, so that opening the door maps onto opening the present, which is the world outside the facility. 
I think I mentioned somewhere upthread that this facility has a car for patients to practice getting in and out, so family members can take them to appts and such? Anyway, he told me he had his first go at getting into the front seat. It was, and I quote, “Piece o’ cake.” He’s able to get himself into and out of his bed to the wheelchair using a transfer board, which is essentially a board varnished slick’n’smooth as a bowling alley. Using that, he can transfer with no help, and today showed that he can do the same into/out of a car, which is I believe a big step towards a) getting a day pass and b) getting discharged into outpatient care. That target date is still 1/23 but I really think they’ll wind up bumping it up.
One leg (Lefty) is getting stronger; he told me that in the pool, using a walker for support, he can stand on that leg. The weak leg (Righty) appears to have taken a serious hit in terms of nerve damage; in the pool it just sort of floats.
So, if he can wheel himself around and/or (eventually) limp around on one leg and a crutch or something, I think at that point his progress is going to slow down considerably and they’ll wind up sending him home. Maybe? One of his PTs threw around a rule of thumb that nerves regenerate at a rate of approx. 1 millimeter per month.
(No word yet on MRI results. The expert was supposed to look at it over the weekend and send back a report by tomorrow.)