Wow, 2022 already. Actually March 2022. And in less than a full three months. And it’s been a year already. Here I thought 2022 was going to be easier than the last 2 years. Silly me.
2022 is turning out to be a big mess. I can explain, because it’s going to take some explanation.
You know how it is. You’re standing there at midnight on December 31/January 1 celebrating the fact that last year’s crazy days and months are now in the rearview mirror and you’re seeing a nice, flat, hopeful new year.
Yeah, THAT was a mirage. 100% Mirage. Like in “you’re looking at the wrong timeline, yours is over here in this dark, blind corner“ mirage.
January started off to confirm my beliefs that 2022 would be a good month. All we had scheduled was a granddaughter’s birthday and our very first cruise.
This was supposed to be our 2nd honeymoon and we were looking forward to it. It was all planned, all the things I wanted to do fit in a 6 day highlight.
First there was the possum. We live pretty close to a big field (two blocks) and we get critters all the time. These guys can break and enter better than a lot of human cat burglars. But, unlike the cat burglar, the possum only wants in where it’s safe and warm out of the rain. But, they make all sorts of noise in the attic and poo.
So, when they come to visit, Bruce has to crawl up the ladder and install our critter cage, baiting it with bacon and peanut butter (because they seem to love that stuff).
It took 3 days to catch the latest one because he was some sort of superhero-type possum. Bruce would have to go back up and rebait the trap only to lose the bait to this guy.
Bruce told me on the second day, after the bait had been stolen without tripping the trap, “This is now personal.” He went up, rebaited the thing, and pushed it back to the middle rather than the end. He checked it the next day and we had a “whatzit” in the trap.
So, he takes the little guy/girl to the cemetery down in Alvin, about 20 miles away and lets him go. It’s the best thing we could think of to give him a new home out of ours.
It wasn’t the worst thing to happen that month, by a long shot.
It was during this fun with the possum that I was working on finishing Book 5. I let this one hang too long and it needed to be finished. I set a goal of doing it before our cruise the end of January and started concentrating.
I finished the first draft on January 19. It’s been through first edits and is at my continuity editor’s currently. I’ll have an announcement on release date soon!
My husband ate a frozen chicken pot pie and promptly got food poisoning. We didn’t think it was too bad, just one of those things. But when he started throwing up blood, that’s when I called the ambulance.
They got here, tried to walk him out the door to the gurney that was just out of the door. He didn’t make it, collapsing on a stool in the kitchen. They brought the gurney in and took him out.
He was already so dehydrated, they had a hard time getting the IV started in the ambulance. I waited in our van behind it for what seemed forever before they finally hit the lights and headed out to the hospital.
We always opt for the hospital near NASA in Clear Lake. It used to be Christus St. John’s but they changed the name of it when Methodist bought it and it’s now Methodist Clear Lake.
When he got there, they had to have the on-call doctor use a sonogram machine to find veins strong enough to hold the arterial IVs they needed. He had 4 IVs in him when they took him up to the ICU unit.
He was in ICU for three full days. He kept waking up at night and thinking it was still Sunday night. When the ICU came in while he was awake, she said good morning and he asked which morning.
It was Wednesday. He had missed three full days. I’ve never seen as many IV bags on a person in my life (and I worked in a hospital drawing blood in the mid-80s). He had 7 at one time piggy backed on those 4 sites.
They ended up giving him five pints of blood and two of plasma to get his levels up. Each of these takes a couple of hours to go in, they make sure it goes slow so it doesn’t cause problems.
We were both amazed that he was blood type A+. We had been told he was a B+ for years. But nope, he is definately an A+. This is funny because I’m also an A+. I’m certain of that, I used to give blood every three months like clockwork before I moved down to Houston. I worked on giving here for several years but now, with all the meds I take, they can’t take it.
Five pints of blood is a LOT to replace. He had opened five places in his esophagus that bled. It was probably weak to begin with, but all the vomiting over the food poisoning caused it to break open. I’ll spare you the details but if you ever see red blood and something that looks like coffee grounds when you are throwing up, go to a hospital IMEDIATELY! As the nurses told me, if I hadn’t recognized the sign, he would have died. He was very close by the time we got him to the hospital.
They FINALLY moved him to a single room on a regular floor on the 4th day in. He still had blood going in and antibiotics. There were 3 doctors still seeing him, but at least he could be a little more comfortable. He did a lot of sleeping, though, because with what he had been through, he needed the rest. I ended up staying home and resting two of those days myself.
But Bruce had a LOT of trouble with the hospital food. After not eating for 3 days, he wanted something to eat and what he got did not taste like anything to him. It was two days in when he got given what they called a hamburger. He lifted the lid, looked at it, and asked the nurse, “Have you heard the joke from Eule Gibbons “Have you ever eaten a pine bench? This thing proves some parts are not.” It was bland and he ended up griping at the nurses because he wanted something that was better.
So, after the doctor changed his diet orders, I found out I could call DoorDash and they would deliver to the hospital! That was awesome because I could order the sandwich and fruit cup and it would be delivered. That made him happy. We are both thankful that the hospital has made that available.
Of course, because this little episode, we had to move our cruise. It was supposed to be January 31-February 4. Since he didn’t get out of the hospital until February 2, we would have never made it. But, I called Royal Caribbean and explained the situation. We scheduled it out for the last week of March so he would be feeling better by the time we go.
Next post will be what I’m going to do on that cruise. I’m looking forward to going!
But, you can see, we had WAY too much going on in January.
