What to Say When There’s So Much to Say?

Oh boy, when you have so much to write that you can’t even get it all written down, then you’ve got problems.  I’ve got problems.

Where to start?  I guess the best place to start is in St. Louis.  Mrs. Ender and I went to the mid-west to visit her mother.  She went out a few days before me and I was scheduled to return a day before her return flight.

Everything started well, if not a bit warm and humid.  We went to the Cardinals-Dodgers ball game that evening, and it was 104 degrees (in the shade) and really humid.  I know that I was drinking like a fish and I suppose that Mrs. Ender wasn’t keeping pace.  While she didn’t seem to be dehydrated, it turns out that she was.  Who knew that getting dehydrated would cause kidney stones to be problematic?

By Friday afternoon she was in so much pain that we had to go to the emergency room.  They did a CT scan and found one blocked and infected kidney.  Because of the size of the stones and the number of stones they couldn’t push a stent up there to relieve all the pressure.  Insead, they needed to stick a tube through her back into her kidney.  To make a long story a bit shorter, she spent four days in two different hospitals.  I got to sit in that chair that looks quite comfy but turns out to be a pain in the back after the first day or so.

On the fourth day we had to get a bit testy (ok, I got a bit testy) and insist that they release her.  After all, we knew there was an infection in her kidney and that is what was causing her to run a temperature and an elevated white blood cell count–although the white cell count had already dropped significantly.  I think they were milking our insurance.  She disagrees, but I think she’ll change her mind if/when the insurance company starts denying some of the charges.

We’d both already missed our flights home, so I had to quick-reserve us a flight out the next day.  Southwest let me use the credit from my missed flight (thank you Southwest) and I had to shell out the difference between next-day reservations and two-week advanced reservations.  American Airlines (what she flew out on) would have charged her either $75 or $100 to change her flight, but not if she’d already missed her original flight.  And, she’d have to reschedule to another flight, and if she didn’t know her schedule (who knew when she’d be released from the hospital) and had to re-reschedule, it would cost another $75-$100.  One of these airlines is bankrupt and the other isn’t, anyone what to guess why?

So we got home.

Mrs. Ender can get around as long as she moves slowly and doesn’t try to lift much weight.  She was okay with going to the double header on Friday (we had the good seats) and to the game on Saturday (we had the good seats), but she stayed home yesterday.  She did get a hug from Gio Gonzalez on Saturday and that made her day.  She says he has puppy dog eyes (google him to see for yourself) and who am I to argue.

And now I’m burned out.  I realize that she is in pain from the kidney (not as much as before) and from the tube in her back (cronic pain, she says, and I believe her) and I realize that all that isn’t her fault.  But I’m resentful that she’s assuming that she can or will continue to do everything she had planned before this happened, and that I can or will be able to provide the extra assistance she needs.  Pushing her around in a wheelchair is fine, but I have neither the patience or energy to keep doing it.  I think she needs to sit and wait for the date when the stones will be removed, and stop expecting so much from me.  Some, yes, but not what she’s expecting now.

On the last day she was in the hospital, my frustraton level was peaking and I’m sure that I wasn’t all smiling and nice.  I had to explain that I’d just spent four days sitting in a hospital room and my frustration was naturally going to be different from someone (her) that had been lying in the same hospital room.  And today I’m equally frustrated.  I know that she’s not getting around like she did before, but I’m the person she’s expecting to get that/pull that/push that/lift that.  Her condition is exhausting me and I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I’ve let her know that in several passive aggressive ways that I’m not proud of.  I know she has limited range/motion/movement, but I can’t keep being her hands/arms/legs without slowly going mad.

In other news, I did get my invitation to purchase playoff tickets for the Nationals.  That’s pretty exciting, even if they don’t get into the playoffs or go all the way to the World Series.  But I can always hope, can’t I?

Ender is out.