TheRustyCook

Back up now....

I have not used this blog in ages. But I decided that I needed somewhere to just write and vent my life. I have been told I have a pretty wild and funny life and that I tell it well. And we all know life is all about the stories. So I decided to just start putting some of those stories up here.

Just a little background. My daughter Shoshanna (age 6) was diagnosed about 2 years ago with Leukemia. So we have had a pretty crazy life for the last two years. We have been in the ER a number of times. She also just got a blood disorder called ITP about 5 weeks ago to make things more complicated. My wife Karen also has hypertension, a heart arrythmia, and diabetes. She had some crazy challenges with that over the last couple weeks when she got the flu or something. So life has been pretty crazy already.

OK, now with that said, we move to the rest of the story (which gets progressively better) by starting with a paraphrase from Tevye (Fiddler on the roof). "Dear Lord, sometimes I wonder when it gets quiet up there you think 'I wonder what little bit of mischief I can play on the Yonkers'". Here is the deal. To start with, Karen had something like a flu or something recently. That like wiped her out. That was why we were in the ER with her one night. Then shortly after that she got these really weird hives. Don't know why. Took her into the doctor and he put her on Benadryl and steroids. So I got to deal with a wiggy wife for a little over a week. Talk about wired totally!

Well we are just getting done with both Karen and Shoshanna on steroids yesterday when our life just stays exciting with another event. Carolyn and Caleb had a band concert last night. They did really good by the way. Well we get home, have worship, and send the kids to bed. Karen and I are talking about a couple things then I was going to post on here about Shoshanna. Suddenly we hear John and David screaming upstairs. I go running up and there is a bat in the room.
OK, I consider myself a pretty macho guy that can handle most anything. One thing that does tend to freak me out though is flying things, especially flying mammals. But, of course, being the man of the house it is my job to take care of the thing. I close the bedroom door and take a few minutes for a think. First I try to hit the thing (it was hanging on the wall) with a soccer ball. Well I suppose if I was not so nervous and such I might have at least come close, but I missed by a mile. So now it is flying again. It lands right above the door this time.

During all of this my 15 year old daughter Carolyn is terrorizing David and John (it is their room) that the bat has rabies and lots of relatives in the attic. And that later tonight the other bats are going to come down and bite them in their sleep. This puts John, who was already quite scared, into an absolute terror fit. He locks himself in the younger girl’s room. If I was not so busy with the bat I would take care of Carolyn, but the bat comes first.

Now for plan two. I grab a broom, slide open the door, and then thrust the broom up and trap the bat under it. Wonderful!!! It is not able to fly around the room. But now I am simply holding the bat in one place. Not what I really had in mind. I hollar for Caleb to bring me a hammer. I figure one or two good wacks on the broom will take care of the problem pretty well. But David starts to hollar not to kill the bat. "It is not his fault, he is innocent". I am telling David to get a grip, sometimes critters must die, but Karen comes in for a bat reprieve carrying a coffee can. "On the Internet it says to capture bats in a can", she says. "OK, you get up here and do it", I reply. No such luck. Women’s rights do not extend to bat capturing (insert choice words here). So I ask for a towel. I try to catch the bat in the towel but he flops out on the floor and starts hopping across the floor. Oh, by the way, did I tell you I was on a ladder by this time?
Well I hop off the ladder with the broom and start trying to wack the bat to stun it before it achieves flight or crawls under something. I break the broom, making me mad now. I get the bat under the broom again, this time on the floor. I ask for the can and get the bat in it. Now I am holding a bat on the floor in a coffee can. Hmmmm. I ask for a piece of cardboard. I get it slid under the can and am able to lift it up, bat squeaking inside.

I now head down the stairs and outside (making sure that David can hear the squeaking bat so he knows it is alive still) to release it. Karen says, "Just take it far away from the house, set the can down and lift the cover, that is what the Internet says". Yeah right! I take it way far away, but instead I whip it far away from me. I am not going to let some pissed off bat decide to go after the jailer.

Well now as I am walking in the house I notice blood all over my hands (insert more choice words here). I go into the bathroom and wash off my hands. I have a puncture wound just below the ring finger on my left hand. Karen says right away "You need to go get rabies shots, that is what it says on the Internet". I try to argue that it could have been the breaking of the broom. She shows me on the Internet thought "Untreated rabies is 100% fatal and if you wait for symptoms it is to late". She then asks me to make sure the will is updated and the life insurance lists her as beneficiary.

So I call the urgent care nurse and after a bit of a chat am told I need to go to the ER, at 10:30 at night! Well, of course I know how to get there really well. Karen says, "have a nice night, I am going to bed, oh and take your computer for something to do, it will probably take a while". Thanks a lot. I grab my computer and head out.

The ER is absolutely packed, and half the people have masks on their faces, either because they have the flu or are scared of the flu. Well I might be afraid of a bat, but not of a silly flu, so I don't get a mask (we will know in a week if that was a stupid move). They take my information and ask me to sit. My computer decides not to connect to the Internet for some reason. So I watch an episode of Keeping up appearances that I have with. I then put things away and just go to sleep. I finally go back to a room about 1:30 or so and go back to sleep on the bed. At least it is a bit more comfortable.

The doc comes in (along with a cute lady nurse) and we have a chat. She then says I need both rabies and tetanus shots. Fun. I go back to sleep to wait. The nurse comes in and asks my weight, 300 lbs. She comes back in a few minutes later to ask my height, 6'6". I just want to sleep. About 2:30 the doc comes back in with two nurses, male nurses! She says "Wow you are a really big guy, you are going to have to get a lot of shots"! "I hate to make you a pin cushion, but the pharmacy says you need all this", she tries to comfort me with. This does not sound good.
To spare you the gory details, I got a shot in the palm of the hand right next to the cut/puncture wound. I got a shot in each arm, two shots in each butt cheek, and a shot in each thigh (that makes 9 total for those who struggle with math). The doc then offers me vicodin for the pain the next day. Oh great, what is this going to feel like. Well I have some still at home so I skip the prescription. Besides it is not as fun to take at home, or when you have male nurses. Not like when I got it for my foot and started chasing nurses in a wheel chair, with my wife right there (vicodin and I have a really good time together).

When I get home I see that Shoshanna (who can never sleep all night in her bed when on steroids), and John (totally freaked by the evenings events), are sleeping in the bed with Karen. I have no room in my own bed to sleep. So I just head off to the little girls room and curl up exhausted in Shoshanna’s bed.

Well today I am a little sore, but not as bad as I expected. Oh, did I tell you I get to go in for more shots this Saturday and the next two or three after this one? And the nurse was so funny (haha). He let me know that if I don't want to wait long to come between 5 and 7 AM because that is when the fewest people are there. Maybe only an hour wait compared to many hours other times of the day. I guess being their pet pin cushion does not rank very high in the triage list.

Labels: bat rabies leukemia hospital emergency room er family crazy shot kids children

posted by AtomicSuperGeek @ 10:31 AM