Togetherness

Of course, as we just saw in the article below, it isn't always easy to get along in close quarters.

When you're together by choice instead of incarceration, you have, at least, Options.

Walter needs to get some staples removed. Most of his stitches are the dissolving kind: the classic Open Heart Surgery railroad track up his chest; the slash on his left shoulder where his pacemaker now sits; the three long horrible inflamed sections on his legs where they took veins to use in his heart bypasses. He had two chest tubes in below his sternum, with one big old cloth stitch each. They yielded to my home surgical scissors with gratifying ease.

That leaves the unusually large gash where they put the heart catheter in his femoral artery.

His new local cardiac doc was quite puzzled at that one. It's generally just a little hole. Walter's is two inches long and held together with six nasty staples.

They did NOT yield to my pliers.

Not without a big old loud yelp from Walter, anyway.

So, I've been gently pummeling him to go get them out ever since.

We didn't want to go back to the primary who took over from my old doc. He gave Walter a thorough physical, pronouncing him in excellent health, a few weeks before he almost died from massive coronary artery disease.

I haven't been too happy with him either.

So apparently, unless your family doc is able and willing, you can't get just anyone to take out your stitches and staples these days. This complicated procedure requires an emergency room or a walk-in urgent care facility.

Since Walter's been wearing himself out sleeping and trying to eat healthy foods, and k's been wearing herself out rocking Walter to sleep and buying and cooking healthy foods for him, we just didn't make it to the ER.

He needed a chest xray too, because his chest pain is worse now than after his surgery. I mean, on the same pain meds. He figures that cross-country drive home had something to do with it. Sounds logical to me.

And! That annoying right arm MRSA didn't respond to the minocycline as well as usual. In fact, even though I went with the Miami doc's instructions and stayed on it for longer than Dr. C said to do - last night, it flared up bad.

Voila!

A His and Hers trip to the ER.

When we came to Holy Cross to check in, the nice lady who generally oversees things there told us we were the second couple coming together today. Ha! Would I could hear what brought them here. But, of course, that rude HIPPA thing made me not even want to ask. Even as nosy as I am, and I could have promised and said cross my heart hope to die stick a needle in my eye...but no. I was a good girl.

It was a long wait this time. Luckily, we advance planned enough to have books for both of us, plus Walter's computer.

His is the one with the Everywhere Wireless.

Which means, finally, I am really and truly liveblogging from the ER.

They would NOT put us in the same room no matter how we begged and pleaded. Oh, protocol!

Well! Here he is, staple-free! He had to bash some heads to get in to my room.

I'm sitting here waiting for my papers, greatly relieved that we have one last oral antibiotic to try. See, without Clindamycin, I'd have to be incarcerated here for a Vancomycin drip. But the smart doc went over this - that - and I explained about my printout, my list of allergies and meds and docs, and he said okay let's look, and said, Hey! Can you take Clindamycin? and I said, Well yes, so far so good!

Now I'm a free woman, ready to go home, and Walter's ready, and in two shakes we're outta here.

Oh, Walter says they used some special tool to take out his staples. He didn't even feel it.

Guess that's why my pliers didn't work.

heh!