Domestic Psychology

stocking up on pens

// September 13th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Doug, health, me

Since I don’t know where to go for leeches, I think I’ll try some empty pen medical care. While Doug’s can be stabbed anywhere to relieve his ample blood pressure, mine will be jammed in my sinus windows that are making my face throb. What? You never saw the magical curative powers of writing implements on *Emergency?

*Now we know what John Locke’s father did when he wasn’t being a con man. Come to think of it, maybe stabbing people with pens in every episode should have been our first clue that his career as a paramedic was just a long con.

Grandaddy says:

// June 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // health, relatives

To family/friends: “The pain is terrible.”
To nurses: “I’m fine.”

“I don’t want you to be frightened by all the tubes and wires, but . . . I’m peeing right now.”

“That nurse has a funny accent. Does she have a green card?”

“I don’t want the nurses to help me. That’s your mother’s job.”

“Next time you visit, bring my gun. I don’t want to be unprotected.”

“Your mother may be my oldest child, but your Uncle is the eldest son, so he’s the executor of my estate and living will. Now, your mother can’t pull the plug on me.”

“Why does your mother keep telling the nurses to make me sleep?”

“Keep those male nurses away from me.”

“I’m so proud of you for doing the right thing and coming to America legally. It really is better here.”

“…and then she squished me to stick a tube in there.”
“When boys are toddlers, they deliberately squish it and it doesn’t hurt them.”
“Oh gross! How can you talk about that?”

“My friends told me that if I use my arms, I’ll feel this pain in my chest for the rest of my life. Fix my pillows again. You didn’t do it right last time.”

“The nurse said I can have sex again when I can climb two flights of stairs, but I’m going to find a woman who can carry me two flights instead. She can just do all the work.”

“Now, your mother gets to know what it was like for me when she had her knees replaced.” (fact check)

To 16-y-o grandchild: “The doctors just gave me ten years. Will I get to meet my great-grandchildren before I die?”

Noah: “Mom? Grandaddy asked me to bring him his gun so he can kill Granny.”
me: “What?!?”
Grandaddy: “Your mother didn’t give me my afternoon pain meds.”
me: “Do I need to drive over there or call 911?”
Granny: “Hello?”
me: “Dad asked Noah to get a gun so he can kill you.”
Granny: “WHAT?!?”
Grandaddy: “You didn’t give me my pain meds and made me suffer.”
Granny: “Your medicine is sorted and sitting on the kitchen counter.”
Grandaddy: “See? She isn’t taking care of me.”
Granny: “I’m so glad you’re feeling better.” <- /sarcasm ->
me: “I’m going to start forwarding these calls to your eldest son.”

CVICU waiting room

// May 27th, 2010 // No Comments » // health, people

Three quickies:

1. The people in this room aren’t just family and friends. Everyone in this room is a former or future CVICU patient. As someone who is conservatively a good 15 pounds heavier than they should be, I am willing to be annoying by saying that everyone in this room is or will have their health affected by lifestyle choices. While the waiting area in other hospital spaces is diversely populated, this room is filled with heavy and obese people. The trash cans overflow with McDonald’s bags. Funyun and Cheetos wrappers are scattered everywhere. My own idea of fun is sitting, listening to music and writing. I am the poster child for sedentary hobbies. The obese man eating a Big Mac reassured me that he’s had CABG surgery twice and it didn’t change anything in his life. He is a former AND a future patient.

2. CVICU has two waiting rooms. The private CVICU waiting room is an isolation box. The walls are bare and the room has no television. Cell phones don’t work and the hospital’s wi-fi refuses to cooperate. The room temperature is so low that ice cream would not melt on the table with the magazines from 2003. The main CVICU is the place without secrets. Teenagers in jammies, fresh from the shower, play games on cell phones while their hair dries. A woman makes multiple calls to give concerned people updates while complaining about the “Bearden pusherman” who she blames. Strangers weave in and out of each others’ conversations with words of experience, compassion and reassurance. Sometimes, the layers of human suffering get too dense and everyone laughs at something that really isn’t funny. “They threatened to put a lien on her condo over a $40 fee she can’t pay because she is unconscious? Ha-ha.” In the evening, a group of homeless adults wander through in search of an empty recliner for an evening of safety. They know the main waiting room is better than the private room.

3. The Whip It soundtrack and a cup of caffeine are your friend in the CVICU.

four eyes

// December 16th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // life, parenting

Last week, when I assaulted the eardrums of everyone in the vicinity of Children’s Hospital with my plastic tree’s metal stand dragging the roof of the parking garage, it turned out to be the highlight of that day. Our destination was the children’s eye doctor who has taken care of my family since Tommy was small. The appointment started out on time. I always sing a little happy song inside when this doctor is on time, because it means there are no eye emergencies at the hospital. Amy was less pleased, because the appointment started with eye drops that burned.

After an assortment of machines and tests, the doctor explained the results to me. He cheerily explained that Amy’s astigmatism and near-sightedness almost cancel each other out so that her vision is not that bad. Then he demonstrated that his real concern was her weak eye muscles. I verbalized lazy pirate therapy, but he said exercises wouldn’t help and surgery was not needed. The plan was to let her wear the glasses for schoolwork and check on the eyes again in a few months. I was too busy processing his casual attitude and her diagnosis to come up with any questions.

The next stop was the attached glasses shop. There were dozens of frames that Amy loved and the employee happily said that anything in the shop would work for Amy. It wasn’t until we were ready to place our order that we found out they didn’t accept Amy’s blah insurance. I left with a visibly disappointed Amy to find a shop that would work with us.

We found a place and they assured us they carried children’s frames. Amy dashed around the store looking at frames while I handed the clerk Amy’s script. “Oh, wow! This script is horrible!” My brain clicked to a different channel and I tried to sync the everything is groovy attitude at one place with the gloomy attitude at this place. Did the doctor who I love, sugar coat reality? Why didn’t he tell me a year ago that her muscles were weak? Why did he say she didn’t need her glasses all the time if they are so bad?

I was dragged back into the moment by the clerk who handed us three frames and said they were our only choices. Say what? Amy looked stunned. The choices were a dark blue metal frame, a plastic crayon purple frame and a teeny plastic peach frame that looked like they were sized for an infant. Amy just stared blankly at the three choices. I said the metal frame looked okay because it was the least awful pair. “You don’t want those. Children shouldn’t have metal frames.” I went back and forth with the clerk who unwaveringly insisted that we weren’t ordering the blue frames. I said fine and told her we’d take the purple pair. She started trying to convince me that we wanted the peach frames that were smaller than Amy’s eyes. I lowered my voice and looked at her through my bangs. “We’re getting the purple pair.” Measurements were taken and we were told to wait a week. Amy left there looking like her heart had been stomped. I had to go home and hide to cry.

Now, I know I shouldn’t complain about the style of glasses when there are children who do without any despite their needs. It’s just easier to complain about being forced to put u-g-l-y frames that look like they were a prize in a happy meal on my sweet child than it is to describe the fear and helplessness at the diagnosis. That and the clerk at a glasses store who took every single bit of fun out of a very difficult situation for a bubbly little girl. I’m sorry for Amy, but not enough to give her a puppy for Christmas.

bad patient

// November 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // health, parenting

4:00 pm – Sarah enters the house, vomits and goes to bed. Her temperature is 101.

“I stayed up too late last night. I’ll be fine after a quick nap. I have to go to a football game tomorrow night.”

10:00 pm – After a six hour nap, Sarah’s temperature is 102.

“I think I just ate too much Halloween candy this week. I’ll be fine for the football game.”

I told Sarah that I have never heard of anyone running a fever from eating too much candy. Doug and I took turns trying to explain that she needs to be fever free for 24 hours before she is going anywhere.

“I won’t breathe on anyone at the game. It’ll be okay.”

like a slow motion train wreck

// July 19th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // health, medical, scouts

Late Thursday night, we got a phone call from *camp that two boys in Noah’s troop were sick and H1N1 was suspected. After a sleepless night, we got another phone call saying that the two sick scouts didn’t have H1N1′s trademark high fever and life returned to our version of normal. Saturday, the phone call report was that multiple scouts in our troop AND the camp were sick and one of our scouts was hospitalized. <- insert mom panic here ->

We called the pede before the boys arrived home from camp. Our pede won’t prescribe TamiFlu for the children until one of them gets sick. We sent all the siblings to the grandparents and began the wait for a symptom that would send us to the ER for TamiFlu. I called again the next day when Noah’s temp rose to 99.6 and he started refusing food and complaining of sleepiness. The on-call nurse went out of her way to be rude and insulting to me while telling me there was no reason to go to the ER before the temp is 105. I tweeted a nasty word in frustration. Six people from our troop have been diagnosed so far. In the mean time, every scout who came home exposed every person they saw. The parents in our son’s troop work for Knox County Schools, ORNL, UTK, the U.S. military and more. There is no way to list all the places that our scouts and their families have been in Knoxville since they were first exposed. It is way beyond containable now. Worse than that, one boy is STILL in the hospital. I wonder if the stress knot in my belly will keep me from getting sick enough to need medical care? One major illness without insurance will be one too many for us to bear. I would really like to say c’est la vie, but I think that’s impossible without modern pharmaceuticals. Or ice cream.

*Read the comments on the camp’s blog and see that no matter what they do, they are made the bad guys. Keep the boys at camp? Parents upset. Send the boys home? Parents upset.

buy bread and milk

// April 26th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // health, people

H1N1 Swine Flu information or a reason to panic about other nasty cooties.
How Twitter users are preparing:
@Busymom Add eggs and beer.
@RussM Surgical masks and chocolate.
@raowen hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, bandaides and bottled water

Want to know if you have Swine Flu? Click here

Doug loves going to the doctor

// October 10th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Doug, health, me

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know that I’ve had mystery eyelid disease coming and going for several months. A lid would puff up for one day, peel for a few days and then be fine for months. This week, for the first time ever, BOTH eyelids puffed on the top AND bottom lid. They didn’t peel on the second day either. They got worse. I became a teensy bit hysterical and Doug made a doctor appointment for me. I suggested he come along and get his cough checked. Off we went for our bi-yearly visit to the doctor.

While I entertained Evan, Doug talked to the doctor about his cough. The doctor talked to Doug about his blood pressure. Doug talked to the doctor about his dizzy spells. The doctor wrote Doug five prescriptions and Doug was very happy. Then, it was my turn. The doctor looked at my eyes from across the room and pulled out a reference book. He got to the puffy eyelid page in his book and started reading.
“The cause is usually unknown and is helped by warm compresses,”
“I’ve been doing that most of the past two days and it doesn’t help.”
“antihistamines . . .”
“Taking them every day.”
“and for discomfort, artificial . . .”
“Tears. Done that.”
“Well, it’s probably a staff infection now. It itches, right?”
“No. It hurts.”

I don’t know if he heard me at all because he never got up from his chair to actually look at my lids. He just wrote the script for topical and oral antibiotics. Doug paid the pharmacy two weeks’ worth of grocery money and we went home to read the orders on all the different labels. I took my nasty pill and read the precautions on the tube of ointment.

Not for ophthalmic use.

I hate going to the doctor.

I’m just going to pretend that collagen lips are out and collagen eyelids are in this season.

Update – You are all very wise. I threw away every makeup that even came near my eyes as well as the brushes. I am the crazy person in dark sunglasses in the grocery store.

blogging health

// April 6th, 2008 // No Comments » // blogging

How do these statistics compare to physical and emotional health issues in other industries? An article from old media desperately hoping that new media is a fad is less than convincing. Most bloggers LOVE what they do. They thrive on the constant input and rapid output of information. Doug gets an adrenaline high when he is experimenting with new technology. I feel disconnected without my steady diet of breaking news and access to multiple outlets for my stories, opinions and ideas to flow out. Would I feel stressed and pressured to blog if I was paid in products, services or cash? No. Blogging about the places I go, the things I do and the people I meet is easy. You know what’s stressful? Blogging about the details of my personal life knowing that the consequences could be more severe than a cranky troll. Getting a free trip in exchange for detailed stories and observations? Easy. Blogging about the real, imperfect feelings and actions in my mundane world? Hard. I don’t need a scientifically sound study to prove what I anecdotally know is true about blogging. Bloggers love to write. We are the diarists of the past. Our blogs are as necessary to us as the old journals were to our like minded ancestors. We Twitter instead of doodling in the margins. We Flickr and Seesmic instead of illustrating. We link instead of taping old articles into our journals. We actively participate in the entire Web experience. We read and comment to others as much as we write for ourselves. It makes us feel more alive, not less. The more I am able to post, the happier and healthier I am. When I am silent, you should worry about my health.

icky eye

// June 15th, 2006 // 1 Comment » // me

Yesterday morning I woke up to a red, swollen eyelid.  Like most uninsured people, I set out to diagnose myself on blingo.  Let’s see, the first possibility is cellulitis and that requires antibiotics, so I’ll keep looking.  Second possibility is an eye socket infection and that just sounds gross so, no thank you. Third possibility is a clogged tear duct which requires no antibiotics. That’s it!  That’s what’s wrong with my eye.  I stuck my head in the sand and life was good.