Steve's in the hospital again. This time it's not the Long Beach VA facility, but Huntington Memorial Hospital right here in Pasadena. The drive's a lot shorter, but the parking costs $6.
Steve was supposed to start another round of chemo last Tuesday, but on Monday he asked to go to the Emergency Room at Long Beach, because he was feeling so dizzy and wobbly. He had fallen several times over the previous week.
He was admitted to the VA hospital for transfusion and, by Tuesday afternoon, the medical consensus there was that the problems were caused by a combination of postural hypotension (standing up too fast makes your blood pressure drop) and anxiety (an M.D. finally uttered the word).
I have kept suggesting that he make a point of walking up and down the stairs a couple time a day, just to keep from becoming atrophied. After he started falling and passing out when standing up, I suggested he stand up at the couch every so often (like whenever ads came on) to "harden" his system again. He agreed these were all really great ideas, but did nothing about them.
Finally, today, I took out the kitchen timer (it's a little chrome tea kettle), set it at 30 minutes, put it by the TV and told him, "When it goes off, you get up, set it to 30 minutes, and sit back down." When it was presented that way, he simply did what he was told, and it seemed to go fairly well.
Another thing I had insisted on was his return to AA meetings, especially the Friday night meetings, because he has so many friends in that group. And I wasn't going to take him; he had to ask someone to take him. He ended up calling Bob McBroom (his ex and a really sweet guy), who picked him up at 7:20.
The meeting starts at 8 p.m., then there's a speaker for about an hour, then group sharing, and things wrap up around 9:30. I got into my robe, since I figured Steve would be pretty worn out after the meeting.
A little after 9 p.m., the buzzer from the front gate goes off. It was Bob: Steve was laying on his back on the sidewalk, looking Kafka-esque. His legs had buckled and he fell. He was pretty sure his left arm and leg were broken. I called 911 and went looking for Steve's Medicare card, which he said was on his desk.
I couldn't find the card, and by the time I got back outside, they were working on getting a back board under him. I didn't have his card, but I did retrieve his "hospital bag" (a small shoulder bag with two books for reading, a fresh pair of underwear and his cell phone charger, among other things). I knew this was going to be more than a treat-and-release situation.
About midnight, Bob dropped me off at home, I got the car and drove back to the hospital, making the mistake of not noting in which parking structure I had parked. I still had my visitor's badge on, so I got right back in. By that time, the nurse had been in and said that Steve was being admitted and was on a pre-operative regimen (no food or water).
Around 1:30 they finally administered some morphine, and Steve dozed off. He woke up about 2 a.m. and told me to go home. When I got outside the ER, I couldn't remember from which direction I'd come. I walked to the parking structure Bob had parked in, but it didn't look familiar. After about 20 minutes of wandering around the buildings and parking structures, I found the car.
I'll try to keep you updated here about things as they happen.
A scene from "Who Frames Roger Rabbit?" comes to mind here, I'm not sure why: the villain has Roger by the throat over a barrel of "dip" (acetone and benzene; the only way to kill a 'toon), and he asks Roger "Any last requests?" to which Roger replies, "Yeah; nose plugs would be nice."
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