Today was my parents’ 31st anniversary, so congratulations, Rhonda and Jerry Dotsey! I talked to my dad this evening a little bit. He and Mom were going to have a steak dinner and that’s about it I believe. He told me that for the most part everyone in Kentucky is doing well. Pap is getting around alright but he has to tape an eye shut still because it stays open when he sleeps. John Quinn’s not doing the best either, but Dad said he was going to be going to Durham soon to get some treatment at Duke University.
Coincidentally I got a MySpace message from Todd Buker today telling me that our high school friend, Richard Moore, is getting married in July. After I told Todd about Amanda’s ordeal he told me a cousin of his had a brain tumor that had been operated on at Duke and that she was doing fine. John also has a brain tumor, so that gives me some hope for him.
Today started out as Amanda’s best day and she slept in until around 9:30 too , which is the latest she’s slept so far. Around 11:00 she felt like her tongue was swelling though. At first it was written off because she had bitten her tongue at some point in the hospital, but after a while it was affecting her speech and her jaw was going off to the right. We figured that it was a reaction to the nausea medicine that was prescribed yesterday. Amanda turned out to be one of those “in rare cases.”
Karen and I tried to call Dr. Gajewski’s office but nobody got back to us very quickly so I loaded Amanda up into the car and we went to Urgent Care. We forgot Amanda’s ID, but I think her pleading “Please” helped them expedite things. They took her in and asked some questions and found out there was nothing there that they could give her, so they called transportation for her to go to Cape Fear Memorial.
I got to Cape Fear Memorial before Amanda was even checked in and Karen got there just as I was allowed to go back and see Amanda. The nurse we had was really great- she was about our age and apparently in about the same life stage. It seemed to take a little while, but she took good care of Amanda. First they gave her something for nausea then they gave her the stuff to counteract the other nausea medicine. By that point Amanda was in pain. The jaw thing was moving across to the left side and for a while her stomach had been spasming, which, with the pain in her stomach from the surgery, was not a pleasant thing.
Once they jacked her up on the new stuff I went back and got Karen and we all sat around in Amanda’s bay for a while. She was feeling better very quickly. Another nurse came in to give Amanda a bottle of water (the medicine made her mouth dry) and she talked with us for a bit too. She was very nice too.
Amanda remarked the other day that after all the poking and prodding and lying in a bed with people examining her she’d lost some sense of her propriety. Amanda was wearing a light dress, as she had been since she got home. When they put the sensors on her the first nurse had to reach down the side of her dress to stick it on her, and when she was getting ready to go, another nurse, this one a guy, was pulling off the sensors that were reachable, but she just reached right down and pulled the sucker off, nevermind that she sort of exposed herself. Russell didn’t look of course, and as a nurse he’s probably seen all sorts of things. I don’t think it bothered me, but it was a little funny to me that she was that… bold. I think I’m more bemused than anything.
I was working already when Amanda woke up this morning and when I heard her call my name I stubbed two toes on the cat crate sitting in the office. Speaking of breaking things, Phil stopped by and when I showed him the cabinet door Karen broke yesterday he accidentally finished pulling the rest of it apart in trying to open it. Ah well. Hopefully some wood glue will take care of the matter.
Karen spent most of the day doing our laundry. She saw that we had a hamper and a half of clothes in need of washing and decided to take care of that for us. I tell ya, with all the cleaning and washing and shopping she’s done, maybe we should have her move in.
Amanda talked to just about everyone she works with on the phone towards the end of their work day as I was getting some work done. Trish came by with dinner from Cracker Barrel tonight. It was chicken and pasta with corn and green beans. She stayed and talked to Amanda for a while and Mary, who also works with Amanda and lives on the street behind us, stopped by with a bunch of little gifts to help keep Amanda occupied. She also got a bunch of cards in today.
For most of the rest of the night we just watched TV. I finally got to show Amanda last week’s episode of South Park, which was title Eek: a Penis! Amanda was cracking up (Karen laughed too) the first time it showed the mouse with the penis growing out of its back flopping back and forth as it ran across the floor. She about died at the part I knew she’d like, when the mouse gazed up at the moon and started singing a parody of Somewhere Out There from American Tale, which the penis joined in singing. Terrible. Amanda thought it was probably her new favorite South Park, the last favorite being Crab People.
There was a slightly uncomfortable episode between Karen and Amanda tonight. I won’t really go into it, but it seemed to come out of left field and I think the root of it was a misunderstanding about ways of communication. I suppose it shouldn’t even be mentioned, but it was a part of the day, ya know.
Everything smoothed over though, and we all returned to watching some TV. There wasn’t much on so we watched Something About Mary. I think when you haven’t seen a movie like that in a long time you forget just how funny it is.
Zach Dotsey