celebration

Yesterday, while Rich was in the emergency room, I stole away for forty-five minutes.  To my favorite coffee place, for sugar and caffeine, and briefly taste another world.  I would also get a carrot muffin for him, after he completed his CT scan.  

Yesterday's concern:  Increasing heartbeat, weakness, some shortness of breath, possible movement of PICC (the catheter snaking up his arm and into his heart, where IV is poured). So, for peace of mind, we went to ER.

A s I drove to the hospital I thought:  How many times have we used the many hours we would be in ER to instead relax and enjoy a Sunday?

Forget this thought.  It's gone.

So I sip an excellent cafe au lait and watch a two-year-old at a nearby table celebrating his birthday.  Or, more accurately, his grandparents celebrating his birthday, joyfully spooning a tiramasu (sophisticated kid) into his mouth, opening his card and watching the bills float away, playing with his Matchbox cars.

And here I am, the anthropologist, absorbing something foreign and intimate, leaving me confusedly sad and longing for what I don't know.

Rich is almost ready to leave ER when I return.  He eats his muffin, removes his hospital gown, and we learn that his heart is okay and nothing seems amiss.

That was morning and afternoon.

Then comes evening.  His hand becomes numb and fierce pains shoot through as the IV begins. We stop the pump, call the appropriate on-call doctor in New York, and he says hold the morning IV until doctor-in-charge calls.  I'm ready to pull out the damn thing, so holding is easy.

And now it's morning again.  Each day is worse.  Rich is having trouble signing his name.  He tries to stand, tries again.   Visiting nurse comes.  We talk with on-call doctor.  Come to NYC tomorrow, he says, we can check it out.

We have other visits scheduled tomorrow, too.  But, if we are still able to go, there will be nothing to celebrate. 

Candace