Married With Medicine

I am writing this on a Saturday night at 8:46, sitting in my faded Christmas kitty jammies and watching a Save Britney documentary on Hulu.

I’m feeling like a full blown loser, but also like I have earned this respite from the crazy week that has been circling around me. This was Go Green Week at my school, our first four-day-week in second grade (another post to come on that later). It is also one week after we hosted a wedding at our home and two days after we had eight brand new spanking windows installed. To say that it’s been busy has been an understatement.

During all the chaos, I noted that my husband looked a little bit weary, a little unlike himself, a few more bags under his eyes, but in the rush of the week, and in our shared desire to keep our pre-teen from doing anything unsavory on TikTok, but also to keep our 9-year-old from eating more than a can of salt and vinegar pringles for dinner, I Ignored his tired look. As the week went on he began to complain more and more of head pain.

Now to be clear, my husband is not a complainer. Anyone will tell you that. I am the dramatic one of our duo. I bump my elbow on the staircase and I start a google search on liver cancer, I cut my leg on a razor blade and begin to research if different band aids can cause seizures. I have several medical degrees, but no one has paid me yet for my knowledge, which is too bad because I have a lot of it to share. Which leads me to my main point, which is to say, my husband tends to share less, search less and complain little about any medical ailments he may have. He also refuses to go to the doctor. I am generalizing here, but I find that this can be an unfortunate male trait. I’m not really sure what the delio is with it, like it is some kind of masculine need to absorb all the pain one can tolerate in the human body before reaching out and saying good lord I need help and then by the time they do, it comes out like Jesus H, someone please f’ing help me!

And this is where I come in. The Jesus H stage.

By the time Wednesday rolled around at our house and he was still slumped over in pain, I said it’s time to call the doctor. He insisted he was good. I ranted and raved. Then on Thursday, I noticed one of his eyes appeared to be drooping some, he said his vision was off. I told him that’s it, call your GD doctor. Still. He sucked it up and never called. By the time Friday arrived and he was in such pain that he couldn’t get out of bed, I was literally sending him messages that read tick tock from school, like some kind of Saw revival episode.

He had not been to his appointment for twenty minutes on Friday evening at 4:00 when I got a call from him. ” Uhhh, the Nurse Practioner, she said it is bad… She wants me to be seen at St. Mary’s. She is worried where we had Covid, it could be a stroke or a brain bleed.”

In that moment, I stop my anxiety chopping of the Blue Apron meal that I am doing and I make some calls for someone to take care of the kids.

The big ones and the furry ones and I make a mad dash to Lewiston. I think a million things on the way there, but mostly I think Dear God don’t let this be serious, god damn you covid and also why didn’t I push harder? Why didn’t I make an appointment myself? I do a lot of blaming on the way there, praying and blaming and then I repeat.

Once I get to the hospital and park in between two spots which some people hate, but I don’t think I ever truly passed drivers ed so I don’t give a crap. I run into the hospital. Now last I knew, spouses couldn’t go into the hospital . This past March, we had babies being born without their Daddies. But lately, things look on the up and up, I guess even Massachusetts is safe now, so I take a chance that I”m good.

Two volunteers look up at me as I blow through the door. They argue with me at first that only one visitor per patient is allowed and when I tell them, I am the visitor they give each other a look and then the one begins the covid check list. I cut her off.

“No diarrhea, no vomiting, no loss of smell or taste, no temperature, no slight cough or body chillls, no known contact with a person who has identified as positive with Covid 19 within the last 20 days.”

“Oh, she says, this is my first night. Is that the whole check list?”

“That is it,” I tell her.

When she asks if I have ever had Covid as she peels the visitor label off the sticky sheet I respond with “Yup, it was fast and furious.”

“Holy crap” she says, “like the movie?”

“Yup, like getting run the hell over.”

After our lovely introduction she lets me through a locked back door and I find Joe slumped on a hospital bed getting poked and prodded. The doctor walks in. He is no Dr. McDreamy, but seems to take his time asking questions and nodding a lot. At one point he says something about severe headaches or migraines and I give my ten cents, because that is the other part about my husband, he is too damn nice for his own good. I swear to God, if he were having a heart attack and knew it, but they said you ate a bad piece of shrimp, he would go home and just throw his shrimp leftovers in the trash. I on the other hand, trust no one and can hate everyone on a Friday night, so I inform this lovely doctor that when he said migraine I heard imaging and when he said headache that sounded a heck of a lot like bloodwork.

I say it in my nice voice. I was raised by a nurse and I know all things happen faster with sugar, but I am no bullshit, with my arms crossed and my Go Green, no outside recess teacher hair. Things move pretty quickly. The nurse is nice. Christine. She has red hair and tattoos. Tattoos that look like they didn’t come from a bad Spring break in college, but that came from a recovery from a bad ex and finding herself two years later. She is quick with the IV and quick with what she calls a migraine cocktail. He begins to relax finally. Someone comes to take him down to have his brain scanned, the nurse comes back and draws more blood. After he falls asleep , I do some more apologizing for the wrongs that I have done lately. For the cursing and rap music I play pulling into LER, for stealing that gum when I was seven, for being selfish and not paying attention to my person all week long.

An hour and a half goes by and then the doctor is back in the doorway, looking tired, but calm and explaining that the scan was good and the blood is good and no sign of strokes or of brain bleeds. I exhale, because my largest fear is always that I will lose him, swiftly and before his time and he is always what makes my light bulb brighter in this world. We leave not knowing why he has had such head pain and still needing more answers, but also knowing that it is not always Married with Children, but sometimes Married with Medicine that happens on a Friday night.