Dropping Like Flies!

You will NOT believe my story on Wednesday.  It’s a bit lengthy but worth the read.  Please find humor in this. 

At 6:58 a.m. I am awoken 2 minutes before my alarm is set to go off by my 7 year old son standing at my bedside saying “Mom”!  He proceeds to tell me that he fell out of bed sometime in the night when it was still dark which I perceive to be somewhere between 12:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. since I checked on him before I went to bed and the sun comes up somewhere around the second time mentioned.  Now when he just woke up he saw a little bit of blood on his pillow and his tongue felt a humongous ditch on his lip.  I mumbled to him that it was OK and I would just wash his sheets a day early… no big deal… when out of the corner of my sleepy eyes I see him timber over and hear a thump on the  floor.  NOW I’M AWAKE!  I jump out of my bed avoiding his legs and see him laying there facing the ceiling with his eyes wide open.  I yell his name and he is unresponsive.  I yell to Rick that Tristan is out cold and to get me the phone, just in case, as well as a cold washcloth.  Tristan comes to consciousness again and I pick him up and put him on the bed.  He explains that he had felt light headed when everything went black and he was floating in a tunnel.  That was the last thing he remembered.  I examined him and discovered that Tristan had a swollen upper lip with some dried blood on it and two gashes on his lower lip where I can only presume his teeth hit during his fall from bed.  I began to use the washcloth to clean up the little bit of dried blood around his mouth and nose.  Tristan looked pale still and said he felt like he was going to throw up so I asked Rick to get another washcloth and the throw-up bucket.  Rick brings me the throw-up bucket and sees Tristan’s swollen lip and pale skin.  He goes into the bathroom to get the washcloth while I continue to work with Tristan when I hear a thump and feel the house shake.  “OH NO”!  I don’t need to see what happened to know.  I turn and run for the bathroom.  Rick is now stone cold on the bathroom floor!!!  The dry washcloth is dropped into the sink basin.  I try to rouse him and yell “Rick!  Can you hear me?  Rick!” and he proceeds to go into seizure activity which I not only recognize as such from my college studies and classroom training but also from working for several summers as a teenager with mentally and physically disabled children and adults.  That population I worked with for those summers had seizures all the time and I was responsible for these people, including on overnight duties when it was my turn.  I know seizure activity.  Plus Rick has a large gash on the back of his head.  I try to roll him on his side to prevent choking as I was taught in my training but I cannot move his dead weight with his head wedged between the toilet and the wall.  I don’t know which kid to be with!  I decide this is more than I can handle alone.  It is now 7:05 a.m. and I run for the phone.  I’m telling this unbelievable story to the 911 operator that my husband and my son are both out, knocked unconscious in a chain response.  She stays with me on the phone till Rick comes to again and he tries to get up.  I tell him “Sit.  Don’t you move!”  Talking to him like giving a dog commands is the only thing he understands as he is dazed.  He doesn’t know what happened.  I hear sirens and hang up the phone to open the front door.  I have the fire chief in his bright red car out in the middle of the road that is first in the line-up.  Next an ambulance arrives with 4 EMT’s who run into the house.  “One’s on the couch and the other one is around the corner in the bathroom”.  It says something that my kids upstairs can sleep through all of the racket because apparently racket is normal around here.  They hook my son up to electrodes for an EKG, check his pulse, ask some questions and do a finger check of his oxygen levels.  In the bathroom they are checking out my husband when another ambulance arrives from the next township over with 4 more EMT’s.  The first guys go to the door and tell them “It’s not as bad as it sounded on 911” so they survey the situation and we are back down to 4 EMT’s again after several minutes.  My husband doesn’t really know what happened and downplays his whole situation while I’m in with Tristan so I don’t actually know what it is that he’s telling them.  When Tristan is under control I turn my attention more toward Rick.  I get bits and pieces of the story he’s told them and tell them “NO…this is what happened” and again “No!  This is what happened”.  The EMT’s on Tristan think it might be a good idea to give Tristan a ride to Children’s.  Lindsay comes downstairs in the middle of all this at 7:15 to get ready for horse camp.  She has big wondering eyes and asks “What’s going on?”  I turn back to the EMT’s still in my PJ’s and unbrushed hair and tell them “I have 5 kids and a husband on the floor that I obviously can’t depend on and if you take Tristan right now, I can’t go with him…do you think he’s OK till I can get him into the pediatrician”?  They agree that the idea seems reasonable and thoughts of me sitting in emergency triage in my PJ’s and bare feet without even my contacts in for hours on end begin to fade”.  Natural Childbirth five times over is something Rick doesn’t mind being a part of but he can’t look at a swollen lip???  He’s in trouble.  The EMT’s have us sign papers and, snickering, make their way out the door.  I can see that my family is going to be  providing entertainment around the dinner tables tonight of the entire medical community.  I’ve been up for almost 30 minutes and it feels like a life time.  Now that it’s quiet Lindsay re-appears and begins asking questions.  I proceed to tell her that Tristan just had a swollen lip from falling out of bed and there was a little bit of blood in his bed when all the sudden she turns sheet white and states she isn’t feeling well and that everything is beginning to go black.  I yell at her to sit where she is, don’t move and BREATHE when the thought crosses my mind that maybe the entire family has carbon monoxide poisoning so I shut off the AC and fly through the house opening windows and as I tear up the stairs to make sure the baby is alive I yell “Is everyone OK up here” and I hear him begin to cry.  Haley, just now waking up, thinks I’m crazy!  Then I remember that not only are the cats all awake and alert but we have two carbon monoxide detectors; surely one of them would have gone off had there been a problem… and Rick’s oxygen came back at 97.  Then it must be some lovely genetic trait for feeling faint at the sight or the talk of blood!!!  I go into my room to brush my hair and find my husband standing there who remarks how sweaty he is and proceeds without even shutting the bedroom door to strip down to his birthday suit and then standing there in all his glory shows me that his big toe hurts!!!  Boy, could my kids have gotten a show!  This is totally and completely unlike Rick.  I look at him incredulously and ask “Are you OK???”  My world is bizarre!  What is happening???  Someone might need to take ME to the looney bin! 

Regardless of all this I still deliver Lindsay to Horse Camp on time by 9 a.m. and return home to start making phone calls for Dr. appointments for both boys.  I begin with Tristan and in the process of describing what he needs to be seen for, the topic of my husband going “Man Overboard” apparently over the sight of blood comes up and the receptionist thinks I’m kidding but then realizes I’m not.   She starts snickering on the other end and we both lament that husbands are really just more kids to take care of.   She transfers me to the Internal Medicine appointment line.  Did I really sign up for this when I got married?  The thought comes to mind that this is more than I bargained for… isn’t it???  I cannot even think about the entire package right now; it’s more than I can bare.  I need to talk to a normal person.

I assign Haley to watch Nathan and Kaitlyn.  My van, complete with baby car seat, is at the water doctor for a leakage issue that is covered by warranty, so I am stuck with not being able to take Nathan anywhere.  We don’t all fit in the car, anyway.

I get Tristan to the pediatrician 20 minutes later while Rick is in the waiting area to see his Doctor on the other side of the building an hour later.  The Doctor, now Tristan’s favorite, does a thorough work-up and determines that lethargic Tristan, normally an endless ball of energy, has had his bell rung just short of a concussion and needs constant supervision all day and gives orders that nothing should be done but play video games, watch movies and eat popsicles.  Now you can see why Tristan fell in love! 

Rick’s doctor was slammed and I waited as long as I could so I could tell this Doctor what happened.  I don’t trust Rick to do it himself.  We wait and wait.  Finally we are in the examining room and we’re waiting and waiting.  I have 7 minutes left before Lindsay is supposed to be picked up… 13 minutes at most when the Dr. walks in with a big smile and says “I hear we’ve got a chain reaction at home going on”.  I quickly tell him what happened to my knowledge and describe what I saw and then apologize for having to walk out. 

Tristan and I drive over to retrieve Lindsay, with one minute to spare till they’re mad, and I turn around and head back to the office where I find Rick standing outside waiting.  “The Doctor determined that I have an abrasion on my head, that sometimes people look like they’re having a seizure after they fall but it isn’t a real one and the whole thing is a vaso-vagal response to situational stress”. 

WHAT???  Now I feel angry.  Rick claims he can’t help what happened.  I can’t believe that I have to treat him like some fragile baby so he can avoid “stress”.  Stress is part of life.  You can’t just “check out” of situations whenever you feel like you can’t handle them.

Later in the day, I discover more evidence that what I saw was a seizure and I will spare you the details here for my husband’s sake, but I feel more anger toward MEN who won’t listen to me and believe me.  I know what I saw.  Rick tells me I’m overreacting.  OVERREACTING?  What do you call “checking out” every time you feel like you can’t handle something?  “Man Overboard”!  Is that NOT overreacting?  Is that not an extreme case of over-reacting???  He tells me he can’t help that and he doesn’t want me to find humor in this whole thing and he doesn’t want me to be sarcastic either.  What is left???  This is just like the cartoons!  He tells me he wants me to feel and show compassion.  What was calling 911 and taking him to the Dr.?  If he wants more than that he needs to go get his Mom because right now all I see is a grown man acting like a baby and I’m not molly-coddling that. 

This is NOT the first time this has happened.  I come to the realization that I cannot depend on him.

I call my Dad.  I have to talk to a normal person.  I state that I’m furious and maybe I need to come home to visit ALONE.  He finds the whole story so funny that I have to ask him if he’s OK.  For a minute I thought he might need 911 too because he can’t catch a breath.  We exchange stories, both recently stressful yet humorous and find therapy in laughter.  Sometimes if you don’t laugh, you cry.  If you don’t do anything, you explode.

Men wonder why they have a bad rap.  Pardon me while I go hit my head against a wall a few times and then escape with a book.