The Plates Continue To Spin

Or so it goes… I haven’t had an opportunity to write since last week because life got in the way. It continues to do so, but I wanted to at least unload a little of the contents of my head.

Last week turned out to be an eventful week when everything was said and done. Everything turned out okay with both of my daughters; Nancy actually did rather well with the removal of her tonsils. I took her yesterday for a follow-up visit with the surgeon. As it turned out it was one of the nurses that saw her, and she pretty much got a go. She won’t have to return for another visit unless a complication comes up, which hopefully won’t happen. She can’t go back to school for another week and she’s not terribly happy about that. As far as I’m concerned, however, the rest will do her good. She really needs to be able to bounce back better, and giving her immune system time to recover will be in her best interest. Plus, she became sick to her stomach later in the day yesterday, and based on what she told me I suspect the pain medication she’s been using is starting to get the better of her. So she’ll be stopping that and going to over-the-counter medications, like Tylenol or Motrin.

Kerry got released from the hospital on Wednesday. The OB-GYN put her on a pretty strict bed rest regimen, but she’s having a hard time following it. She’s mostly doing what she’s supposed to but she does go outside and get air every once in a while. When she talked to the doc about that, the word she got was that as long as she didn’t go anywhere that could stress her or do anything that would even remotely cause her to be excited or jostled in any way, that was acceptable. And so far, to her credit, she’s done that. And so far she’s fine.

I had a bit of a mishap at work this past Thursday. With a patient on board my ambulance got side-swiped by another vehicle during a transfer. Nobody was injured, and I was trying to change lanes when it happened. I had the truck all lit up and my directional flashing to move left and there were no vehicles approaching on my left side. At least there were none until I started moving when a large SUV all of a sudden appeared. I don’t know who made contact first, but his vehicle hit the left front tire of the ambulance and destroyed the steering rod and the wheel itself. When I called for help I had the whole world show up: Boston PD, Fire, and EMS as well as three ambulances from one of the other companies working in Boston. And one of ours took my patient and my partner (neither were injured) to where we were supposed to go. I stayed with the truck until the tow arrived.

Nobody was injured in either party, and the driver of the SUV was able to drive away afterward. That, to me, was incredibly ironic. And I was pretty unhappy; in almost 18 years of working in EMS this was the first incident I’ve ever had in an emergency vehicle. While I suspect it was bound to happen, it still bugs me that it finally did. I’m always careful, but sometimes you simply can’t be careful enough.

On another note, my mother-in-law had a partial spinal fusion last Friday. She spent 3 days as an in-patient before going to a skilled nursing facility. I know when she left the hospital she was not doing as well as she probably should have. So we’re a little bit concerned that she may run into problems while she’s in the SNF. Mostly we’re concerned about her potentially developing pneumonia; she left the hospital on Oxygen, something neither of us expected. And she was really wiped out from all of the stuff involving the surgery. So we can hope that it all doesn’t fall apart and she does get it together while she’s there. When she’s released she’ll be with us for a few weeks.

There are worse things.