Had I but known the road we were one would be like this, I may have done things a bit differently.
John had set all the appointments up and started all the necessary approvals in motion. The first one to come up was the Otyrentorologist, Dr Caan.
He went to see him and came home with good news and bad news. The good news is the original site of the Squamous Cell Carcinoma Tumor is still well encapsulated and hadn't spread. Great right? Yes I think so. The bad news is he felt the sac it was contained in was a little heavier than he would like. He wanted to do a needle biopsy at MSK and was setting about to get that scheduled.
While John is making dinner, I look out the window and see the car door on the drivers side is open. From the fourth floor I see this. Maybe that's not OUR car. So I ask him and he looks out the window. Sure enough it's ours. Odd. We proceed to have dinner and I go to choir still feeling that we are not really dealing with a cancer emergency. Call me an optimist but I just didn't have the sense that this was really bad and we were busy ruling out the big C.
The bone scan was next and I had to drive him because his leg was so painful from the sciatica that he couldn't walk long distances let alone drive. In addition the pain medication that he was on was seriously taking it's toll on him.
We arrive early and they take him upstairs and shoot the contrast in him. They tell us to come back in three hours. We live 5 minutes away which is a blessing. I work for the next few hours and then we turn around and go back. They complete the scan and I take him home.
Once I get him in the house and sitting down he takes his pain meds and goes right to sleep. He is in sheer misery - the leg is killing him. I am working but stressing. I finally call the good Dr. Topelevsky but she is on rounds at Our lady of Mercy so who knows when she will call back. Her boss, the owner of the practice, calls me back and says I should take John to the ER if it's that bad. He also feels the electrolytes are in danger and we should go for that as well.
I call Roberta, a friend of ours who is a nurse. She says, yes you need to take him in. I will meet you there.
I wake John up and tell him the doctor thinks we need to go to the ER because the electrolytes are in danger. He gets up and dressed and we drive over.
Roberta and James, Jeanie's husband, meet up with us at the ER. I get John Signed in and settled. They call him very quickly and start testing. They don't let me back there. James and I are in the waiting room and I am updating James who is also a doctor. All of a sudden the locked door to the ER opens and out comes Roberta. How did she get in there? she would have had to pass right by me. .... right?
Well, as a nurse, she talked her way through from the front of the building. Figures. She cracks me up. She updates me on John and his condition.
Finally I send James home because he has to work in the city the next morning. Roberta and I head back to the ER cubicle where John is. He's lying on a table way too short for him and making sure that anyone within earshot knows it. In the meanwhile, they have given him nothing for the pain. Roberta goes to find the Dr on call and harasses him into giving John some Morphine until the testing is done.
An hour later, testing not done, morphine not administered, John is sliding off the stretcher, complaining about it, when his buddy walks in to take him for his Cat Scan. He comes back really quickly and still no doctor and no morphine.
Roberta says she is going to find out what the hell is going on. So she walks over to where the doctor is talking. He's talking about another patient. He looks right at her and tells here she can't stand there.
"I can stand anywhere I want. It's a free country" she responds.
"I can have you thrown out, you know" he says
"But you won't." she counters.
"I'll make you a deal. If I order the morphine, will you go away?" he negotiates
"YES. See how easy that was?" She walks away.
10 minutes later, we had a morphine drip.
I love Roberta. Did I mention that?
That was about 9 PM. Shortly after the doctor arrives to tell us that John either has the beginnings of pneumonia or the end. Either way they are putting him on Moxifloxcin. In addition he has a fractured rib ( No kidding) and he has too much calcium and was dehydrated. Roberta was trying to cheer him up and we were making light hearted jokes when John threw us both out! Oh the humanity!!!
Around Midnight John was admitted to a private room because he was still radioactive from the nuclear bone scan he had had earlier.
Once he was in the room and resting, I left with Roberta but had to drive around the entire complex to find her car.
Thus the first chapter of Roberta and The Contessa's adventure d'excellente begins...
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