Amanda was up a little earlier than me this morning. Even though she denies it, she overdid it. She was busy getting things ready to leave, and it took a while to get ready without much of a break in between. Once I was up and going, I was busy doing dishes and taking the trash and boxes to the street. With the impending cold weather headed our way, I also checked our outdoor faucets were covered well.
I also needed to turn the heat on, double-check the outdoor faucets, and I just turned the water off to the outdoor bathrooms at our downtown place. I dripped water on everything; I didn’t want any issues while we were gone. Our area only dips below freezing a few times a year, so generally, no one is ever ready for a hard freeze. We had a wheelchair in our storage area that I wanted to take with us, just in case. We have an ample supply of medical equipment collected over the years.
Just as I’d finished everything I needed to do there, I saw Amanda in and out of the car. She was looking for something. Before putting lotion on her hands, she took off her wedding ring off and sat it precariously on some envelopes. It slid off to God knew where, and she was looking for it. I joined the search, complaining about why she would have taken it off and put it in such a bad spot with her yelling back that my criticism wasn’t helping at all. Married couples, I’m sure, can see just how that was playing out! After about 20 minutes of tireless searching, I took everything out of the car. All the things in the console, all the bags, our luggage, and the floor mats. Amanda searched the open bags it could have fallen in while I looked under the seats. I was sure it had rolled under the carpet by a floor vent. I was on the verge of calling someone to help me pull the seats out and the carpet!
YJ showed up as I was having a tirade, and Amanda was on the verge of a breakdown! We’d been searching for about 45 minutes or so by then. I was moving the seats back and forth and looking from both sides. Feeling under the seats and rails, I grumbled the whole time. YJ was praying out loud for help finding the ring. Likely an hour in, Amanda shouts, “I see it!” It was sitting on top of the rail on which the seat slides back and forth. Lord knows how it got there, atop that rail! Either way, he helped us find it! Amanda was in tears after we found it.
We’d invited YJ to Starbucks on our way out for a “staff meeting!” With that dramatic and traumatic experience over, we made our way to Uvalde for coffee. Then, I headed out for Houston. Not before we had our picture taken with matching Lord of the Rings shirts. I guess they were the only Christmas presents to each other; we bought them in the hospital. They arrived while we were gone and were waiting for us when we arrived home. Not exact matches per se, but I think they complement each other well!
The drive up wasn’t bad except for all the left-lane campers; you know who you are! Not only left-lane campers but the ones that speed up when you go to pass them. All the way from San Antonio to Houston, that’s what we dealt with. About the time we got to Katy, Amanda’s chest started hurting. We stopped for dinner before we got into town. It’s essentially covid protocols for us: sanitizing all the time, Amanda wearing a mask, and we aren’t eating out anywhere. We’re just being precautious, and we’ll hold tight to this for a while. Needless to say, in Houston, we ate in the car, not in the restaurant.
After dinner, we went to the ER; we were told to check in there for an after-hours admission. Immunocompromised patient, let’s make her wait in a metropolitan ER; great idea! I wheeled up to the ER door like an ambulance, hopped out, and got Amanda set up. She had a backpack and a bag stuffed with a blanket and pillow. I got her inside and then went to park the car. It was blocked off, and I couldn’t get my favorite spot, but I found a suitable replacement not far from the elevator I needed. I went to the hotel room to drop a couple of bags off, then went over to wait with Amanda.
The ER is at the front of the hospital and a long walk from the hotel, it’s all connected, so at least it wasn’t too cold of a walk. The skybridges are usually hot, but the heaters must not have been working because it was cold in them. The ER was surprisingly not that bad. There was a cracked-out homeless lady in the hall screaming, but you see that on the street here every day, so nothing new there! I expected it to be packed and was worried about sitting in an ER waiting room.
Amanda told them about the chest pain when she was checking. A transplant patient with chest pain meant no waiting room sitting; she went straight back to a room! By the time I arrived, she’d already seen a doctor and a cardio fellow; they were on the ball. The pain was terrible, and she just wasn’t able to get ahead of it with the oral meds. Her rate was high, too, almost 140, the highest we’d seen in a while. They gave her a dose of morphine after drawing labs, but she was still the pain; her rate had come down a bit, though. She got a second dose an hour late, which did the trick.
The room had some fancy screen with all the info you could want on them: the regular vitals plus heart rate and oxygen graphs, along with lab results. It was a pretty fancy setup, one we hadn’t seen; then again, we hadn’t been in that ER since just after the transplant four years ago for the scariest nosebleed ever. Amanda ended up with an internal nose splint set kept for days after; it was a traumatic experience!
Her blood pressure had been high when we got there because of the pain but lowered once she got settled and more comfortable after the morphine. Before the second dose, she was shaking with each beat of her heart, though. The nurse came in to give her some other meds, including a diuretic and a beta blocker, because of the rate. I guess Amanda wasn’t thinking about it, but she had already taken her regular dose of beta blocker about an hour before. It was a good thing I caught it because her BP would have plummeted; she’s sensitive to those medications.
The internal medicine doctor came in to go over things. I recognized him, maybe because of the last ER visit or somewhere else. He had the craziest question we’d never had before in a hospital. He asked if she was ok with chest compressions where something happened and if she’d be ok being intubated, as well. Yes, sir, we’d like you to save her life, please!
There wasn’t a chair for me to sit in, but I grabbed the doctor’s rolling stool. After an hour or so, I needed to make it a bit more comfortable since it was sliding when I leaned against the wall. I set Amanda’s backpack, which was on a hospital table, against the wall for a backrest. My stool was still rolling, so some latex gloves as a wheel chock fixed that! I’m confident with my vast experience, I could make just about anything more comfortable to bear a hospital stay. The latex glove chock was a new move added to the repertoire, though!
I hung out until almost 1 a.m., and then I headed for the hotel bed. Days ago, we’d talked about how it made no sense for me to stay the night in the ER. I’d have been in a terrible chair, though I thought it would have been better than the setup I made. So, there was no need to have a sleepless night when I could stay in the hotel. Our hope is that Amanda will come to the hotel on Monday night with me.
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