I hate the ER.

I hate the ER.

I am a week out of my last ER visit. It was my second one in as many days, which makes it that much worse. Nothing like going to the hospital on a Thursday & finding out your baby is dead, then having to go back Friday because of being in excruciating pain. That was the only time I have ever been admitted to the hospital from the ER.

Now, I know that I don't have any knowledge of the inner workings of an ED, nor of what else was going on when I was there. But I am going to bitch anyway. And identify the hospital--Northeast Baptist, in San Antonio.

As I alluded to, I miscarried. I had bleeding Thursday and because the Navy trained me not to make OB appointments in the first trimester (they don't want to waste their money on you if you're going to miscarry, I guess), I didn't have a doctor of my own to go to, & so no choice but to go to the hospital. That was another in the Baptist network; Baptist Medical Center. I went because a) they take my insurance, & b) they were less than a block from where I was when I realized the bleeding had returned. I wasn't too upset with anything from that visit apart from realizing I'd already been assigned a priority (5--non-urgent) before being triaged. Silly me, I thought that was the entire purpose of being triaged. (Another note: it took an hour to be triaged. I've been triaged faster than that in the crowded ER of a Level III trauma center with several trauma cases incoming.) But they took my blood and did an ultrasound and told me that my baby had been dead a week. Return to the ER for increased abdominal pain or very heavy bleeding.

Friday afternoon, I called up my now-estranged husband (yep, that's the family troubles that have caused my break) and told him I was in so much pain I couldn't take it and I needed him to take me to the hospital. Which he did. (You think that's odd? You don't know the half of it, but it's not something I'm going to explain in public.)

Anyhow, that visit blew a couple of my former ER beliefs all to hell. To wit:

One would think that bleeding heavily on the floor of the ER waiting room would get you seen a little faster. One would be wrong. It doesn't even get you triaged faster. They brought me a wheelchair. And an OB pad. I kid you not.

One might also think that being literally hunched over, crying & moaning in pain, would get an offer of pain medication. Again, one would be wrong. (Now, I don't expect to be offered something until a doctor sees me, but damn. A little ibuprofen would have been nice--and all I'd have either asked for or accepted. I recovered from two c-sections on ibuprofen.) By the time I was offered a painkiller, upon being taken up to my room, I really didn't need it anymore, because the spikes in pain had spaced themselves out from every minute or two to every 30 minutes or so.

The only good thing I can say about anything that went on in that ER was the nurse who took me to the bathroom (after I'd had Robert go tell them a second time that I really, really needed to go) took one look at the blood that was everywhere and brought me rags to clean myself with. Perhaps after a while of working in the ER, the concept of human dignity escapes you, but rest assured it does not escape the patients. If I'd seen her name tag (I wasn't wearing my glasses), I'd write the hospital a letter of thanks. I cannot fully express the horror of having blood on you when you know it means the death of your unborn child. (And yeah, a big crude FUCK YOU to the pro-choice idiots who refuse to admit that a 10-weeks gestation fetus is a child.) She helped me get clean.

I was mostly ignored in the room they put me in, save a quick pelvic exam (and as someone who normally showers & shaves her legs right before a GYN appointment, my apologies to the doctor who did it, especially as he was not a GYN) and in-room sonogram to see what would need to be done. I saw my nurse twice. She seemed very surprised to learn that no one had told me they'd decided I be admitted for surgery first thing in the morning. It apparently never occurred to her to tell me.

Gah, I am almost out of time (library computer)!

I will say, I give a lot of leeway for this having been on a Friday evening. But damn. Keep the patient informed, OK?

And I have a couple of final points to cram in:

I don't care what the actual medical term is. Never, ever, EVER refer to a woman's miscarriage as an abortion. And if you do, and she punches you (like I wanted to, but was too weak to), you deserve it.

Also:

I don't care how much easier it is for staff. Putting a miscarrying woman in the postpartum wing is just fucking cruel.

Going on hiatus.

I know I have only one regular reader/commenter, but I feel obligated to make this post anyway.

I am having some issues right now, and I need to bend all my concentration to that.

I hope to be back soon.

Anyone reading this please pray for my children.

Ten Years Ago

I know I'm late with this, but it is still 7th September. Anyhow...

Ten years ago today, I met my husband. Y'all bask in the glory that was me at 18 & him at 24:

OK, you can quit laughing now.

It might not be immediately obvious, due to the wicked cropping job I did, but we met at a wedding. (That white splotch there on the right is the bride.)

It is a source of near-endless amusement that we outlasted that couple. (I know, one shouldn't laugh at things like that, but the two never should have gotten married in the first place, and pretty much everyone told them so. But that's a whole other story.)

Anyway, the story as I tell it goes like this. Billie Jo Hesskew (that's her arm there on the left) and I had gone outside to get something out of my mother's car, and when I stood up he was standing there against the wall of the building and I glanced at him and saw blonde hair and high cheekbones and though to myself, "Well, if nothing else I can amuse myself by looking at him all day."

Turns out he was thinking much the same about me.

My best friend Mark also happened to be at the wedding, and he will frequently laugh at the both of us and how we spent a couple of hours pussyfooting around each other before getting down to talking, and apparently spent much of that time staring while trying for it to not be obvious. Pretty typical stuff for people as young and shy as we both were, I guess.

But eventually he asked me to dance and that was pretty much the end of that. We were inseparable for the rest of the night, except when we were all linedancing & for some reason he kept hiding behind a potted palm.

This being a redneck wedding, at some point it was decided that the whole wedding party plus the bride's brother (who, incidentally, was my ex-boyfriend) should go out and rent a hotel room somewhere and get our drink on. Which was actually kind of funny, since not only were most of us underage we weren't exactly a bunch of partyers. It basically turned into BJ getting bored and going home & Wayne (my ex) and Eligio (the other groomsman) drinking heavily whilst the newlyweds, Rob, & I watched some crappy movie.

We spent most of that night lying awake & talking, and we spent all of the next day together as well, the highlights of which included meeting Robert's mother and taking Scooter (the groom) to his probation meeting.

It also included what is still my favorite story: After we picked Christina (the bride) up from her job at Taco Bell, Robert, while driving, quipped that he only had about four braincells left--two of them were asleep, one of them was thinking about sex, and that left him only one to drive with.

He then promptly rear-ended a vanload of illegal aliens. (No, I am not embellishing.)

The next day he was supposed to leave early to start the drive back to Groton, but delayed the trip for a while so we could spend more time together. I wrote my address down for him but honestly didn't think he'd ever get back in touch.

Obviously, I was wrong.

This last day was a Tuesday, and on Thursday or Friday I talked to him briefly on the phone over at Christina's mother's house because he wanted to let me know he'd made it back to Connecticut safely. Two days after that, I called him up to talk to him. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but I have serious phone issues. I don't like calling people I'm related to, so for me to call someone who was basically a near-stranger was a huge deal.

The day before my brother's birthday (or the day of, I sadly no longer remember exactly), which is the 16th September, I told him I loved him because by then I did.

So basically, we met and we were off like a rocket and now it is ten years later and we have three kids (plus the one on the way) and even though we are fighting a lot lately I have only grown to love him that much more. Sometimes it really is that simple.


(I know, I know, get back to ya when we've got the 40+ his parents do. Still, 10 years ain't half bad. It's certainly some kind of a record in my family--Scooter's my cousin, for example.)

Here's Your Good News for the Week

Iraqi Army Withdraws from Fallujah

Lil' tidbit from the Fightin' 6th:

On an obviously momentous day that perfectly enshrines the hard work of the Fightin' 6th, our three regimental predecessors in the region, as well as the work of our Iraqi compatriots, the Iraqi Army has ceded their counterinsurgency operations in Fallujah to the Iraqi Police. A city that only 3 years ago was the scene of arguably the most ferocious house-to-house fighting operation of the war is now in the hands of the 'Sons of Fallujah.'

*snip*


The last battalion of Iraqi soldiers with 2nd Brigade, 1st Iraqi Army Division, withdrew from the Anbar Province city of Fallujah, Sept. 1, leaving the city’s security and stability in the hands of the local police and government.


Brig. Gen. Ali al-Hashemi, the brigade’s commander, said the time had come when Iraqi Police alone could handle law enforcement in the city.


“I am very confident in the IPs keeping the city safe. Besides, it is their job to work to keep the city safe,” al-Hashemi said through an interpreter. “It’s not the IA’s job. The army should not be inside the city. The police should be in the city.”

If memory serves, US forces cleaned up Fallujah utilizing the same techniques that are now in broader use as part of the surge. Obviously, this speaks well for the future of OIF and especially the country itself.

As the Navy would say: Bravo Zulu!

Candidate Calculator

Candidate Calculator.

Pretty interesting stuff. You pick where you stand on an issue & its importance to you, & it matches you with Presidential candidates. Any of them, apparently, including a couple I've never heard of and one I'd forgotten all about.

My only complaint? Though it gives a top pick and percentage (in my case, Mitt Romney with 86.67%--dreadfully hard to find a candidate who supports gay marriage and isn't all for illegal immigration), it doesn't explain why. Perhaps a brief rundown of policy stats would be a good thing. Even in my "high importance" issues, there are some that outweigh others, so it'd be helpful to have some more info there.

I do have to say that while I don't find Mitt Romney exactly thrilling, he is my favorite of those who seem to be the GOP top three these days--Romney, Guiliani, & Thompson (who really shouldn't be a front-runner when he's not actually running). I've already faced the fact that I'll probably have to hold my nose & vote for a Yankee this time around, 'cause it seems the only Southerner who's running is that greasy twit John Edwards. (Who, coincidentally, was at the bottom of the list for me, with 8.89%.)

I don't have stories.

I could tell some of my husband's stories, but I'm not sure anyone would believe them. And the funniest story, which involves a dude named Carp and duct tape, we're still under orders not to talk about.

But I have a startling lack of funny military stories, having been the family member rather than service member.

I did, however, once have dinner with Cutter & Monkey, a visit which was much enlivened afterwards by my husband explaining exactly how Stanmeyer got the nickname Monkey (it, er, evolved from "Spank Monkey" and involved the fan room, so let your imagination go wild). Of course, the reason for the evening was a game of D&D, so it never really got too exciting.

I think I'll have to ask him from some stories to post here; that's pretty much my only hope of humor blogging. I could tell a few mommy stories, but I'm never really sure where it crosses from "haha, omigod that's hilarious" to "dear Lord, what is wrong with that woman?"

My husband served on board the USS Oklahoma City & the USS Boise. Four years on each, with a 3-year shore duty in Groton in between. A hundred and fifty men all closed up together in a very small space for sometimes very long stretches of time react pretty much exactly as you'd expect, minus the gay sex.

OK, wait. I do have this one story. Which probably won't even be funny typed out, as verbal inflection is its key. But I have to try:

One snowy winter night in Groton, Rob, Mark (my best friend), & I went to visit Larry, Rob's ex-roommate. Larry lived on town by then, with another fellow whose name I never caught.

Larry is a notorious alcoholic. Goes home, stays home, starts drinking and watching anime, & eventually passes out or falls asleep or something. Sweet guy, but not exactly a role model.

So we're sitting there, and Larry, trying to be a good host, asked me if I wanted anything to drink. I almost never imbibe, so I wracked my brain for something nonalcoholic an alcoholic might reasonably be expected to have in his house. I wound up asking for ice water.

"Ice....water..." He just stood there with this utterly blank look on his face for a minute or two. "Ice...water..." (Remember that episode of the Simpsons where Barney's in the torpedo room and reports flooding as "a clear, nonalcoholic substance"? Larry's even a torpedoman.)

Of course, Larry has always been a great source of one-liners. That same visit, when talking about the cook on board the USS Miami, he said, "He means well. Of course, Hitler meant well. Mussolini meant well."

Larry is also terrified of my children.

think

I Stumble{d}Upon this yesterday. I have no idea who, if anyone, owns the copyright. Such are the hazards of SU. I have changed it only to erase the Comic Sans someone with pretention at wit appended to the bottom of the photo. So far as I can tell, the whiteboard writing is original to the photo.

I shall leave it open to viewer interpretation, & not add anything myself.