Beep, beep, beep. Most days, if I am hearing little beeps, it's from a precious 4-year-old playing with cars on our classroom rug or one of my co-teachers reading "Little Blue Truck." When I hear a little whine followed by a complaint, it's usually "Billy won't play with me" or "Sally is using all the red blocks." These days, it's a beeping IV machine saying infusion complete, and my husband's not as precious complaints about pain (or hunger or boredom or restlessness-but mostly pain). Yup, a backache, a fever, and a really grumpy man landed us right here in room 505 at the hospital with the best view known to man. Now, instead of looking up-promoting preschoolers' emergent writing on my phone, I am searching words like osteomyelitis (for the infection in his spine), sepsis (for the infection in his blood), and endocarditis (for the infection in the mitral valve in his heart). My medical degree may be from google, but when things like rare, critical, and requires immediate medical attention pop up on your search, it's not ideal. AND if you know anything about Rachel or Charles, for that matter, you know we tend to be procrastinators. Immediate medical attention will get even the most ardent procrastinator to hop into action. And by hop into action, I mean beg, cajole, scream, threaten, and basically push your 6-foot 3-inch husband into your tiny little car and dump him off at the ER door. So here we are... in room 505 of the hospital with the best view known to man...with choruses of beep beep beeps and diagnoses of some very scary, very medical sounding, very serious conditions. We've been here since Sunday, and it doesn't look like we will be busting out anytime in the near future. But, the antibiotics, doctors, nurses, and CNAs are working around the clock to get the numbers looking better, and right this minute, they are doing everything they can do to avoid surgeries. It's going to be a very long road to recovery, but it is road, and Charles is the best darn driving instructor I know.
