Emergency Rooms, CT Scans, and Old Habits – Thoughts from February 29, 2024

It’s leap day or leap year or however you say it. I’m at the emergency room with Patti. She woke up and was blind in her right eye. Eventually, she could see out of the top of her eye, but the lower half was gray and blocking her sight. Because Patti is Patti, she drove to work, thinking it would get better. It did not, so she drove home and woke me up and said she needed to go to the emergency room. They examined her and said it could indicate a stroke. They sent her to ophthalmology, and they confirmed it wasn’t something else. We went back to emergency care and are waiting for her to be admitted to the hospital. She’s going to stay overnight to do more tests and monitor her.

Patti is in denial about the whole thing. People who smoke have strokes. This is just one of many if she doesn’t quit. I feel helpless about the whole thing because I am. She won’t listen to me or anyone else. Most of the time, I’m the only one who talks to her about her health. She ignores her health with humor. When she asked me if she is a person who gets sick often, I had to remain silent. My silence is a mixed emotional bag of feelings. I want to bring up all the things she can’t do because of the health problems related to smoking, but I know that will just shut her down. She’ll just stop talking to me or accuse me of picking on her. I can either be honest with her or silent.

They took her in a mobile bed to get a scan of some kind. It could be a cat scan, but I’m not sure. I’m all alone in room 20 and it’s freezing. They gave her a heated blanket because she was even colder, being only in a hospital gown. When they took her out, they unplugged all the cords that were going into her. The monitor was beeping in alarm. I asked someone if they could silence the alarm. He was about to turn the monitor off, but the nurse, Renee, stopped him and showed him how to silence it without resetting it. I could tell it disturbed her. Eventually, Patti came back, and they plugged her back in.

We waited the rest of the night for a new doctor to review the results from the tests. The new nurse replacing Renee told us when the doctor had started reviewing Patti’s case. It was about two hours until the doctor came in to talk to us. She did many of the same physical tests and asked questions that other people had already asked. The doctor said Patti was going to stay overnight and they would perform a CT scan. Patti doesn’t like when she has to get scanned in the tube, but it wasn’t as bad because the scan only had to be done on her head. Patti sent me home because she was mainly going to sleep when she wasn’t being scanned.

I went home and ate Fritos and bean dip with some mixed nuts and raisins that I brought to work. The girls (cats) were very excited to see me. They had seen no human in over twelve hours. I brushed my teeth before I went to bed because I didn’t really brush my teeth that morning. When we went to the emergency room, we didn’t realize we would be there all day. I set both my cell phone and our home phone by the bed so I could hear them. It took me awhile to figure out how to get the volume on my new cell phone higher. Even though Patti wasn’t in bed with me, I had the TV on because I used it as a nightlight. Scout slept in Patti’s spot because she is the mom after all.