The Hits Keep Coming

Remember when I said that the last few weeks had been rough?  Well, I spoke too soon.

Twelve days after my husband's surgery, he had already gone back to work and seemed to be doing fine when his nose exploded.  I'm only exaggerating a little bit.  He was asleep and I was downstairs working on freelance stuff that I should have finished already.  It was a weekend, so my kids were at the mother-in-law's house and I had delusions of getting a lot of work done.  All of a sudden I heard a bunch of banging.  It took me a minute to react because I thought he was asleep.  I ran upstairs to find my husband standing over the bathroom sink with blood pouring out of his face and splashing up on the walls, the mirror, and all over the counter.  He says "I can't move without bleeding all over the floor."  So I toss him a dark colored hand towel and go get his phone to call the doctor.

When I got the doctor on the phone, I tried very hard to tell him how concerned I was at the amount of blood my husband was loosing (he was now on his second hand towel, having completely soaked through the first one).  The doctor, however, didn't seemed concerned at all....which was a little annoying.  He said "Okay, well what you want to do is to spray some Afrin up his nose.  It would be okay to use a third of the bottle because it's going to cause those blood vessels to constrict and stop the bleeding."  To which I responded "Yeah, apparently I have failed to adequately convey the seriousness of the situation here.  Nothing is going 'up' my husband's nose because THERE IS A RIVER OF BLOOD POURING FROM MY HUSBAND'S FACE!"  He just said that if we couldn't get it to stop to go to the ER.  So we hung up and got into the car heading for the ER, leaving my house looking like a scene from a horror movie.  On the way to the hospital I told my husband not to die suspiciously at the hospital because if there as an investigation, there was enough DNA all over the house and in my car to convict me ten times over.

The fun continued at the ER where I was holding the bucket under his nose for him to hemorrhage into and I got scolded by the ER doctor for not wearing gloves.  I tried to explain that this was my husband and that we had four kids together and that I had been peed on, pooped on, puked on, bled on, snotted on, etc. more times than I could count without gloves, but she insisted in case I tried to sue or OSHA walked in randomly to the exam room.  They ended up shoving these things up his nose called "Rhino Rockets" to stop the bleeding.  They are basically balloon filled tampons that they inflate to apply pressure and stop the bleeding.  And they admitted him.  We stayed in the hospital until late Sunday and didn't go to the doctor's office until Tuesday when they removed the Rhino Rockets.  So far, there hasn't been anymore bleeding, but his blood pressure has been jumping around from normal to stage 2 hypertension, so that has been fun.

I had put most of the freelance work that I had left to do (about 6 articles) until that weekend since my boss was on vacation until Monday and I had planned on being at home alone all weekend and not in the hospital with the husband. Luckily, I have an understanding boss.  And I am usually ahead of her as far as work submitted versus work she has had time to read over and approve.  But still, I was behind and I hate being behind.  Every time I started an article there seemed to be a minor crisis with the kids or another doctor's appointment, or a family obligation, or something and then when I would go back and try to pick up where I had left off and would read what I had written, I ended up having to start over.  The articles I was working on were sourced from the opposite point of view -- so I had a lot more research to do because it was like writing an argument for something based on all of the evidence against it. Although it was incredibly interesting, I kept having to start over and that was not awesome.  Finally I finished all but the last article.  I was halfway through it when my research on the last subject indicated that it wasn't applicable in the state where my bosses business is located.  So now I am waiting to hear back from her about whether or not she wants me to finish it.

Throughout all of this, my back is still jacked up and I have probably undone any progress that I was making towards getting it back to where it should be by sleeping on hospital recliners that misrepresent themselves as beds, doing housework (yes, I do occasionally do that), picking up kids, etc.  I haven't been able to get back to the chiropractor since the Thursday before last.

So now you are all caught up on the misadventures of the Caballero Clan.  There have been some current events that I have written some editorial pieces on, but they're not finished and even when I do finish them, they probably won't be "current" events anymore.  Not to mention the fact that every time I share a strong opinion on something controversial on here I lose a bunch of followers.  I do have some humorous stories that are woven throughout all of this, and I am looking forward to being able to write about THOSE for change instead of recounting everything that has gone wrong lately.  If it hadn't been for my parents and my mother-in-law through all of this I would have lost it over the past 2 weeks.

But hey, it's all good. I roll with the punches as the hits keep coming.