How I Deal with Life.....

How I Deal with Life.....

Thursday, January 12, 2012

How Do You Catch a Unique Dear Husband? You 'Nique up On Him! (Personal Essay)

Dear Husband had surgery yesterday on his right rotator cuff. He’s had this surgery before in the exact same shoulder, so this surgery entailed the removal of scar tissue (yuck),  repair of the muscle itself, and shaving down of a bone spur (double yuck).
            Dear Husband has been sitting on the couch for most of the day with a morphine I.V drip in his vein. He hits a pink button and a bit of morphine is suddenly released into his system.  About twenty seconds after the morphine is released (I know because I timed it) his eyelids grow heavy and he gets a dopey little shit eating grin on his face. Then his head lolls back, if he’s not in mid-sentence, and his mouth drops open, and a type of weird snorting sleep overtakes him. Weird sleep though. If I move towards him he snaps awake like he’s at Boy Scout Camp and someone is attempting sneak up and fill his hand with shaving cream.  I haven’t been able to get within a foot of him without his startling into an instant awake state. He’s good. Even doped up, he’s good. It’s like trying to approach a vampire sleeping in his coffin. He senses the wooden stake somehow.  But I keep trying.
            It’s been an interesting and vastly entertaining afternoon, between trying to outwit a morphine drugged husband and driving back and forth to the store.  Each time I come home from the store with an item he’s requested, he thinks of something else that he needs, then zones out for another twilight nap. Bread. Pimento cheese. Dairy Queen Blizzard. Benadryl. But I really don’t mind. I get to listen to Leonard Cohen in the car cranked full volume, and when I had surgery three months ago I kept Dear Husband running back and forth to the store like an overgrown Energizer bunny, only he’s not pink and doesn’t play a percussion instrument. But I, unlike Dear Husband, didn’t get to bring home a morphine I.V drip when I had surgery. How unfair is that? I wasn’t bombed out on the couch, and Dear Husband missed all the entertainment value of a spouse in a post-op morphine daze.
             The nurse is coming tomorrow to remove Dear Husband’s I.V. What am I going to do for fun after that?

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