Head barely above water, but still breathing

This post is just a short wave to the blogosphere. I’ve had a helluva couple of weeks. I have worked a lot, and the boyfriend has had serious complications from his sinus surgery. In fact, he almost died yesterday from massive hemorrhage from an arterial bleed in his sphenoid sinus. It hasn’t sunk in yet how close he came; I walked in as he flew past on a blood-soaked gurney to emergency surgery. They called a rapid-response team on him. He pulled through and has perked up after 5 units of blood; in fact I wonder if he feels more rested than I do, after working back to back and never sleeping through the night since as a result of midnight ER visits and/or ambulance calls! My dad is coming to stay with us for a week or so to stay with the boyfriend when I have to work and just to help out a little so I can get some rest. I’m about to drop dead. How do people care for family members long-term? I totally get caregiver role strain, and this has only been going on for 2 weeks. Yikes.

Meanwhile I have distracted myself to survive mentally. KU Medical Center provides wireless access, and I was one of many in the surgical waiting room staring blankly at Facebook (which apparently, according to this picture, I don’t need to feel guilty about using, unlike MySpace) and Twitter so I could attempt to avoid freaking out completely about the surgery and situation in general.

I’m really freaking mad at the ER staff here in town. We were there twice, and both times they wouldn’t treat my boyfriend since he had the surgery someplace else. That’s not necessarily their fault, but the second time I called the ambulance myself for direct transport, and they still made us stop here in town and wasted time not treating him. I implored them to give him blood, and they didn’t. The first time they sent him in my CAR to the other ER, an hour away, and he passed out as soon as he got inside; the second time he almost died because when the bleed started back up the dude was out of blood. I know there may be policies I’m not understanding, but the fundamental principles appear to be that they didn’t follow a basic principle (if you are missing a lot of blood, you need some from elsewhere) and they delayed effective treatment by withholding it while preventing us from going to the other ER where they would treat him. I’m trying to let this go, but I’m caught up on the “he almost died” part. You just don’t want to see a loved one like I saw him with scary phrases like “life-threatening bleed” flying around. Those docs looked worried; mostly docs don’t look worried. I’ve never seen one look actually scared, but these did. It was not good. I’m not experiencing warm fuzzies about the local hospital, therefore, and it’s unfortunate that I work there.