Tuesday, December 1, 2009

A Thanksgiving to Remember

Thanksgiving... didn't quite go as planned.

Apologies for the delay in updating, but I didn't have internet!

Jedi and I went up to my grandparents' place on Wednesday night. We drove separately (a 3 hour drive) because he had to work on Friday.

First- The good part. My grandparents (and my 97 year old great-grandmother) really liked Jedi. Really, Really, Really liked him. (Though, as Npapaya says-- What's not to like about him? There's nothing objectionable!) I know that in her head my grandma was probably planning a wedding (though they did make him sleep chastely on the couch. Ha ha ha.) Jedi also really liked them. He liked my grandpa (who is a difficult personality) and of course loved my grandma (who doesn't!)

I felt bad taking him away from his own family, but he kept insisting that he wanted to be with me.


Now for the BAD part...

On Wednesday night Jedi started feeling unwell. He thought it might just be acid reflux, and so he powered through. On Thursday the pain got worse and moved up into his chest which caused him some slight difficulty breathing. He was supposed to go home on Thursday night (And one can't go home just ANY old time round these parts... you have to wait for a ferry, and so you're trapped on their schedule.) He laid down to rest after Thanksgiving dinner and fell asleep. He asked me to wake him, and I did, but given that he still wasn't feeling well (at this point he'd tried prilosec, rolaids, tums, pepto, xantac, etc.) he decided to take the 1st ferry back in the morning.

My plan had been to stay at my Grandparents' through Monday, and then come home Monday night. When Jedi woke up on Friday morning though (5am to catch the ferry), he was doing worse. It was decided that he needed to go to a doctor. My grandma suggested he go to her doc, but I pointed out that didn't make much since since 1) we'd have to wait 3 hours until his office opened, and 2) he'd only send us to a larger hospital an hour and a half away because he wouldn't be able to do tests in his office.

Now... I admit. I had more than a moment's hesitation about Jedi's illness. Not that I didn't think he was feeling poorly, but I thought he might be playing it up for effect. Maybe that makes me a bad person to have had that moment of doubt, but I kept thinking about how much Jedi didn't want to go back to work that Friday (He'd asked for it off 3 times, but was told no), and how much he ALWAYS wants to be with me, and the fact that he had stated more than once that he would have wanted to spend the whole weekend with me.

I was kind of annoyed. (again, maybe this makes me a bad person) but I totally thought he was playing it up with his unverifiable symptoms. Someone (I don't remember who, maybe my grandma) suggested that he couldn't drive himself. Who knows what would happen if he passed out or something.

Ok. Ok. I decided to drive him home so that he could come to the large hospital closest to our town. If he had to stay in the hospital he wanted to be sure to be close to home, he said.

Well, on the ride home I began to be more worried as it started to be obvious that he wasn't faking his chest pain. I thought he was going to pass out a few times actually, and almost went to the hospital that was closer, but he kept insisting he wanted to be at the hospital close to home.

We went to the ER and I called his mom to come and sit with him while I dropped off my dog at home. I then came back and sat with him and they found that his heart rate is really elevated and irregular and that he has high levels of lead in his system and his hemoglobin levels will cause serious liver damage if it's not reversed. Weirdly enough, they said his chest pain isn't caused by any of those things, and they couldn't figure out what that was. They released him after they deemed it wasn't "life threatening", but have scheduled more tests for later in the month with specialists.

I had had to leave my car up north and so Jedi offered me the use of his car in the meantime and he used his mom's car, which she offered to let him use-- very nice of her.

That time in the hospital is the most time I've spent with his mom actually, and it was nice to get to know her better. Jedi went back to her house to recover over the weekend.... (and yes, I feel bad that I thought he was faking.) I ended up spending a fair bit of time over at their place this weekend though-- had a couple meals, helped to put up the Christmas tree. It was nice to get to know the family better.

I still don't know his prognosis since they're still doing some tests, but he's still having some pain.

On another note-- my grandparents have called 4 times to see how he is.
Guess they must really like him, huh?

(Oh. Did I mention that he surprised me with a pair of earrings I had mentioned liking? Yeah. He's sweet like that.)

2 comments:

Perpetua said...

The good part is good! The bad part, though, is just awful. High lead levels? How bizarre! Of course you were second-guessing him--it's clearly not something most people have dealt with or heard of. I mean, I'd have suspected bad turkey-related-gas before lead poisoning(?), of all things.

Tell Jedi the Internet hopes he's feeling better. :)

StephanieC said...

Thanks!.... Um... Maybe I'd tell him if he knew about the blog... hmmm... that's another subject I need to tackle.