I am the first to tell you that the
last place I would spend a majority of my day is a hospital. Now, in the
circumstances things changed a lot in many ways, so I had to suck it up and
take it like a woman. The “way to clean” smell and laboratory lighting made me
feel uneasy at first, but I wasn’t there for me, I was there for Joe. Hospitals
are not the most G-rated places in the world, so I cannot make my blog for this
particular stage G-Rated either. Reality is reality and I am not going to sugar
coat it for you all.
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| One of my best days there: his first day in the wheelchair :) |
If half my leg was blown off, my
backside was tore up, and my other knee hurt like a royal SOB… the last thing I
would care about was being clothed. I would want to be as bare as the day I was
born into this world and I wouldn’t care who saw… neither did Joe. For some
humor, from now on I will refer to Joe’s penis as Little Joe. Little Joe didn’t
care if the nurses saw him, Little Joe didn’t care if his mother saw him, Little
Joe wanted to be free d*** it and I don’t blame him. Also Little Joe had a tube
in it, which Joe referred to as the “piss tube”. Now the “piss tube” was one
part of the plethora of tubes that was connected to various parts of Joe’s body
and was also the one that was the biggest pain to deal with during our hours of
repositioning to make sure that Joe was comfortable. I am jumping ahead a
couple days from my first visit to Walter Reed, but since we are on the topic
of Little Joe and the “piss tube”, I want to finish our story on our
experiences with the pain of removal and horror of replacement.
About a week into my trip, we got the most excellent news
that the “piss tube” was going to be removed. Joe and I were delighted to hear
the Little Joe wouldn’t have to deal with being violated by the d*** “piss tube”
any longer! The doctor and assistant came in with their “piss tube” removal
equipment and both of us looked at him and Joe asked “aren’t you going to numb
it up or are you just going to pull it out?” “I’m just going to pull it out”.
My jaw HIT THE FLOOR. I (mentally) flipped out on them. “DON’T YOU PEOPLE
REALIZE THAT I NEED THAT LATER?! PEOPLE EXPECT ME TO HAVE HIS CHILDREN AND YOU
ARE JUST GONNA PULL IT OUT!? YOU ARE GOING TO RUIN BABY MAKING FOR US! WHAT THE
HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?! “ Joe’s face went emotionless as he mentally
prepared for Little Joe to be seriously violated. I watched as they pulled a
tube out of Little Joe and managed to not pass out. After about 3 seconds of
complete pain, yelling, and a little bit of blood, the piss tube was out J
A sigh of relief came from Joe and I when he had one less
tube to deal with… unfortunately for us, the moment of relief lasted about 4
hours. PAIN. WORST PAIN EVER. His body had gotten used to having the “piss
tube” in that he couldn’t pee and his bladder was to the point of explosion I
swear. So, the “piss tube” team came in to replace it. I though watching it
getting taken out was painful… think about Little Joe having to deal with
putting it back in. Once again there was no numbing of Little Joe and I
(mentally) flipped out on them, “ OH NOW YOU GUYS HAVE REALLY RUINED BABY
MAKING FOR US! He will never be able to have sexy-time with me or have babies
now that you guys are gonna shove a tube up it.” Watching a tube go up
something that isn’t meant to have a tube made my gut go into my throat and Joe
about punched the doctor and his assistant while he called them dirty names. I
watched as Joe went through complete pain all over again. My crotch hurt with
imaginary pain that a tube was being shoved up Little Hillary and once again,
almost passed out. Once the team left, Joe had sweat running down his face, I
sat on my chair and took deep breaths and tried to recollect on what had just
happened to Joe. Relief came across Joe’s face with the removal of about 100
CCs of pee from his bladder… which was followed by a pain of pure
disappointment that the dreaded “piss tube” was back into our lives. After a
Google search and a text message from his mom, I found out that the baby making
parts of Little Joe would not be affected by the removal and replacement of the
“piss tube”, THANK GOD. About two days later, when I wasn’t in the room, they
went through the removal and replacement procedure all over again. I am glad I
didn’t have to see that again because I probably would have really passed out
and that wouldn’t be good for me or for Joe.
Day one in the hospital was a good start and introductory day to what my life was going to consist of for the duration of my time there. After I had got done saying my hello’s, I love you’s, and explaining my days of flying to Joe, I saw that he was lying on about a dozen pillows. “Hey Hillary, can you lift my leg and adjust this pillow for me?” “Uhhh, do you really want me to touch your leg?” was my response. “Ya, just lift it up”. I was completely terrified that I was going to hurt him that when I lifted his leg, I felt like I was handling an egg during an egg toss. “Doesn’t this hurt?” I asked him. His response was, “not if you lift it up slow and don’t squeeze it too hard.” “Ok, I won’t do that.” Well I did, a lot, during my time there. I hurt him; I know I did because he told me I did. I hated knowing that I was hurting him. We spent 75% of our day repositioning the pillows that were keeping Joe comfortable.
On day one
I also learned about phantom pain. My first encounter with phantom pain
completely freaked me out. Joe shot up and started rubbing and grabbing the end
of his stump (the term stump is for the remaining part of his leg after
amputation). I was asking him what was wrong and he responded to me, its the
phantom pain. I kept asking what I could do to help and he said to just rub the
end of his stump. He explained phantom pain to me like this, “ my brain thinks
I still have the rest of my leg, so it sends messages to my foot that it hurts
even though it isn’t there. I have to tell my brain that I am moving my non-existent
ankle so that it doesn’t hurt as bad even though it doesn’t really help at
all.” Basically, his body has to adjust to having the end of his stump be the
end of his right leg. Until that point, it will feel like Joe’s nonexistent
foot is being rolled up over itself until it reaches his amputation site. It is
excruciating.
All I could do to help was rub and rub and rub his leg to help his body realize
that it has a new end.
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| He lost a lot of weight since his accident... |
After about
6 hours in his room, reality really set in. It isn’t that it did before hand,
but he was sitting right there in front of me, I saw his leg, I saw the wounds
in his backside, I saw the cast and brace on his left leg, and I saw the agony
of pain in his face. In my mind I was thinking to myself that I would trade
places with him in a heartbeat. I don’t need my leg! I sit at a desk and type
on a computer for my job, I don’t need a leg. All I need to succeed in my life is
my brain and what is in my pants. I WISH it was me in that bed and not him. Is
that weird? That I wanted to be in his spot instead of him? Who in their right
mind wishes that they could trade places with someone that is in almost
constant pain? Well, I guess I am not in my right mind.
I broke
down the next day when I got to my hotel room to shower and change clothes. I
cried until my face turned blue and snot was down to my chin. I cried until I
had no more tears to cry out. I think I had finally reached the point where my
body couldn’t create more tears. Then when I let myself think, I told myself,
“You KNEW that this wasn’t going to be easy. You came here to be his rock and
you are doing a pretty bad job of that right now. Straighten up, get your head back
on your shoulders, clean up your face because you look terrible right now, put
your big girl panties on and get back over to Joe because he needs you right
now. STOP BEING SELFISH HILLARY.” I took my shower, put my face on, and marched
my little butt back to my man.
When I was
in New Jersey, I had my first experience with Battle Dreams. He was jumping,
twitching, and mumbling words that I couldn’t make out, but when it was over he
rolled over and grabbed me in his huge arms and hugged me while still asleep.
The next morning, he remembered that he had a dream and brushed it off like it
was no big deal. The dreams he had in Maryland, were totally different. My
second night there, at about 2 am I woke up to screaming. “HILLARY! HILLARY!
DOCTOR! DOCTOR! DOCTOR! HILLARY!!” He was screaming all while asleep “WAKE UP
JOE! COME ON BABE WAKE UP! YOU’RE OK! YOU’RE OK!” I was trying so hard to get
him to wake up and get back to reality. When he woke up, engulfed me in his
arms and gave me the big kisses that I love. He looked up to me and said, “I
love you Hillary. Not many girls would do what you are doing by staying by my
side through all this. You have seen a lot and done a lot of things to help me.
I love you so much.” My heart melted, he had come back to me from a world of
horror in his dream. “I love you to babe and don’t worry, I’m not going
anywhere.” Throughout the weeks I was there he had more dreams and most he
didn’t remember the next day.
Our
relationship went to a whole different level while I was there. We got to the
stage where we did things for each other that may seem embarrassing to the
other. He had multiple wounds to his butt. The explosion had sent him backward
and shrapnel had punctured his back side in a lot of different places. The
first couple days I was there, the wounds were leaking really bad due to
healing and sitting on them for so long. There were pad-type sheets that I
would change out every couple hours so that he wasn’t sitting on wetness. “I’m
sorry, but can you help me like wipe up my bottom, to try to get the moisture off?”
“Hon,” I told him, “, you don’t have to be sorry and yes I can do that for
you.” I told him that there were going to be times, like when I start popping
out his babies that I was going to need him to do weird things for me and that
this is what people do for each other when they really love each other. When
your significant other is hurt or ill, you don’t think twice about seeing or
doing things that seem “gross” or “disgusting” for the other. I added that to
my definition of love while I was down there.
I may sound
like my whole time down there was full of him telling me how WONDERFUL
I am ;) but there were times that he wanted to scream his head off at me,
especially when I touched his leg too hard or lifted it up too fast. Or when I
didn’t turn the TV up loud enough, or grabbed the wrong thing for him, or was
plain being annoying (I have that tendency according to Joe). We had a genuine
Hillary/Joe moment while I was there, for those of you that had the pleasure of
going to high school with Joe and I, you will know exactly what I mean by a
Hillary/Joe moment. We are both completely and utter SMARTASSES. There is no
nice way to describe us other than SMARTASSES. I went to rub his leg and I
rubbed it a little too hard…again. “ Hey uhh Hillary, have you realized that
half my leg has been blown off yet?” started the battle of smartass-ness. “Oh
really babe? Half you leg is gone? Thank you for reminding me because I forgot
about 10 minutes ago… you probably need to remind me again in about 10 minutes
cause I will forget again” I replied. “ Can you just think with common sense
for once?” he replied. He won.
Joe has
thick skin, literally, you can’t tell if he has veins or not and the nurses
couldn’t either. Every day they came in to take some blood for testing and they
would test three or four times over because they couldn’t find his vein. So,
they decided to place a pick line in his arm. A pick line is like a super long
IV that they have to in-patient surgically place into his harm. I didn’t know
that before I watched them place it… I dressed in a full gown, a facemask, and
gloves and had no idea what I was about to watch happen to my love. They numbed
up his arm and they grabbed this 2 foot long piece of what looked like silver
fishing line. “What in the world are they going to do with that?” I thought to
myself as they then proceeded to start shoving it up his arm. Joe sat there and
didn’t quiver once. Beads of sweat began to roll down my face, I felt like I
couldn’t breathe cause of the stupid mask, and my legs felt like noodles.
Luckily I didn’t’ fall flat on my face because that would plain be embarrassing
and would not be helpful to Joe at all. They finished their procedure and Joe
didn’t feel a thing at all, thank god.
After the
“piss tube” removal and replacement and the shoving of silver fishing line up
his arm life had gotten a bit easier. He had three surgeries the first week I
was there, one that was 9 hours long to close up the wounds on his back side
and put a plate and screws in his broken femur (the x-ray looked like someone
attacked his leg with a nail gun), the second was about 4 hours to do a
wash-out of his wounds and last was about 2 hours to do another wash-out. The
waiting was the worst part of surgery days, but a plus is that I became very
good at Bejeweled and knowing that even through he was getting cut open and
having pieces of him pulled back together, he was getting closer to having his
wounds and injuries completely healed. Before the last surgery he had while I was there, he was able to get into a wheelchair :) It was the most amazing thing to see him get up and out of the bed that he had been bound in for weeks. We went on little strolls around the floor and went to visit Tharp a couple times. We also went to another part of the hospital so that he could get his hair cut. Being able to get out of his room together made me feel like we owned the world.
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| Joe and Rex |
He had
another surgery before I left, about 7 hours, to fix all four of his damaged ligaments in his
left leg and to do a skin graft for his left calf. That was one of the more
painful surgeries, he had a massive, leg-length brace on that weighed about a
100 pounds that I could hardly move on my own and knee surgery is not the most
pleasant of surgeries. The inner athlete in me quivers with the thought of
having a single torn ligament in my knee and he had all four damaged…
Pain drugs
bring the best out in people. I had countless conversations with Joe while he
was in a whole different dimension and while he was in a drug-induced sleep. The
first went a little like this:
Joe:
“HILLARY! HILLARY!”
I pop out of bed preparing for another
battle dream.
Hillary: “
Ya honey?”
Joe:
“Didn’t you want to talk?” (I talk a lot,
so this seemed reasonable)
Hillary
(puzzled): “Ummm, well sure, what do you want to talk about?”
Joe: “ No,
into the microphone.”
Hillary (chuckles a little bit): “ Well, sure
babe I’ll talk into the microphone, where is it?”
Joe (looks into space trying to find the non-existent microphone):
“Ohhh, well never mind I guess.” (then
passes out).
This was my FAVORITE of them all; it was the day before I
was about to get on the plane to return to Alaska.
Joe (from a dead sleep): “ WHERE’S MY
HELMET?!”
Nurse that happened to be in the room freaks
out.
Hillary tells the nurse to get out of the
room.
Hillary: “
Honey, why do you need your helmet?”
Joe: “ I
NEED MY HELMET RIGHT HERE” (moves stuff
on his table around and taps on the clear space he wants his helmet)
Hillary: “ Joe, your helmet is
on its way, it is still in Afghanistan”
Joe: “Ok,
ok. Hillary, where is your helmet?”
Hillary: “
Honey, why would I need a helmet? I don’t have one.”
Joe: “ YOU NEED YOUR HELMET!
You’re getting on the helicopter soon.”
Hillary:
“No honey, I don’t need a helmet, I’m not getting on a helicopter.”
Joe: “ YES
Hillary, you told me you were leaving soon and you can’t get on the helicopter
without your helmet.”
Hillary:
“Honey, I am getting on a regular plane, not a helicopter.”
Joe: “You
still need your helmet and I need my helmet.”
I could tell that I was going to get
nowhere, so I went with it.
Hillary:
“Ok babe, I will be sure to put my helmet on before I get on the plane and when
yours gets here, I will put it right here.”
Joe: “Ok,
good.” He falls back asleep.
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| I wish I could read a magazine like this... |
We had many
more conversations like that. We had one about a device or building he had created to protect the former presidents, another was about how I sucked at
basketball and needed to go home to Sitka, and another was between him and an
imaginary person (that one freaked me out a little bit, but I was able to tell
him that there was only him and I in the room). Although these conversations
make me laugh now, they were very scary and confusing when they were happening.
The time
was nearing for me to get home and the anxiety of leaving was starting to
attack me. I really did not want to go home, I knew that Joe was still going to
really need me and I really needed him as well. I arranged my tickets home and
spent as much time as I could with him. The morning that I left was harder than
the day I left Jersey. I woke up at 3 am and started to arrange the room for
Joe so that everything he needed was within reach. We hugged, kissed, and said
I love you dozens of times. The nurse came in to take his vitals and give him
his meds, which was an indication to me that it was time to go. As I walked out
his hospital room, I looked back to see him one last time and even though I
promised him that I wouldn’t cry, I did.
Stage Two in the Journey of Unexpecting the Unexpected.
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