Thank God For EMTs

So here I am, eating stale Safeway cheesecake that tastes like socks, drinking milk and wishing it was wine, and trying to decide how on earth I am going to get ground in vomit out of the carpet.

Need me to back up? OK. I deleted a really long, detailed account of how terrible my day was. It started at Five AM and it didn't end until nearly midnight, but it ended well and that's the important thing.

The short version is that Little Hawk had a pretty bad spasm day today, and it was made worse by the fact that he is getting frustrated with the sedation his meds cause and delayed in taking them until it was too late to do more than keep them from being uncontrollable, rather than making them go away. He was resting on the couch in between attacks, and I turned my back for a minute to get him his meds, and his spasms caused him to fall off the couch and inhale a big lungful of carpet dust.
THAT caused his asthma to go into overdrive, and the next thing I know I'm trying to hold him on his side so he doesn't aspirate any of the vomit-laced foam he's coughing up, and trying to clear his mouth for a few seconds so I can use his rescue inhaler on him. I say trying because he's still spasming at this point, so it was rather like trying to wrestle a very strong rabid sea lion. I managed to get the albuterol inside him, and he started to breath much better, so I put him back on the couch, gave him a pile of benedril,  and went to get a warm washcloth to wash the spittle off him.
Aren't I thoughtful?
Well apparently not, because he fell off the couch and got a second lungful of dust. Welp, home care is all over now, time to call in the pros. I called 911, fully understanding that unless the COPES money had kicked in, we wouldn't be able to pay this trip.
The EMTs were at our place in less than a minute- HOW DO THEY DO THAT?
The fire station is clear across town, easily three miles away. Maybe four.
Anyway, they were wonderfully sweet, helped stabilize his breathing, and waited with us until the Benedril kicked in, saving us the cost of a trip. We discussed the treatment plan we are on for his spasms, shared a few nurse jokes, and dissected the local doctors in gossip. Then, after Little Hawk was breathing normally and his spasms were under control, they helped me carry him to bed and cleaned up, heading back to the station.
As they headed out the door, the Captain turned and shook my hand with a kind expression on his face.
"Honey, I know that some of the docs have their heads up their asses over your husband there, and most of 'em think he's a Munchausen’s, but we all know the truth. This is real, and this is terrible, but you are a real hero for sticking by him and both of you are gonna be ok."


It's a good thing he hurried out because I would have died of embarrassment if he had seen how hard that made me cry. These were good tears, mind, because it's been such a long time since we've had someone  in the medical field be nice to us and show some sympathy, when we are so jaded by doctors who dismiss us and shove us in the corner of the corridor, on a cot behind the mobile xray machine. Having him say that made the whole horrible day better. 


I DO love my husband, more than life itself. I WILL stay with him and support him no matter how bad his health is, because a year ago Sunday, I made a vow to. He is an amazing, kind, thoughtful, funny, handsome, and all around wonderful man, and he is worth any amount of pain and trauma, and it's nice to have that reaffirmed by a professional. 
Also, it's nice being called a hero by a REAL HERO. 

Working From Home

There was a lot of confusion around here over the past few weeks about what, exactly, was going on this summer. We knew we were moving, we knew I was working, we knew Little Hawk would need a lot of in-home care, and I knew that I really, really needed to spend some quality time with my beads, my dyes, my wool and my knitting. If I want to get serious about running a business, I need to dedicate a lot of time to my artwork. Also, if I don't want my developing artistic vision to stagnate over the summer, I need to spend time each day working.
The issues that we had to work out were money and care. As it stood at the end of the quarter, we were spending horrendous amounts of money on Er visits, insurance, medicine, and other bills. This was due to a frustrating cycle that we were locked into:

Little Hawk would try to do something that he was too weak to do, such as take a shower by himself or try to load the washing machine, then he would fall and hurt himself, either banging his head or jarring his hip. I would either take him to the ER for xrays, or we would have to call an ambulance, we would spend the entire day or night there while they shoved us in a corner or ignored us, he would check out battered but not broken, and we would return home. For a few days he would depend on me to help him with everything, then he would start to feel a bit better, try to do something by himself, and get hurt all over again. 

Then we would have to try and find money to pay for the ambulance, xrays, and ER copay, which all together would end up being about $250 on top of the $600 we were already paying for insurance. Factor in that we were going in two to three times a month, and it adds up. 

So the summer started with us fending off a few collections agencies, me unable to leave Little Hawk by himself, and having to follow him all around the house so that I could be on hand to assist him with anything strenuous, because he refused to ask for help. 

Remember, a year ago, he was in the prime of life, able to live entirely on his own and never needing help from anyone. Having to admit that this recovery is going to take a long time, having to stoop to ask for help with activities of daily living, that kind of humility is too much for a proud man, especially one who is determined to make his own way. 

In the end, we applied to the COPES program. It would subsidize our medical expenses entirely and provide in home help, solving our money problem and allowing me to either spend more time doing artwork and educating myself, or to work more. It took a month for them to get around to approving us, and during that month things have gotten a little better. We still have money problems, and he is still having health issues, but I have found some ways to let him be independent, but minimize his risk factors, like taking over all of his daily chores, but putting him in charge of other, safer ones. It's like the creed of the assisted living program I work for- We accommodate the client's needs, we don't make them accommodate us. 

In the end, it looks like our summer will be a lot easier now. We have our appointment with the people who will be providing the in home care today, and I will try to explain to them what the situation is. Little Hawk thinks that they will be there to clean the house and do the dishes, and that is a small part of it, but not all. I think they will also be expecting that I am taking classes this summer, but I cancelled my summer classes because I didn't know if we were going to be approved or not, and if we weren't, I needed to be at home. Now that we are approved, I'm going to be locking myself in my studio and getting something accomplished. 

I am beginning to see the inherent problem with working from home- Since you are at home, everyone seems to think you aren't working and can do things for them. 

Summer at Last.

Finals are over at last, and I am in the process of transferring my degree over to Evergreen for my last two quarters. Why am I hitting up another school when I am less than a year away from my degree? Three reasons. One, as an artist, I am stagnating at this school. My teacher and I are having some pretty big issues and I need a fresh outlook on ceramics. Two, the house we are living in is unsafe for Little Hawk at this point. His condition continues to deteriorate and this house isn't really that accessible. Also, we need to be closer to his doctors. If every drive to see his doc costs us $75, we aren't ever going to be able to pay off the ER trips that have gone to collections, let alone get me new glasses and dental care. Third, almost everyone that we know here is moving away, and we had precious few friends in the area to begin with. Little Hawk is lonely and miserable, and I have only a few people who I can lean on for help when it all becomes too much. This last quarter was awful, and without the support we had, we might not have pulled through. We need more help.

Not everything is dreary and terrible. My Etsy shop is back up and running, full of lovely things and making me a few dollars that I can spend on wool. I recently bought some Romeldale silvery lilac wool, and it is LOVELY. I washed and carded it up this morning, and I can hardly wait to spin this stuff. It is soft and downy, a pale grey that is almost blue with golden tips, and I have a special project in mind for it.
I want to knit a shawl. Not just any  shawl, but one knit from the lace edging up, cast on in charcoal wool, with the lace section in my lilac romeldale, and the plain center in white. It's a similar idea to the shawl that the Yarn Harlot knitted a month back.
It will be a spectacular shawl, and it's going to be a gift for my mother.