(my) back

the dryness in the hospital split the skin on my thumb again. it really hurts.

the full-day-of-youtube hospital experience wasn't good for anyone, but we did have some good moments and on monday evening mr smear did some great drawings and we read a bit more diary of a wimpy kid in hebrew. it's blowing my mind how mr smear can't remember simple things we tell him or whether or not he's brushed his teeth, but he remembers most of the books he's read verbatim and consistently helps me with or corrects my translations.

monday was hard. working on a chair in a hospital with a single screen was hard, dealing with mr smear dealing with youtube / other people like doctors and nurses / well-meaning purim revellers etc. was hard. not being able to go anywhere because he was in quarantine and attached to a drip was hard.

monday night was pretty much a repeat of sunday night. lots of sleep interruptions, but the actual sleep on their fold-out bed was pretty good.

yesterday morning was okay, a lot of the same from monday but mr smear's eye was looking much better. while gd got settled in and the doctors determined whether or not he was ready to go home, i went to the office.

the first hour or two in the office were considerably more constructive. lunch (a hummus run with my boss and a mostly full house at the table) was good. what followed was a mix of going to a three-minute dermatologist consultation - he doesn't think i have psoriasis, and believes everyone in israel should be shampooing daily - speed-walking back to the hospital ward to grab the toothbrushes gd forgot when they vacated, crashing in front of my desk while trying to avoid having more coffee, and a late evening struggling to debug something but finally walking out with a sense of accomplishment.

dinner in front of gravity falls last night - the last of the "special" days before getting back into a routine - and then a really hard night realizing that the last three sleepless months are at least partially, if not mostly, due to me being uncomfortable on our new mattress. i shifted to the couch in the middle of the night and slept much better.

now it's cleanup time, including dishes and grocery shopping online and taking laundry to the laundromat, before heading to work.

hospitalization

 an hour or two being bounced between offices until we gave up and went to the clinic, where they took pity on a miserable-looking mr smear and sent us up to the nurse who gave us the referral.

we did the ER thing from about 11am until around 9pm, it took half the day to get the PCR results from thursday and for a professor of infectious diseases to come and take a look at him: the diagnoses did end up being herpes, and he hadn't been responding well to the meds we were giving him, so we took him through for another eye examination before he was hospitalized for a couple of days' infusion.

i was already very sore and tired by then. around noon i'd had to rush home and back for medication, in the evening i rushed home and back for a t-shirt and underwear for mr smear and to pick up dinner for all of us, which gd really didn't enjoy, and for most of the day we were either walking around or sitting on uncomfortable chairs.

once we got him settled, i went home to shower and brush my teeth and pick up a couple more things and returned to relieve gd and let her go home.

it's been seven years since our last hospitalization, and it's much easier this time around. if it wasn't for a night full of alarms for IV occlusions waking me up during REM sleep it might've been the most comfortable night's sleep i've had in years.

i was a wreck after being woken up this morning, but i'm feeling okay now. and mr smear is happy because he's hooked into a bed with a screen that lets him watch youtube...

... gd just arrived, it's coffee and breakfast time.