Third times a charm

Well the heart catherization finally happened and just as I suspected they can't find out what is causing the heart enlargement. So basically I went through three weeks of stress and anxiety to find out absolutely nothing. Not to mention the pain and humiliation of the entire procedure. First of all they schedule the procedure for eight am which means I have to be at the hospital at six thirty am. This is because I have to have additionaly blood work done since the blood work they did in the hospital is over thirty days old. Now if they hadn't rescheduled this the previous two times I wouldn't have had to endure another blood draw....but nooooooo. The timing of this also means hat I have to trust Drake and Peyton to get themselves ready for school and onto the bus without my supervision and my help. I know this shouldn't be an issue for most mothers with a fourteen and twelve year old. But you really have to understand how helpless I have raised these two precious boys to be. Generally I am the one standing outside in the freezing cold, rain, snow, sleet or heat watching for the bus. I usually stand out on the porch and report into my children the buses progress down our road...Drake and Peyton the bus is on the road....Drake and Peyton hurry up the bus is at Nick's house......OMG please boys the bus is at Marcus' house...Drake and Peyton right now the bus is pulling up...no Drake I don't have any gum....no Peyton I didn't pack your shorts for wrestling....as they are running out the door...yes Peyton I will drop off the things you need for practice.... This is my typical morning routine just for the bus ride to school. I don't have time or energy to go into the hour that precedes this part of the morning. I won't even mention the morning that they don't get to the bus and our bus driver from hell leaves them here for me to drive to school. See I officially have the worst bus driver on the planet. This woman absolutely can not stand me. She has driven my children to school for nearly a decade now and had never so much as spoken to me (and this was before I started reporting her to the school transportation board) Well anyway I get to the hospital and am taken back to the prep area where I have the pleasure of stripping down to nothing but the worlds ugliest hospital gown blood work is drawn and IV inserted. Then I get the pleasure of having maintenance work done on my hoo hoo under bright flourescent hospital lights. Once I am taken back to the cath lab to have the procedure I have to slide off of the bed I am on and onto the table while wearing the hospital gown as I am trying to manuever myself from the table to the bed the nurse begins laughing that she hasn't seen anyone do it like me before. She says she always gets a kick out of how different folks approach the transition. I explain to her that I am trying to get from the bed to the table without showing the entire surgical staff all my personal business. Then they all start laughing and the nurse says not to worry about because as soon as I am on the table the are going to remove my hospital gown anyway.....well ain't this just wonderful..I have already endured having my hoo hoo remodeled by one nurse in broad daylight..now I get to show four other people my newly maintenced hoo hoo along with every other inch of my completely naked body...can anyone please tell me what contest in hell I have won???? At this point I am crying not only because I am scared to death now I get to add loss of dignity and humiliation to this wonderful day. When my doctor arrives he tells them to go ahead and give me the sedation to take the edge off and to cam me down. The nurse says she will put this in my IV and in just a few seconds I won't even care what is going on..... oh really LIAR...when that doesn't work they opt for a second one. The nurse says with the second one I probably won't even remember what went on......LIAR. Fully aware and still edgy once they are finished the nurse ask me if I can even remember what went on. I procede to tell her exactly what occured. She is surprised that I can recall every second of the proceedure she says most folks don't even realize what is going on. I must be pretty tolerant to the drug. Aren't I just sooooo lucky. Now mind you if I drink one mixed drink I am likely to sleep for twelve to thirteen hours..but sedatives adminstered in an IV that are meant to put someone to sleep has very little affect on me. When they are finished and the finally take me back to recovery they tell me I have to lay back here for at least an hour before I can go back to the regular recovery room. I aks them why because I was told I would be taken right back to where they had me to begin with prior to the heart cath. The nurse says that I need to stay back there until the tubes come out....excuse me? What tubes?...no one said anyting about any tubes..this is when the nurse tells me that they were unable to put the plug in the artery so now I have one venus and one arterial tube hanging out of my leg....Holy #%$%^ this little piece of information just blows my little oars right out of the water. See I don't like medical stuff, I don't like needles and I have always lived with the motto "NO NEW HOLES" I figure God gave me all the holes in my body that he wanted me to have and I don't feel it necessary to have new ones put on me..let alone have holes in me with objects hanging out of them. When the nurse comes back over to check the incision site and take my vitals she is concerned because my blood pressure is quite low and they can not get pulses in my legs. I tell her not to be concerned that my blood pressure is often low and especially low when I am on the verge of fainting because I can not stop thinking about the tubes hagning out of my leg. Seeing that I am now almost in a full blown panic attack as my mind will not stop envisioning these bloody tubes hanging out of my body. They contact the doctor to get the okay to give me just one more shot of something to take the edge off. I explain to her that more medication is not going to take the edge off the only thing that is going to take the edge off is when they get the tubes that I was not told about out of my body. They medicate me anyway and tell me between all three shots of sedative I should sleep through the remainder of this ordeal....LIARS. The nurse injects the third dose of sedative and walks away. As I am lying there I can see another nurse over my the nurses station chowing down on a Lindsey's donut I am contemplating hopping out of this bed tubes and all to tackle her for this delectable little treat but I chicken out. When the other nurse comes back over to check on me I tell her she needs to warn Nurse Donut to go eat somewhere where I can't see her. I have not had any coffee this morning let alone my favorite breakfast on the planet a chocolate covered cream filled donut. She says don't worry we are going to take the tubes out and then we can send you back to the regualr recovery room and you can have something to drink and a snack. Thank God!! When they come back to take the tubes out one nurse says she is going to take the tubes out and the other one wil apply pressure for fifteen minutes to the site. Sounds simple enough. When I tell you apply pressure I don't think you can quite grasp what special kind of pressure from hell I am talking about. Let's just say that if it had not been for fear of bleeding to death I would have most certainly taken my good leg to do some sort of Chuck Norris round house kick to this nurses head multiple times to get her to leave me alone. Once I have endured this fifteen minutes of torture they call to have someone take me back to the regular recovery area where they tell me I can eat and have something to drink. They didn't tell me I could do this but only while lying flat on my back unable to move. To top it all off when they bring my darling husband Tony back to see me he is holding a nice steaming cup of hot coffee..coffee I would really like to grab and pour over his handsome head. I figure it is probably too risky to try and drink steaming hot coffee while lying flat on my back and the way my luck is going I am likely to suffethird degree burns if I attempt it. I settle on a diet coke and a snickerdoodle cookie. My new nurse informs me that they have ran out of donuts but the other nurse back in the tube hanging recovery area called her to tell her to give me a donut.. I must have really scared that woman which I found quite amusing. I mean here she is trying to take care of multiple post op recovery patients and she is calling up front to tell the other nurses to give me a donut..this is just too funny. Well I have to lay on the flat of my back for another two hours if I do okay with that then I am told I will have to sit up for one hour and then I can go home. Thank the Lord this all went well and I got to leave the hospital in three hours. Of course the sedation hits me once I got home when I didn't care if I was sedated. I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon away and Peyton even made me dinner when he came home. I also had no problem going back to sleep last night. But when I woke up at five thirty this morning I discovered my back had gone out from having to lay on it for so long. Now to put the icing on the cake the painters arrived today to cheer me on!! So other than the soreness from the heart cath, the bad back flaring up and cramps..it is shaping up to be a great day!!! Well at least I get out of going to the wrestling meet tonight and tomorrow. I guess I should count my blessings!!