The Punster's Big Hospital Adventure

First, the latest kidney stone played hide and seek, forcing the surgeon to spend much longer finding it and removing it than he expected.

Then, just to make life interesting for both of us, the Hubster passed out in the lobby while we were waiting for a taxi to take us home. Fortunately, three kind hospital employees--one of whom was a nurse, thank G-d--schlepped him up off the floor and into the wheelchair that he'd been trying to reach as he complained about being dizzy--apparently, he was already not entirely alert when I told him that I'd bring him a wheelchair--and rushed him to the Emergency Room. The ER personnel took a gazillion blood samples--I called them "vampires" :) --to send to the lab. Then, they wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around his upper arm, put a heartbeat-rate-monitoring contraption on his index finger, plugged an IV into him and "salted" his veins with sodium chloride--I told him he was getting well pickled :) --stuck an oxygen gadget in his nose, and gave me the honor of (literally) standing at his bedside for probably over four hours until they decided that he was well enough to go home.

Such fun. Not.

Next time, I'll remember to:

• take him from Ambulatory Surgery to the lobby in a wheelchair, and make sure he stays there until the taxi arrives.
• bring food (and plastic utensils with which to eat it)--there's almost nothing kosher at the local grocery store, especially when you're following the surgeon's orders and looking for something low-fat and not spicy, and, since the Hubster passed out between meals, I ended up having to feed him a single-serving container of Cheerios (which he ate "straight up"--without milk--by hand, directly from the container).

I'm happy to report that my husband was well enough yesterday to want to leave the apartment. Nut case that he is, he went over to the shul to help with the financial records.