I think it is because we're sleep deprived, but maybe these are really funny things, at any rate, Dwayne and I are easily amused by the things that we see and experience around us...
- When we were in the ER, one of the staff members was asking Dwayne a series of questions that she said she asks every patient. One of the questions was, "Is anyone abusing you?" Dwayne heard, "Is anyone amusing you?" He thought that was a strange question, and at that time, we hadn't really been amused yet... but we hadn't been here long yet!
- Dwayne gets his vitals taken every few hours, including his blood pressure, oxygen saturation, and temperature. One time, we got to chatting with the technician who was doing this, and, distracted, she forgot to remove the wiring that connected her machine to the cuff that was on Dwayne's arm as she prepared to take her machine out of his room. It was quickly apparent that this was going to be trouble as her machine came to a stop when it tried to drag a 150+ pounds (well, more than that considering he was in the bed) with it! Dwayne said that he could have gotten dragged along with her and visit all the other patients as she was checking them! She was laughing and we were laughing by the time she disconnected the machine from him!
- On Monday, I ran out to our favorite store/boondocking location - Walmart - to get a couple of items that Dwayne needed in the room. As I was walking to the store, there was a dark colored SUV with tinted windows that had stopped to let customers pass who were coming out of the store. While it was stopped, I saw a lady at the opened passenger door apologizing for trying to get into their vehicle. She was evidently waiting for someone to pick her up at Walmart in a dark SUV, so she tried getting into a likely looking one! Lesson learned: if you have a common color/model of vehicle, don't pass in front of the Walmart and have to stop if you don't want random people trying to join you in your vehicle!
- Also on Monday, at the hospital, I went to the elevator on the first floor to go up to the third floor. There were three ladies just ahead of me, and one of them pressed the elevator "up" button with her elbow. The ladies were discussing that they shouldn't touch anything (I behave similarly - there are a lot of sick people in hospitals! but I usually use a knuckle instead of my elbow). When they got onto the elevator, one of them pressed a button with her elbow, seeming to have difficulty getting it pressed. When I went to press "3", I noticed no floor was pressed, so I asked them what floor they wanted. They wanted the first floor. I hadn't pressed any button yet, so I pressed the door open and showed them the "1" on the outside of the elevator and said that they had arrived! They were obviously a bit confused, so I asked which room number they were looking for and found a staff person walking toward us and asked where that room would be... so they got going in the right direction.
- Related to the story about the lady about to get into the wrong SUV, we had a man walk into Dwayne's room and see his face go very confused when he saw Dwayne on the bed... he thought he was walking into his wife's room - I bet that would be very disconcerting to see all strangers in what you think is your spouse's room - but also easy to do.
- I walked out of Dwayne's room one day and there was a lady walking slowly in front of it with a piece of paper in her hand. I asked if I could help, and she said, "Do you know where room 3130 is? It is my husband's room and I was there earlier but now I can't find it!" I didn't, but I found a nurse - and she pointed the way, explaining to the lady she just needed to turn the "other" way when she left the elevator. As she started on her way, the lady was mumbling, "I'm never going to leave the room again!"
I'm going to chalk both of these last ones up to "spouse sleep deprivation", and hope that I don't get written up in someone else's report for doing stupid things that I don't know I'm doing!
And, a reminder, I'm doing journalling of Dwayne's medical issues on CaringBridge: https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/dwaynecartwright/journal
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