tee em eye

Talked to J yesterday twice, before and after she went to the hospital. Things not going well with S. More or less comatose. Still massive infection. Super low platelet count that led to bleeding from his nose and mouth and, oh yeah, in his brain. Renal failure. Liver not doing too well either. More tests planned for today, to help map out a plan of attack for the surgery they hoped to have him stabilized enough to do tomorrow.

Okay. Late this afternoon a woman from [big hospital] calls me while I'm at work, leaving nothing but her name and asking me to call back and have her paged. A million thoughts start running through my mind, mostly about why they'd be calling me. When I get her on the phone, it turns out she's a social worker. "In these situations" they like to touch base with the family members. And some anger I guess I didn't know was there bubbled up, and I told her that, well, I wasn't really family, I was his ex-wife and he hadn't see me or his son in four years. She asked me about D and I explained about his psychiatric illness. She then asked if D wanted to see S, and if he'd "feel bad if anything were to happen and he hadn't." And I realized that she was, of course, hinting that they weren't expecting him to make it. And some more of that anger bubbled up and I said something about S not ever seeing D when he was in the hospital for two months and karma being a bitch. But I promised to ask D what he felt. A little more chitchat and we hung up.

A bit later I was telling my boss all this (complete with all the anger popping to the surface again) and he agreed that when the social workers call you like that, it ain't because they're overly optimistic regarding prognosis. So I figure I ought to call J and find out what she's heard from the docs today and if she thought I ought to get D in there *tonight*. She agreed that what they said to her had seemed like they were hinting around that he might be dying and soon. So we decided we would all go in together tonight, and she'd try to get her dad to come too, rather than wait till it might be too late.

S wasn't totally comatose. He could hear us when we spoke to him: he'd move around a bit and his BP would rise. We were standing around the bed, and I dunno, I just slipped my hand under the sleeve of his johnny and started rubbing his arm. I'm a fucking massage therapist, we touch people, sue me. I stood there, looking at him in such a horrible state--intubated, jaundiced, edematous, urine bag full of what was basically all blood--and rubbing his arm, and he felt like my S. I mean to say, I'm so tactilely-oriented that I remember how people feel. And he felt like the man I once loved. It was like all the anger I might have felt or might feel in the future just fell away.

I want him to get better. I want him to live.

xoxo

P.S. D did so well with the ICU visit. Really, really well.