Mrs Ohtobe: Ray Charles and the hospital

Poor Ohtobe. Wouldn't you know the second I post some grade A fiction here - he has to go and make it real life! At 6:45 a.m. I awake to him saying, "Mrs. Oh, call 911."

"Huh?" says the sleeping Mrs. Oh.

"Call 911, I don't feel right, my heart is racing and I am dizzy" repeats Mr Oh., sounding a lot like Barry White.

So I call 911 and the paramedics AND a fire truck arrive within 3 minutes. Tobey moved into the living room because there was no way on earth the paramedics could have got a stretcher past the living room couch. I woke Frodo and Butter up and put the dogs out back. The paramedics assess Tobey and give him baby aspirin. It was decided he needed to go to the hospital and get checked out.

The paramedics next put a ton of heart monitors all over Tobey and once they saw that he is 90% Wookie they uttered the words every Wookie-lover hates to hear: we need a razor. I do not admit to asking if they could put the monitors on some place that he didn't have hair, like his head. My fear being the man-o-lantern:

Once he was monitored up and loaded on the stretcher the severity of the situation hit me. My love was sick, possilbly dying....and I rememered the some-what fictious post...I gasped, "Oh no, the neighbors are now going to think I am trying to kill you!"

One of the paramedics said he wished he still had the straight jacket in the truck because they could have wheeled him out wearing that! Apparently he has read this blog before.

We get to the emergency room and after a few hours, an IV, several blood tests the PA said the tests were negative and we could go home. Yipee! We hadn't counted on the fact that the PA was a 'student' PA or the fact that she looked like a cross between the Skipper doll and Dougie Howser. A few more minutes pass and the doctor comes in and tells us that she is admitting Tobey for observation and more tests.

Now during the course of all of this, another student had examined Tobey and she did the eyeball test. She shown her flashlight in his eye and he explained to her that he is blind in his left eye and that he has a bullet still lodged there. I needed to get something to eat and Butter needed to go home, so I left him for a few minutes while he got moved to his room.

When I arrived in his room he was getting an EKG done and he wasn't in the room. A few minutes later the orderly walks him back in the room holding on to his elbow. Tobey said they were really worried about him, they wouldn't let me get up or walk without assistance, which was fine by me because I was so worried about him.

A while later the nursing assitant arrived and saw that I brought Tobey a book to read and she looked perplexed and asked him how blind he was because they charted that he was legally blind. Tobey told her he was blind in his left eye. Just the left eye. His vision is fine in his right eye. She says that they had it on his chart that he was legally blind. I said well that explains why they are holding on to him every time he gets up! And everyone laughs. The assistant said she would let the nurse know and she would bring him his dinner menu. The assistant comes back a few minutes later with the menu and I asked if it was in Braille.

As it stands now, Tobey is fine and wants to come home. He is hooked up to a portable heart monitor and they are checking his blood every few hours for a cardiac enzyme, which if it shows up it means he did have a heart attack. If the enzyme doesn't appear he will do a cardiac stress test tomorrow and we go forth from there.

And right now I am wiped out and going to do my best to get some sleep.

~ame

on Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Labels: Marriage