Checking yourself into the ER when you’re not coding sort of feels a little like what I imagine turning yourself into the police station after you commit a minor crime must feel like.
There’s no drama. But you know there will be after you report your misdeed. I was kind of over drama at this point in time, but I did want to face the music — once and for all.
Sadly, as soon as Lou was all tucked into his bed in the ER, things did fall apart of him. Suddenly, there was a great deal of blood in his catheter bag (again), and, he was clotting around the catheter tubing (again). I remember sitting in this very low chair in Lou’s little room, trying to fight off the urge to cry. I was so cold, and my heart was beating so slowly to conserve energy. It was all just…too much.
This saga was never going to end.
Lou had a series of exceptionally kind PA’s and nurses doing everything they could to make him more comfortable, but he was absolutely at wit’s end. After recounting the intense medical history of his famous bleeding schmeckle two times, and coping with the excruciating pain of a clot pushing out of him, I didn’t even recognize my husband. That was the part that hurt my heart the most. The Lou I knew was ebbing away, and there was nothing I could do to stop that.
I had to leave the room when the urology resident arrived. He started using a huge syringe to extract Lou’s clots manually. I was sitting just outside Lou’s room, and I could hear him shout in agony over and over again. The doctor was relentless. Finally, a nurse came out of the room and said to me, “I think they’re about done.”
About done with what exactly?
The working theory about why Lou started bleeding so badly again was that he had had two prostate exams in a very short window of time, which inflamed an already enlarged and probably infected prostate. So the urologist admitted Lou for one night. He wanted to keep an eye on Lou’s hemoglobin levels, as well as to make sure that the clotting didn’t start up again.
Also, after a lot of debate between Lou and his new doctor, Lou was hooked up to an IV with a cocktail of drugs. Lou didn’t want to be on antibiotics or other unnecessary drugs — but at this point, it was clearly necessary for Lou to comply. So eventually he did.
For me, it was such a relief to be in the hospital when the onset of all of the bleeding returned, but it nearly crushed Lou that he was going to have to stay the night in the hospital. He was so dark and gloomy, and I was absolutely out of ideas for how to comfort him.
