Yep. That’s me in the hospital bed. I barely recognize myself.
I’m ok. I was just exhausted beyond belief and collapsed into my husband’s hospital bed the moment he moved.
So I guess I’ll start at the beginning and say I had a rather eventful Valentine’s weekend. You can go ahead and mark that down as the understatement of the year and we’re only two months into 2014.
It all started out so innocently enough. We had a great dinner at home because we really don’t like to go out on Valentine’s. We’d rather whip up some of our favorite goodies and have a lot of laughs with family and friends. Ok. I’ll go ahead and admit I go overboard silly on Valentine’s. I use it as an excuse for my shenanigans. We do cheesy funny Valentine’s and everyone gets in on the act. Even the dog.
Ok, so back to the story. We get up from the dinner table and immediately my husband starts feeling bad. He takes it in stride and we all gather around the TV to watch a funny movie. Fast forward a few hours and he is in really bad shape. Bad. Shape. At this point we realize that he needs to go to the ER.
And we all jump in the car.
Let me tell you. I have seen a lot of really bad stuff. I mean I have seen the sickest sick you have ever seen in your life and this was right up there with the best of them. It actually topped everything I’ve ever seen.
I can’t go into a whole lot of details since the whole hospitalization isn’t really my story to tell but I can at least tell what happened to me. Kinda. My son and I stayed up all night in the ER with my husband who was really in horrible shape. We dozed maybe 30 minutes out of the entire night. Family showed up the next day and I managed to catch roughly an hour of sleep in the waiting room while my husband was being transferred from the ER to a room.
I’ll admit right now that the night before Valentine’s I was completely up to no good trying to complete some work on a class that I’m taking and I had only gotten 2 hours of sleep. Not good. Fast forward to Valentine’s night and I got maybe 30 minutes cumulative of a bit of a snoozing here and there. I was also so busy with my husband that I didn’t even eat for a full day either. Who needs food? It was the last thing on my mind given the circumstances really.
Back to the longest Saturday ever, the day after Valentine’s Day. I find myself running off of fumes. My family that has come in from out of town left in the late afternoon. I still don’t want to leave my husband but I really have to check on some things at home for a minute and move the car that is still in the ER parking lot. I make sure everything is ok and decide to slip away quickly so I can get right back.
Here’s the part where it gets really fantastical.
I go to move the car and it won’t start. It’s dead. I left the hazard lights on and the battery died. So I called AAA and tried my best to keep warm while I waited for them to arrive.
Roughly 30 minutes pass while I’m catching up on my texts and the AAA guy gets there. He is unable to start my car. In fact, he declares that I must call AAA again and request a tow since he can’t tow me. Perfect!
I make another call and wait another 35ish minutes for help. At this point I’m shivering so hard that I’m pretty sure the car is shaking. I’m starting to feel completely defeated. I am completely worn out.
Finally after an hour and a half my car gets towed and I have a friend to pick me up. I’m going to be honest. I’m too flabbergasted by the events of everything to even know how to think anymore really. I can’t think. I need sleep and I need food and I need a break!
After rushing home and grabbing a few things and a bite to eat, I am ready to head back over to the hospital to watch over hubby. I’m so exhausted that I’m sure I’ll crash and sleep. I didn’t factor in the crappiness of the hospital chair that I’m given to crash on. Total fail. I did manage to doze a bit, like maybe even a whole hour before the craziness set in.
And then it happened. I knew that I had lost my mind from total sleep deprivation and I found myself desperately needing an outlet to occupy myself so that I didn’t become a total nutcase. I was ready to cry. I wanted to wail at the Universe and implore why me? Why, why, why could I not at least get the tiniest break so I could remain sane enough to care for everyone and everything that I needed to care for? I have a family that depends on me and I’m not holding together. However, I decided to not give in to frustration and fear.
Instead I decided to entertain myself…
In the early hours of Sunday morning I decided to whip out my phone and do a ridiculous photo essay of the hospital setting for my Facebook account. In fact, I did three of them. My already insane sense of humor is apparently out of control on less than five hours of sleep in three days. I’ve included the screen shots below for your entertainment.
Now that I shared this rather long story in the shortest way possible I want stress something important to you.
We choose how to react to every situation at every moment of every single day.
It’s a choice.
I could have cried. I could have gotten angry. I could have blamed the world. The list goes on and on.
I’ll be honest; I’ve had some real crap times in my life. You would probably need therapy if I started telling my life’s story. We all have horrible stories to tell. No one gets out of life without a big fat plate full of crap that they have been dealt at some time or other. It’s life.
And yet we are so powerful that we can make a choice as to how we will react to what happens to us.
I chose humor. I chose to sit in that awful chair and create a funny scenario.
I created my reality right then and there. I was not a victim to circumstance.
And neither are you.
The craptasticness of your circumstance does not define you.
Only you define you.
Choose your reactions wisely.
BAM!
My husband is almost back to 100% and my car was completely fine. Go figure.
***updated post to include a much requested video of the eventful weekend***
This blog post has been brought to you by Hooch, a homeless dog that oozes the most incredible amount of JOY ever. I’m smitten. Tell everyone you know that he needs to be adopted!
