A little more history
You know how awesome it is that last day of work before Christmas? When you just walk away and know that the next few days are full of cozy and love and traditions and surprises?
Our surprise was the our future roommate was in the hospital. More frustratingly, was that that night was “Grinch Night” - a night where we eat Grinch food and watch the Grinch together (the original, not Jim Carey) and we invite P over to celebrate Christmas. P and our roommate are sisters, but not speaking and after forcing them together to celebrate occasions for the past few years I finally decided to stop. So we weren’t supposed to say anything to P. I was getting text updates from S who was at the hospital with his mom the whole time and it wasn’t sounding good but I had to just keep it in and pretend he was at work.
It turns out there was another problem with the hip that had just been replaced and we really needed to get to the bottom of that. I already knew by then that she cannot be the source of truth on health so the next morning I took T and we went in to visit her.
She didn’t like any of the staff at the hospital. She was refusing to eat. She was nuclear level negative and each time I asked her a question she shrugged her shoulders at me and gave me the condescending grin. So there I am. At the nurses station asking to speak with her care team to get the real story and always prefacing it with I am not on her side here I am on your side. I just want the facts because she is refusing,
She had a raging infection, and they did a surgery revision and she was in the hospital over a week - though they did switch her rooms because her room had a roof leak and so she was being dripped on. “at least it isn’t blood dripping.” I said - no one was amused.
She is allergic to adhesives so she could only have paper tape applied. Apparently the hospital didn’t have any. So S was stopping at every drugstore he drove by on December 23 to see if he could collect some and luckily I found some on Amazon (remember 2 day shipping) and we were able to supply enough to the hospital to repack her wound and then use during her 2nd surgery. And then we found time on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to drive to the hospital and sit in her room and bring her the only brand of peanut butter she will eat and the only crackers she would eat and then not talk to her because she was busy watching TV and really had nothing to say because she was pouting.
Just exactly what you want to be doing at Christmastime.