Swords, Valium and Hospitals

Living in this house it is impossible to sleep at any time of the day if my sister is within 76 miles of the front door.

Yesterday she had to drive one of her buddies from work to some where in Minnesota to pick up a car that he wasn't supposed to buy. On the way back they stopped in Fargo to eat at Hooters, then she decided to stop and visit Johnny. After she was at his room she decided she was too tired to drive the rest of the way home, or he convinced her that she needed to stay the night. I'm not going to ask questions.

This morning at 8:36 my cell phone rings, of course it is Jennifer she is the only person in the world that feels the need to talk to me at this time of the day.

The combination of my drowsiness and her mumbling and crying at the same time made every thing sound like Greek to me the first time around except something about the hospital and stabbing. I woke up a little more and asked her to calm down and repeat herself.

"Johnny is already at work and I was just getting ready to drive home and I kicked one of his swords because I didn't know it was there and it stabbed my foot. Do you think I should go to the hospital? Do you think I need stitches? It hurts really bad.

"How bad are you bleeding? How bad is the wound? Do you think you should go to the hospital?" I can't see this wound. How exactly am I supposed to be the judge of whether or not she should go to the hospital?

"Never mind I will just drive home and decide what to do when I get there."

"Your foot isn't going to interfere with your driving is it?"

"It is my left foot."

Call me crazy, but why did you have to call me and wake me up if you really didn't care what I had to say. She hung up the phone and for about 20 minutes I worried about her passing out while she was driving and causing a wreck on the interstate, then I remembered that pain doesn't have the same effect on her and I fell back asleep until she came home and had to wake me up and stick her foot in my face. We decided that she didn't need to go to the hospital and that a regular band-aid would be fine.

Fast forward to shortly after 7 pm tonight. I am in bed again because I am freezing and don't feel well because I got hardly any sleep last night even though I was in bed the earliest I have been in ages. Enter Jennifer.

"Are you okay? I haven't seen you anywhere but your bed today."

"I'm cold, my stomach hurts and I am trying to sleep for a while. Other than that I am fine, I've been to work today and I even watched a DVD. I am not planning on hurting myself and I am not spending all day in bed because I feel bad for myself. Between you and your cats I didn't sleep very well before I had to go to work today, so I am trying to take a nap."

"Oh." She leaves my bedroom, goes to the living room (which looks very nice with the new entertainment center,) turns the TV on as loud as possible, and starts playing with the cats. 45 minutes later Johnny shows up to pack his things and I have to try sleeping through those two talking back and forth, they have three volumes, loud, louder and we are yelling at each other stay out of the way. Tonight the meaningless chitchat happened in some new volume in between louder and yelling. Like Johnny noticed that I was sleeping because my door was open and wanted to make it impossible for me to sleep. Guess what it worked, here I am. So I am going to fill you in on an interesting phone call I made on Easter.

My second year at CWC this family moved into my apartment complex, in the apartment right below mine. They did their thing and I pretty much did mine. It wasn't until right before the spring semester ended that I started spending any time with them. Nothing big a bunch of us went on a picnic in Sinks Canyon, we had a blast and then a week later we all went home for the summer.

The next fall I moved into the apartment right next to theirs and didn't get along with my newest roommates for the longest time. This is around the time that I started this diary, so if you really feel motivated you can probably go way back to the beginning and read bits and pieces and Nicky and Justin and their two boys. They moved out of the apartment before that fall semester even ended, but every time they were in town they made sure to stop and visit me.

So any way on with the story. When Justin dropped out of school he rejoined the army and they moved to Kansas. I called once when I while I was in Montana to check on the new baby, because Nicky was pregnant when they left and I hadn't heard anything. When I got up here to North Dakota I called once while I lived in the dorm and found out that she was pregnant again. I think about them all the time but it is always really late and I never wanted to call and wake up the babies.

Easter I was home alone all day, I don't even remember what Jenn was doing work or whatever. I tried calling one of my cousins and her cell phone number has been disconnected but there was a different number to call. I left a voice mail. Dorea was asleep so when I saw Nicky's phone number I decided I was going to call her, see how everything was going and check on the new baby that was already 8 months old.

She never knows who I am when I called because my calls are so few and far between. But then we spend a good hour or two on the phone catching up. Justin has been having trouble with his back because he has two slipped disks, so they put him on a bunch or narcotics for the pain and they mess with his head. In March be got some bad advice from the base psychiatrist and took off to Wyoming. After three days he got a phone call saying that the State Troopers would be there to arrest him in the morning. He called his Commander and explained why they had taken off and that they would head back the next day.

Mid-April he was sent over to Saudi Arabia. He was gone for 9 days when he started having serious trouble with his back. He spent 18 hours one day driving a truck and the next morning he couldn't even get out of his cot. (I learned this last night when I called to make sure he made it home okay.) They gave him four Valium just to get his muscles to relax enough so he could get out of bed. They also gave him a packet of some other drug and he had his medicine for his migraines. After the four Valium he was extremely high, but for some reason he decided it would be a good idea to take the rest of the pills he had.

On Easter he called home to say that he was in a Navy Hospital in Spain and that he was on his way home. I was still on the phone with Nicky and she thought her mom was trying to call. Asked if I could hold on because she couldn't ignore the call waiting beep any more, something might be wrong. She get back on the phone and tells me that it was Justin and what is going on and we said our goodbyes so she could call the rest of her family and let them know that Justin was on his way home once he got out of the hospital.

For the longest time after I got off the phone with her I was so worried that he would be in trouble for taking all those drugs and he would get a dishonorable discharge and whatever else happens when something like this happens.

The doctors on base wouldn't do anything for him besides give him drugs for the pain, because they refused to see that anything was wrong with his back. It wasn't until he decided to go to a chiropractor that he learned that he had the two slipped disks. They took those x-rays to the Dr. on base and that Dr. still said that nothing was wrong.

When he learned that he would be going to Saudi Arabia he said he didn't want to go because he was afraid he would have trouble with his back, the doctors would drug him up and he would go crazy and accidentally kill one of his buddies. He was assured that they wouldn't let that happen so he agree to go over and try it out. He didn't cause harm to anyone else but he nearly killed himself.

He is home now and safe and will be honorably discharged in about 3 months. He got back to the base and went to see the psychiatrist and already had the paper work filled out for him. They hadn't believed that he was in such pain, or that all the drugs were having such an effect on him. They had just thought that because he had a wife and four children he just didn't want to go to war. Now that he is back they are doing everything they can to make this all disappear as fast as they can and keep him happy, because people can lose their jobs over something like this.

Any way I was glad I got to talk to him last night. I hadn't talked to him since the last time I saw him back in Wyoming because every time I called he was always off working or training here or there. He has sworn off all pills of any kind, he won't even take Tylenol because after he had recovered from all the pills he took the Tylenol 3 from the migraine medicine was still in his system and it had started attacking his liver. At one point he was told if the next test came back and this certain enzyme was higher than it was on the last test he would be flown to a different hospital and have to get a liver transplant, then told that is was very unlikely that he would get a liver so he would have about four days left. The next test said that the enzyme or whatever they were testing had starting going down so his liver was safe.

I couldn't imagine having to be Nicky and get the phone call when he called to say that his liver might be failing and that he may only have four more days to live.

That is the end of my story. But it is a good reminder to myself to keep in better touch with the people I care about.

Speaking of people like that one of my old roommates got married on the 1st and I didn't even get a card sent. I will have to call her parents and see if I can get a phone number for her.