Where The Thistles Meet The Thicket

Joseph

Lying in a hospital room was a lot like watching paint dry. After the initial hustle of ensuring I was going to live was resolved, I was faced with days of waiting. Waiting for test results, waiting for doctors to stop by, waiting for my lab work to stabilize. Antibiotics, pain medicine, what seemed like hundreds of saline bags. MRI, X-ray, CT Scan. Pneumonia, influenza, bronchitis. Fever after fever. Sepsis. Oh yeah, and a traumatic brain injury.

My family didn't leave my side. My older brother, my sisters, my mama, or my father took turns sleeping on the uncomfortable recliner pushed into the corner of the matchbox room. It couldn't have been easy to stay with my impatient and incredibly frustrated self, even deep in the throes of a major concussion, but there wasn't a moment that I was left on my own. I was humiliated, as I was so concussed in the first few days that I could barely wipe my ass on my own. Although the nurses were great about covering my backside when helping me to use the bedside commode and my family didn't give a shit about anything other than making sure I was safe, I think I could go an entire lifetime without wearing another hospital gown.

My family was overly protective. They asked every question they could think to ask, had a notepad full of every move the nurses and doctors made, and were extremely hands-on with each therapy session I had. I was grateful for their constant attention and concern, and I understood their worry, especially after I was able to comprehend what had happened to me.

I was sick, very sick. I had a slew of illnesses developed after months of not taking care of myself. I developed sepsis, an infection in my blood when my depleted immune system couldn't fight any longer. I couldn't deny that jamming my head on a nail was a blessing in disguise, as my doctor told me that had I not come in when I did, my parents might be picking out my casket. And I was lucky that I didn't sustain a severe enough head injury to need any kind of surgery, but I had lost consciousness, experienced problems speaking and understanding what was being said to me, and had some mobility issues. I had bled significantly and had some swelling in my brain, requiring a diuretic that made me pee like a racehorse to keep pressure off of my skull. My blood pressure had dropped so low and my heart rate so fast at one point that I was transferred to the ICU for the night.

After I was finally deemed stable enough to leave the hospital- with extremely strict instructions to take the entirety of my antibiotics, make use of the home health nurse assigned to me, change my bandage every day, call immediately with any change in my condition, and for God's sake, stay in bed for at least two weeks- I was finally able to go home. The uncomfortable hospital bed with a permanent hole in the middle was replaced with my own mattress that I would never complain about again. My sisters had filled my room with what looked like every pillow in our house and moved one of the chairs in the living room right beside my bed.

I knew that I had slept plenty in the hospital, sleep being the only thing that relieved the gnawing and stabbing pain in my head, however coming home felt like I needed a three-week vacation from my time there. Someone was entering my hospital room seemingly every hour to draw blood, or give me some kind of medicine, or check my blood pressure and temperature, or getting me out of bed to do therapy. Being home, I realized I preferred being at the hospital where something was occupying my mind. I spent the first week home sleeping and thinking of Mary Beth.

It had been months since I had allowed myself to think of Mary Beth for more than a thought. Before the accident, I had been too busy. I didn't have time to think of much of anything other than eating and sleeping. Nobody mentioned her in my family, her own family didn't either. It sometimes felt like she was a dream. Her mother screaming at her on the phone was the first time I had allowed myself to think about Mary Beth in roughly six months. While in the hospital I asked about her a few times but couldn't get a response. "I don't know anything about it, Bubba." Mama had said. "She had Gaylynn quite worked up, though. Worked up enough to ignore my baby boy laying in a puddle of his own blood."