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Our strangest Christmas ever
Dec. 25th, 2003 11:24 amHere's to spending Christmas with family; for the first time since 1980, I am not in the town of my birth, Lafayette, LA, on Christmas Day. This is because last night, eight hours that should have been spent driving down to Louisiana for the only time all year my relatives get to see me were instead spent at the hospital here in Atlanta waiting for my partner Mary to be rehydrated and medicated. She is doing better, but both of us are stuck here far from our families likely until tomorrow at the earliest.
The whole thing started last weekend when her teeth started aching. She wept at times, so horrible was the pain. She went to her dentist on Monday and got yet more expensive dental work done (she's already into this overcharging gonif for eight large with all the work she's had to have done the past few months) and medication to relieve the pain. Unfortunately, the meds made her throw up everything she tried to eat or drink. So then on top of tooth agony, she had stomach and intestinal agony and near-starvation for three whole days.
Finally, she went to a GP yesterday afternoon at the neighborhood Kaiser Permanente clinic, which determined she needed rehydrating and tests the clinic was not equipped for and sent her to Piedmont Hospital down the street. After my half-day of work, I went to pick her up and took her to the hospital and waited eight hours in an ER bedroom with her, unable to even call my family and let them know not to expect us. And on top of it all, neither of us had gotten around to getting the other's present or even a tree for our apartment. Thankfully, they discharged her about 10 PM and we were able to go home. And may whatever gods there be bless the staff at CVS on Peachtree, across from the hospital, especially the young Asian pharmacist who was still on duty, filling prescriptions at 11 PM on Christmas Eve when all the other drugstores were closed.
So we are spending the most un-Christmas-like Christmas ever for either of us, with next to no stores open for even groceries and wondering what to do with ourselves except maybe later see if we can find a place open selling trees. I know many other Americans are separated from their families today, many of them in uniform and harm's way. So I feel stupid whining about my situation...but I wanna bawl like a colicky baby, I truly do.
I am trying to remember that Mary is family too. I bought her a card last night to wish her Merry Christmas. And we could both be a whole lot worse off than stuck in a nice apartment in a city that isn't even snowbound. And we do have some food and a rental car while Mary's is in the shop getting the damage I did to it repaired.
So to all of you with your loved ones today, merry Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Solstice or whatever you like. I am with at least one of my loved ones...the one I love the most. And we truly are blessed, even if at times like this it's harder to remember it.
The whole thing started last weekend when her teeth started aching. She wept at times, so horrible was the pain. She went to her dentist on Monday and got yet more expensive dental work done (she's already into this overcharging gonif for eight large with all the work she's had to have done the past few months) and medication to relieve the pain. Unfortunately, the meds made her throw up everything she tried to eat or drink. So then on top of tooth agony, she had stomach and intestinal agony and near-starvation for three whole days.
Finally, she went to a GP yesterday afternoon at the neighborhood Kaiser Permanente clinic, which determined she needed rehydrating and tests the clinic was not equipped for and sent her to Piedmont Hospital down the street. After my half-day of work, I went to pick her up and took her to the hospital and waited eight hours in an ER bedroom with her, unable to even call my family and let them know not to expect us. And on top of it all, neither of us had gotten around to getting the other's present or even a tree for our apartment. Thankfully, they discharged her about 10 PM and we were able to go home. And may whatever gods there be bless the staff at CVS on Peachtree, across from the hospital, especially the young Asian pharmacist who was still on duty, filling prescriptions at 11 PM on Christmas Eve when all the other drugstores were closed.
So we are spending the most un-Christmas-like Christmas ever for either of us, with next to no stores open for even groceries and wondering what to do with ourselves except maybe later see if we can find a place open selling trees. I know many other Americans are separated from their families today, many of them in uniform and harm's way. So I feel stupid whining about my situation...but I wanna bawl like a colicky baby, I truly do.
I am trying to remember that Mary is family too. I bought her a card last night to wish her Merry Christmas. And we could both be a whole lot worse off than stuck in a nice apartment in a city that isn't even snowbound. And we do have some food and a rental car while Mary's is in the shop getting the damage I did to it repaired.
So to all of you with your loved ones today, merry Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Solstice or whatever you like. I am with at least one of my loved ones...the one I love the most. And we truly are blessed, even if at times like this it's harder to remember it.
