Still waiting.

After being at the hospital with Tony for nearly 12 hours on Friday, he said “take it easy – no rush to get to me tomorrow.”  I would have loved it if I spent the morning being Bizzy in my kitchen, or watching a chick flick that he would never watch.  Nope.  I spent an hour and fifteen minutes snow blowing our driveway.  We don’t have a garage, and as much as we love that our subdivision has it’s own plow that does our streets – they almost always leave a nice wall of snow at the end of our drive that I need to get rid of to get the car out without getting stuck.

Ew, I see crows feet around my eyes in that picture!  I have to tell you, that when Tony bought the snow blower I thought “how fun!”  Well, the novelty wore off within the first few times of using it.  It’s still work!  I got to the hospital around 11.  Tony gets really tired in the hospital.  He doesn’t sleep well being interrupted every hour with vitals, etc.  I like to call myself the “sleep whisperer” because it’s what happens usually within the first ten minutes of getting there.  We kiss, hug, I pull the blanket up over him and lights out!  I don’t mind – he needs the rest, I have my iPhone to keep me entertained.  It’s all good.

The floor that Tony is on is a pediatric unit and it’s only half a floor – the other half is the maternity ward, and you can’t walk from one side to the other – both sides you need to get buzzed in.  So it’s a VERY short walk for us when Tony wants to stretch his legs.  We finally got permission to leave the floor up to an hour a day, without a wheel chair which is hospital protocol, as long as he’s with a family member.  Well, that’ me!  I ended up getting chili for lunch.  As we were walking back to the room, Tony said “don’t they have those stinky jalapenos at Subway that you could put on your chili?”  Even though we are in the hospital for him, he still looks out for me and my need for spicy shit!

And yes, that People magazine is from the summer.  It’s the story of the bride who threw her husband off a cliff on their honeymoon – crazeballs!  Tony does accuse me of having munchausen – a disease wherein someone derives pleasure on being the center of attention in a sick family member.  Um, not sure I could have given him endocarditis which resulted in an artificial heart valve,  infected his knee replacement, given him colon cancer, given him a hernia, which in turn gave him c-diff.  And now having the need to have more polyps removed and now some liver problems.  He always says to me “I was never this sick until I met you!”  In which I reply “I came into your life when you needed me the most!”

I ended up staying only until 5:00 – turns out when there are football playoffs on the t.v. I am not needed!  It was good though – I haven’t been grocery shopping since a week before Christmas!   I ended up buying lots of veggies and lean meats.  I talked about doing the 21 day sugar detox, which starts today.  Of course at the time I had no idea Tony would be in the hospital, but I am going to give it my best shot.  It has to be better than hospital food!

I ended up grilling veggies for two recipes – one is a vegetable pasta sauce, and the other is a Romesco sauce for dipping veggies in.   Both recipes will be forthcoming this week.  While my veggies baked at 350 for an hour, I got to Face talk with Hannah for almost an hour!  I am so happy she has today off – with record cold temps, the thought of her catching the L at 6:00 a.m. to get to her job at Panera on State street downtown would have sucked!  She prepared ahead, made my Dad’s Chicken Brunswick Stew, and will probably do a movie marathon with her boyfriend.  Perfect way to hunker down in this cold ass weather.

The veggie pasta sauce made a ton.  I plan on using it to make meatballs for an Italian meatball tomato soup, then for stuffed zucchini later in the week, as well as having that with grilled Italian sausage over spaghetti squash. 

I was going to write the recipe for my spicy tomato soup with Italian meatballs, but I haven’t gotten a good picture of the final product, nor have I figured out the calories yet.  And I also made a broccoli, unsweetened almond milk quiche that I will post later this week too.   The final product looks pretty good – and only 144 calories for 1/4 of the pie!

So I want to thank all of you for the comments, texts, Facebook messages, etc. saying that you are keeping us in your thoughts – it means more to us than you’ll ever know.  Right now we are still not sure what is causing the liver failure.  Turns out some blood tests take longer than others.  We’ve ruled out hepatitis and gall stones.  Once we get the polyps removed we can focus our attention on figuring out what’s wrong with his liver.  All points are leading to one of his medications he was on for gout, but only time will tell. 

So my plan is to pack my day as if I was going to work, stop by the hospital early this morning, and find out if and when he’s having surgery.  Based on that I will figure out if I will go into the office today, or take a half day.  Luckily this week I am only scheduled for two nights, and if push comes to shove, I can see if someone can take those shifts for me this week – probably the only good thing about the restaurant not being fully busy just yet!

Alright, time to heat up my car – right now it’s . . .

Yep, right now it’s –11, which is the high today.  But with the wind chill, it feels like –40.  Yikes!  I plan on wearing my long johns, and snow pants to the hospital this morning, I don’t care what I look like!

Keep sending your good vibes our way – we can feel them!  Make it a great day!