Let’s Go To The Healing Garden!

How was your holiday weekend?  Ours?  Well, let’s just say it wasn’t the holiday weekend either of us envisioned.   We had to take Tony to the hospital after I got home from work on Thursday.  I was off site all day from my desk, and Tony left me a couple messages there that he wasn’t feeling well.  He tried to get a hold of two of his main doctors, to no avail.  Finally when I got home I got through to the doctor on call, Tony gave his symptoms over the phone and I knew right then and there that we were headed back to the ER.

Because he is prone to infections, they put him in the ICU – he finally got to his room around midnight and I left around 12:30.  I had to go to work on Friday, but I knew he would be in good hands.  I luckily found someone to work for me at the restaurant Friday night.  Here’s how Tony feels about being in the hospital again:

And here was my view coming and going to the hospital for five days.

And Tony missed out on amazing weather – it was warm and sunny all weekend – didn’t start to rain until last night.

I had made a batch of my copycat Nature Valley granola bars for the nurse at the Coumadin clinic that Tony was supposed to see on Thursday, but felt too bad to go so rescheduled the appointment.   So on Friday morning I brought them to the ICU nurses.  I saw a nurse outside Tony’s room, introduced myself as Tony’s wife, handed her the granola bars and she said “your husband isn’t a happy camper today.”  See, Tony gets hardly any rest in the hospital – and because he was in ICU he gets extra special attention.  I have to say, the nursing staff is incredible – so caring. 

So this nurse Jennifer, so perky, walks into the room and says “Let’s go to the healing garden!”  We get Tony up out of the chair, transfer his IV’s to a pole so he can walk, and off we go.  Um, except this healing garden is literally nothing more than a bench, next to some flowers that haven’t bloomed yet and a “rock garden” that apparently has water attached to it so it’s soothing, but all it was, was a pile of dry rocks.  And it faced the parking lot so we got a nice view of all the doctors cars:  Porche, BMW, Mercedes, another BMW.  You can tell from this picture that Tony is THRILLED to be going to the healing garden!

On Saturday I brought banana muffins to the unit.  I had several bananas that had to be used up.  I also had some leftover granola bars – the corner bars almost always break into pieces, so I decided to make that the topping to the muffins.  OMG – these were amazing if I do say so myself!  I’ll post the recipe later this week, but I had all the nurses asking me for the recipe!  I am calling these Banana Granola Crunch Muffins.

My eats?  Kind of shitty, which is how I handle situations like this.  I had chili and water a couple times for meals at the hospital:

I couple times I had my chicken finger salad:

I had Subway too – and I bought a Digorno pizza one night, and over the course of Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, I managed to polish that off all by myself.  I lucked out at work on Saturday night.  Being a holiday weekend it was dead.  I was working in the bar and there wasn’t a single customer in the whole bar for the first hour and a half.  We had three bartenders, a bar back and me!  I ended up giving the bar to one of the servers who hadn’t gotten a table yet – there was going to be a party of 20 people later that night for apps and open bar and he was more than willing to take it, so I just went back to the hospital Saturday night for a few more hours.

Sunday afternoon I took a break and came home to get some stuff done around the house – get the laundry started, clean out the fridge/freezer.

The top right hand shelf is what I like to call “Tony’s shelf.”  It has all of the stuff he eats now – fruit, apple sauce, cottage cheese, yogurt, etc.  Loving having a clean refrigerator, although it never seems to last too long!

While I was home, Tony texted me this:

He had the nurses laughing the whole time.  When they asked what he did for a living, he almost always said “exotic dancer.”   When I got to the hospital yesterday, I really didn’t have high hopes that they would let him go, but finally around 11:30 they said they were putting the discharge papers together – hooray!  Well, except we already know the drill, from the time they say discharge until they actually bring the wheelchair up to the room, it’s usually several hours.  Yup.  We finally left at 3:00!

I got Tony settled inside and then went to do my errands.  Remember when I put vinegar in my Keurig a couple weeks ago?  Yep, it’s never worked right since then.  Sometimes it would pour 1/4 of the amount it should.  Sometimes it wouldn’t work at all unless I unplugged it, plugged it back in, and even then it was hit or miss if it worked.  Momma needs her coffee!  So I used a 20% off coupon at Bed Bath & Beyond and picked up a new one.  Got gas for the car and grocery shopped. 

When we were waiting to get discharged I told Tony that I had no idea how to meal plan for dinners because I had no idea what his appetite was going to be like.  He said that he had a taste for a white bean salad (sans onions that seem to be in every recipe I looked at – I am going to make this bean and artichoke salad – doesn’t it look good?!) and he said “and you know what would be good with that? wait – never mind, you would never eat it.”  When I asked him what it was he said “octopus!”   And wouldn’t you know, while I was buying shrimp for this recipe I am making for my lunch today.    And as I am waiting for him to wrap up my shrimp, I look down and see . . . baby octopus!  There wasn’t a price per pound tag on it, so I asked how much they were – only $3.99 a pound!

I put that picture on Instagram asking if anyone had any tips so that they don’t taste like ass.  For the most part, I think more than half the people threw up in their mouth just looking at that picture.  But my friend Alison said “grill it!”  So that’s what I am going to do.  Except there is a bit of work involved.  You have to remove the heads and then blanch the octopus in boiling water for 1 minute.  I have to admit, when I added the octopus to the hot water they looked like they were alive!

Right now they are marinating in the fridge with a bit of olive oil, garlic and lemon juice.  I’ll grill them up tonight – wish me luck!

You know what Tony was dreaming about while he was at the hospital?  Just sitting outside, enjoying the weather and having a cigar.  Which is what we did last night.

And then this look – when he was saying “okay, enough pictures of me already!”

So he meets with his two main doctors this week and we’ll see what the game plan is.  Just so happy he’s home! 

And I have to give a happy birthday shout out to my niece Rachel!  She’s graduating from high school this year – time sure does fly – Happy Birthday Rachel!  Rachel is my brother Charlie’s youngest daughter.

I have a follow up doctor appointment this morning for my toe – it still looks awful but I have no toe pain anymore!  This gives me a bit of time to get my stuff together – my gym bag has been untouched in my car since last Wednesday – ew!

Make it a great day!