Background: on Tuesday, my 19-year-old half-brother had outpatient surgery to remove his tonsils. They’d been giving him nothing but trouble for some time, and reasoned medical opinion held that he might as well have them out.
The surgery went fine. He went home and started recovering.
But it hurt a lot. As surgeries do. And he couldn’t eat anything, could hardly swallow. So it was decided that he would probably miss Christmas dinner. 🙁 He would just stay home and recuperate.
Then this morning, it got lots worse. And he started feeling queasy, nauseous. And then some more things happened that you really don’t want to hear about. And so my stepmom took him to the emergency room.
When Dad called and told us this, he said he (Dad) would still be coming by, with the salad they’d agreed to bring. We were all, Forget the salad! It’s fine!
At the ER, they took Half-Brother into surgery, where they determined that yes, the sutures had opened up and he’d swallowed a lot of blood. They cauterized and added another stitch. During all this, Dad and Stepmom were able to at least get some turkey dinner here (the hospital is about 5 minutes away); after dinner, Dad and I went to see the poor kid. I was happy to get to do that–I wasn’t going to be able to see him otherwise.
He was doing great, at that point: the power of modern painkillers.
At about 5pm, they released him, and his folks took him home. And we all kept eating, here. Because, you know, what else are we supposed to do?
My other brother (my whole brother?) has a cold, with a sore throat. He feels horribly, horribly upstaged. 🙂 He asked me to mention here how much his throat hurts. Sorry, guy. No hospitalization? No respect.
Merry Christmas everyone! Hope your days were all emergency-room-free. 🙂