start the year off harsh.
Jan. 6th, 2013 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
not_funokay, the comic is going to be late. possibly several days late, i really don't know. here's a summary of my last four days which will hopefully explain it.
i normally work on the comic from thurs-saturday with prelim work weds. well...
weds - pre-sketch the comic as normal. get a text from alf around 2 that he's coming home early and needs to go to the doctor for what we (at the time) thought was an extremely swollen lymph node. he's been feeling ill and in constant pain and finally is going to get antibiotics, even though he hates the doctor.
when we arrive we wait like an hour for an appointment. the doctor sees him. says it's not a lymph node, it's an abscess (probably caused by an underarm hair going crazy) and that given the size it is extremely serious and needs to be operated on ASAP. she prescribes an antibiotic, schedules an appointment for the next day and says to keep an eye on his temp. if he gets a fever, we need to go to the ER immediately because the infection will have then entered the bloodstream (which is fatal if untreated).
we forgot our insurance card for prescriptions and so decide to pick it up the next day. no fever.
thurs - i spend most of the morning telling alf they'll numb the region before cutting it open and draining it. this does not reassure him. he spends most of the morning in bed, looking very ill, but without a fever. drive to the hospital. i sketch some small drawings in the waiting room, it's the only art i get done all day. i go with him to the procedure room. we meet two other doctors there. they inform him that they cannot use any numbing agents.
alf squeezes my hand and manages somehow not to scream or cry while they 1) draw a culture with an enormous syringe for testing 2) cut a hole in his underarm 3) excised the offending material 4) dug around inside his arm and cut/pulled out chunks of flesh 5) stuck a wick inside his arm. they say they need to check it again the next day, and to make an appointment. the doctor also prescribes ibuprofen 8 for pain. she scolds us on not picking up the antibiotic yet and impresses upon us the severity of the infection and how we REALLY MUST GET THAT ANTIBIOTIC SERIOUSLY
we attempt to pick up our prescription from the hospital pharmacy. you know, the one called in weds? they tell us to wait two hours. we say fuck it, we'll get our local pharmacy to fill it. go home, call local pharmacy. local pharmacy calls hospital pharmacy. hospital pharmacy tells them to wait 15 minutes before they'll even talk to them. local pharmacy says fuck it and hangs up. i check in with them an hour later, find this out, call doctor's office. doctor's office can't find the ibuprofen 8 prescription but manages to fax the antibiotic to our local pharmacy. that's the important one so off we go to get it.
when we arrive we find out our prescription insurance company has alf's birthday wrong. stand around waiting. finally get prescription.
return home. both of us are afraid of alf taking the antibiotic, since the last time he did he had an anaphalactic reaction to amoxicillin. this isn't a 'cillin, but we're still concerned. finally he takes it. nothing bad happens.
mom calls. still wants to visit this weekend. i warn her alf's just had surgery. say we still want to see her, but again. SURGERY. no hint taken. she decides to still visit. i spend the rest of the evening trying to get the house spotless so her critical Mother Eye will have nothing to criticise. i do not finish.
fri - i wake up feeling sick. nothing serious, but definately caught a cold from kids in the waiting room. head back to the hospital. no time to draw this time around. we see one of the doctors from last night. again, without any painkillers, she begins to work on alf. he doesn't scream but it looks like the pain is worse. she removes the wick and presses on the wound. mostly only blood comes out. she says this is good and that it looks like it is healing well. she places another wick inside, which hurts worse than the first one. alf squeezes my hand so hard from the pain his fingernails cut into my palm. meet another doctor. doctors all discuss how this particular malady was in the 'top three' sizes they'd ever seen. it was about the size of a baseball before the procedure on thursday.
get prescriptions directly from the doctor for the ibuprofen 8 and (for before procedures) tylonal 3 with codine. doctor tells us to come in tomorrow again, but that she will not be here. attempt to tell the very rude receptionist this, refrain from punching her in her eye-rolling face. decide to just come in as a walk-in 15 minutes before the office opens as the doctor instructed.
return home and make lunch since alf can't really with his arm in that much pain. go out to pick up other prescriptions. no problems this time. get fuel for the stove, which i carry in all 300+lbs of it and then return to cleaning. clean frantically. make dinner frantically. help alf with redressing the wound. somewhere in here, i also lose my mind for a while.
get a frantic voicemail from zar. nana is in the ER with an aneurism. call her back, she's on the freeway.
mom texts. i call her back, tell her this is REALLY NOT A GOOD WEEKEND FOR HER TO VISIT. alf is lying down nauseated from the antibiotics plus the followup the next day. mom becomes indignant that our medical emergencies are inconveniencing her plans and hangs up on me. spend the rest of the evening riddled with guilt.
talk to zar a few hours later. not sure how much the doctors have said about aneurisms, can't bring myself to actually tell her what might happen. hang up. feel awful that i couldn't.
realize i will not be able to hold the pieces of my sanity together unless i work on some art. stay up until midnight working on the comic. only get the sketch and script done.
sat - return to the hospital first thing in the morning. alf takes the codine before we go in. it takes effect quickly but he says does not seem to be dulling the pain from the wick/wound any. i manage to ink speech balloons before he's called in.
we wait in the procedure room for about 20 minutes. a new doctor comes in, seems to have no idea what we should be doing or what exactly happened. i fill her in on the specifics of what has been done before, how large it was, what was prescribed, what the doctor said we should be doing today etc.
doctor removes the wick again. does not excise the wound, but it does not seem to matter. alf is yelling louder this time, obviously the tylonal with codine does not really do much for the pain. doctor puts in another wick. at least she's faster than the other doctors about it.
she instructs us in aftercare (first one to do this without my pressing them on the matter) and tells us to come back monday.
go home. alf falls asleep, i start to make lunch but realize we're missing an ingrediant and so go out on foot to get stuff. store has none. return home. mentally and physically exhausted, i actually start hearing music that isn't there while trying to make some fucking soup. alf wakes up for lunch. i fall asleep immediately after. sleep until 5.
wake up for dinner, get ahold of zar and learn nana's moved (finally) to the ICU. procedures are being discussed. zar thinks she's in stable condition but isn't sure. really, really, really hope nana will b e okay and that it was caught in time. tell the cat to use cat magic to make it be okay.
help dress the wound again, go back to sleep.
sun - and here we are. no doctor's appointments today, but i still only have a sketched page with part of a hand and speech balloons inked. i'll be working on it today, but whatever i caught in the waiting room is giving me a kind of unrelenting headache. i really am sorry. i'll have the comic as soon as possible, but so far 2013 has been a bit of a punch in the dick.
keep zar's nana in your thoughts or prayers or whatever. and i'll see you with the comic...whenever i have it done.
i normally work on the comic from thurs-saturday with prelim work weds. well...
weds - pre-sketch the comic as normal. get a text from alf around 2 that he's coming home early and needs to go to the doctor for what we (at the time) thought was an extremely swollen lymph node. he's been feeling ill and in constant pain and finally is going to get antibiotics, even though he hates the doctor.
when we arrive we wait like an hour for an appointment. the doctor sees him. says it's not a lymph node, it's an abscess (probably caused by an underarm hair going crazy) and that given the size it is extremely serious and needs to be operated on ASAP. she prescribes an antibiotic, schedules an appointment for the next day and says to keep an eye on his temp. if he gets a fever, we need to go to the ER immediately because the infection will have then entered the bloodstream (which is fatal if untreated).
we forgot our insurance card for prescriptions and so decide to pick it up the next day. no fever.
thurs - i spend most of the morning telling alf they'll numb the region before cutting it open and draining it. this does not reassure him. he spends most of the morning in bed, looking very ill, but without a fever. drive to the hospital. i sketch some small drawings in the waiting room, it's the only art i get done all day. i go with him to the procedure room. we meet two other doctors there. they inform him that they cannot use any numbing agents.
alf squeezes my hand and manages somehow not to scream or cry while they 1) draw a culture with an enormous syringe for testing 2) cut a hole in his underarm 3) excised the offending material 4) dug around inside his arm and cut/pulled out chunks of flesh 5) stuck a wick inside his arm. they say they need to check it again the next day, and to make an appointment. the doctor also prescribes ibuprofen 8 for pain. she scolds us on not picking up the antibiotic yet and impresses upon us the severity of the infection and how we REALLY MUST GET THAT ANTIBIOTIC SERIOUSLY
we attempt to pick up our prescription from the hospital pharmacy. you know, the one called in weds? they tell us to wait two hours. we say fuck it, we'll get our local pharmacy to fill it. go home, call local pharmacy. local pharmacy calls hospital pharmacy. hospital pharmacy tells them to wait 15 minutes before they'll even talk to them. local pharmacy says fuck it and hangs up. i check in with them an hour later, find this out, call doctor's office. doctor's office can't find the ibuprofen 8 prescription but manages to fax the antibiotic to our local pharmacy. that's the important one so off we go to get it.
when we arrive we find out our prescription insurance company has alf's birthday wrong. stand around waiting. finally get prescription.
return home. both of us are afraid of alf taking the antibiotic, since the last time he did he had an anaphalactic reaction to amoxicillin. this isn't a 'cillin, but we're still concerned. finally he takes it. nothing bad happens.
mom calls. still wants to visit this weekend. i warn her alf's just had surgery. say we still want to see her, but again. SURGERY. no hint taken. she decides to still visit. i spend the rest of the evening trying to get the house spotless so her critical Mother Eye will have nothing to criticise. i do not finish.
fri - i wake up feeling sick. nothing serious, but definately caught a cold from kids in the waiting room. head back to the hospital. no time to draw this time around. we see one of the doctors from last night. again, without any painkillers, she begins to work on alf. he doesn't scream but it looks like the pain is worse. she removes the wick and presses on the wound. mostly only blood comes out. she says this is good and that it looks like it is healing well. she places another wick inside, which hurts worse than the first one. alf squeezes my hand so hard from the pain his fingernails cut into my palm. meet another doctor. doctors all discuss how this particular malady was in the 'top three' sizes they'd ever seen. it was about the size of a baseball before the procedure on thursday.
get prescriptions directly from the doctor for the ibuprofen 8 and (for before procedures) tylonal 3 with codine. doctor tells us to come in tomorrow again, but that she will not be here. attempt to tell the very rude receptionist this, refrain from punching her in her eye-rolling face. decide to just come in as a walk-in 15 minutes before the office opens as the doctor instructed.
return home and make lunch since alf can't really with his arm in that much pain. go out to pick up other prescriptions. no problems this time. get fuel for the stove, which i carry in all 300+lbs of it and then return to cleaning. clean frantically. make dinner frantically. help alf with redressing the wound. somewhere in here, i also lose my mind for a while.
get a frantic voicemail from zar. nana is in the ER with an aneurism. call her back, she's on the freeway.
mom texts. i call her back, tell her this is REALLY NOT A GOOD WEEKEND FOR HER TO VISIT. alf is lying down nauseated from the antibiotics plus the followup the next day. mom becomes indignant that our medical emergencies are inconveniencing her plans and hangs up on me. spend the rest of the evening riddled with guilt.
talk to zar a few hours later. not sure how much the doctors have said about aneurisms, can't bring myself to actually tell her what might happen. hang up. feel awful that i couldn't.
realize i will not be able to hold the pieces of my sanity together unless i work on some art. stay up until midnight working on the comic. only get the sketch and script done.
sat - return to the hospital first thing in the morning. alf takes the codine before we go in. it takes effect quickly but he says does not seem to be dulling the pain from the wick/wound any. i manage to ink speech balloons before he's called in.
we wait in the procedure room for about 20 minutes. a new doctor comes in, seems to have no idea what we should be doing or what exactly happened. i fill her in on the specifics of what has been done before, how large it was, what was prescribed, what the doctor said we should be doing today etc.
doctor removes the wick again. does not excise the wound, but it does not seem to matter. alf is yelling louder this time, obviously the tylonal with codine does not really do much for the pain. doctor puts in another wick. at least she's faster than the other doctors about it.
she instructs us in aftercare (first one to do this without my pressing them on the matter) and tells us to come back monday.
go home. alf falls asleep, i start to make lunch but realize we're missing an ingrediant and so go out on foot to get stuff. store has none. return home. mentally and physically exhausted, i actually start hearing music that isn't there while trying to make some fucking soup. alf wakes up for lunch. i fall asleep immediately after. sleep until 5.
wake up for dinner, get ahold of zar and learn nana's moved (finally) to the ICU. procedures are being discussed. zar thinks she's in stable condition but isn't sure. really, really, really hope nana will b e okay and that it was caught in time. tell the cat to use cat magic to make it be okay.
help dress the wound again, go back to sleep.
sun - and here we are. no doctor's appointments today, but i still only have a sketched page with part of a hand and speech balloons inked. i'll be working on it today, but whatever i caught in the waiting room is giving me a kind of unrelenting headache. i really am sorry. i'll have the comic as soon as possible, but so far 2013 has been a bit of a punch in the dick.
keep zar's nana in your thoughts or prayers or whatever. and i'll see you with the comic...whenever i have it done.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-06 05:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-06 09:09 pm (UTC)I hope Alf and you get better, you hang on to what's left of your sanity, and Nana's surgery goes well, and recovers quickly.