Watchful Waiting

I am full of things to talk about tonight, full of things to share, to ask your opinion about. My fingers are aching to tell you stories and fill you in. Everyone in my house is sleeping right now all the animals and all the people, except for me, because I am awake and pacing. I am anxious and worried about people and animals and things that I love and I don’t even know where to begin.

I finished up Internal Medicine on Friday with an exam and, though those exams are always a giant question mark, I feel like it was probably okay. Then, I had another exam, starting at noon, which I completely forgot about. I was halfway to my car before running into someone from my class who commented on how quickly I must have finished my exam. That was a moment I hope to never repeat, as if my worse nightmare had come true. A final exam that I didn’t know about, hadn’t studied for, and was now late for…

The weekend looked promising. Though Colin has been exceedingly trying the last week or so, as he is presently sprouting molars and that is, from all accounts, a terrible ordeal, he was all geared up to spend the night with the Baby Mama and crew, giving me and Patrick a night out. Patrick bought movie tickets for me (I’m still suspicious.) and said I could pick what to see.

Let me be perfectly clear: I absolutely LOVE going to the movies. It is among my very favorite things to do and, given the choice of going on an all expenses paid trip to Vegas and going out to see a movie, I would pay for my own ticket and popcorn. So when Patrick showed up with two passes to go for a night out at the movies, I was as happy as I’ve been since Colin was born.

I picked “Avatar” because I had heard of it and it also seemed like it would be a good one to see that on the seven story screen and with super mega sound. Turns out, I was right! (Shocking.) It was completely wonderful and I loved it.

That is, except the parts where Patrick kept having to get up and leave the theater to take phone calls from his mother, where he would talk to the Emergency Room doctor about how his grandmother was having dangerous heart rhythms because of a terrible infection.

That will kill any movie, no matter how good the effects or how tall the screen.

So we packed up our things and drove the few hours to see her in the hospital. We helped interpret the medical lingo for our family and we shouted in her ear so she could hear us without her hearing aids. We rotated through with the rest of our family so that there were only two people at a time in her room, everyone else pacing outside or running for coffee. She looked better, then worse, then about the same.

We got home late Saturday night, exhausted from the day and, for me, being up late every night this week studying. We were very much looking forward to sleeping in a little this morning.
So imagine how unfortunate it was when Colin awoke at 7:30 on the dot (relatively early for him) and, upon getting out of bed to start the day, I noticed that my little cat, my Emma, the first of the many animals, couldn’t move her back legs.

She was pulling herself across the floor, crying, not in pain but in an effort to call attention to herself, and looked completely inconvenienced by the whole thing. I called an old friend, now a vet at an emergency hospital, who said, sorry but yes, you have to take her today, right now, before you brush your teeth. And so we went.

She’s still there, my mean little Emma, tough and begrudging. She’s there cursing the technicians and veterinarians who are moving her in and out of the litter box, she’s brewing potions of poison for any assistant who tries to pet her, and she’s watching with her huge eyes, scheming and planning her escape.

That escape is going to be difficult when you can’t walk, little one.

In medicine, there is a saying “watchful waiting”, which means that we have no idea what’s going to happen. That’s what we’re doing here tonight. Watching and waiting and pacing and trying to think about something else.

I start Neurology in the morning. Maybe that’ll help.