11-11-07: Mr. CrankyPants...

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Despite my determination to "get well soon," there are those times when I'm sitting in bed or sitting in my wheelchair and I just get tired of sitting. And my mind starts thinking, "Why me?.. if I only had been one second earlier or later.. Oh man, this really sucks." It's during those times you can call me Mr. CrankyPants.

I've managed to achieve sleep at two in the morning, despite the cacophony of continuous and intermittent, high-pitched beeps of patients pulling their cords to summon the nurse for pain pills or other patients moaning loudly in the grips of said pain... the RN's and the CNA's talking too loudly about the failings of their boyfriends and husbands during one of those rare moments when all the patients are actually sleeping... when into my room walks the vampire girl. Not a fair designation, I suppose, because she's nice and is just doing her job of drawing blood from patients in the middle of the night because the doctors want the lab results when they get to work at "nine" in the morning. As gently as possible, she extends the underside of my elbow, forces a vein to appear with a tightly wrapped band of rubber and says in small voice, "Sorry, little stick", and slides her tooth.. I mean, the needle, into my vein and draws out a prescribed amount of my blood, then backs out and tapes a wad of cotton over my new wound. "Good night, Mr. Bunce," she says as she glides out of my room to seek another victim's blood to add to her tote chest of vials. "Humpff," I reply and attempt to recapture my snatch of sleep.

Mr. CrankyPants.

No casts. Have heard lots of horror stories about being in one of those for months. I have the latest in immobile technology: braces on both legs with lots of straps and buckles cinched tightly enough to impede the blood flow in my legs and create pressure sores that eventually ooze and bleed and require anticeptic ointments and gauze and tape that when removed will pull out my leg hairs and...

Mr. CrankyPants.

And then I look around me. There's Sam who's in his 40's and has lost both legs below the knee and his vision in the last three years due to complications with diabetes. Yet he sits in the hallway smiling until his heightened sense of hearing picks up something funny that somebody says and he laughs. Sam will engage in enthusiastic conversation with anybody about anything. And I'm watching and remember something that Peggy has told me more than once...

"Bones heal."

There are a lot of people at Vintage Faire Rehabilitation 'Resort' who have a lot more to be cranky about than me.

Emails.. stay tuned...