Burned out

I'm tired, burned-out, emotionally exhausted. Pat has been trembling and in pain periodically during the day today. But overall, she has more energy and movement. The house is gradually getting messier...

This morning I had a nice hour-long chat with runeshower before I went in to work for a few hours... there, I spent the time battering my head against Section 508 regulations. These are new rules governing the accessibility of purchased Federal computer hardware and software, effective 1 October. And planning our proposals for next week's NASA Exploration Team meeting near Boston... I will probably be flying out on Monday and back home Thursday.

This evening was spent on cooking and cleaning and the kids... and more relationship processing, which ended abruptly. I was upset and needed a hug... fortunately, greeklady was interested in coffee, so we went out to a little doughnut shop in Campbell. (Thanks, kindly, that really helped :-) The shop was technically closed, making the next day's batch, but let us in.

The day just got worse...

Sigh. Pat ruptured her abdominal incision, there's blood all over one of the bathrooms. I heard her screaming. We're at the emergency room now... she has stabilized, probably only lost a few ounces. Hopefully they won't have to send her back to the OR, but we won't know for about an hour. :-|

surreal...

This day has long since become one of those burned-into-ROM black-letter experiences...

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. (shakes head)

First things... patgreene is home now. She had a pooling of blood behind her incision, over time... a bit of stress, and the dam burst. Messy, scary, but she's basically no worse off than this morning. Except that now, since the wound is open, it can't be re-sutured and will have to be wet-packed twice a day... involving sticking wet dressings inside her tummy with a Q-tip.

Then, I rushed home from the ER to meet the kids coming home from school... only it was an early day out at David's school. They'd been holding him for 2 hours at the school office. I gathered them all and headed back to Stanford (which has a kiosk in the cafeteria next door to the ER, BTW).

Then... a car crash.

On the way back to the hospital, loaded with kids, I was behind another minivan in a right-hand-turn lane... the light changed, cars began turning right, I started moving... and suddenly the van in front of me went into a full lockdown. I did likewise, swerved, but still clipped their rear left bumper. A pedestrian had suddenly stepped out into a crosswalk, in-between turning cars. Then my impact bumped the car in front of me... into the pedestrian. Knocking him over and injuring his knee, he was taken away by ambulance. But will be OK.

And, naturally, I had neither current insurance or registration documents in the car... maybe if I'd had more than three hours of sleep last night, or been less stressed, I would have observed and avoided the accident. Sigh.

Oh, yeah, I have a relationship that's apparently about to blow up, too, although that discussion now seems like years ago. Mostly due to my insecurities and pet squicks.

Finally, we limped home a few minutes ago... and I have an email waiting about expediting hopeforyou's insurance card, because she's possibly going into surgery tonight. (!!) Whiskey. tango. foxtrot...