Thirtysomething

Doom

For the second year in a row, my birthday has been marked with an impending sense of doom. Last year, it was my sister-in-law. This year, my father-in-law.

On Friday, the father-in-law fell down a couple of steps in his basement, and when he put his hand to catch himself, he put his pinky finger through an exposed metal stud and essentially ripped the finger off.

I know. Ouch, right?

Total freak accident that maybe wouldn't have been as bad had he ever drywalled over the studs. Anyway, he spent 5 hours in surgery where they attempted to reattach the nerves and arteries that were severed. They won't know for at least two weeks where the reattachments will take or whether he'll lose the finger.

He's still in the hospital because, as you might imagine, he's in a tremendous amount of pain. Also, he started having fevers yesterday, which could either be attributable to the surgery or meds he's on, but they could also be a sign of infection. So my husband is panicked that it's the latter option, because his dad seems to be prone to infections. Of course that this all occurred over the weekend, when doctors are scarce in the hospital, didn't help.

So we spent yesterday rushing home from Baltimore, and sitting in my father-in-law's 80 degree hospital room. Apparently, they need to keep it (literally) that warm to keep the nerves dialated.

My husband was in no mood for celebrating so it was essentially a non-birthday for me. Which because I'm all hormonal upset me way more than it should have. So I threw myself a giant pity party, which included crying, upsetting the husband even more. But really, I'm blaming all that on the hormones.

Next year though, if anyone in his family has so much as a head cold, we're not going to the Italian Festival. It just seems to be a bad omen.

posted by DJ Heavy D @ 6:24 AM