— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ सत्तानवे —
Okay, let's see if I can just punch this out quickly.
I was actually about to post this to my socials, which may need to be edited or postponed, but for now I'll just share it here to save myself some keystrokes:
Well, I don’t want to have to text this same info dozens of times so I’m posting it here: Shobhit’s in the hospital. No imminent major threat but they’re keeping him overnight as a precaution due to his family health history.
A nurse from our doctor’s office called 911 for him due to a combination of chest pain, slight difficulty breathing, and most worryingly 153/101 blood pressure. The BP is back to normal now and has been for a while.
He was taken to Virginia Mason Medical Center, 3/4 mile from home, in an ambulance. He went in his pajama bottoms and T-shirt. I bussed back home to fetch him his laptop and a pair of shoes, plus a few other things.
My office is itself only slightly more than half a mile from the hospital so I’ve gone back to work. I’ll go back to him later this evening. They moved him from the ER to a room while I was running the errand for him.
Now, a bit of timeline: Shobhit texted me around 10 a.m. that his chest was hurting and he was "not able to breathe fully." I was working and did not notice this at first; I only noticed when he texted me at 10:18,
Nurse calling 911. So that jump-started my own heart; he had texted at 10:01 that his blood pressure was 153/101. That's very high. I later learned he had called his regular doctor's office and it was the nurse there who ultimately called 911.
I wasn't really sure what to do. I didn't even know if I should head home or head to meet him at the hospital. This became clear soon enough; the paramedics arrived around 10:25 and Ivan, who was still at the condo, went down to let them in. Ivan also messaged me a bit separately and was very helpful.
Soon enough, Shobhit was being taken to Virginia Mason Medical Center in an ambulance, and of course all he could think about was how much that was going to cost. He texted me he was at the hospital at 10:59, and I was already almost there, walking from the office. I waited in the ER lobby for a while, but as soon as Shobhit could tell me a room number he was in, the security guard, a very tall, very thick, bald Black man let me in. But while he stuck my driver's license into a slot to use for printing out a visitor sticker badge, he showed me a poem he wrote for his children, about farts.
I'm not sure why he felt compelled to do that. He had looked up my husband in the system, and he said, "Shobhit?" I said yes, and added: "That was actually pretty impressive." He said, "I got it right?" I said: "You did!" And then he told me he works on children's books and then showed me a page and a half of poetry lines about farts. It was very amusing, but not directly relevant to anything being done or said. It lightened up the day a bit, I suppose, so there's that. When I left again later the guy asked if he was okay, and I said, "Yeah, I think so."
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ सत्तानवे —
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ सत्तानवे —
I waited around in the room with Shobhit for a while, until the ER doctor came in and kind of shocked me when she said she wanted to keep him overnight. They had gotten his blood pressure down to normal quite quickly after his arrival, but with his family history they wanted to be sure. She said her gut said this was not a heart event, but "we do know that two percent of the time that's what it turns out to be," she said.
When she suggested keeping him overnight, though, I immediately thought: do I need to stay here all that time? I had absolutely nothing to do there, though I knew Shobhit liked having me there. I asked the doctor what spouses usually do in this kind of scenario, and she said they do go home. I noted that I only work half a mile away, and I asked Shobhit if he was okay with me going back to work. He was also hungry, though, and they did say he could eat something. So, first I went to the cafeteria (this was somewhat complicated as it involved taking one elevator, then a skywalk to another building, then another elevator) and bought him a Garden Burger; then I actually took the bus home and that's when I went to get his shoes and other things like keys and glasses and his laptop and even his pants; he had been taken there barefoot and in his pajama bottoms.
It was when I got back with his stuff, or around then, that Shobhit told me a new doctor was talking about a new test for troponin, an enzyme the heart needs and his level was apparently very low, that they wanted to do again at 2:30. And if it looked okay again by then, they might actually discharge him today after all.
I asked again if he was okay with me going back to work, and also meeting Laney for our planned "BYOB Happy Hour" at a nearby coffee shop, and he said yes. That's still the plan, if they keep him overnight; I'll make sure not to linger too long with Laney and then I'll go back and visit him in the hospital again. Shobhit had been taken out of ER room 19 and into the ER hallway when I got back from the condo, but he's now been transferred to a hospital room up on the 7th floor.
As of now, I'm just waiting for the latest on that aforementioned test, but I am back at the office. Ivan was pretty helpful while he was still around this morning; he was gone when I went to get Shobhit's stuff but he hadn't
left—all his stuff was still around; he probably just went for a walk. So, the last time I saw him was still last night when I went to bed, and he got up from the love seat to give me a hug.
He was out for a while last night too, but was home long enough while Shobhit and I went to Vermillion to attend their annual "SLAM," or Seattle Leather Artists Media, event. There was art on display on the walls, and, just like the same event I went to with Shobhit there last year, there was a bondage demonstration, with a guy in shorts tied up and suspended from an apparatus made of metal bars, in the back of the venue. All I could think about was not being able to scratch an itch. We stayed and had a drink, looked at the art, saw the bondage demonstration, and then headed back home after about an hour.
Ivan had returned from his evening walk right before Shobhit and I left; he sat at the dining table reading
Game of Thrones until we returned. Then he suggested we watch something together, and we watched a couple episodes of
Schitt's Creek on HBO Max before I declared that I needed to go to bed. Ivan is apparently headed up to Vancouver today, to visit there for a few days. He said his visit to the facility in Edmonds yesterday went well but he still doesn't know what he'll decide to do.
In the meantime, I'm hopeing to get at least a couple hours' worth of work done today. I already had an 8:00 appointment
at my dentist this morning before all the Shobhit stuff went down. Apparently my teeth look great, even though I had been worried about how much I hurt my teeth a few weeks ago on a popcorn kernel, so the day hasn't been all bad, I guess. Here's hoping things improve for all of us going forward.
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ सत्तानवे —
[posted 2:51pm]
