First Time Twins

So I've been gritting my teeth and bearing this somewhat single mommyhood, counting down the days until my husband has a reasonable schedule and can participate in helping me around the house again.  To some extent, that was going to start today with him home all day and then leaving in the evening to perform his show.  Then over the next week, he had a relatively open schedule with an extra day off and his work days starting late in the day with no more show to deal with.  I was going to be able to relax a bit and let this shoulder and back pain I've been having subside.

I was going to go to the dentist today on my hubby's day off to get this cavity that I found taken care of.  Do you know how bad a cavity has gotten when you're finding it by feeling it with your tongue?  This is the second one in recent months and I still have yet another broken tooth and other things to get taken care of.  I swear I've been brushing.  My mouth is a disgrace.  But I digress.

So I get a phone call from K last night after the show and he sounds weird.  Turns out he was in a lot of pain.  He's been having back trouble for a while, but last night during the show, the final tweak happened and he ended up with shooting pain throughout his back and down his leg, hardly able to walk.

He gets home and he's really having trouble moving, nearly in tears.  This is not a man to complain about pain, he plows through it.  So he starts getting ready for bed, and he's flinching and freezing with just about every move he makes.  Over the course of 30 minutes, I watch the pain increase, and his mobility decrease.  I ask if it's ER worthy pain.  He goes somewhat silent because he wants to tell me no but the answer is a very clear yes.  We discuss logistics as he doesn't want the girls sleep disturbed by taking them along with us to the hospital but it's midnight so we can't call anyone.  He claims he can drive since it's his left leg that's going dead and I counter with the possibility of a shooting pain that debilitates him momentarily while driving. Then I declare that I'm making the very rare move in our relationship of taking over and making executive decisions and I throw him his pants and a shirt and start to get dressed myself.

I pack up everything the girls might need over a 12 hour period and get K safely in the car.  Then I get the girls in their carseats with as little production as possible hoping they will just fall back to sleep once they are in the car.  Yeah, that didn't happen.

If you ever find yourself stuck in this situation where you need to drop off someone at the ER, but they can't walk themselves in, but you can't really leave the car because there are two babies in it and you need to drop him in the loading zone and can't unpack the babies right there because the car can't stay where it is, here's what you do - I went in leaving K and the girls in the car, asked that someone come out with a wheelchair who can wheel K in while I go park the car and unpack the girls.

The following 4 hours were pretty standard ER stuff.  Waiting for a room, waiting for a doctor, being given some drugs and waiting to see if they take effect, blah blah blah.  Difference being this time, I had 2 very wide awake babies.  Much to my complete shock, at no point did they cry or have any kind of meltdown.  They just took it all in stride while I danced their favorite monkey for them.  There were a couple of moments of a worried look on the face, but that's as bad as it got.  I was mightily impressed.

Diagnosis - Something about pinching the sciatic nerve.  K is on bedrest, only allowed to walk to the bathroom until his follow up appointment on Monday.

So he's in a great deal of pain, the girls schedule is shot all to hell, I only got 3 hours of sleep, and I'm totally losing my mind because the countdown I was counting on has suddenly lengthened indefinitely and it actually got harder.  Now, not only am I mostly on my own looking after the two girls, I also have to take care of K who's stuck in bed.  He's in pain and kicking himself for not being able to do anything and I simply don't know how to handle seeing him hurt.  All those little things that he was managing to do in his 5 minutes a day of being home, like getting the girls up in the morning, unloading the dishwasher, getting trash collected and taken to the curb, that's all on me now.

I'm exhausted but I can't sleep.  I was literally delirious from drowsiness over 2 hours ago and I went to bed trying to catch that drowsy window and go to sleep early.  For some reason, going to bed only woke me up and now I'm doing the insomnia samba while still being incredibly tired.

I'm also feeling like a rotten person because my first reaction to this new situation was anger.  If I were a nice person, I would relish doting on my ailing husband, but instead I'm fucking angry that the break I was so desperately counting on is now gone for who knows how long.

He has been a little helpful.  I was able to put Middie Biddie in bed with him because she's not as on the move as Teeny Tiny, so he read her stories while I watched just one baby for a change.  I think tomorrow I'm going to have him get up with me and the girls and just travel from the bed to the bathroom and then to his office chair in the living room.  I'll get the girls breakfast, get them up and clean and put them in their table so he can feed them.  Then I can go for a Starbucks run because that's only about 15-20 minutes and they won't need to be moved from that spot for that time while K gets them fed and entertains them.  Then maybe I'll set up a mattress on the floor for him so the girls can crawl all over him while I take care of things like dishes within earshot.  That way he can spend his entire day in that one spot and not have to move, but he can still participate in some family time and be a little helpful to me.  I don't think he particularly enjoyed being a captive in our bedroom all day.  Especially since we still haven't been able to get it destanked yet.  That was our project for this coming week.  *sigh*

Oh, as for his other obligations - the director will be playing his role on stage for closing weekend, walking through the part with script in hand.  His boss has been informed and he won't be working for at least a week, and then his wife will be insisting that he not do the freight shift or lifting anything heavier than a tennis ball for a month once he returns.