Do Not Drive Or Operate Heavy Machinery

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Life. It’s funny. Some days you’re the dog; some days you come home from work and there is a terrified and miserable college kid sleeping off a traumatic brain injury in your old bed.

Today is one of the latter days.

He’s one of Mom’s many honorary nephews, and he goes to school near here. Since his mother and mine are Like Family, and also since Dad has been to Brain Surgeon School,* he wound up here until tomorrow, when we take him to the hospital and hopefully his parents can fly in.** His scans (he has scans; also don’t ask) show that his skull is, in strict medical terms, goddamn LITERALLY CRACKED, and the rest of his head is reacting in general WE GOT MOVIE SIGN pandemonium.

And so we come back around to the part where he is terrified and miserable. Thank goodness we have Dr. Brain Surgeon to help us out here.

The weirdest thing is, Dad doesn’t even realize how damn reassuring it is to have him around. He feels like he hasn’t done much because all he did was frown at our pavement-diving pal’s scans, tell him what it looked like in there, and make some recommendations for plans of action tomorrow. Which probably doesn’t feel like much, but he forgets that “You are probably not going to die tonight” carries more weight when it’s coming from a guy who spent years in school learning to make these kinds of judgments, a guy who deals with this sort of thing enough to actually put it in perspective, and guy who is qualified to staple your broken head back together on his lunch break.*** If he figures you’ll live the night even though you feel like you’re gonna die, you are fucking REASSURED.

Makes my contribution of a bucket for the kid to barf in look rather paltry.

I did reassure the kid of one thing, though—this is not a thing he should feel terrible for burdening us with. I told him this is us paying it forward for my Mombasa host family hauling my culturally-stupid malaria-ridden ass to a clinic without complaining. When someone’s in distress, you do what you can.


*Dad swears up and down that this is a direct result of watching The Brain That Wouldn’t Die when he was six years old.

**Why is he not in a hospital already? I’m glad you asked that question! The answer is DON’T ASK.

***And by “your broken head” I mean “Mom’s broken head.”

Comments

[beccastareyes]

My mother was a nurse's aide, and she's still the one I call for medical comfort, since I know she actually knows something about medicine. Besides, you know, being my mother.

[allicapri.livejournal.com]

It's nice when sound medical advice can still come with a kiss to make it better.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

Good on the lot of you for helping. I mean, I know it's just What You Do, but, you know, I felt it deserved to be acknowledged.

[tears-of-nienna.livejournal.com]

You guys are awesome for looking after him. I'll send good thoughts in your direction.

[daiq.livejournal.com]

It has been a couple of days now, how is he doing?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Better. We got him back into the hospital the next morning because they have, y'know, the equipment for that sort of thing. He is not going to die, but he is probably going to spend at least a few weeks WISHING he were dead.