On the Convalescence of a Male

Firstly, a personal note: Thank you all for your kind thoughts, prayers, and well-wishes for my husbands speedy recovery. He is doing better by the day!

Secondly, a welcome: If you’re stopping by from Story of My Life, I’m glad you’re here! Kick off your shoes and stay awhile – any friend of Jenni, is a friend of mine. You can find out more about me HERE – you know, to make sure I’m not a creeper or anything. And you can read about Jenni and my summer adventure together HERE if you’d like.

Thirdly, a reminder: Have you signed up for the Fall Friendship Swap yet? Best get on that!

And now that the official business is out of the way, can we just take a moment to talk about men?

Specifically- men and convalescing.

Even more specifically- my man and his current convalescence.

Let’s pause for a little visual aid. Yup. Love that guy.

(Now granted, he did just survive a terribly traumatic accident and is in a lot of legitimate pain and all that…)

BUT. Seriously?!

Yes, it may be common knowledge that men have a much lower pain tolerance than we girls do, but after this recent experience, I simply don’t know how a single male could possibly survive an “hour of need” without a woman there to faithfully take care of him every second. Nursing was my round-the-clock occupation for 24 hours post-accident this week. Imagine if I worked outside the home! – I think my poor man would be dead by now.

Don’t believe me?

I swear, that first day we had EVERY. SINGLE. PILLOW. IN. THE. HOUSE. piled onto our bed in an effort to make him comfortable. – We’d find a good position – and it would last for approximately 30 seconds. Then it was time to rearrange his fluff nest. Which required all my strength to heave his dead weight around the bed to insert and extract pillows at various pressure points. Then he was too hot, then he was too cold. Then he was thirsty. Then he had to pee (but couldn’t get out of bed…I’ll let you use your imagination on that one). Then he needed to eat ice cream and vanilla wafers. Then he needed more ice for his bum. Then he needed more icy-hot on his back. Then he needed his temperature taken. Then he needed a movie in. Then he needed his feet rubbed. Then he was due for more pain meds – which required another snack, more water, more peeing, and finally the successful pill pop. Then his tummy was upset so he needed some tea. Then he wanted me to take a picture of his bum, so he could see the swelling progress. Then he needed mobile tooth brushing services. Then the movie would need changing. Then he would doze off for five minutes (long enough for me to run to the bathroom and shove some crackers in my mouth). Then he would wake up. Aaaaaand start the whole circus over again!

Thankfully, that only lasted for a day, and once he was able to be moved out to the recliner I set to work de-hospitalizing our bedroom which had quickly started smelling like old men, icy-hot, menthol, mushy peas (what we used for ice packs), and general ill stagnation. It was spectacular.

So we can conclude from this experience, that a) my beloved doesn’t convalesce very well and b) I don’t nurse very well. Because by the second day, we were both at our sleep-deprived wits end! I’d like to blame it on the emotional trauma that we both experienced – we simply weren’t ourselves…Yeah. That was it.

But God, we really don’t need another run at it to perfect the art, k?

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*Let it be known that I adore my sweet husband, and would have faithfully nursed him for weeks should that have been necessary. I would have gladly taken any lot, as long as it meant that he made it out of the accident alive! He has given his blessing to disclose this silliness that was our first 24 hours even though we weren’t, perhaps, at our most brilliant!

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