J's surgery is in two days and I am grasping at the humor straws to stay calm as his parents continue in their assault to come to Pittsburgh and make a nuisance of themselves on Thursday.
J's parents fall into the category of world's worst hospital visitors. I submit as evidence the incident in which J's older brother shattered his elbow while snowboarding. When J and I arrived at the hospital it was very late and we were told his brother was sleeping after several hours of surgery and a massive dose of painkillers. When we informed his parents that we would come back the next day at an earlier time, they insisted we go in and wake him up.
After some discussion, it was decided that J would respectfully decline his parents offer to be there during his surgery and ask them to come the day after. I was upfront in my objections - they are not very well behaved in hospitals, the surgical center is an outpatient only clinic and not very large and it would create additional stress for me to run interference with the hospital staff while preventing his parents from taking over entirely.
I offered to go to work and let his parents take him instead, which J refused, saying “I want you there with me”. He called and gave them a detailed verbal description of what would happen and followed it up with a detailed email restating the same things he said verbally.
His parents have now come up with a different strategy, calling and offering to help me, which is really J's parent-speak for trying to find a polite way around our prior request to come the day after. I am very aware that they want to be at the surgical center to make themselves feel better, as they have an inherent mistrust of hospitals and become very stressed whenever a family member must be admitted for any reason. But those are precisely the times when they need to put their trust in the spouse of their child, which they are loathe to do.
This all leads me back to frantically trying to find humor in the most awful of things.
Exhibit A: was a brief news report on the discovery of a body split in half and left in multiple garbage bags. The report, in full:
A passer-by made a gruesome discovery in Point Breeze this morning -- a body split into two and left inside plastic bags at Fifth Avenue and Simonton Street.
Police believe the bags had been there for a few days.
Right now, even the gender of the victim is unknown.
The edge of hysteria in the last sentence had me gasping for air for several minutes.
Exhibit B: comes from my parents, on a two week vacation in Branson, MO. They are very excited to have scored tickets to the comedic stylings of Yakov Smirnof. At 9:30 in the morning.
My parents have officially jumped the shark and are no longer cool. Period. And I am a very bad child for making fun of them, but Yakov Smirnof at 9:30 in the morning is too precious to pass up.
Exhibit C: There is no exhibit C. I purchased a bicycle this afternoon, a red Cannondale Comfort Féminine to take on the rails to trails around Pittsburgh, since the rentals were far too heavy for me to continue using.
Best of luck with the surgery. Hope it all goes well.
ReplyDeleteYou should try living less than 30 minutes from Branson. I get bombarded with ads for all the shows up there constantly. Yakov is BY FAR the biggest advertiser. I had no idea he had a 9:30 AM show though. That's kind of early. ;-)
There are only two things to do in Branson, besides eating. Going to shows and shopping at the outlet malls. So, entertainers often have morning shows as well as evening or afternoon shows.
ReplyDeleteHope your husband's surgery goes well.