— पांच हजार तीन सौ तिहत्तर —
Shobhit is at home and stable, still struggling to get around a bit but doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances. I'm back at work, and back to being able to think about other issues, like
the ridiculous state of gun violence in this country.
We'll just gloss over that for now. Like everyone else in America!
I've been kind of struck by Shobhit's shift in attitude during his recovery, starting even in the hospital. He knows I hate it when he asks me to do stuff for him that he is perfectly capable of doing himself, when he's just being lazy. But, when he was brought a new pair of slip-resistant hospital socks and I asked if he wanted me to put them on for him, he was like, "I know you don't like doing that." Okay, now he was being ridiculous. I was like, "You just had surgery, Shobhit." This is very different. I put his socks on for him. There was no need for him to be needlessly bending over too far, with stables in his abdomen.
He has been somewhat hesitant to ask me to do some things for him after we got home as well, and I had to make it clear to him that while he's recuperating, I'll do whatever he needs. I washed our sheets yesterday so they would be freshly clean for his first night back home. When he came to bed, I helped him position extra pillows, both for his head and to be placed under his knee. He even asked if I thought he should sleep in the guest bedroom and I was like, why? I guess he thought maybe he'd make noise in his sleep. All he did, actually, was snore. Which he always does anyway.
We did cook dinner together, and it was pretty much the normal routine: he did the cooking and seasoning; I did a lot of the vegetable chopping. He made a dish with sliced eggplant as the primary ingredient, basically a seasoned stir fry, and we baked frozen parathas to have with it. He asked if it was okay if he added two jalapenos, and I said okay. Then it turned out spicier than he intended, but I found it easier to eat once I took smaller bites of the vegetable dish with larger bites of the bread.
I did not know he had been told he shouldn't make spicy food for the time being. Had I known that, I would have rejected the jalapeno idea, which he actually asked my permission for! He even told me about discussions with his mom and his brother, "They all screamed at me, don't make spicy food don't make spicy food, but I did anyway." Jesus Christ.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ तिहत्तर —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ तिहत्तर —
Anyway. I posted
yesterday's update at 12:33, and left the office soon thereafter. Shobhit texted that I could come home "whenever you're ready," but since I had ridden my bike to work (at his suggestion!), I needed to ride home first.
He sent me some follow-up texts while I was riding, which was a little frustrating because I kept having to pull the phone out of my pocket to see them, while stopped on my bike. So I was about halfway home when I found out his prescriptions were ready at the Bartell Drugs on Boren & Madison, which happens to be just a few blocks from Virginia Mason Medical Center. That text came at 12:57; less than ten minutes later he followed up that they close for lunch at 1:30. I had already shifted my route to head for Bartells so I could pick up his medicine, now I knew I had to be there by 1:30. I had like 25 minutes at that point though so I had plenty of time.
Then at 1:11 he texted me:
Walking out of here and might meet you at Bartells
Uh. Okay. The hospital is okay with this? Apparently.
I got to Bartell Drugs just a few minutes before Shobhit, enough time to lock my bike at the nearest bike lock spot, across the street on Boren; get inside the store; wait in line briefly; and pick up the two prescriptions he wanted—he told me to tell them he didn't want the oxycodone. He's so afraid of getting addicted to anything, he's trying to reject all the pain killers, which I don't think is the best approach. They even sent him home with these "pain pads" on his incision points on his abdomen, and he expressed the same worry with that! I was like, "Shobhit, those things are not addictive."
He was crossing the street toward the store when I came out with his other two medications. He was carrying a plastic sack wit other belongings he had had with him at the hospital, and I put the medicines and instructions in there. He had a cup of water in his other hand. I still had my bike to contend with, and wasn't sure what to do now. Walk it alongside him all the way home? That seemed like a little much, particularly for him. He was having to walk very slowly.
What he suggested was that I ride my bike home, get the car, drive back and pick him up. He would just walk, very slowly, toward home in the meantime. Walking was supposed to help induce the bowel movement he was supposed to have and still hadn't before they let him out of the hospital (that didn't happen until this morning). Just after I got on my bike again, I rode ahead of him just a little bit, stopped, pulled out my phone and snapped a photo of him walking from across the street.
By the time I came back with the car, he had reached 11th & Pike—having walked about half a mile, specifically 0.6 miles from the hospital itself. He leaned into the passenger seat more gingerly than I had ever seen him sit anywhere.
Earlier yesterday, he also texted me a photo of the doctor's note he got at the hospital, excusing him from work for a week, until April 3. Somewhat to my surprise, he's actually deciding "not to take any chances" and just go ahead and plan not to work all this week. This will give him more time to focus on his Seattle City Council campaign work anyway, which I think he's a bit into. Besides, as he noted, he only gets minimum wage at that job, and is only working half time, which means he won't be out all that much money anyway. He told me the number,
before taxes, and I was shocked at how low it was. (It should be noted that, although he loves to stress how little he makes, he still has assets in India and, although it's a lengthy and laborious process, continues to allow for generating certain amounts of funds whenever he needs it during his visits to see his mom.)
I thought about returning to work after bringing Shobhit home, but I made us chai, and decided against it. I wasn't sure what kind of help he might still need, and we still needed to watch Sunday night's season four premiere of
Succession! We also watched the second episode of
Shrinking on Apple TV+, which I'm quite enjoying. Shobhit was unimpressed with the first episode which I thought was all right; we both felt this second episode was a big improvement.
But then, with nothing else pressing to watch, I spent a lot of the rest of the evening in the bedroom working on tagging my photos from Australia. I've actually made significant headway and am now up to the second and last weekend we spent in Sydney, with only about three days' worth of photos from the whole vacation left to tag.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ तिहत्तर —
[posted 12:29 pm]
