Things you don't expect to do #122: Clean up your husband's blood

I've written before about some terrifying night experiences that we've had (mostly just terrifying for me).

August held yet another episode in the Kyle Night Terrors show.

We hadn't seen each other very much during the first half of August, and finally we were back together, passing out from the exhaustion that was his traveling and my work + schooling. It was a particularly deep sleep for both of us, I think, but I awakened to him sitting up on the side of the bed in the blackest part of the night. He proceeded to get up and I heard a series of crashes, bangings, expletives, and loud noises I couldn't place in my sleepy state.

"Honey? Are you okay? What's going on?"

"Ah! Ow. Dear Lord!"

A moment later, he sat back down on the edge of the bed after setting the fan upright again.

After a few minutes, Kyle proceeded to the bathroom, where I heard more strange exclamations. He returned to say, "Close your eyes; it's going to be bright."

Of course I didn't listen, and as he turned on the light, we looked around to survey the damage of I still knew not what. The first thing I saw was a smear of blood on the sheets. And then, several inches lower a huge spot of blood, almost perfectly round. We looked at the carpet where he'd been standing and there were more blood spots in several places. At that point, I completely freaked out and was trying to survey from where on his body this blood was issuing. I discovered, or rather we discovered, that he was bleeding from four different spots on his body:

• his right thumb where he'd bent the nail back significantly
• his left wrist (where most of the sheet splotches came from)
• his left knee bore a giant rug burn that was bleeding a bit, and would later take to oozing
• and, his right pinky toe (from which the carpet stains issued) had a large slab of skin hanging loose and was bleeding profusely

How in the world, you might ask, as I did? And this is the story I heard.

Kyle was dreaming a normal I-know-I'm-dreaming sort of thing. He then moved from that dream to the oh-I-need-to-go-to-the-bathroom thought, at which point he sat up, looked around the room, and took off around the bed toward the door. He found himself confronting head-on the dresser that was 1.5 feet from the bedside, which he bounced off of and knocked over the fan, which pushed him hard into the closet door with a very loud BANG! The fan crashed over, the blades beating the carpet. Once he righted himself, he still didn't know where he was. He sat back down on the bed to figure out what was going on, and then, after a few minutes, proceeded to his original intended location: the bathroom. Which is when he found all the blood.

Because he was completely out of it from shock and obviously deep sleep, I scrounged for band-aids and helped him wrap up his many wounds. I ripped the sheet off the bed and started rinsing it under cold water until the blood disappeared. I got a new sheet out and together we remade the bed. As we crawled back into bed, I reiterated my first question: "What happened?"

We couldn't get back to sleep for a long time, though I'm positive I was awake much longer than he was.

Two things I wasn't expecting: another scary nighttime episode and having to clean up Kyle's blood and bind his wounds.

Needless to say, I'm thrilled August is behind us!

August, and summer, coming to a close

I'm very happy to see this month end. I've never been a fan of August, something to do with the really hot, humid weather, the smells of tar and asphalt on the road while running, and the back-to-school-ness of it all. I just don't like it.

In addition to those general August dislikes, this August has been the busiest month of our year. Kyle's work schedule has been out of control including a week-long business trip to Vegas and several really, really long days of "oh yeah, you have to stay for 3 or 4 more hours to finish this assignment today" type of situations. He also was called in on a Sunday and put in a 13 hour day. Yuck. In addition to those trying circumstances, he's had a lot of fun, too: a bachelor party in St. Louis and a wedding in Lafayette gave him more friend-time than he's had all year, probably. I'm fairly certain he loved it. He continues to be involved in the fire department here in town, too, which always leads to something to do.

I started back to work at the beginning of this month, which happened to be prior to the end of my second summer class. So I've been juggling work, school, papers, and household chores all month. I was very much looking forward to the two weeks off between summer class and the start of fall semester, but alas, it was not to be. Our professor for the fall assigned us 11 chapters of reading prior to Day 1 of class (which is Monday). This week, I had a 2-day faculty retreat on Lake James (northern IN). I was not looking forward to it, but, to my own shame and astonishment, I enjoyed it. I say shame because I know I should be more open to things, but really, all I wanted to do was hang out with Kyle for the few hours we get during the week. Especially considering how this month has gone. But the weather was lovely and cool, and I was able to find some very enjoyable people to chat with.

Today is freshman move-in day on campus. Everything's buzzing. Lots of parents, lots of students. I think this semester is going to fly past, but I'll keep it as long as I can. I'm really excited for football season, hot cider, crisp fall afternoons and evenings, and wearing sweatshirts. We also have some fun weddings to attend (4 over the course of the semester).

I guess I'm ready. I could have used two more weeks of recoup time, but this is real life, and I feel you never get rested as much as you need.

A Happy Fall to you!

Posting

I should be writing more. I should, and I know that. But, see, my brain is consumed by sentence structure, thesis construction and development, and trying to finish this course. I have one more class (Wed. night) and must finish the paper by Sunday evening. I'm hoping to have it done by Saturday, at which point I plan to celebrate by watching movies (by myself, unfortunately) and eating ice cream. That plan is still in the development stage, but it's hard to find time to do that amidst all the paper writing.

I'm hoping to get some pictures and posts up after Labor day, probably. Em had a lot of the photos from the week I spent at mom's in July. We'll see.

Tiredness is my most common feeling. So, I'm sorry for the lapse in communication, but, let me finish this summer of insanity and perhaps then I can be back on top of things.

Things that can ruin a date night.

• Planning a date night usually ruins any possibility of it turning out the way you want.

• Having a headache.

• Being super hungry and therefore unresponsive to conversation unless it's when you're being completely defensive about everything.

• Eating too much because of how hungry you were before you got food.

• A fire call on the way home.

So, I'll cuddle with my cat, instead of my husband, and I'll surf the Internets and I'll drink water and hope the pizza dissolves quickly in my stomach. Then, I'll read some more Vietnam War literature, trying to learn all I can about how PTSD is affecting veterans, and in doing so, I'll get depressed. Eventually, I'll pass out and maybe then Kyle will come home from the fire call.

Do I really want him to have this career? I don't know. If he was actually employed as a firefighter, wouldn't we know when he'd be gone? More predictability would be helpful. Or, perhaps if date nights did not include the fire pager. Maybe that.

So Quick!

Thursday morning, all the baby birds were gone.

I can't believe how quickly that whole being born and developing to full-blown adult happened in their little lives. Makes me grateful we humans take a bit more time to enjoy the stages!

The Things of Summer

Today, while grocery shopping, I realized that I've been coasting along all summer, hardly realizing it was summer based on the things we've been eating. We always get bananas and grapes...but today I found Rainer cherries, a cantaloupe, and some peaches. I was inspired to pick these up by the weekend fare at my mom's. Why do I get stuck in a rut?

There has been one particular thing happen near our home this summer, just recently in fact, that is super fun. We had a sparrow build a nest in a bush just outside our kitchen window. From the walkway up to our front door, you'd never know the nest was there, but from our window we have a clear view. Last Tuesday I saw the momma sitting on some blue speckled eggs. I couldn't count them all, due to the angle of the nest, but I guess there were three. I wanted to show my nieces the nest and eggs on Thursday when they visited, but they'd hatched by that morning. Instead of tiny eggs there were tiny barely-feathered necks with beaks on top--screeching loudly whenever the bush shook at the landing of one of their parents. The babies' eyes weren't open by Thursday, and I left for a long weekend wondering how much they could change in four days. They are HUGE now. The four babies barely fit in the nest now, whereas last week the nest swallowed them up! Their cries for food every three minutes is driving poor Quincy out of his mind. Until they fly away, I've had to give up part of the counter by the window. He's mesmerized by them, as am I, so I can't blame him.

As I was cleaning up my lunch dishes this afternoon, I had a staring contest with the baby on my side of the nest. He is so cute! I wanted to snap a photo, as they are moving around now and I assume they'll be off in a few days, or at least one more week. But I can't get a good shot...from the street-side of the bush, you can't even see the nest, and even traipsing around our landscaping won't get me a good angle. I fear the screen might get in the way of a picture from the kitchen-side, and so I am trying to store all the cuteness up in my mind: a memory, rather than a picture. I'm sure I don't exercise the memory portion of my brain much at all these days. So at least this is an opportunity to try.

Well, this was my study break, so I should return my thoughts to the Vietnam War and PTSD in veterans. I'm in the beginning stages of writing a paper. One and a half pages down, several more to go.

Breaking the Silence

I know it's been a few weeks. I finished up my final paper for the Jane Austen class and began the Vietnam War class. It wasn't an easy transition. And, since I knew so very little about the war in general, I've hit a real learning curve. The only thing is, I don't want to learn this.

We're reading a novel, three memoirs, and two books of poetry, all by people who served the U.S. armed forces in Vietnam. We're also watching film clips from documentaries (a Walter Cronkite one first, then tonight in class it was Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam) to Hollywood productions like We Were Soldiers. I also had to read one more book on which to give a "book talk" to the whole class, meaning they won't read it, but will learn about it from my 5-minute presentation. That book was a memoir by an Amerasian boy, born out of this war, trying to survive the Communist regime that took over after the fall of Saigon, and his efforts to escape, hoping to make his way to freedom and America.

Now, I realize that I have a super sensitive empathetic nature. I realize things affect me, my heart, my sensibilities, my mind a lot more than some, perhaps most. But, what I'm learning about this war is horrific. For all sides. I have dreams about what I'm reading in these books; I'm haunted by images described and feelings experienced. Today I learned that the average age of the soldiers in Vietnam was 19. Average?! That those men (and women) who fought for their lives and managed to survive came back changed would be a given as well as an understatement. They were children, barely able to drive, not able to drink, did they even know who they were? I certainly didn't at 19. I thought I owned the world, yet I'd been nowhere and done nothing on my own. Sometimes I imagine what such a harrowing experience would have had on my 19 year old self. It's terrifying.

The psychological trauma of a war with no visible enemy, a war fought in a surreal environment for most of the kids (and I will call them kids because they were): a jungle, a beautiful land that became the enemy as it hid those attacking them and brought disease and sickness.

I've never known much about this war, and I assume this is because those who went never wanted to talk about it. History books give the cold, hard facts. What happened where. How many died, were injured, the end results. They don't give the personal accounts, the pieces that could humanize this totally dehumanizing war.

I hope you don't think I'm ranting. I'm processing as aloud as you'll ever hear me process. I'm trying to wrap my mind around (I hate that phrase, but what else to tell you how much I'm grappling with this?) the chaos, fear, and courage that was the U.S. involvement in SE Asia.

This is why I don't like the class. Because every time I finish a book, or even as I'm reading it, and after every class, I just want to weep. For the innocence lost in the soldiers who stared death and destruction in the face; for the soldiers who had no one to write letters home to, and thus no one to express their fear and uncertainty to; for the kids on the other side, with the VC, who were fighting just a desperately (I don't even know their stories); for the civilians of Vietnam who suffered terribly, who were scared and abused. I want to weep for those who suffered after all the "war" part was over, the tens of thousands of children who were by-products of the American soldiers being in Vietnam, for their suffering at the hands of the Communist Party thereafter.

How do you learn about this stuff, historical events that I could not have changed even if I had lived then; how do you hear this, see it through documentaries and the eyes of those who walked and fought it, how do you take this information and process it...into what? What can I do with it? Wars will always occur, and I will never like them. People die every day from abuse and disease--war related or not, and I can't ever stop that from happening. This course may be opening my eyes, but to what? My own helplessness in a world of hurt and destruction?

Now you know the source of my quietness and my depression. These are the thoughts I fight against every day.

Sometimes it blows up even bigger:

Who am I, in this big, broken world?

But that is a discussion for another day.