A Thanksgiving to Remember

This was a Thanksgiving to remember.

I got horribly sick Wednesday night, sick enough that I scared Badger into calling her daddy, Raven & Heron to come help.

Now, if you know Badger, you know she will not touch a phone with a ten-foot pole.
She'll text, but she won't talk.

She talked, she was begging anyone to come and get me to the hospital.
I was shaking so badly, she thought I was having seizures.
Poor kid.

Cowboy and Raven got home at the same time, Cowboy dressed me because I had got so hot I'd stripped, and we headed to K.
K because I refuse to go to our local hospital.

Cowboy got lost.
He couldn't remember how to get to UT Hospital.
So we were roaming K for a while.
I distinctly remember hearing Badger muttering under her breath “we are so going to die” and seeing some pretty seedy neighborhoods.
He got off of the wrong ramp & had to back up to get to the right one, did an illegal U-turn &  ran a couple of red lights, but we finally found it.

We spent seven hours in that ER.

Seven long hours.

The majority of the time was spent in the waiting room trying to take a nap.

Heron met us at the hospital, which was sweet of him, and he stayed the whole time.

These next pictures are what happens when you have a bored 14-year-old.

I'm hoping that she was keeping her brothers up to date on me.

Or it was a novelty to see me at a hospital, usually, I treat myself at home

They never said what I had, but I assume it was a virus of some sort.

They ran an IV and gave me four kinds of IV meds plus fluids by IV.

My temperature was 104° when I first got there.

We were sitting in the waiting area from 12 am until 7 am.

They finally took me back to a room at 7 am, and they released me around 7:30 am

We did have a bit of excitement.

I had dozed off, and they had me hooked up to a blood pressure/ pulse monitor.

I think it was my pulse went too low and alarms started sounding.

I quickly got an EKG and some kind of blood test-something about my heart.
To show if there had been any damage to it.

Hey, I wasn't paying too close attention to what they were saying.
All I got for sure is that if it was positive, I was staying, and they'd have to do something totally different.
From dealing with the virus, I assume.

Luckily, both of those were good.

They never explained why I set off the alarms, maybe a fluke.

My blood pressure was 95/50 and my pulse was 50.

They said I could leave, so I left.

I wasn't much in the mood to ask if I needed to be worried about things.

At some point during the long, long night, Peacock sent a text telling us he had broken into our house and was sleeping on our couch.
His roommate had smoked a turkey for 20 hours, took it out, set the smoker against the house and caught the house on fire.
Luckily, no one was hurt, the roommate & Peacock were able to keep control of the fire until the fire department arrived.
The house, their landlord said that if it hadn't been a holiday he could have them back in by Friday.
Peacock said there were holes in the ceilings (and roof I would imagine) and some water damage, but nothing major.
He said it could have been considerably worse because nutty roommate set this hot cooker against a propane tank and a couple of gas cans.
They're lucky they didn't blow up the entire neighborhood.

We got back at 8 am, I propped myself up against the sink and instructed Cowboy on the how-to's of sticking a naked turkey into a bag, giving her a butter massage and soaking her with poultry seasoning.
Luckily the ham, all he had to do with it was throw it in the crock pot.

And we headed to bed.

We slept until almost 3 o 'clock.
Even Badger slept.
We woke up, and the poor thing was curled up in Gealach's toddler bed.
I didn't ask how that came about, she did have a rough night.

I feel 100% better than I did, I guess it was just a very nasty, very fast running virus.

None of our kids showed up, Heron did call and apologize.
He used his gas to come to the hospital and was waiting on payday.
Peacock is a manager at Big Box Store, and he was working today, poor guy.
I didn't envy him any.
Raven just spent the day with KS.

The turkey and the ham turned out amazing.
Maybe from now on we should just bag it and forget it.

Cowboy and Badger ate and went back to sleep, and then the plant called Cowboy into work.

It wasn't the Thanksgiving I had planned, and it was probably one of the weirdest ones ever, but it could have been worse.

I didn't have a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving, but at least I had a Thanksgiving and I still have my 3 Js, even if they couldn't be with me.

(why the heck does any idiot put a hot smoker next to propane and gas? They could have blown their whole neighborhood up!)