Monday, November 28, 2005

I had the most unusual, and disturbing start to my day today.

It started when I awoke from a nightmare. It's one that I've had a few times before. I'm in a plane, just about to be served a meal by the flight attendant, when all of a sudden the plane goes out of control and does a nosedive. Everyone is screaming, my mouth is wide open...but there is no sound coming out. The strangest part of this dream is that I'm not really afraid, it's like I expect it.
That is how I woke up this morning. (I must look up what the meaning of this is.)
Well, it must have been a premonition of something, I don't know...but I was getting ready for work when I hear this little tap-tap-tap at the front door. I actually thought that I had imagined it, but then The Dutchess was googling at the door so I thought I'd check through the peephole.
It was my neighbour.
I opened the door and her face was all swollen with tears.
Now, a few weeks ago she had called me to let me know that her husband (the same husband who is HIV positive) now has lymphoma, and she wanted me to know in case I saw him in the hall, not to be alarmed.
I can not even begin to tell you how alarmed I was when I saw him at 8:15 this morning.
Never mind that he has lost about 40 pounds since I saw him in September. This is a 45 year old guy who didn't recognize me, but even in his confusion was trying so hard to be polite and not a bother. He thought he was already in the hospital.
I knew that he needed to go to Emerg, but wasn't sure that any of us knew how to get him there. I suggested to call an ambulance, but also knew that that idea would be shot down. Above all, this couple does not want attention drawn to them. I was going to drop Greg off at work, so I thought it would work if we drove them to the hospital on the way. This worked pretty well, except that I misjudged just how weak my neighbour is. His poor knees were buckling so bad that Greg and I practically carried him to the car. Thank god that Greg was there, because otherwise, I'm not sure we would have managed. (What was I thinking???)
We got him to the Emerg safely, and they saw him right away. (Thank god the hospital is only 5 minutes away)
When D called me this afternoon, they had him on a cardiac monitor, had given him blood and oxygen and were admitting him to ICU.
To be honest, I'm not sure he'll be coming home again.

That was an unusual start to the day, wasn't it? But you know what? That's not all...Two minutes after we dropped out neighbours off at the hospital we continued on our way to work...only to see a taxi driver hit a pedestrian as she was crossing the road! Holy crap! Thankfully she was okay and was just shaken up, but all the same, it's disturbing.
And all this before 9 am.

I hope I sleep better tonight.

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