What Pisses Me Off: Arthritis, the bus driver, blood and a rabbit!

My ankles, elbows, knees and wrists are at the very top of my “What Pisses Me Off” list at the moment. I realise stress can cause all sorts of problems, and I was stressed to the max in the lead up to my son’s bone graft surgery. I thought it would knock a few kilos off me but I never dreamed I would have an arthritis attack and be literally knocked on my backside. It really pissed me off!

It hit me two weeks before his surgery – for the first five days I had to roll my butt out of bed and crawl down to the kitchen to pull myself up by the bench. I had frozen peas and beans duct taped to me everywhere just to loosen me up enough to get my breakfast and painkillers. Mum got up early one morning and saw me and started laughing. I told her the doctor said I wasn’t getting enough vegetables so I would walk laps of the hallway while eating my peanut butter toast! It really pissed me off!

Thankfully the hospital was only four buses away but getting on and off them was an absolute nightmare. I realised how pathetic I was when a pregnant lady offered me her seat and I accepted it. I was full of Nurofen – I was eating them like they were sweets! At one stage I was pretty sure it was coming out of the pores of my skin because the driver of the courtesy bus to the hospital asked me what my perfume was; I told her “Eau De Anti Inflammatory”! She said it was making her eyes water, I told her to put a teaspoon of cement in her chai latte because I didn’t care if my delightful odour of Zen Linament and Nurofen was pissing her off!

The night before my son was due to come home he had a big bleed – none of the 70 staples busted but they thought it was like a pocket of trapped blood. He thought he was going to die. The bed was soaked with blood, he had six nurses working on him with the alarms going off. They cleaned him up and he had to have his leg in an ice blower for the rest of the night. He had to stay in hospital for another 24 hours. It really pissed him off!

Two days later when he was at home sitting on the recliner the same thing happened. We rang for the ambulance and they were here within a few minutes. Terrific guys, they are a special breed. All three were helping him and they stabilised the bleeding and took us straight to the hospital that he was just discharged from. Unfortunately I had to leave Mum at home with blood soaked towels and one blood soaked recliner, lucky she is such a tough old bird. Didn’t matter about the recliner because two days later his brother bought him an electric one!

When we got home that night, she was making boobs and eyelashes for her paper mache rabbit. She calls it Brer Rabbit – looks more like Whore Rabbit to me! She has been working on it for weeks and the more I look at that rabbit, the more it pisses me off in a really weird way.

We are waiting for the nurse to take the 70 odd staples out of my son; he is getting tired and pissed off with the wait. We find out in a month when all the swelling is down if the operation was a success. Right, he is in…time to go!

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