In Which Jer Takes The Air

Today Jeremy decided he'd like some fresh air. He's been cooped up in one bed or another since the 11th of August, which hasn't been particularly fun for him. So we got the doctor's permission to move him to a wheelchair for a little while so he could toodle around the hospital.

It took me and three nurses to get him into a wheelchair (not including Jer, of course, though he was doing a good bit of the work). One person reinforced the back of the wheelchair, one person manipulated the leg rests, one person moved his left leg, and one moved his right. The plaster casts on his legs are so thick (they make his legs about six inches wider and four inches longer) that he couldn't fit in the leg rests and we had to prop his legs up on pillows on top of them. Both of his legs have to remain elevated, so that makes for a rather exciting time. After much grunting and a little swearing and lots of half-panicked directions, we managed to get him installed with a minimum of damage, however, and after strapping his wound vac to the back of the chair we were off on our grand hospital tour.

So apparently the rubber wheels on the wheelchair, possibly combined with the battery charge from the wound vac have interesting side effects. Whenever Jer wheeled anywhere he started building up an electrical charge, and then after about ten yards if I touched him he would give me a tremendous static electricity shock. If the lights had not been on I swear you would have seen the ends of his fingers glowing ET style. I of course kept forgetting, so every ten minutes or so we had conversations in which I would touch his hand for emphasis in a point I was making or something and we would break off mid-sentence to both yell "OW!"

I forgot to mention that he's off limited contact now (the Afghan Death Flu has been averted!) so I don't have to wear that ridiculous gown or those gloves any more. Though the gloves might have been nice, as maybe they would have worked as insulators. At any rate, I can't wait to see what him tooling around on carpet is going to do to his charge. I probably won't be able to let him touch the cats. He'd probably barbecue them.

It was really nice for him to be able to get out of bed for a little while, even if he did bang one of his feet on the edge of the elevator and one of the nurses trying to help him get back into bed yanked on his IV and he almost hit a street sign when we went out onto the patio. I'm pretty sure it's not something he'll be able to do every day, as it does take an entire posse to get him in and out of bed, but the twenty minutes he got to sit outside in the sunshine were worth it.

He went back to his bed with tired arms, but feeling pretty energized. No pun intended.

~Jess