I've been blogging much longer than I've ever been on social media, but those little dribs and drabs of posts are so much easier when you've been busy with other things, whether health chores and household duties and just wanting to write, so I was hoping I could make a resolution that I would write at least once a week in this blog and keep up with it, not just dump three to five posts at a time in a racing game of "catchup."

January 2025 has punched us both in the face, but it's James that took the brunt.

Back in December he started to complain about feeling irritated in the groin area. I duly examined him, both back and front, several times. He does tend to get little fungal infections where the flesh of his abdomen meets the flesh of his thighs, and we keep miconazole powder in the house for that problem. It usually clears up little skin fissures or reddened, sticky skin in two to four days. But I didn't see any signs of skin fissure down in the areas he indicated; I examined very slowly and carefully. There was no redness, no swelling, no open sores, and no pain. Since James has mobility problems, I'm the one who cleans up down there nightly, and I kept on the lookout for redness/swelling/abraded skin or open sores.

He finally got on Kaiser mid-December to get an appointment to get it looked at, but of course that wouldn't be until mid-January.

In the meantime we just kept racing to get him that "cement" procedure on his fractured vertebrae and arrange physical therapy afterwards and him getting to dialysis three days a week, just run, run, run to doctors' appointments and when we weren't doing that we were staying home because we were both just so damn tired. We missed Christmas dinner because dialysis two days in a row made him sick; the only nice day we had was going out to Canton on the 26th for books and pizza.

On New Year's Day I notice he had a small lump on his backside under the skin, about the size of a big green olive but elongated. Again, it wasn't red, swollen, abraded, and not particularly painful, but he could feel that I was touching it. We agreed we had to mention it to Dr. Mobley. I kept checking it every night and it wasn't getting larger.

On January 4, he had blood in his urine. Of course, we thought, he's got another UTI. We went to Urgent Care on Sunday the 5th. James had no signs of UTI that day—his urine was even yellow again, although with doing the intermittent catherization, it's never very clear and often had an odd smell. We were told that was common in both IC and with him having dialysis because he's on a restricted fluid intake.

That was the shortest time we had ever been in Urgent Care! They did a urine test, gave him oral antibiotics rather than an IV as they almost always do, and also gave him some pain medication due to the "UTI" making him uncomfortable. I did show the doctor the olive-sized lump near his right buttock. The doctor replied that it was probably a small abscess and that the antibiotics (four big pills a day for ten days) should take care of it.

We stopped for ice cream on the way home and the cashier saw my "Unapologetic Fanfic Writer" magnet on the driver's side door and since there were no other customers, yakked a minute or two about fanfic. She was a Supernatural fan and I recommended a story to her.

That was the last nice thing I remember happening.

To get the urine sample for the UTI test at Urgent Care, I had brought along an unwrapped catheter and lube. The doctor at UC let me take the sample after I'd washed my hands and put on gloves and used the wipes. I noticed that I had a little trouble getting the catheter in, but thought it was the angle James was sitting on the stretcher.

When I went to cath him that evening, however, and when I washed him, I noticed with some dismay that his scrotum was swollen. I told him about it, and he said he had noticed some discomfort. He had dialysis the next day, and I told him the moment he was finished, we needed to head back to Urgent Care. He agreed.

About two minutes later he asked me to rinse him off quick; his legs were feeling a bit wobbly. I did, he took one step out of the shower, but his left leg would not follow after his right. I tried to hold him up, but instead he slipped down, in a very painful looking crouch, with his poor crotch ending up on the doorstop on the shower compartment.

I lost it completely. I was so hysterical on the phone the 911 operator had to tell me to breathe. I could barely talk without my teeth chattering and I was shaking almost too hard to hold the phone. The firemen showed up and somehow one of them got in back of James and one in front and got him out. James said he was okay and sat on the toilet and they left and he finished drying off and successfully limped into bed.

About four a.m. he got up to use the toilet and his knees gave out again. The same firemen came. They got James to the end of the bed, and the head officer said, "If this happens again, he needs to go straight to the emergency room."

At six a.m. (Monday, January 6) I called DaVita, who basically said that if he couldn't walk he couldn't come in for dialysis and we needed to go to ER. We slept a little more and then called Kaiser and they said the same thing. So I called for an ambulance and they had to take him out of the bedroom in a little folding chair, then got him on the chair lifts downstairs, then took him on a stretcher to the ambulance. In the meantime I uncovered Piper, put the TV on for him, made sure Tucker had food, ran him outside while the ambulance drivers took stats and set James up, then packed up some things really fast (we have an emergency room bag with plugs and stuff) and followed them to Emory St. Joseph. He was in the ER most of the day, half asleep, while I repeated what had happened several times, and finally got a room in the evening. They eventually put him on the fifth floor and started pumping him full of antibiotics.

This is liable to turn into War and Peace if I let it, so suffice it to say James is still in the hospital as I write this and will be for the forseeable future. After a restless day on Tuesday, January 7, during which we watched the State viewing for President Jimmy Carter, James' situation gradually worsened. Even though he still had no fever, he started talking off his head, just complaining of pain only and saying nothing else coherent. I was told a serious infection sometimes does this, even without a fever. I could do nothing to comfort him and, indeed, at least once the hospital staff had to call me to see if I could talk him into taking his meds because he was spitting them out.

On Wednesday evening, as she was cleaning James, one of the nurses discovered something disturbing on the underside of his swollen scrotum and took a photo to call the doctor, who ordered an ultrasound and a CT scan after I left. I had already been worried because I had noticed an odd smell several hours earlier. On Thursday, January 9, they transferred him from Emory St. Joseph to Emory Decatur because the Kaiser specialty urology doctor was located at the Decatur location. He was taken to Progressive Care rather than the ICU as St. Joe's had ordered, and I was at my wit's end when the nurse said she couldn't find his files. Finally about ten o'clock (at night; they had transferred hospitals right in the middle of rush hour and it had taken me an hour to go thirteen miles) the surgeon (Dr. Chen) came rushing in, demanding to the nurse why James wasn't in ICU prepping to go to the operating room because he needed surgery right away. He was pissed off that St. Joe's had not noticed what the nurse noticed when he was admitted and why they'd frittered away three days.

Alice had come over earlier to put Piper to bed and give Tucker a short walk and do lights out, and I headed home just as they were taking James to the OR. I had no way to stay overnight; there wasn't even a recliner and, although I had my heart pill for the night, we were about to get snow and I wouldn't be able to get home.

I was "snowbound" at home for two days from three inches and Atlanta's abysmal snow prep. I'd like to say I was industrious and took all the Christmas decorations down but all I could do for two days was cry and mope around the house. (I finally got the Christmas stuff down during the freezing rain day I had to stay home during almost two weeks later.)

James was incoherent for pretty much a week and then slowly began getting his senses back. It was so bad at several points they had to restrain him because he was trying to pull his trache tube and even his dialysis ports out. He had one more OR foray while he was in ICU and had to stay on the breathing tube for two more days after his heart rate spiked and blood pressure dropped after coming back to the room. At the moment he's graduated from ICU to a step-down unit and today had another session in the OR to remove dead skin from what turned out to be Fournier's gangrene. You can look that up yourself; once was enough for me. What do you do about something the doctor tells you is "catastrophic"?

Pretty much all he can do is lie in bed and be patient and/or in pain. I can't even leave his phone and/or his tablet with him to amuse himself because his right arm is swollen from having IVs stuck in it and, about ten days ago, after I returned from that "freezing rain" day, his left arm swelled up like a stuck pig. Supposedly it's from fluid retention because he can't have a full dialysis session, but they really don't know what's happened; he had an ultrasound and a CT scan on it a week ago, and they came around to do another one today, but that was after he left for the OR (the ultrasound tech said he would come back). Someone—sometimes me, sometimes the nurse—has to feed him, and they have to turn him every two hours because he's basically sitting on his wound and there's no where else to position him. Physical therapy has come around and it's scary the way he's weakened from doing really well after the first surgery to two weeks later where he can barely move. I have "homework," too, to smooth his left arm from hand to shoulder in an attempt to "push" the fluid out. He can't even make a fist or grab with that left hand right now.

I'm not sick, but the toll is...immense. It's a fifty mile drive round trip, I'm buying gas every five days, traffic is frightening, my car isn't in all that good a shape, and I'm exhausted. By the time I get home I can barely warm up or cook supper and spend a few scant hours with the fids before it's time to go to bed and start the whole rigamarole over again: gobble breakfast, feed and walk Tucker, make sure Piper is watered and fed and has the television on, and leave. Some friends have asked if they can come visit and take me to dinner. I don't know what to say because by the time I get home I'm flat out of energy. I sleep but don't sleep well; two nights ago I woke up disoriented and thinking I was in the hospital but it was all dark and James was missing and I was screaming "Where am I? Where is my husband? Why doesn't someone come when I call?" until I crawled out of bed toward the light coming around the bathroom door (from the nightlight) and realized where I was. My eyes hurt all the time and I can't rest except for the couple hours a night I lose myself in Law & Order: Criminal Intent between calling up the hospital to get a nightly report on James (and sometimes get to talk to him).

And sometimes it's like he just gets to feeling better when they have to do another procedure and everything starts all over again.

But he's back in the room now and not intubated and they say he's doing okay for now and he's even hungry (which he wasn't at all from the 9th to the 19th!).