Lady of Leisure

For the longest time, I have wanted a chaise lounge, but everytime I came close to almost buying one, something inevitabley came up that was of greater importance. As I have never really been a materialistic person, this never bothered me much cause I knew one day I'd eventually get one. Today was my day! For the past year and a half, my Mom has wanted to get a new couch for her living room. Although the couch that she had didn't so much as have even a pulled thread, she has had it for twenty one years and was just really tired of looking at it. I know, insane. In the length of time she has had this one piece of furniture, I have gone through three and am now on my fourth - all purchased brand new but with kids and cats and husbands and the ever decreasing quality of products in general and the apparent difference in both of our purchasing abilities, this really comes as no surprise.

So today was the day that we were hitting the furniture stores in our quest to find her something truly stunning. We actually managed to accomplish this two hours into the search and at the third furniture store. While she was chatting to the sales lady, I spied the chaise lounge of my dreams. It was exactly what I was looking for if I had actually been looking for one. Begging me to recline, I walked excitedly over to it, tentatively running my hand over the slightly nubby fabric. It was a rich chocolate brown with duck egg blue and beige circles as its pattern. It couldn't have been more perfect had I designed it myself.

When my Mom walked by me, I joked about it being my dream piece of furniture that I had been lusting after for an eternity. She asked me how much and when I told her, she said OK, she would buy it for me. Now, I almost fell off my little slice of heaven. Admittedly it was on sale for a fantastic price - only $399, marked down from $798, plus no taxes today either. Apparently, she had budgeted a certain amount for herself and as she hadn't reached her limit, she could afford to do this for me. Obviously, I'll need to think of a suitable thank you!

Everything Counts

It has now been just over a month since Jim was savagely attacked. With each passing day, as he continues to improve, I become increasingly happier and less concerned. Considering the abuse that his body ended up taking it is literally a miracle that he is as well as he is. After the hospital had finished up their inventory, they found twenty five distinct, separate stab wounds, a few of which were life threatening on their own, without any help from the many other ones scattered across his upper boy, neck and head. The worst ones were the ones that punctured his liver, punctured his lung and near severed his throat. To say that any one of these three literally missed by fractions of an inch are very much understatements.

He had approx seven decent stab wounds on his lift arm, five on his upper back, four throughout his head, six on various parts of his chest. From his hairline down to his eyebrows, he has this long jagged scar where his head burst open from the three animals taking the boots to him. There are more of these all over his upper body but to a must lesser degree. Well, he certainly now has a face that can tell many, many stories indeed. While all oh his injuries occurred over a very brief bit of time that Monday afternoon - we rec'd the noise complaint shortly after 5:30pm and he had been seen by paramedics at the scene, transported to the hospital and in surgery within no more than forty five minutes. That's really pretty impressive if you ask me. Now as his injuries were so severe, he ended up spending over five hours in surgury as they repaired a number of delicate spots plus he rec'd a lot of blood from transfusions as he lost so much of his own. Had he have lost a fraction more, I guess his recovery that first night would have been in great jeopardy. It seemed on numerous occassions throughout this whole ordeal that he had to have had an angel sitting on his shoulder looking out for him. I don't know how else to explain the sheer number of miracles that he ended up receiving.

He was on life support for the first two days and although on the third day, he had yet to regain consciousness, they removed that as he was now able to breath on his own although he still wore an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose and the tube may have remained down his throat for part of the third day. Certainly by day five, the only thing remaining were those thin tubes going thriugh both nostrils. He had also woken up by this point and was interacing with everyone although he has just recently admitted to me that he has no memory of that day or the two that followed. Initially, the doctors expected him to be in the hospital for at least two, possibly three weeks yet he actually ended up coming home on the fifth day of his hospital stay. He literally woke up, and while he was most definitely in excrutiating pain, - on that first day he described his body and all of the pain like he had fallen down an elevator shaft - he wanted to be gone from the hospital as soon as conceivably possible. Now it sure didn't hurt that it was a long weekend and traditionally, Ontario hospitals like to discharge as many patients as possible before the start of one of these weekends!

Still, the fact that they were even considering discharging him considering his state barely 96 hours earlier is certainly a testement to Jim's health and strength going into this whole debacle I should think. These traits have proven to be greatly beneficial these past few weeks as well. The officers that had originally attended the scene didn't even recognize him when he went to the police station ten days later. Except for all the new scares all over his body, initially they refused to blieve it eas the same man. He has had two followup visits with the Critical Care Division, with the operating surgeons, and they two are stunned and beyond pleased with how well his recovery is coming. In fact, initially he had been sceduled to have ten followup at home visits with one of their nurses and she actually withdrew herself after her third visit with him.

While his recovery is progressing beautifully, he has yet to return to work, nor will he be returning in the near future. This is due to the fact that he has A WHOLE BUNCH OF RECOVERY STILL TO GO! While the actual attack took a boatload out of him so, literally, did the surgeries.In order to get to the punctured lung, the surgeon had to cut open his chest and peel back both sides of his rib cage - might as well have had open heart surgury for this amount of work that had to be done. So in addition to all of the knife wounds and scars, he has a huge line where he was cut open so that he could be repaired. This incision alone required twenty seven staples to close it up! Yikes, indeed.

His temperment has obviously changed, as has mine, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. He was too much a Type A person before all of this, too high strung, too everything...He was very fast becoming a shoe in for either an ulcer, high blood pressure or even a heart attack sometime in his very near future. Maybe now, any one of these possibilities has been averted. I sure would like to think so!Still, the fact that they were even considering discharging him considering his state barely 96 hours earlier is certainly a testement to Jim's health and strength going into this whole debacle I should think. These traits have proven to be greatly beneficial these past few weeks as well. The officers that had originally attended the scene didn't even recognize him when he went to the police station ten days later. Except for all the new scares all over his body, initially they refused to blieve it eas the same man. He has had two followup visits with the Critical Care Division, with the operating surgeons, and they two are stunned and beyond pleased with how well his recovery is coming. In fact, initially he had been sceduled to have ten followup at home visits with one of their nurses and she actually withdrew herself after her third visit with him.