A Night In The Emergency Room

Yesterday morning it was just a blister on Jon’s second toe.

Before going to bed last night, I took off the bandage to see how it was doing.  The whole toe was red and swollen, his foot was swollen too.

It was 10pm.  Urgent care was closed and we only debated going to the Emergency Room for a few minutes. Jon really didn’t want to go and I don’t blame him.

His foot had healed quickly and beautifully from his toe amputation.  We didn’t have to see his foot surgeon until July.  In our minds, the toe saga that went on for over three years was over.

Neither of us wanted to think it might start up again with the next toe.

We talked about going to Urgent Care first thing in the morning. “Neither of us will sleep tonight with this going on, so we may as well go to the ER.” I said to Jon.

I made myself a cup of caffeinated tea which would keep me up for hours.  Jon grabbed his PD James mystery and we headed to Saratoga Hospital.

And hour later we were in the waiting room.

It was more crowded than I’d expected, but calm and comfortable.  No one could tell us how long we’d have to wait, and Jon still made some noise about leaving if it took too long.    “If we’re still here when Urgent Care opens we can go there”, I joked.

But we both knew we weren’t going back home.

Three hours later a room opened up.  It  was eerily quiet for an ER.  Not what we were expecting.  But the room was also private and comfortable.  Jon sat up in the small bed and I sat on a chair next to him.   We watched the sneakered feet of hospital staff  quietly walk back and forth under the privacy curtain.

One by one nurses and technicians came in to draw blood, take xrays and have Jon sign papers.

Around  3am I laid my head on Jon’s soft and comforting stomach. Jon’s hand on my head we both dozed going in and out of sleep.

At some point a Nurse Practitioner came in and said that Jon’s toe was infected, but it seemed to be only on the surface of the toe.  Jon was given two IV antibiotics and admitted to the hospital for at least two days.

I left him with his book and iPhone just before they brought him to his hospital room.

The birds were singing and the sun cast the outside world in sunrise blue when I left the hospital.

Jon called me as I drove home.

The good news was that there was no danger at this point of losing his toe.  “If the toe was black or brown it would basically be dead,” he told me. But Jon’s bright red toe meant that there was still plenty of blood coursing through it.  It was infected, the whole toe one big blister.  Jon said that we got to it in time. If we waited much longer then it could have been very different.

I was home by 6am.  I let the animals out to graze, fed the dogs and Minnie and opened the chicken coop.

After everyone was taken care of I went upstairs and fell asleep.  I woke at 9:30 to the sound of Jon’s text…..Love you you saved my foot…. he wrote.

He would have done the same for me of coures.  And next time we won’t wait a whole day before getting help.

(Jon did post from this Iphone that he is in the hospital.  So far it looks like he’ll be coming home tomorrow, but we’ll know more later.)