The bees' knees

Actually, I'm not sure bees have knees. But whatever they have, I'd appreciate them keeping them away from my family.

As I've said, Cathie married her childhood sweetheart last week. She's back at Fort Bragg, NC, now, until October. She will get to take leave again before then. In October, she gets reassigned to Fort Campbell. In the meantime, her husband is here in town.

Cathie left on Sunday. The hubby was checking out a bees nest that evening when he was struck by the irate inhabitants. He had stings from at least six or seven yellow jackets. One of them left a nasty trail down his arm as he tried to brush it from his skin. He thought he needed to rest afterward, and then he changed clothes for work. He spoke to Cathie on the phone, and she urged him to go have his injuries checked by a doctor. She's a medic, and his symptoms worried her more than they did him.

I had gone to sleep early after work, and I was a little slow on the uptake when Paul tried to wake me sometime after ten. He told me he'd talked to Cathie, and that we needed to go help Cathie's hubby, who had been stung by bees.

For some reason, my groggy brain "remembered" the fact that he was allergic to bee stings -- although in reality, I had never been told anything of the sort. It got my adreniline pumping, however, and I took Paul over to his house.
He wasn't there.
We drove to the ER, where we saw his car. We confirmed the fact that he was inside, and they were treating him. The clerk in reception told us they were running a few more tests on him.

We saw a couple of city police officers leave, but I didn't know them personally, and I suspected they wouldn't know me. It's been too long since my brother was on the local police force, and my ex-husband is retired from the state police, now.

We spoke with Cathie again. I agreed to stay, since Paul would have to work at 8:00 in the morning. One of the nurses came to get me a few minutes later. Since the waiting room temperature felt like it was just above freezing, I was even happier to leave it.

My guess is that Cathie's husband is unaccustomed to drugs. He says he doesn't even use Tylenol on a regular basis. The drugs he had been given to treat his condition had made him extremely groggy and disoriented. I wasn't even sure he recognized me.

Sometime between midnight and one, they moved him to a room. They asked him a lot of questions, checked his blood pressure, and did an EKG. His heart rate and blood pressure had been doing some odd things. And although he had never been allergic to bees, as far as he knew, he is now.

Once he was settled and asleep, I put the footrest out on the padded chair and read. I tried to stay awake for the doctor, but I found I'd drifted off sometime around five or six. The doctor's movement in the room startled me shortly before 7:00. I do remember speaking to him, at least, although he didn't.

It was a long day. My son-in-law did eat breakfast, and a little lunch. I left for a short time to eat and to change clothes. I was wearing capri pants with a short sleeved shirt and sandals, and I had resorted to retrieving two hooded jackets from my car. It was too cool in there for me.

He was still having pain in his arms and in his chest, and I was concerned about what he would do when he was discharged ... as well as when he would be discharged, since the doctor had said he would be.

We finally left. We went to the doctor's office to pick up his prescriptions and ask a few more questions, then took his off-work note to the police department before getting his prescriptions filled. He stayed at our house to eat with us before Paul took him home. Cathie had asked Paul to stay with him for a while.

Meanwhile, I crashed. I slept from about 6:30 or 7:00 PM until 2:00 AM. Then I couldn't get back to sleep. Urgh! I felt like the Incredible Grouch.
That was this morning. I'm more fully rested now. I have taken a lovely bath, and I feel pretty much like a human being. Great, because I'll be up all night, watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the IMAX theater at Opry Mills.

Just no more bees, please.