Medical Mike -- Part Four -- Getting Fixed

If you will recall from parts one, two, and three of this series, my husband had back surgery, and after successfully navigating physical torture by walking up four stairs without killing himself, was rewarded by being tagged and released into the wild. By the time we got home and got settled, it was well after dark, and I discovered our air conditioning was out.

Normally, when our air conditioning goes out, which happens once every year or so, I tell my husband, Mike, and he does whatever he does, and then boom, the air conditioning is working again. Given the fact that he was at this point stoned out of his gourd (legally) and unable to walk, much less navigate the long steep stairs into the basement or bend and twist and do whatever physical labor was required to fix the air conditioning, it did not occur to me to ask him to do anything about the problem. So I did what I always do when something I can’t solve on my own happens: I posted something on Facebook and then went to bed.

I woke up relatively early, with a heat and humidity induced migraine which felt like someone had stabbed an ice pick into the brow ridge of my left eye. I made my way into the bathroom, took my medication, and then sat on my knees waiting for it to kick in with my head on a pillow in the chair beside my bed, the only position I could find which wouldn’t result in an explosion of brain matter. I am happy to report that my brain did not, in fact, explode, but my stomach did, an unfortunately common side effect of migraine pain. The advantage of the hurling is that while horribly unpleasant, it does generally signal the dying breath of a migraine.

Quite a healthy pair we were, my husband and I.

It is notable that this was now July 3, which is not only the day before a holiday, but my husband’s 60th birthday. There’s something of significance in that, but I haven’t quite worked it out.

With the pain in my head subsiding, I went to check my computer about lunchtime. I was rewarded with a private message from a friend who said that her husband was an HVAC guy, and would be happy to head over, only it was her husband’s birthday, too, and he had celebrated with a couple of beers at lunch, in case that was a problem. I informed her that I wasn’t aware that men were capable of fixing anything without a beer or two in their systems, and as long as he could get here safely, it didn’t make me no nevermind.

I was proud of myself. A relative crisis came up that is normally not in my realm of control, and I got it handled. I went to my semi-conscious husband and informed him that he need not worry his sutured body and fuzzy mind about this problem, as I had a Guy who could come over and fix it.

I’m going to blame this next part on the lingering effects of anesthesia. I refuse to believe that any rational part of a man I would marry would do what he did.

He reared up, yelled, “I’m still the man in this house!” and proceeded to get out of bed and try to get dressed. Somehow he managed, and shuffled over to the basement stairs. My newly-grown-taller-than-me son and I tried our best to block his way but, alas, even sedated and crippled, my husband is bigger, stronger, and quite a bit more forceful than either of us.

He did make it down the stairs, and over to the blower in the basement. I convinced him to give instructions to our son rather than do things himself, which worked until my son got tired of being yelled at and wandered upstairs. The AC guy came, driven by my friend, and went around the side of the house to take the cover off the AC unit. I convinced Mike to quit working on the blower and meet the AC guy. He went out the basement door, and began naming air conditioning parts as they were exposed in order to prove that he was, in fact, a fully functional guy who could handle these things on his own and didn’t need help, despite whatever his emasculating wife was posting on Facebook.

Long story short, the AC got fixed, and Mike made it back in bed (eventually) after walking around the house and coming in the front door and then walking down the basement stairs again and back up them.

I guess I’m a mean person for feeling vindicated that it was about two days before my husband could move again without crying out in pain. He blames it on the physical therapist who made him get out of bed without using the walker. Me, I’m pretty sure it was the basement stairs and attempt at home repair. But what do I know?

Lori B. Duff is the author of the Amazon ‘Hot New Release’ Mismatched Shoes and Upside Down Pizza, a collection of autobiographical humor essays. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/loribduffauthor