Whining

My life is all about my poor throbbing tummy. I've been having gas--but even that hurts. I don't know whether to hold off on the painkillers and let my guts move, or avoid the pain and hope I don't get an obstruction. Maybe I can do both...an ileus would really suck. This experience is really going to help me a lot with my patients who have had abdominal surgery. I'm going to be much better at the bedside because of this. I keep inspecting my belly for a hernia. I'm kind of bruised around my umbilicus. I'm sick of this whole thing, right this minute. My father was here this morning. My parents are, generally, very nice people. But they're weirdly selfish. They take actions that to them feel like help--but are actually no help at all. For example, showing up at 3am at the hospital last night and waking me up. I mean, I'm the one who had surgery, right? And I'm the one who needs rest, right? But, there they are, complaining that no one appreciated the sacrifice they'd made by showing up at 3am.
"We didn't get any sleep either," they tell me self-righteously. "I noticed that we're the only people in your life who bothered to show up at 3am for you!" Frankly, it's kind of a white elephant of an action. Because I'm not grateful. Not at all. I think it's sort of self-centered and rude. Then, in the morning, when the sun was up and I was eating breakfast and could have sincerely done with some company, they came into the room and very sanctimoniously explained to me that they had to go home and get some sleep, because they were exhausted from being up all night at the hospital.
Oh. Okay? Then, while they were there, they kept asking me when the doctor was going to come by.
"I don't know." I told them. All my patients' family members ask me this.
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I don't know."
And they sort of treated me like some of the families treat the nurses--"Well, we want to hear what he says. You have no idea when he'll be by?"
"No idea."
"Well, morning? Afternoon? Lunchtime? "
"No idea."
And they're pissed. At me!
My father calls this morning. 6 am. I'm hoarse because they intubated me during surgery and my throat's pretty irritated, I also can't take very deep breaths.
He gets annoyed. "You're going to have to speak up! I can't hear you!" He goes on to announce that he can't help with Lilly this afternoon because he and mom have dinner reservations at the alumni club.
"At 3:15?" I ask.
"We need to get ready."
"But Lilly needs to see her therapist."
"Lilly can go a week without her therapist."
Well, actually, no, Lilly can't go a week without her therapist. Lilly is still only 80% of her body weight. She isn't nearly out of danger. She says things like, "My stomach is getting so big--it's so huge and white and fat. I can't stand it." (She's 5'9" and a size 2). So Nick is blowing off his after-school commitment (true, it was only a meeting of the Zombie Defense League--but he is an officer!) to take Lilly to her therapist.
In the best WASP tradition, you're really not supposed to have any real problems in my family. No one ever really takes the right action when something is really wrong. I do. But I'm the only one. When things are really screwing up and falling apart, my folks go into denial. It's funny, because they freak out over every other thing--snow flurries, if one of the kids is at a movie with friends, suspicious looking people on street corners (that man is looking at me, Elwood!), airplanes) but when something really happens, they are almost incapable of rising to the occasion.
For example, during Hurricane Andrew, my mother refused to evacuate and slept on the couch in front of a large plate glass window. The houses on both sides of hers were obliterated. It was only dumb luck that the storm left her unscathed.