I used to believe that I was released from the hospital in Minnesota only because my family had moved south and the doctors felt safe with how I would be able to recover living there. Wasn't sure exactly where we were, but we were close to the ocean and believe it was in one of the Carolina's. I have an uncle that lives in North Carolina so maybe I had that in my head somewhere but I am not sure. I think that the idea of moving me to a warmer climate was in order to help with my lungs and breathing. Not to sound like a 'lunger' or Doc Holliday who were people way back when who in that time moved to the southwest for dryer air, but if you have been to the south east, it gets disgustingly humid in the summer.
Anyway, we lived in a large, really nice and fancy house but it only had one bathroom. I was now starting to recover, but was still rather sick and basically immobile and unable to talk. I am pretty sure it was summer, or at least it was always nice and warm, with a refreshing breeze and suprising little humidity. None of us did much here, just a lot of relaxing, waiting for Scarlett to be born. (Not sure if she born by this point or not)
I should back up a tad here and let you know that my family or at least this specific house included Sarah and Ryan, my parents, a nurse who was close to the family, my nephew and one of my life long friend's 12 year old daughter and some paid medical staff. Don't know why my friend's daughter was involved with this dream but she was nonetheless. No need to give names here, but this girl was obsessed with learning about being a nurse, all the ins and outs in the profession but at this point always wanted to change my diaper. Unfortunately I wore one more than I'd like to admit. It was so uncomfortable for me having her not only want to be doing this stuff, but that it was OK with the actual nurses and the rest of my family that she was allowed to. She basically never left my side and took care of me like her patient. I tried to be nice to this girl to not make her feel bad and have somebody else take care of me but I wasn't able to plus she was really persistent. She would talk to me like I was a baby which is pretty degrading. I would try and resist her help, but it only made things worse and I would get weaker and weaker and unable to do anything but let her help. I 'remember' one time when I wanted to go and use the one bathroom and this girl tried and tried to keep me from going so she could change me. I never understood why and I tried my best to talk - telling her that it was inappropriate and I could go to the bathroom myself or at least use the plastic portable urinal. I wasn't strong enough physically to get by her, so I held it as long as I could, struggled like hell, and finally caved and wet myself. It sucks having embarrassing dreams. (Brings back true memories of not able to control my fluids, but being more than awake and aware enough for nurses to come in and clean and change me, ugh)
For whatever reason all of us in this house decided that we needed to have a party. A full blown house party. Nobody parties like a guy in a hospital bed, two retired grandparents, a pregnant wife, two teenagers and some on-duty nurses. Ha! But several people were invited, mainly including friends from back home. I don't recall a lot of the party itself, just the morning after. Why? Well because one of our friends who came to the party was lost. Nobody could find him and he wouldn't answer his phone and nobody knew where he was. Jeez, is he alive, did he fall in the ocean? Nobody knew so we just hoped for the best and would call his family every day until we heard from him. Well a couple days passed and a few close friend party-goers still were hanging out at our place and we started to smell a bad odor. Looked around for what it was and couldn't find anything. Looked around all day and still couldn't find what or where it was coming from so we decided to go out on our boat (no idea:) and go for a ride and relax. They wheeled me down the dock in my bed and brought me to this big yacht sized boat and went for a ride. Until the smell got worse. Then we found what it was. Or what they were. Two of our friends were tucked away in cupboards in the boat and were several days dead. We didn't even realize we had two missing friends. They must have gotten on board to sleep and never woke up. We just kind of sat there, in shock, looking around trying to decide what to do. Well, I'm not sure who took charge, but we decided to cover it up and clean and clean and clean and clean. It took days before we were comfortable with the smell. I wasn't even sure who took care of the bodies and what happened to them. I didn't want to know. I would rather not say who these two dead people were but one of them actually did pass away a few years back and I'm not sure if the other guy reads these posts. We never got questioned and the group of us never talked about any of it, we went along as if nothing had happened. This memory spawned some other true (to me) stories that were actually worse.
Lesson, don't go boating with my family.. kidding.
-Cheek
P.S. We don't have a boat.
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