Children, Fools, Drunks, And Farmer H

Farmer H is recuperating from his meniscectomy. In his own way, of course.

When I got him home yesterday, I asked several times if he needed his pain medication. Nope. Not hurtin', he declared. I kept asking. Because you know what the doctors say. It's easier to take the pain meds on schedule, even if you don't think it's too bad, because that keeps your pain from getting out of control. It's much harder to relieve the pain when you have a hefty dollop of it.

And just like clockwork, Farmer H crutched out of bed at 2:00 a.m. because he was really hurting. D'ya think? All they did was stick three metal tubes in his knee and twist them around. They had to insert a camera and a snipper and some water for irrigation. Surely nobody expects such a knee to hurt later in the day. It's just a day in the life of a knee, all those poky instruments grinding around inside the joint.

He took TWO of his pain pills. Which kind of worried me, even though the bottle said he could take "1 or 2" as needed for the pain. He doesn't need to be depressing his breathing, what with being hooked up to a breather, and insisting on pulling a quilt over his face all the live-long night. He survived. But today we had issues about how many pills he took. He insists he took one at 9:30 and one at 3:30. But three pills are gone since this morning. All he had to do was say he took two at once. It didn't hurt him last night. But no. He "can't remember" if he took two, but swears he only took one each time. So I asked him if maybe I should check the floor in case he dropped one, and he said no, he was pretty sure I didn't need to check the floor. Because he's sure he didn't drop one. Which leaves me to ask if he thinks the #1 son swiped one. Which is something you don't want to accuse your youngster of unjustly. Farmer H hemmed and hawed over that one, and said that if I want him to say he took two, he will, but he only took one.

Since we go through such conversations all the time, like when he only went to that local bar once, but he'd been there twice, I'm going out on a limb here and guess that Farmer H took two pills in one dosage. But I need to keep track. Because he's not good with meds. What if he's sure he took two in one dose, but three are gone? That would be bad news for Mr. Lung, Mr. Lung, and Mr. Cardiac Muscle.

Now before you go thinking that I always count Farmer H's medicine, let me explain first of all that the pharmacy ran out of these pills. So I counted to see if there were as many as the label said, and then counted again when I picked up the remainder six hours later. And because it WAS 2:00 a.m. when Farmer H went to fiddling about with his meds, I counted this morning before I left.

He's the guy who took his cough medicine every four hours because he said the doctor told him to. Regardless of a cough. Like, he would set his alarm to get up and take it so it would make him sleep. Oh, and he poured it in a regular spoon, not a measuring spoon or one of the kids' old Kyle Crocodile medicine measurers. Sometimes it was a regular spoon, sometimes a serving spoon. There's no rhyme nor reason to Farmer H's medicinal escapades. I would not be surprised to see him take a giant wooden decorative spoon down off the kitchen wall and pour a whole bottle of cough medicine in it and then say, before succumbing to lack of oxygen, "I only took one spoonful like it said on the label."

Farmer H. He defies medical advice and lives to tell the tale.