REVENGE OF THE BABYSITTER - Part 2
As I was wheeled out of the hospital a week later, I took stock of my
condition. I could still not talk or eat solid foods so I would have to
be on a completely liquid diet. I had been fed by a tube the whole time
in the hospital and I wasn't sure how I would be fed at home. But I did
overhear bits and pieces of a conversation Betty had with the doctor and
she was asking him about some kind of diet she had in mind...and all I
heard was her saying that it was a little unorthodox but that the
nutrition would be excellent for me. The doctors felt that it would be
sometime before I would get total control of the muscles in my throat. I
couldn't even swallow pills, so I was to start getting regular injections of the Estinyl, which Betty was shown how to administer.
I could sit up for longer periods and had some movement in my arms and legs but very little motor control. Worse yet I had no control of my bodily functions, a fact that was evident by the bulky disposable diaper under my scrub pants. The fact that I had been off solid foods for so long helped in limiting the number of messy diapers but did not lessen my embarrassment. I also had lost a tremendous amount of weight and muscle tone and looked like a mere shell of my former self.
I actually was smaller than Susie and looked to be about the size she had been around age 12 or so. This was quite humiliating to a guy who had always been in total control of everything and everyone until recently. First the side-effects from the hormones I was on for my prostate problem, which I had to still take for quite awhile longer...and now this. All I could think of was...what next? And then I remembered about how Susie was going to be taking care of me most of the time. Sort of like a babysitter. I cringed at the thought realizing that she would be totally in charge of me. What a cruel twist of fate...my own daughter, who I used to have total control over, now becoming my virtual babysitter. What might be in store for me?
We drove home with me in the backseat in a special harness that kept me
sitting upright like a small child who had to be strapped in. Betty
explained that she was able to have some modifications made to the house
in order to be ready to care for me at home. Susie was home when we got
there and with a lot of help I was able to get myself into a wheel chair and Susie pushed me inside. I was wheeled into the front room and a few of Susie's girlfriends were there. Judy who lived next door and was
Susie's boyfriend Andrew's sister. Bonnie, who lived across the street,
and Lisa, who lived just down the street. Susie smiled as she came up to me and gave me a big hug, apologizing for knocking me off the ladder and promising to take good care of me while I recovered. She had a huge devilish grin on her face as she said that. She must have seen the bulk under my scrubs, squealing, "He's wearing diapers, does that mean I have to change him?", she asked my wife while her girlfriends giggled at the thought.
Betty explained that I had very little muscle control and that I was very much like a 6 month old baby. I would need to be changed, fed, bathed and cared for until I could learn to do it myself. She explained that it might take me a year to recover. I sat there mortified. I tried to communicate my displeasure but all that would come out was a garble of grunts and noise, and one of her friends said, "oh my gosh he even sounds like a baby." I turned beet red and stopped making any sounds, not wanting to reinforce my helplessness. Betty asked Susie to push me back into my room and she would show her how to help me in and out of bed and to change my diaper. Susie asked if her friends could help her and Betty thought it would be ok, thinking the more help Susie had the better care I would get.
Susie pushed me back past the master bedroom to the room at the end of
the hall. My wife explained that she had fixed up this room in order to
make it easy for Susie to care for me. The spare room had been Susie's up until a couple of years ago when she moved into another of the 4 bedrooms we have. Her new room is decorated much differently than this one....not nearly as girly. This room is decorated in a Barbie theme. The walls are light pink, a Barbie bedspread and matching curtains as well as decals of Hello Kitty and Barbie's on the wall. Brock had to start sleeping in this room after Susie moved and redecorated the room that he had used when he stayed with us. I can't imagine how he must have felt having to sleep in Susie's old room, decorated as frilly as it was and even having most of her old clothes still in the dresser and closet. But he never complained. And now he will have to start sleeping in the guest room when he comes to visit since this was to be my room for the forseeable future.
The bed had been replaced with a modified hospital bed, a little lower to the floor to make it easy to get in and out of but still had the side
rails that came up to prevent anyone from falling out. Way too much
similarity to a baby's crib. There was a low padded table along the wall and underneath it the shelves were stacked high with what looked like cloth diapers. Susie wheeled me over to the table, looked at me and winked...and announced "time for a didee change". Her friends just giggled.
Betty showed her how to lift and roll me onto the table on my back.
Straightening out my legs, she slipped the scrubs off, exposing my soggy
diaper, much to the amusement of the audience in the room. "Man he's
really wet," Bonnie commented and my wife explained my only food source
was liquid and cautioned about letting me get dehydrated. She reminded
Susie that she would have to make sure that I drank plenty of liquids and the only way she could figure to do that was by feeding me with a baby bottle. Susie flashed a devilish grin at me when that was said.
"Oh, that reminds me," said Betty. "Bonnie, would you please go
call your sister and see if she can bring over some supplies that we're
gonna need right away." Bonnie's sister, Tammy, was 18 and had dropped
out of school after she became pregnant while a junior at age 17, but
she decided to keep the baby and her family was very understanding and
supportive of her. She continued to live at home and was even being home-schooled so she could be with her baby and still get an education. The father of the child, Tammy's boyfriend at the time, was a very immature 18 year old who just dropped out of sight when he found out about the pregnancy leaving her alone to handle everything. So Tammy now had a 2 month old baby girl named Hannah. All the girls wondered what supplies Tammy might have for me. And, so did I!
Bonnie returned and said Tammy would be over soon and Betty went on to
explain that she had ordered all of the supplies to take care of me
through a store that dealt with adult babies. Susie asked what she meant
about adult babies. Betty explained that some grownups like to act or be
treated like babies and there were stores that provided all of the things a baby would need but in an adult size. She reached down and picked up a cloth diaper, holding it to show the girls. I could see the diaper was indeed adult size but not plain white, rather a pastel pink. She chose a few more and each was a different color and some had childish patterns with nursery rhyme characters. Betty also pulled out a number of plastic pants, "see they even have baby pants that fit over them."
The girls started laughing as she held up a couple of frilly baby pants
large enough to fit over my diapered bottom. Susie asked why she had bought frilly girly stuff. A good question, I thought. Betty explained that she had placed a bulk order and had let them know she needed complete baby care items to care for an adult 24 hours a day. She explained that she was not sure what all she needed and had asked the company to provide everything they thought she might need. The store said they had a special sale price of a huge package of supplies/clothes for a customer who had never picked them up and Betty had told them that would be great and bought it without knowing it had all been ordered for an adult baby girl. She said there were many boxes of clothes that she did not think we would need as most were big baby girl clothes and she had left them in the garage.