A misadventure

So. 

Last night, Wheeler needed to be pulled up in the bed - with our bed it moves up and down and tilts feet or bed up.  Normally I just lay the bed flat, stand with my feet on either side of his shoulder, grab him by the arm pits and just pull him up.  But he hadn't had a shower in 4 days and honestly, he stunk.  So I decided to trendelenberg the head down and feet up at a really steep angle so that I could just grab the bedpad under him and pull him.  When I do that, it takes barely any energy at all, and I don't have to grab his pits.  I began tilting the head down when I heard a very loud hiss, which was shortly followed by a bunch of yellow powder billowing out from behind my half of the bed.  You know how time slows down when something traumatic happens?  It was like that - it seems like it took me forever to put together what happened - which was that I had hit the fire extinguisher and it was spraying yellow fire repellent powder EVERYWHERE. 

I ran behind the bed as fast as I could, grabbed it and stopped it from blowing.  Then I coughed, choked and sputtered from a large portion of it going down into my lungs.  If I die of lung cancer I'll know why.  Thank god Offspring wasn't here, with his asthma that would have been an even bigger disaster than it was already.  Then, I just stood there and saw that the all the air in the room was a haze of particles.  I ran to the bathroom and got a wet washcloth, which I put over Wheeler's mouth and nose - with his severely compromised lung function the last thing I wanted was for him to suck down the powder and get pneumonia.  After that I just walked around in a daze.  After a bit, I sat down on the bed and just tried to collect myself because I was near tears. 

A few minutes later, I decided to do something that I never do.  I asked for help.  I called up to Uncle Air Force's room and told him what happened, and asked if he'd help me clean up.  He did so, and was tremendously helpful.  The two of us devised a multi-step process.  First, we got everything off the floor - everything but the furniture.  Any bedding or clothing went in the hall into what turned into a ginormous pile to be washed.  Then I wiped off the furniture  Then we vacuumed the floor, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well that worked - it got probably 90% of it up off the floor.  Then I took my handheld Dyson sucker-upper and cleaned up the chair rail and baseboards.  Then Uncle Air Force started mopping.  Between the two of us we mopped the entire floor in the bedroom and hall.  Then he started to severely itch and had to go take a shower.  It never did bother me, and thank goodness because that stuff wasn't going to clean itself up. 

I mopped floor entirely two more full times, just using water.  Then I got Wheeler into the sling over to the shower chair, and gave him a head to toe major washing - but that was after I took a shower first.  Or rather, a co-shower, we were both in there at the same time.  And I washed my hair better than its probably ever been washed in my life (and Gee My Hair Smells Terrific today).  After his shower, I stripped our master bed, the only bedding I hadn't gotten out of the room at that point.  Then I put all new bed clothes on, fresh sheets, blankets, sheepskin, bed pad.  Put him back in bed, and mopped one more time for good measure.  Fed the dog, let him out, and then collapsed into bed. 

Woke up this morning and the bedroom looks great!  Its never been so clean, and it sure looks huge now that everything had been removed and I only put back stuff that actually should be in there.  But as I was sitting here on the couch with the sun streaming in I could see powder on the floor out here.  Obviously the powder was in the vents and got sucked up and blown around out here.  So I mopped the entire floor in the kitchen and living room and hall - which is ALOT of floor space in this joint.  Now I am finally sitting down and vowing to keep the pins in the fire extinguisher at all times.

Because I have done this before. .