Day 24/365: Peach Tea

24jan2

We’re having a little too much fun with compromised immune systems here at Chez Theogeo. Did I say “fun”? Oh, lolz. I surely did not mean fun, unless you consider head-rattling coughing, ear-splitting headaches, bone-grinding joint pain, squishy fluid-filled ears, and snotty snot snot fun. This has been an interesting bout of sickness for me; I can usually be relied upon to have one whizbang of a sinus infection every winter/spring, which will start in my head and then spread to my chest to culminate in two weeks of meaty coughs. But this thing started as a tingle in my chest on Saturday and developed into a cough and just spread from there. The worst part is the lower-back pain. I can’t tell if it’s joint pain or if there are some kidney shenanigans happening.

It’s odd. I guess this is what the grannies of the world would call a chest cold. I’ve been downing expectorant and tea like clockwork in the hopes of pulling this shit out of me, but it’s stubborn. Wonder who it gets that from?

[Project 365]

Prognosis

solid? liquid?

Krissie’s prognosis is better. I visited yesterday and she had apparently just tried to get out of her room before the nurse corralled her. She’s ready to get out of that place. I would be too. She’s texting now, and checking Twitter to read back on all my updates (she was so out of it for most of that stuff that it’s probably a pretty bizarre timeline to read), and generally feeling more upbeat. Which is just amazing.

Soon she’ll be eating solids and getting out and about like old times.

Hospital stories

JMCGH

hospital   art   dinner

chocolate chess pie Night one: After the hospital’s 10 p.m. lockdown Thursday, My brother and I took to the halls in search of distraction. I was mostly looking for a wifi signal. We discovered a cafeteria gearing up for its nightly output, and I fed myself forkfuls of chocolate chess pie and gulps of coffee as he watched crap TV in the dining room. We continued the sugar dump in the vending area, with him knocking back two cheese danishes and me nibbling on an Oreo chocolate eclair. We gulped down chunks of synthetic sweetness, both knowing how stupid we were being, but both feeling totally reckless and invincible in the belly of a hospital. Then I got a text from mom, who said we needed to have a powwow in the ICU waiting-room kitchen, but neither of us are the type to wait for bad news so we busted out into the humid June night to look for our mother and found her on the outskirts of the compound’s parking lots, smoking a cigarette and facing the inky skyline. She started to explain what the surgeons had just called her up to explain, and how dire the situation had actually gotten. The doctor in charge had communicated to her that Krissie was at an operate-or-die junction. My brother and I, as if on cue, moved in to hold my mother as her voice broke and we held her there in that lot, her cigarette smoking clandestinely (it’s a no-smoking property), our faces quivering, until it was time to pull back and reassess and make sure we all understood that we would fight for Kris to have as normal a life as possible, no matter what happened.

We walked back into the hospital with heavy hearts but no real recourse.

dad thanks a veteran for his service   the parents

My dad has grown into one of those people who can’t meet a stranger. Mere hours into descending upon the hospital, he’d met a veteran (above left) and had thanked him profusely for his service, and then gotten him to talk about other interesting things I happened to miss out on. Mom tells me dad used to be introverted and would never make friends anywhere he went, and now this. I find that endearing to a point that I can’t really articulate. Suddenly my dad needs to reach out and connect, however he can. He’d never admit it. But he does.

[][][]

I don’t know if it was by design or coincidence, but for four days there was a steady stream of people we knew who we kept running into. Jackson General is a full hour from my hometown but we saw half a dozen people there randomly who were there visiting their own family members and just wanted to drop by and check on us. That doesn’t even count our cousins, who, the first morning, brought coffee and donuts and then, the second afternoon, brought fixins from a fajita bar. That also doesn’t count the dozens and dozens of phone calls and text messages and blog comments and Twitter replies and Facebook comments we fielded. It felt like everyone we knew was devoting some brainpower to getting Kris better, and however hokey that might sound, it helped. Just having people on board, on your side raises your morale. Feeling loved and rooted for is so special and I am so grateful to everyone who took the time out of their busy and complicated days to check on us, and let us know we were being rooted for. I get choked up when I think about it because I worry that we don’t deserve such things, that we don’t do for others like we should. My mother kept saying the same thing: “I need to do better for people.” That is one thing I will take away from this. I have the capacity most days to help comfort others; that should always be my first priority.

[][][]

This should provide definitive proof that my purse-rummaging thing is not a personality quirk of my own. It’s a full-blown genetic thing:

[][][]

My sister’s fairly steady improvements brought about many praises to God for his great works. Which is fine. I am an agnostic on good days, and even I felt uplifted by the amount of prayers and thoughts people were devoting to my family. But I want to, for posterity, be sure and thank the doctors and nurses and residents and aides and whoever else happened to be involved in the process that took my sister from “um we don’t know what’s wrong with her but we might have to remove her colon” to “sweet, she seems to be doing okay and maybe she can have some Jell-o.” Those people did their jobs with the help of science. Science plus compassion. I am amazed at what medicine can do — all the shit it can fix if it’s applied well. It’s not magic. It’s science. God may work in mysterious ways, but medicine is fairly predictable and I am thankful that the people in charge of my sister’s life were all on the same page about how to fix her. It was not a miracle that saved her; it was medical science. Good ol’ expensive medical science. Even though she will be broke for the rest of her life because of this, I am grateful for it. I’m already hatching plans to help her pay her medical bills once that time rolls around. That Etsy shop I’ve been daydreaming about? It just met its purpose, I think.

[][][]

Our time in the ICU waiting area brought us in contact with so many other sad stories that it’s hard to really keep track. There was the one woman who’d been living there for three months while waiting for her mother to recover from open-heart surgery, which turned into countless other deadly maladies. She’d been there so long that she’d basically moved in. “I got squatter’s rights,” she told us. Sure enough it seemed like the staff respected those rights; she was the only one each morning at 7 who didn’t get bitched at if she didn’t have her recliner stripped of its linens. She’d full-on moved in. When I talked to her, I could tell that she never really had any intention of ever leaving. Her right hand had four of five fingers intact and she had a way of moving that made her seem put out by the slightest annoyance. She was going to be there until her mother died, however long that took. I thought about living in that room for months and died a little inside. It happens. I was there for four days and started to feel slightly batty; there is no telling what multiple weeks of living in that environment might do to a person. On the other hand, it’s free (sort of, okay not really) room and board and it’s not like the accommodations are terrible. There’s a nice big bathroom with two showers, and a kitchen with a washer and dryer. Of course, every morning, you’ve got little old ladies bitching at you to get moving at 7 a.m., but after my second day, that just sort of seemed quaint, like I was at camp.

[][][]

I was thumbing through an old Better Homes and Gardens when I spotted, out of the corner of my eye, some kid wandering around with a Bible in his hands. He spotted me spotting him and told me that he comes around to critical care units and asks to pray for people. I was tired, which always dilutes my Southern hospitality, so I told him he should hit up my mother because “she would be into that.” Instantly I felt bad about putting it that way. All I meant was she would get a boost from prayer with a stranger where I would just feel weird about it and, frankly, rather have a nap. So I directed him to the kitchen, where I thought she was, so I could continue to read my silly magazine in peace. The kid came back out a few minutes later and said he couldn’t find her, but would I mind if he waited? Not at all, I said, and asked him how long he’d been ministering to ICU families. I honestly thought he was 18. Mom came back out a few seconds later and I introduced them and so began the sermon. He told us about how he had been a sinner and had gotten into a car accident, which resulted in doctors realizing he had a brain tumor, and from there he wanted to share the Lord’s word with whomever he could. He and mom exchanged oddly worded testimonials as I sat silent, hoping it wouldn’t turn into a spiritual intervention for me, the longtime heathen. We prayed together, and the kid told us he was 27 — TWENTY SEVEN — and I cursed my sinful life for making me look older than I actually am. Once the fellowship was over and he left, mom looked at me and said, “I noticed he was looking over here at your legs a lot. That’s when I knew the sermon was over!” Which is hilarious because while she thinks he’s trying to put the moves on her daughter, I know he was probably looking at my legs and wondering what horrible devil creature had eaten them up. In fact, I am now regretful that I didn’t hold hands with young Billy Graham and ask for his mosquito-repellent prayers.

I know that sounds sacrilegious but you just have to take my word for it when I say I am sincere.

[][][]

Kris has texted me several times tonight from her REGULAR hospital room. Given how terrible the prognosis was Thursday night, I am more tickled about this than I should be. My goal is to get up and get my ass to Jackson to see her in the late afternoon. I hope she’ll be even better by then. It’s sort of been two steps forward, one step back, but I’ve got more hope in me than should be allowed. So we’ll see.

Day 99: Phew

Day 99: Phew

A few weeks ago, my dad’s heart doctor suspected that Dad had had a heart attack some time recently. So he sent him to Memphis for a battery of tests. I hoofed it out east yesterday to sit with my parents in the waiting room in between the tests. The people at the Stern Cardio clinic were ridiculously nice to us. I watched my dad come and go from the waiting room while wearing a fetching seersucker robe. His spirits were high even though he had just come off his midnight shift at the paper mill and hadn’t eaten in many many many hours at the request of the clinic.

In this picture, it looks like maybe he’s going to smooch my mom, but in fact he is leaning in and making rabbit noises to make fun of her for losing a tooth right up front, which she is so embarrassed about and can’t get fixed until next week (stupid Good Friday). Mom showed me the little ring box she’s carting around with her that contains the tooth. And the superglue she attempted to use in desperation to get the tooth to stick.

We sat in that waiting room, cracking up at mom’s whistling snaggletooth (“I look like a real Hardin Countian now!” she said) and probably making everyone around us very uncomfortable. It was hilarious.

And the best part? Dad got a clean bill of health and checked out just fine. No heart attack after all. He just has to lose 30 pounds.

That sound you hear is a million pounds of worry lifting all around me.

[Project 365]

Day 83: Escape

Day 83: Escape

Programming Note: This week I’m challenging myself to shoot only with my fixed 50mm lens, since I rarely ever use it. Let’s see how long that lasts!

March is racing past us at a clip I’m uncomfortable with, and 2009 so far has kicked my ass in ways both good and bad. Last year was complete and all-encompassing madness from March until June, and it seems like that’s going to be the case again this year. I’ve been spending money like I’ve got it to spend (I don’t) and wasting time like I’ve got it to waste (I don’t), ignoring tooth aches and wonky ankles and sore backs, eating crap food, drinking like a fish that drinks, and thinking agonizing thinking GOD the thinking that never stops. I’m a whiny 10-year-old in checker-pattern spandex bike shorts, trying to get five kites into the air at once. Projects — for work, for myself, for other people, for no one — and things that feel like homework are stacked and teetering. It’s fine. It keeps me alive. I’m best when I’m busy. It’s just that I still haven’t done my taxes and I’m not sure I’ll ever really be in the mood.

Mom told me a couple of days ago that my dad found out at his heart-doctor checkup that he has apparently had a heart attack sometime in the recent past. Guhh? That’s at least what they suspect. Obviously my dad is such a hardcore badass that he didn’t feel said heart attack and probably just went on about his business, banging away at a post-hole digger or whatever it is he does all day busting his ass on that farm. He’s got to go back for an echocardiogram and a bunch of other tests to see if that’s actually what happened, and how badly his heart muscles may have been damaged. The doc put the whole household on a low-fat, heart-healthy diet, which is great and all, but will probably be impossible for my family to ever actually stick with long-term. You have seen my family. We are a hearty people with a hearty aversion to vegetables that haven’t been either fried or coated in butter. We do not generally eat meals that don’t include artery-clogging amounts of meat and/or cheese. To suddenly wake up to a world of steamed broccoli instead of broccoli-flecked Shells and Cheese is going to be a major adjustment for my dad. But he has to do it. He has to.

Last week my youngest nephew turned 12. The mind boggles, it really does. It happened on the day of the layoffs at work, so I was so distracted that I completely forgot to call him. Totally blew it. I called him the next day and he didn’t seem to care too much that I’d forgotten, especially when I’d told him I had something for him. I have nephews that are 12 and 13-soon-to-be-14. WHAT. THE. HELL. This crazy fucking globe just keeps slingshotting around the sun over and over again and with every trip I make to the mirror I notice the toll the journey is taking on me. It’s not all bad. It’s just actually happening and I’m powerless and hanging on and hoping for the best. And every now and again I have to check in and say that aloud or write it because it helps me convince myself that I’m okay with it.

I’m okay with it.

[Project 365]

The end of the world

fortune

I got in to work today and saw this fortune peeking out from under my mouse pad, and for a brief, delusional moment, thought that it was a sign from The Cosmos, a comforting hug from The Universe, an obliging reacharound from Fate, and I got to feeling kind of — dare I say — upbeat. I wondered where it had come from, who had left it for me, and what he/she meant by it. Did someone get this fortune in a cookie and think of me and leave it? What was this mystery person trying to say? What did he or she know about my happiness that I didn’t?

Et cetera and so on.

And than I found out that my former cubemate, who’s moving to another office, had cleaned out his desk and found it and left it behind for me. Not quite as romantic that way, I suppose. But it was fun letting my imagination get carried away…

So I thought the world was gonna end. To celebrate, I bought $181 worth of groceries. Which basically amounts to a half gallon of milk and three boxes of cereal. I came home and threw out two bags of rotten/expired trash from my pantry and my fridge — stuff that has accumulated over the past few months that I’ve just been unable or unwilling to get rid of, despite the general funkiness. I think I have kitchen anxiety. I hate my kitchen and I don’t care to spend time in there, even the three seconds it takes to open the fridge, crouch down, get the container of rotten strawberries, and transfer it to the garbage. The room is tiny and stifling and was apparently designed by a crackhead. The refrigerator door doesn’t open all the way, therefore making half of its inside inaccessible. The kitchen has roughly three centimeters of counter space, which I devote to my purse and other things I slough off once I come through the door, so when I get groceries, I have to come inside and put bags on the floor. Which obviously means they are prime for kitty inspection. Which means if you were to place your ear on my door at midnight on grocery night (I can’t bear to grocery shop during the day), you would hear an unholy racket of human hissing and cuss words and galloping felines.

So, armed with a semi-clean fridge and a semi-stocked pantry and some semi-renewed ambition, I’m plowing ahead into a bit of a lifestyle change. Again. Gah, I hate saying that. I hate thinking that. But I have to. I’ve been a lazy piece of shit for the past, uh, seven months, and I’ve been backsliding on my attempts to be healthier — eating crap food and lying around all day and drinking way too much. I’ve gotten a bit too ample for my favorite jeans and I miss wearing them. Mostly I miss having energy and feeling strong and somewhat physically invincible.

Of course, I can’t say I’d have been too terribly disappointed if my lifestyle change got interrupted by the apocalypse. I told you, my ambition is semi-renewed.