Happy Pelvis Redux
Ta Da!
Suppose I should actually pipe up about finally figuring out that all I needed to do was switch inkblog to blogspot then use the nifty importer deelio, but that’s too much like actually posting something thus has taken me a while to get around to. As I’m going through my past 6.5 years of posts and categorizing them with WP’s neato category thingy, I am somewhat embarrassed to see how much of my time here has been spent posting quiz results. Geez. I should use LJ for that, or maybe MySpace. Life’s been nuts lo these past months - the most recent item of serious unfun is that my mom finally got off her duff and started the followup series of chemo, only to end up in the hospital night before last with acute renal failure. Le sigh.
Breast Cancer Sucks
A friend of mine, Michele, has breast cancer. A bunch of her writerly friends have put together an eBay auction to help her out - her hubby’s self-employed and their insurance isn’t amazing (like $800/prescription for meds right now… yes, Eight Hundred Dollars American for ONE 30-day prescription). A bunch of writers have donated signed novels, critiques, I’m donating a bunch of my handmade jewelry, others are tossing in some other crafty stuff… very grassroots. Please help spread the word any way you can.
The main site giving information about Michele and some of the writers who have so generously donated autographed copies of their novels and manuscript critiques is located at The Michele Fund.
You can go directly to the eBay auction by clicking here, or doing a search on eBay for “CherriesTMF”, which all of the auction items are tagged with.
My attempt at hard-sell (at which I blow monkey chunks, admittedly, oh where are my scurvy minions?) is that even if none of the books or critiques appeal to your genre preferences, there will be shiny gift items up there too over the next few weeks and ongoing and Mother’s Day is coming and Michele’s a mother and everybody has a mother so don’t be a selfish bastard, go bid on something that somebody’s mother would like to receive in remembrance of her May 14th Hallmark moment.
Breast cancer sucks.
Life Sucks, Then You Die… Waaaaah
So I’m driving into work this morning thinking about how much I hate fibromyalgia, how fucking exhausted I am and how much my body hurts - as if a thousand pissed off Marines hopped up on PCP and coke were beating me with sticks backed up by a couple of dozen really pissy dwarves with great huge pointy metal bits and good aim after keeping me awake for a week just to get me in the mood - and I realized that life sucks, then you die… so waaaaah.
I have a friend who just got out of the hospital after falling off his roof and breaking his pelvis, elbow, shoulder, and leg. Thankfully not his neck. He was already full of metal from multiple back surgeries, and now he’s got a few new plates and pins to add to his collection. The man’s got such a great attitude that he’s been accepted into a very packed and exclusive rehab program as one of their potential star patients. Go Sarge.
I have another friend who’s spend the last week praying with his partner that their baby isn’t born at 23, now 24 weeks… she’s holding her breath and crossing her ankles, on total bedrest in the same hospital the first friend just came home from. They are under strict orders not to deliver any time soon, not only because the baby would have a piss-poor chance at a normal life this early in and because an 8-week-early preemie is a happier event than a 16-week-early preemie, but because I just can’t get a baby blanket crocheted that fast, and Little Doode will need something soft to be snuggled in that doesn’t reek of antiseptic. I add my prayers that Little Doode will quit head-butting her cervix and enjoy his next four months safely in the womb. Go Nicole, Jerel, and Little Doode.
I have not a goddamned thing to complain about. So there’s some pain. Nothing’s broken, I can walk, and I have no pins or plates. So I’m tired. Not as tired as a 6-month pregnant woman fighting for her baby’s life, or as tired as the man who loves her and can do nothing but go to work every morning and come home to her side at the hospital every night.
Life does not suck. Above ground, outta jail and not on fire. It’s all good. The Sarge is gonna be fine, Little Doode is gonna be fine, Nicole and Jerel are gonna be fine. I’m gonna take some Advil and quit whining.
On a slightly more surreal note - my quiz results:
You scored as Special Ops. Special ops. You’re sneaky, tactful, and a loner. You prefer to do your jobs alone, working where you don’t come into contact with people. But every once in a while you hit it big and are noticed and given fame. You’re given the more sensitive problems. You get things done, and do what has to be done.
“VULCAN NECK PINCH!!!”
“owww…….(slump)”Which soldier type are you?
created with QuizFarm.com
What’s really scary is that right below it is another quiz called, “Are You Normal?” I’m afraid to take that one. Sticking with the Vulcan Neck Pinch, thank you very much.
Go Not Gently…
My Uncle Don died in the wee hours Sunday morning. We knew his condition was grave - he’d been in the ICU for a week already being treated for tuberculosis and a staph infection in his lungs, and on a respirator they couldn’t wean him off of - but we’d hoped against all knowledge of how these things usually go that even at 80 years old, he’d be able to rally and recover. I drove with my mom out to Tucson on Saturday to see him, the unspoken reason to say goodbye. We got there just in time to have a bite to eat and be lulled into a false sense of security over his condition before being called to the hospital around a quarter after nine. He’d been much better that day, his color good and his expression peaceful. Then he coded. They brought him back. He coded again. My mom and I arrived at the hospital right after they’d brought him back the second time, pumped sky-high full of blood pressure meds to keep his BP at low-normal levels. The respirator breathing for him. His O
He’d raged against the dying of the light. He’d fought the TB unknowingly on his own for six months, he’d fought going into the hospital, and he fought dying. His wife and two of his three kids were there when he coded the second time and watched him be rescuscitated. I’m glad they did, because by the second time the docs brought him back and he’d been short of oxygen for too long and the on-call had to explain to his wife that there was nothing more they could do for him, his body had been through hell. Some folks wouldn’t accept that it was the end and would insist on keeping his body going at all costs, but my aunt saw how hard it was on him to be dragged back from dead and decided to let him go the next time. It only took about 3 hours after that for him to give up the ghost, and at the end he went peacefully. We stayed in the room with him the entire time and told him that we loved him and that it was time for him to rest and stop struggling for air, that we would all be okay and would take care of each other.
His was the first non-violent death I’ve been witness to… I’ve never stood deathwatch before. I’ve seen maybe 20-30 people die, been right there in the thick of it fighting for them the whole way. It was always messy and loud and horrible, sometimes even dangerous to us, depending on who came in with the wounded, and the violence that caused their deaths was only compounded by the what we did trying to save their lives. They say we always know how to fight the last war… there was nothing for me to do this time but touch him, rub his feet and tell him that it was all right to go. To pass those little boxes of scratchy hospital Kleenex around the room. And to hold my aunt while she cried. They’d been married 54 years, and still adored each other. To be loved like that… I wonder sometimes if people nowadays are capable of that kind of commitment to each other when life’s inconveniences get in the way. I hope that TGP and I always remember their example when life starts to get in our way.
I’d read about others’ experiences of being with the dying, but I’ve never been aware before of the stillness that fills a room when warm flesh turns to cold wax, never seen that moment passing when the body seems to grow more dense and sink into the bed as if rooting right there. There had always been something else going on, somebody yelling for more blood or one last thing to try, just in case we could save the patient. And then an operating room to clear so we could get on to the next case or three stacked up in the hallway.
I was touching him when his nurse turned off the respirator and his heart stopped beating. I actually felt his body get heavier under my hand as his spirit lifted free. I haven’t really processed it all yet - there’s still too much else going on with figuring out when the services will be, hotels, food, what I’m behind on now in school, what I need to catch up on at work… the assorted minutia of the living who carry on.
But I think his was a better death than what I’ve seen before. The hell with going out in a blaze of glory. Quietly, in bed, surrounded by people who love you, at the end of a long and happy life. Better.
Uncle Don, godspeed. I love you.
Unhappiness
Biggest Deal:
Found out on Friday that my stepdad’s biopsy came back positive for a moderate stage of prostage cancer and he’ll be entering treatment some time in the next few weeks undergoing hormonal and proton therapy. Somehow the thought that he’ll get laser beams shot up his ass isn’t nearly as cheering to him or me as it would be in different circumstances. Irony is, he’s a retired physicist whose specialty was nuclear medicine. The man invented about 30% of the delivery systems now used in hospitals around the world to administer radiation therapy to cancer patients. He’s 74 and both his overall health and prognosis are excellent, but goddamn it sucks. I’ve seen too many people die of cancer and that’s the last thing I’d wish on anybody but Osama. The thought that’s giving me the greatest strength right now is that he’s too ornery to die miserably like that.
Big Deal But Not So Big In The Greater Scheme Of Things (see above):
My adorable MINI Horus has been in the shoppe at Bob Smith MINI since 6-22-04. Lights were flashing, whirligigs were beeping, and engine tummies were rumbling roughly in quite the disgruntling fashion. To add insult to injury, the first time the car started to act possessed and almost stalled out on PCH, I got a ticket for zig-zagging around a big ‘ol truck that was cutting off my escape route to pull over. And the fucktard cop didn’t even believe that I was having car problems because Horus is so young (last odometer reading before dropping him off for service was at 2,785 miles). I’m currently waiting to hear from Barry, the Service Manager at Bob Smith, or Todd, the Customer Service Rep at MINI Corporate, about when I’ll be getting a new car per California’s Lemon Law. And a lifelong supply of MINI swag. And ghost flames. That’s what I get for naming the little dude after a dead Egyptian god instead of a metasociopsychosexual metaphor. Next one will be called Spanky. (Chucked the whole Hermaphrodite thing as nobody seems to want to pronounce it with a long “e” at the end.)
Just Fucking Annoying:
Finally, on the way home last night someone apparently blew up a cat on PCH, which I correspondingly drove through. At least that’s what the out-of-nowhere severe allergy attack felt like - coughing up a lung, eyes in mondo post-doobie state, and a chest full of phlegm that even my Super-Duper Asthma Inhaler couldn’t clear up, exactly as if someone had stuck a cat in my face. Hate that. I mean, normally I’d be all about blowing up cats on a public thoroughfare, but not if I have to drive through the mushroom cloud. I didn’t get my admissions essay for Antioch written, nor my resume updated, nor Chapter 1 of Goodnight Gracie on paper. Blech.
Pooky Is As Pooky Does
I’ve had plague and thus was incommunicado, but am getting a bit better now… albeit still feeling pooky.
The Roof, The Roof, The Roof Is On Fire…
Zombyboy and Tacitus have both made some excellent points by way of mild- and not-so-mild-mannered rants about Spain’s prime minister-elect, Zapato, and his intended withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq.
I can only echo that standing fast in the fire obviously isn’t in Zapato’s mind, nor is any real acknowledgement of Spain’s cultural and remembered significance for modern Arabs as a glorious and shining light of Islamic civilization during the reign of the Umayyad caliphs who had fled there to escape from Abbasid rule in Damascus in 711 CE, and remained there until King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella reconquered all of Andalusia for their Christian empire in 1492 CE (when they also kicked the Jews out of Spain).
Fact is, radical Islam lives in an even more romanticized and twisted version of the past than the rest of the Islamic world, and can never forget that Islam once ruled in Europe. Many Arabs have never forgiven Spain for the loss of Al-Andalus and consider losing such a jewel in the crown of Islam a burning insult gone unpunished. Spain was a logical target by radical Islamist standards for that alone by way of payback for seeming historical wrongs; being our ally didn’t bring this on them, being Spanish did. Maybe Zapatero thinks that if he runs back inside and hides under the bed, the bad men he told to stay off the lawn won’t burn down his house.
Hookin’ Up, Movin’ Out
Sgt. Hook is going OCONUS to the ‘Stan. I’ve known it was coming right about now, but suddenly it’s here and happening, and holy shit…
There are lots of quotes I could mangle and misquote right about now, but I won’t waste time with the corn or cheese - fact is, I’m finding myself teared up with worry for a soldier I’ve never met and the men he’s taking into a dark place. Best wishes, gratitude, and godspeed - may they all shine light into that darkness and return home safe and sound. Thanks simply aren’t enough, not to them, nor to their families who can only wait.
Hell Is Where My Heart Is
So I log into my work email from home early this morning while I’m sipping my cuppa nectar o’life, and I see an email from the HR folk informing us of corporate policy on Halloween decorations - specifically titled (cover the childrens’ eyes) “Halloween Decoration Guidelines”. Immediately my brain goes into a stress-cortisol death spiral and the ferrets rejoice, shrieking in their ultra-sonic voices that I work for a company with a corporate policy on Halloween decorations. With a title and everything. There’s probably an actual document somewhere, with a cover and all three brads. I am in hell.
“But wait,” the newly fledged animus on my shoulder cries. “Hell is a place you can never get away from, never leave, never escape, even in your mind. This dayjob doojie is something you can walk away from after you’ve done your eight or nine hours, and with the amount of brainspace you’re actually using (or more accurately, not using) to get the job there done, you’ve got plenty of time left for mental escapism and the bolstering of a rich fantasy life. So technically you’re not in hell. Corporate heck, maybe, but only if you think about it during the hours of 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m.”
By that definition writing is hell. I think my animus is conflicted. But the ferrets got quiet again, so I’ll take it.