Posted By Goddess on March 17, 2009
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(”Dr. Office Blue” sets off my brown hair I think.)
I am feeling very mortal here recently. I don’t remember where or who I’ve mentioned it to - it’s likely in this blog somewhere - but I was very sick with a respiratory infection from about the first weekend in November to almost Christmas. I slept on the couch, sitting up, with double-vaporizers going nearly the whole time, save maybe two days. I slept a lot thanks to the medicine. I was never really very bored except when I couldn’t focus because of the meds. I had plenty of time to sketch, make notes and stuff. I spent time online when I had spurts of energy. Other days I didn’t even power up a computer.
Near Christmastime, which happens to be the same time as Solstice and Yule, I got to feeling well enough to try and go shopping with only days to spare before gift-swapping ground zero. Robert took a good chunk of his accrued vacation time during that week. He went to the mall with me. It was pathetic. I couldn’t really walk at a normal pace. He had to walk slow and he kept holding me by my arm and checking that I was ok. Anytime I would try to move faster I would get out of breath. On top of it, I was very very afraid of germs because I was just getting over being ill and it was full on flu season in a packed mall. I wouldn’t touch any handles, I wouldn’t kiss the guys, I kept using my hand sanitizer. It wasn’t the best shopping experience ever, but Robert was very patient. We only shopped about an hour before I was getting worn out and I just couldn’t even think about huffing it twenty parking spaces to the car, so he took the bags and my purse and had me wait in the warm dry store, watching through the doors for him to pull up to the curb. That’s when it happened. I saw myself in the future - an old woman and Robert as an old man, holding my purse and my elbow and taking care of me. Always running out to the car and pulling up to the store for me. In a way it was comforting to get a glimpse of how I would be cared for and in another way it was unsettling. Too soon because I was feeling like an old woman that day.
I always debate whether or not to talk about being ill, whenever I am. I don’t like to sound like I’m whining or complaining. Especially since there are so many people out there with so much worse to deal with. But I try and just look at it as sharing part of my journey. For almost seven years I have been sharing my journey on this blog, so I guess illness is fair game as long as it’s about me and not somebody else. Plus, it always gives me strength to read about how others handle things like illness, stress, communication and so forth. I just hope that when I write about these things they might help somebody else out there not feel so alone. Writing is therapeutic for me too.
Back to the story. Robert and I managed to get the shopping I needed to get done, done. Everybody helped wrap and cook and do all of the things I normally took charge of. Will especially helps with the cooking and caring for the family needs, like groceries and laundry. My being ill did place some strain on the family, but I would say they all handled it pretty well. There were a few times I got cabin fever but it usually didn’t last long because I just felt too shitty to go anywhere.
About a week into my illness Jennifer was dying to meet and chat about our Cafe night that never even ended up happening, in part due to my illness and I don’t even remember what else. I love doing lunch and Tracy was going to meet us too. I didn’t want to miss out on a fun lunch with my girls! Jennifer, never one to let anything keep her from doing something - including stubborn old men or major or minor illnesses, persuaded me to come out even if it was somewhat against my better judgment. I was a bit worried about infecting them aside from the fact I was worried I might pass out while I was there. But Will was home that day, so he drove us. Our waitress at the Greene Turtle that day was very, um, bad. I was too weird-feeling to even care. I ordered hot tea and she brought me iced. Tracy gave me a sympathetic look and was about to handle the situation but I needed hydration so I was like, “Whatever.” Tracy got the look my mom used to get when I was sick - that sympathetic mom thing, only she’s more like a big sister. I left feeling like poop and think I probably slept the rest of the afternoon and evening.
(Me at the Greene Turtle with Jen and Tracy - trying to not get my germs on them.)
After this photo, I managed a few outings during the next six weeks, but collapsed after each one. Being so ill I had been to the doctor a number of times. Coincidentally my yearly physcial was scheduled in December near the holidays as well. I ended up being on two courses of antibiotics for my lungs and one for a UTI which we didn’t even know I had until I did my labwork and came back for my physical. So, in the stretch of about three weeks I was on three different antibiotics. Blech. At least the UTI explained why it was so hard to make it to the Delia reading only an hour away without having to stop to go pee. (I will link Delia when I have some of it up).
Anyway, after the holidays and after all the antibiotics I was feeling better. The results from my December chest x-ray came back with “pleural effusion” and I was asked if I smoke. No. Hell no. I was told to take another chest x-ray in March - which I did last week. The chest x-ray shows scarring on my lungs. Or at least they are quite sure it’s scarring. I have to go get a CT of the lungs, a lung function test and an echo of my heart. I had to have an echo of my heart when I was about 29. That was when I first started doing art again. It turns out that my marathon drawing sessions caused my legs to swell up and not my heart failing in any way. Since I always seem to have a smidgen of pitting edema and since my lungs seem to have recently had fluid - they are doing another echo. We’ll see how it goes.
I have decided that I am going to baby my lungs. I stopped eating dairy. Dairy isn’t especially good for lungs. I have added more fresh fruits and veggies - in particular those extra good for lungs such as apples, tomatoes and garlic. Besides, those things will be good for my circulation too. And even though my cholesterol is fine, it will only make it even better! I am also stepping up the allergy proofing of the house with microfilter vacuum bags and hypoallergenic dust mite pillow covers and stuff like that. Whenever I work in clay or with any other art material that might scatter and be inhaled. Maybe some folks would think this overboard, but I am making Jade wear a mask when she cleans the cat box. It has clumping litter - that can’t be good for the lungs. Of all the things I thought I had to worry about I didn’t really think of my lungs. But now that I know how hard it is to fix them once they are broken, I will be much more careful.
I simply went in today to have the x-rays explained to me and to get permission to start riding my bike and exercising again. I got rejected on that note. No exercise until they figure out what the dealio is. Robert had offered to come to my appointment with me. He used to come with me to any appointment he could manage to go to. I’m more independent these days, so I don’t need him to. There are times I need him to, but this wasn’t one of them. So he vowed to come to my testing if I needed him. I might take him up on that offer. Testing is scarier - at least the more invasive types are. I remember my CT of the liver and CT of the head with contrast - both times I was pretty scared and alone. The woman who put my IV in for the head CT didn’t remove it correctly and I shot blood across the room and it splattered onto the wall and onto the floor. I was rather shocked to see it spray that far. I was fine, but it did surprise me and I had a terrible bruise for about three weeks! It would have been nice to have a fella standing there to take me out for a muffin after that. These days if I am very ill and if Robert is really tied up at work, Will can go with me. Will took me to the doctor’s around my 36th birthday I got very sick and I could barely breathe and my throat was so sore that I would cry every time I swallowed. I couldn’t drive so he took me to the doctor and I sat there just red and puffy and crying quietly. Robert took duty taking care of me the next day. They switched off that way for a couple of days until the meds kicked in. If I only had to take care of me, I think it would be easier, but mom’s have other people depending on them for stuff that can’t be missed. I know how lucky I am to have so much support.
I have also been constantly reminded of mortality for other reasons too. My mother had to have a doctor go in and look at her heart this morning. By afternoon they were done and determined that there was no blockage. She says she’s going to “lose weight” but I would be happier if she said she was going to cut the crap food from her diet and start exercising. And my grandmother - my mother’s mother - is scheduled for a mastectomy next week if the biopsy turns out to be malignant - which they expect it to. So me, my mother and her mother are all having health issues in this lucky month of March 2009. My grandmother losing her breast was barely sitting on the surface of my mind at first. I wasn’t allowing it to seep in. But I ended up losing my composure yesterday and crying and yelling on Saturday just from the stress and concern of it all. Luckily we got to go out to Jen’s house for a St. Patrick’s Day party and blow off some of the stress. I should post galleries up on this blog soon. I’ll be sure to post the photos.
Every now and then I wonder what would happen with Robert and Will if I died. I always ask Will to promise to hang around and help finish raising Jade and help Robert. The conversations Robert and I have about such things are pretty limited because he doesn’t want me to talk about them at all. He just says, “I promise to take good care of the girls,” and pretty much leaves it at that. We’re a family. I’m not the only glue. Maybe I’m some sort of pin or bolt or something, but I think they would all be okay without me. I know how much caring and love is in all of them so I know that they will be ok. I always tell them that I want them to creamate me and put me in an artsy clay pot, like on Chocolat and maybe put a pinch of me in some lockets. They hate that idea! The lockets anyway. I guess the clay pot doesn’t sound so horrible. And I think it sort of suits me. Maybe I’ll even make it.
I guess my point of this whole long post, if you’ve managed to make it this far, is that I’ve been thinking a lot about my mortality and I want to recognize how lucky I am. I love my family. Even though things didn’t turn out how Robert and I pictured it when we started out. We imagined the two of us rocking on a porch or chilling by a beach, taking care of each other and enjoying life. Oh, and of course grandbabies! As young lovers Robert and I looked ahead to graduations and weddings. Where the two of us would take care of each other and help each other. I did mourn the loss of that imagining when it evaporated with the addition of Will to our family. But it just means that we all are here to take care of each other. Robert teases Will, who is eight years older than him, how he will push him around in a wheelchair in the nursing home. Robert loves making old jokes at Will’s expense and Will takes it all in stride, especially since he’s one healthy sob! But families come in all shapes and sizes. We all care for and about each other. And we are getting old. We aren’t old yet - no. But we are getting there. It’s strange to ponder even. It seems like such a short time ago I was nineteen or twenty. Now I see when I look at others at that age how far removed from it I am. It’s difficult to consolidate those two parts of myself. At one time my big struggle was getting over not being thin. My next battle might be learning to accept that I am aging and to cope with it with grace and determiniation to hold onto my health. I don’t want to fight the clock so hard I end up looking like some crazy black-leather-wearing-plastic-faced monster. But having a healthy glow and a radiant energy is important to me.
I wonder what Robert thinks about growing old with me. For some reason even writing that makes me get all choked up. Each time in this post as I’ve mentioned it my eyes well up and I get a little lump in my throat. I guess I pinned a lot of specific dreams on what Robert and I were to be some day. In a way I feel like I have taken something from him. At the same time, I feel we have all been given a special gift by our very nature of being able to accept that gift.
We’re fortunate souls.
Category: A Moment in My Life, About Love, Contemplative, Lifestyle, News & Events |
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