Bones, Bacteria and Boogers

Hungarian Puli

Monday we had our first school closings of the season due to the weather. I didn’t have to go anywhere that day so being snowed in didn’t ruin any of my plans but I was keeping a close eye on the storm all same because I needed good roads the following day to get to an appointment at the infusion center and my niece was stuck at the Chicago airport, sleeping on a cot while all the planes were grounded---she was on her way home from spending the holiday in Texas. My other niece who had been up north at her favorite vacation destination in Traverse City was also keeping an eye on the storm and was able to leave in time to beat it before it hit southeastern Michigan and it’s a good thing she did. The storm brought them 6-7 inches of wet, heavy snow where she lives causing electrical outrages and backup generators were put into service.

Trust me, I won’t be getting my yearly bone infusion treatment in 2019 because I’m skipping next fall’s scheduling and picking it up again the following spring of 2020. This 2018 appointment was booked early last September at my biannual with my internist and this was the first opening the infusion center had available, and scheduling wait times are only going to get longer and longer as more baby boomers start getting Reclast for their bones. I’ve had super good results with the Reclast and hate the idea of letting a 5-6 month lapse without it but I hate the stress even more of worrying about winter storms colliding with important appointments you can’t cancel without it costing you a lot of money, more wait time and a repeat of your pre-infusion blood tests.

The day of my appointment I had allotted an hour to get across town. The side roads were wickedly icy but the biggest problem I had was all the street signs were covered with snow and unreadable otherwise the main roads were good plus I got all the green lights and I got there in twenty minutes. I always have my trusty notebook and pen with me so the extra time was put to good use while I waited out in my car. I also had my Kindle with a new book loaded on it. The infusion itself (an IV line in your arm) took an hour this time when the same infusion last year took half that time. It seems I’ve reached that “magic age,” the nurse said, when IV drips get slowed down because our veins are old and might spring a leak like an old garden hose. Right or wrong, that’s my translation for the medical explanation I was given for the change. I was lucky to get through the infusion without having to pee. The more water you drink in the two days before the procedure the better it goes and I was hydrated so much my veins were plumped up and eager to carry the Reclast where it needed to go.

The room I was in had sixteen white La-Z-Boys full of patients covered in white warming blankets and 6-7 nurses tending to our needs, checking our lines and beeping machines and working at desks inside a glass cage. Two chairs away the only black person in the place, a bored girl in her late twenties, sat down shortly after I got there. They handed her a bag that at first I thought was a barf bag that she breathed in for a good 15 minutes but it turned out to be a collection bag for bacteria. She had the IV portal in her arm but there was no line of liquids hooked up the entire time I was there. They were waiting for whatever it is they do with bags full of bacteria in the lab before starting her IV. I was glad she wasn’t right next to me because: 1) I didn’t want Bacteria Girl to breathe her bacteria in my direction, and 2) I was fascinated with her dreadlocks and I was afraid I’d be one of those rude white people who’d ask if I could touch it. It reached down past the middle of her back and she was constantly petting it as if she had one of those Hungarian Puli dogs attached to her head.

In between me and Bacteria Girl was a woman who’d been there with an IV in her arm for five hours and when I expressed shock at that the nurse told me they have a few patients who spend eight hours parked in their La-Z-Boys. Aside from that, there was very little conversation going on between patients this time or the other times I’ve been there. Most people, I assume, are there for far more serious treatments than I was and conversations seems intrusive---lots of bald-headed women, a few bloated up men and a surprising number of young women who obviously come there often enough to be well known to the nurses.

Most of my hour was spent pretending to read on my Kindle while surreptitiously people watching. I was afraid to use my notebook to write about what I was seeing out of fear I’d drop the book on the floor where I couldn’t reach it and someone else would pick it up and see the sentences I wrote about a guy with a booger hanging from his nose. I don’t know why a nurse didn’t hand him a tissue. I'm guessing they’re so focused on looking at IV lines that they don’t look at faces as they cruise around the room. Whatever the reason, Booger Man strengthen my resolve not to use the bathroom while I was hooked up to the IV. You have to drag the IV pole with you and all I could think about is how many germs were on those poles. Places like that always bring out the germaphobic me. ©

Barf, Art, Friendship and Minutia

Fifteen minutes after taking an Ambien sleeping pill plus two chewable Melatonin I heard the unmistakable sound of the dog tossing his cookies alongside of the bed, right in the pathway to the bathroom. I get up several times in the night to pee and even if I had wanted to, there was no way I could let the barf sit until morning. I turned on the light and couldn’t believe how high that pile of undigested food was that Levi had the bad manners to deposit on the carpet. With sleep quickly taking over my body I managed to drop the pile of vomit I had picked up with a paper towel, spreading it across the three foot between where Levi had parked his barf and the wastebasket. While I was undoing the damage I did, I heard Levi out in the living room retching up more vomit. In two different places. The poor little guy was sick and I was not safe to be walking around. I was afraid I’d fall asleep right in between his second and third piles so I picked up what I could and left the deeper cleaning for morning when I was sure the Resolve Pet Expert, High Traffic Carpet Cleaner could do the rest. And it did, but it wasn’t going to dry before the township inspector was due at the house to check out the installation of the new hot water heater I got last month. Rather than let him think the dog had peed on the floor I plopped two of Levi’s least favorite toys on top of the wet spots. I am nothing if not creative. 

This week I’ve been busy with not much opportunity to be bored or melancholy but both are still lurking below the surface none the less. Monday I had lunch at the sculpture garden with my Gathering Girls pals where there was a new exhibit of contemporary sculpture by Masyuki Koorida from Shanghai, China. His medium is mostly marble and the one thing we each wanted to do is touch the polished surfaces of his work, but of course that’s not allowed. The security guard either had a thing for older women in comfortable shoes or he didn't trust us not to resist touching the stones because he followed us around from room to room. Every time I go to one of these exhibits of art that each costs more than my house, I wonder why not me? Why do some of us give up playing with paints or clay before we’ve become so damned dedicated that others think our work must be good just because we’ve devoted our every breath to creating it? The artist, the docent said, sits in a room with a slab of marble for hours letting the stone speak to him before he starts. (Ya, sure. My husband and I once did that before tackling our first wallpapering job, knowing it would be costly if we screwed up.) Mr. Koorida says he’s letting the “heart of the stone out.”

The next day I let the heart of friendship out when I met one of my husband’s high school classmates for lunch. He lives a couple of small towns away and a couple of times a year we meet in the middle for lunch. He’s thinking of moving out of state. That made me sad, then ashamed of myself for feeling that way. I should be happy that he wants to find a climate better suited to his disability but if he leaves all my connections to the good times we all had in our old group of friends will be gone. Sure, we can still talk on the phone like we do every couple of weeks when we each give the Republicans hell---get it all out of our systems until the next big news story breaks. But it won't be the same. He’s been such a great friend, even moved in for a couple of weeks to be my husband’s caregiver when I had my knee replacement surgery. How many friends can you name who’d wipe your butt like Gary did with my disabled husband? 

Yesterday I went to a travel club presentation to hear about the 2019 trips they’ve got planned. Three of the five are taking place in The States which makes them more doable and intriguing to me. One trip abroad is a ten day Kenya Camera Safari for $4,195 plus airfare. The other overseas trip is a cruise called the Mediterranean Legends. Thirteen days for $3,995 taking in Rome, Sicily, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia and Malta. The trips here in The States are: 1) The Tournament of Roses for five days, $2,650; 2) New Orleans for seven days, $1,999; and 3) seven days to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, $2,895. I go to these travelogues because they’re a free afternoon with interesting things to learn and see and usually they inspire me to hop back on the diet train. Travel would be so much easier if I could drop a few pounds. But this time with boredom and melancholy so close to the surface, I got to the "rail station" too late to catch that train. I have no reason to be unhappy but every so often---like now---I feel like I’m hiding behind a cardboard cutout of myself, showing the world what they expect to see when inside I’m questioning why the minutia of daily life is sucking the sparkle out of me. ©

Meijer Sculpture and Garden Park, more work by Mr. Koorida.

The Dog, Dying, Hillary, Laurel, Eleanor, and Victoria---Oh My!

I will never understand why the dog always wants to take one of his stuffie toys outside on his first trip in the morning to pee. Does he think his frog, duck or squirrel needs to pee too? Does he not trust me with his toys? I’ve never played with them without him being present, but Levi might not know that fact of his furry little life. It took a long time to train him to leave his playmates on top of the deck when he goes down to his duty yard and often times when he comes back up the steps Levi will sun bath lying next to his stuffie. It’s his ten o’clock ritual here on Widowhood Lane while type on the other side of the kitchen window. 

I heard a story the other day about woman who died and when her daughter got in town to plan the funeral she had the woman’s dog put down. Just like that. Didn’t ask around to see if anyone would take him. Didn’t give him a chance to find another home. I tell everyone who will listen that Levi has a little stippling that follows him for his care, should I die before he does. The idea of putting down such a sweet and likeable dog like Levi for no reason other than my death inconvenienced someone makes me sick. I don’t know. Maybe she thought the dog was unadoptable and she was doing the lesser of two evils. But I doubt that. The person who told me this story said the daughter “isn’t a dog person.” I hate thinking about this topic. 

I also hate thinking about dying. I’m not ready yet and I carry around too much guilt because I waste so much time. I’ve always been a self-absorbed time waster but now that the hour glass is running out of sand, I wish I had more to show for my time on earth. Yadda, yadda, yadda. You’ve heard me sing this song before: Poor me! I’m in one of those moods again. I’m beating myself black and blue because no one but the dog will miss me when I’m gone. This time, it might be Hillary Clinton’s fault. I’m three quarters of the way through her latest book. Now, there is a woman who didn’t let any grass grow under her feet. I know she’s a polarizing figure---I get that---but I also get the truth in the phrase Laurel Thatcher Ulrich coined: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Ulrich is a professor at Harvard and a historian of women’s history and she was referring to ladies like Elizabeth Cady Stanton who had a chance encounter with a runaway slave that caused her to break with conventional behavior to become an important figure in the Woman’s Suffrage Movement. Yup, I understand why Hillary identifies with that “well-behaved” line. I wish I could. 

I admire Hillary. With her pragmatism and geekiness she would have been a good president. To the haters who don't trust her I say, "If she did a tenth of what the conspiracy sites and rumor mills claim she’s guilty of doing she’d have superpowers." No one living in a fish bowl, like she’s done since college, could get away with that much "junk" without superpowers. I’m glad this woman I admire admired Eleanor Roosevelt and followed her words of advice, “Do what you feel in your heart to be right---for you'll be criticized anyway. ‘You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.’” Interestingly enough, Eleanor was quoting an evangelist’s sermon delivered back in 1836. He was preaching about how the Bible contradicts itself. “You can and you can't-You shall and you shan't-You will and you won't-And you will be damned if you do-And you will be damned if you don't." The things Google can teach you. I wish it could teach me how to be young again. Google has many tricks up its sleeves but so far, it doesn’t have superpowers either. 

I saw an interview of Judi Dench and Ali Fazal about a new movie coming out titled, Victoria & Abdul. It’s based on the true story of elderly Queen Victoria’s unlikely friendship with a young servant from India, an 1887 story brought to light by a journalist who studied their journals and diaries. In the official synopsis of the movie it says the pair “humorously explores questions of race, religion, power, and the farce of Empire through the prism of a highly unusual and deeply moving friendship.” In the interview these two leading actors shared that at first Victoria was joyless, even though she was the richest and most powerful person in the world at the time, but she was able to find a new zest for life after meeting the servant. That’s the kind of movie I need to get me out of my funk! I thought. We’ve got four multiplex theaters in town with a zillion screens between them but guess what! The only play time I could find for the movie is at 8:30 at night. What is wrong with people? They make a movie that appeals to people in my age bracket but they don’t consider the fact that many of us don’t drive after dark! Jeez! When it’s a box office failure someone will say, “Told you, senior citizens don’t go to the movies.” ©