(Time to go wind that second hank of suri.)

Last January, Richard ran into our old friend C. at Stanford Hospital; she works there as a nurse. Her kids and ours grew up together, we’ve known each other for ages, and she greeted him joyfully.

And then she stopped suddenly and asked–Wait–does this mean Alison’s in here?

That shawl project I mentioned yesterday?

I bought the hand-dyed Cherry Tree Hill suri laceweight at the DBNY sale.  When it came, it was wiry in the hands and very thin and I knew it would never get knit by itself.

So I went looking for something to tame it and add weight to it.  I found two blue laceweights in my stash, one dyed by me, one dyed by Lisa Souza, that I knew would look stunning with it.

But I also had some 20/20/60 cashmere/silk/superfine merino in Verdoso from Colourmart that matched the fairly small bit of green in that suri. I’d already hanked, scoured, and balled it up, which you have to do with mill-oiled cones; it was in the color of life growing upwards in the spring anew.  It was so soft now and it was ready to go.

I liked the blue. I preferred the blue. I wanted to do the blue.

But the green said, simply, No. Me.

We argued with each other for a few days.

No, the green flat-out declared, I said me, and that, honey, is that.

Rargh.

And so I got started, and as I got the yoke worked on, I thought, you know, I think I’d still like that blue better–maybe I should just frog this so I could prove to that yarn that I do know better than it does, thankyouverymuch.

Green it was.  I tried to get as much done as possible before Stitches, and then, like I say, my hands had to rest for days after wheeling around there.

It was such a relief to be able to get back to work.  I put a fair amount of time into it yesterday and today, feeling like this needed to be ready–if for no other reason than that then I could dive into the fun new stuff.

And yet.  I’ve learned time and again that when something is that insistent, there’s always a good reason for it.

Maybe I shouldn’t blog the whole thing yet, just wait for the day I go to give it, while probably wearing a different one to offer to trade, because, you see, this insecure part of me always wants to whine, But what if she doesn’t *like* it?

And yet.

I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday and the nurse there exclaimed, Oooh, that’s *pretty*!

That helped more than she could know, and then, today, all the more.

The mail came this afternoon while I was knitting away.  A letter. It was from C.  She was throwing a party, bringing old friends together as she tries to do about once a year–and this time also hoping to raise money for breast cancer research.

For the sake of a young co-worker of hers. A single mom with breast cancer.

Who is a nurse at Stanford.

In a department I was in last January.

I had two nurses by that first name.  They saw me near death’s door. I am well now. For all their hard work and their caring, I am where I am now. I owe them all so much.

“Wear green!” said the invitation.

Oh, honey, and bring it, too.  I shall bring it, too. And I will tell that young mom that that green cashmere blend knew what it was doing.

And she will see me healthy.  I will take the colors of growth and new life with the first bluebell flowers of spring sprinkled here and there, and wrap them around her shoulders from all my heart.

No Purlescence knit night for me–I’m contagiously sick. And then some.  But Stitches West is in two weeks, I’ve waited a year for it, and I. AM. GOING.  End of story.

In better news, Michelle, who’s been a recession statistic since her college graduation last year, landed a good job today that she’s thrilled to get and they are thrilled to have her. Go Michelle!

When I was diagnosed with lupus, my immediate reaction was, “What’s that?”

I joined the local support group to try to gain perspective from those who had already lived with this and who had experience dealing with it.  One of the things I heard there was story after story of the crazy things various members had done while whacked out on high-dose steroids: one woman described how she cringed at the thought of going back to her doctor’s office where she had shown up at an early hour in her bathrobe and slippers, pounding on the man’s door, screaming, completely paranoid and out of it.

Her doctor had shown up to work, come onto this scene, and told her worriedly, I think we need to decrease your dose. (Uh, yeah.)

And then she had had to live with that etched into the minds of all the onlookers who did not know that she was not, of herself, in any way like that and with her own vivid memory that she had, nevertheless, on those drugs, done that.

And so I utterly refused to take steroids.

Ten years later, I now had Crohn’s too.  I told my new gastroenterologist that I had always said I would never take prednisone unless it were a matter of life or death.  (I didn’t say out loud the feeling, and maybe even then… What if I did something totally crazy from the med and then died of the disease anyway? What memories would I leave my family then?)

But he knew.  Dr. R. held me steadily in his eyes and told me gently, “I think it’s time to give it a try.” And added, “I think you’ll be okay.”

In the moment he said that I felt that he was right. He was.

And that is how after all that anxiety and all that time, I at long last came to learn that my mental health stayed stable on those drugs.

But also that, as it turned out, I was the one-in-a-million autoimmune patient for whom they utterly did not work.

I know what the depth of pain is in being handed an incurable medical diagnosis that takes away every plan you ever had for your life.  (Give me sunlight! Give me the great outdoors!) But I was an adult, with enough experience to know I could adjust to the new situation and cope, and with four small children dependent on me to help keep me going.

And my brain was intact.

For me it was a choice and it was also pure good luck.

The homecoming prince. The good-looking guy. The nice kid. The big brother everybody looked up to and wanted to be around, who liked to laugh and who was so good with little kids.  Suddenly trying not only to cope with a major new diagnosis and with finding out that his entire future as he’d pictured it no longer existed, but now having no functioning mind with which to learn and adjust. He was out of it. He simply did not and physically could not comprehend.

At church today, people were searching for ways to rally around the family. I, for whom writing is like breathing, offered this: write down memories of our Brian.  The Eagle Scout. The ready helper.  That beautiful smile.  Remember out loud for his family the best of who he was and what he did. There would be so many stories; give them to his parents, his grandparents, his little brothers and sisters, his aunts and uncles and his cousins.

Tell the good.

Because that is who he truly was.

(Typing fast, I’ve only got two minutes…)

Wha-a-a-t! That’s not supposed to…! I just put that in there!

Context:  Blue Cross helpfully said there were no deductibles on ileostomy supplies this year. Given our $10k deductible and a no-insurance catalog price of $995/month, that was a huge relief. They don’t tell you the fine points during the November enrollment period, nor do they answer the questions they don’t want you to know to ask.

So I was going, oh good.  And then they said that oh by the way that one month supply that just shipped, same monthly amount as ever, was, as of this year, to hold me for the quarter.  Wait, *what*!  Are you out of your MINDS?!

And today, how stunningly bad an idea that was was staring hard at me.

It’s okay. My doctor’s office is on it. (But why should they have to be?)

Michelle was sitting in a cozy spot on this cold, rainy day.  First time I ever saw a bluejay shaking itself off like a dog, or a very soaked squirrel, but I don’t think either would have cared for an offer of a hairdryer. Brrr.

Wrapped up in a blanket, hot mug of cocoa on the arm of the chair, laptop propped up on the other one, safe from all ills.  It cheered me up just to look at her.

I plunked down at her feet. “Can I growl?”

She looked at me. “Okay, you got one minute of whine.”

“Stupid bag burst.”

“Oh,” wincing.  She thought about it a moment.  Then she threw her arms out from under her blanket in a magnanimous, wide-open gesture, and granted me, “For that, you may have TWO minutes of whine!”

We both burst out laughing, and that was the end of that.  Hey, Michelle–you’re a good one.  Thank you.

(Massachusetts voters:  60.  It’s all in your hands tomorrow.)

January 2.  New Year’s will probably always now remind me of January 2.

There’s a whole lot I didn’t write in that post a year ago today.  I didn’t say it was an emergency colonoscopy.  I didn’t say how the doctor wanted me to get some blood tests run, too, but after he saw what he saw he made a point of telling Richard to take me straight home afterwards and not put me through going to the lab that day. He was hoping all that bleeding he’d wanted so much not to see would quiet down enough to make it easier to go in the next day.

It was all downhill from there.

We got a letter in the mail, that, fittingly, arrived today of all days: announcing the new company that would be handling our by-mail meds, which, were I still on it, would have applied to supplying my Humira–you cannot just walk into a pharmacy and buy a biological Rx off the shelf.

So now we know.  Caremark has been kicked out.  YES!! (I tell myself I’m not bitter.  And yet.  It is still true that had they done their job I might still have a colon. Had Blue Cross honored their commitments on time I might still have a colon, not to mention points south requiring that second operation.  They did not.)

But a year later, looking back… All of that is honestly a very small part of the whole.

There is this sense that I can handle anything now.

There is this sense that I can be there for anyone else now.

There is the knowledge that there were people who were there for me through anything and everything, including, to the best of your abilities, so many of you from wherever you were.  You let me know I was not alone and not bereft in that hospital room all those weeks with needles in my arms and itchy plastic anti-blood-clot machines working on my legs day and night, that my mom and my husband keeping watch there and my children who were away weren’t facing this alone either.  I cannot tell you how important your presence in the comments and by your prayers were during those days, the squares that were knit, the afghans that were assembled, the cards that were sent, the Thinking Good Thoughts that got thought. Thank you.

There were doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, even that housekeeper, who made me feel it was important to them that I had passed through their lives and thereby gave meaning to what I was having to go through.  In the process, they, too, strengthened my then-tenuous hold on my own.  How close I came–not that there was any doubt–was brought home to me when I got word two months ago that someone my little brother had grown up with had just had the same liver-inflammation complication of his own Crohn’s; he had not made it.  My heart goes out to his family.

I am intensely grateful to be here with my own family still.  Amazed at the things I can do now.  Intensely grateful at having had our kids home for the holidays.  Celebrate? Oh, honey, there are no words to say how much.  And it’s a whole new year!

The squirrels weren’t diving into those pistachios (I’d been curious).  No, no, thanks, plain sunflowerburgers for me and my bro, hold the mayo. Eww, waitress, there’s a hair in my picture!

A quick note–I hope I didn’t offend anyone, including Ms. Reddy, with yesterday’s bit of snarkiness.  A Mississippi Delta blues song that, to me, totally puts women down, sung chirpy and perky and with an Australian accent–it just didn’t work out well for me.

Okay. Moving along!

I did, however, put my friend Neil’s music on last night before going to bed and I sat in front of the speakers, absorbing the notes in just a couple of favorite pieces before turning in, reveling in how good they sounded with my aids adjusted to the new situation.  Planting something positive in my brain for future five a.m. half-awake brainstorm sessions. It worked.

Today I got a little knitting done in a waiting room: I saw my rheumatologist for the first time in exactly a year.  His nurse got me into the exam room and shut the door behind her before she exclaimed, “You’ve lost weight, haven’t you…!?” having no idea and clearly a little afraid to ask.

I hate having to fill people in from scratch and watching them wince.  But at least then she filled the doctor in for me.

He came in and got the details.  He did a fair bit of wincing himself, while I wanted to tell him, it’s okay!  But then, none of it was new news to me, and I deeply appreciated that what I’d gone through meant something to him.  (And her.)  I mattered. It showed in his face.  Thank you, Dr. F. And Nurse M.

I handed him the UCSF results and watched his eyes as he looked it over.  I told him that Dr. R knew steroids didn’t work on me, but there was no convincing the young doctors from Dr. R’s department working my case in his absence, who were sure that if you just threw enough steroids at that Crohn’s, it would tamp it down at last.  200 mg a day. (That is a breathtakingly high dose.  Granted, they were trying to save my colon and my life. Details.)

His eyebrows raised. “Did it?”

“It did absolutely zero.”

He allowed as how being as laid up as I’d been had contributed, too, but he made the diagnosis definite. Osteoporosis.  At 50.  Walk, he said, good that you’ve started walking again, take lots of walks. Some of the loss is irreversible, but some you can do something about.  And build that strength back up.

Another consultation appointment next week before treatment can/might start, the two doctors want to handle it together.  (Hurry, before we lose our current insurance policy Jan 1…   Don’t get me started…)

Remember when I came to out of surgery in August and the first thing I saw was a group of doctors surrounding the foot of my bed talking to me? Trying to get me to answer their questions?  Their mouths were moving but there was no sound.  Nada.  I groggily asked for my hearing aids, put them in, fumbled the battery cases closed and turned the things on…

And heard nearly nothing still.

Nobody had any idea why. This was not supposed to happen.

Things got somewhat better; then, on my last day in the hospital, I was given a dose of Dilaudid when taking my surgical tube out proved extremely painful–and as that dose went into my IV, it was like turning the volume down on the voices around me with an ever-so-slight time delay.  The Dilaudid. Busted.

I put off getting my hearing tested. I wanted to give my ears recovery time.  But mostly, I wanted not to believe I’d permanently lost more of my hearing, and if I waited, and it was so, then there could be no arguing with it.

There is now no more arguing with it: I finally got in to see John Miles today.   It’s a 5dB loss across the board, all frequencies, both ears, except for one holdout at 1KhZ in one ear that stayed the same.  Mind you, I had already become someone who didn’t hear train whistles or fire alarms most of the time without those aids in.

I drove home exulting at being able to again hear music playing clearly, cranked up high to try to drive out of my brain the horribly kitschy Helen Reddy greatest hits album I had the great misfortune to listen to last week because a friend was throwing it away and I thought I’d give nostalgia a kick, deaf or no. (I know. I liked it when I was 12, too.  Some of the songs were okay, but some–I won’t even tell you the names of those earworms. I’m nicer than that.)

I have smart friends….  I woke up at 5 am with the worst of the earworms singing away gleefully at perfect pitch.  Nooooo…!  I listened to everything today from Camel to Christmas carols.  Cleanse, brain, cleanse!

I still say this hearing thing is worth it.

——–

*Consonants, which are made with the tongue against the teeth, are higher-pitched than vowels, which are made reverberating in the throat, and so the consonants are the first to disappear in a high-frequency loss, which is what most older people have. This is why people sound to them like they’re mumbling.  They’re missing pieces of the words.  That previous sentence would then be “e i i e i o e o.”

Me, I’ve been older since my teens.

Last time I saw the surgeon he got to play Santa. But I missed one nurse from that day: she saw me into the examining room, and we spoke long enough for me to feel she was one who truly cared about her patients too. She just sparkled. I was impressed, and sorry later to have missed her.  I was expecting her to come back in but someone else did instead, the young nurse I surprised with a lace scarf at the end.

Today was my last (oh honey I so hope) post-op at Stanford.  A medical assistant told me they were crazy-busy today, that they had 45 patients to get through. Wow. But when Dr. S. came in, one of the first things he said was how much his wife loved her shawl. The man is a peach. (And so is his wife!)  He was completely focused on me and on taking care of me and on answering my questions; nothing else intruded. I’d been scoped yesterday?  (Thank you Dr. R.!)  We discussed where the bleeding had been and for how long–it finally stopped today; he told me why it was normal there with a blockage, and I came away very reassured.

But he also told me to call him next time there’s any such problem, and he clearly meant it. Having done two blockages now, I needed to hear that. Thank you, Dr. S.

Before I left home, I’d put some of the cuter Peruvian fingerpuppets in my purse, and as he was on his way out the door, I gave him a few for future pediatric patients or for children of patients.  He looked at the fish and laughed.

I saw that missing nurse briefly again in the hallway as I was coming out.  She was talking to another patient, and there was a scale right there with a chair next to it; I commandeered the chair while fishing quickly through my knitting bag for the scarf that had been waiting a month for her.  But by the time I got it out of the ziploc, she was walking briskly away.

I called her name after her. That startled her–Who? as she spun around.  How did you…?

And then she was exclaiming, “These are my favorite colors! Oh wow!” I told her that a friend of mine had dyed the yarn. (Hey, Lisa–the Mardi Gras colorway in merino. Love it.)

I finally got to tell one more person who deserved it how much her kindness and smile meant each and every day to all the people streaming through those doors. Forty-five people is a lot of eased burdens just today.

She was so thrilled. She so much deserved it. She made me so happy.  This is why I do this.

Thank you, everybody, for your good wishes, kind words, prayers and support.  In the self-diagnosis department, it looks clearly now like a blockage, and I heard from one person with far more experience than I at this colectomy stuff that it’s normal for that to have some bleeding with it.

That is SO much better news than a new Crohn’s site. It’s temporary and it’s fixable.

We’ll see what the doctors say.

Talk about timing.

I have my last post-op appointment with my surgeon next Thursday.

Just yesterday I was telling an old friend, as I have a number of people now, that, yeah, I’d had a rough year but it was all over and I’m fine now and it’s a wonderful place to be,  free of all that and with more energy than in ages.

And I got that call from MedicAlert last week, getting things updated; eh, you never know, right?

That you might wake up the morning after their bracelet comes with everything back and staring you right there in the face.  Blood.  The Crohn’s. That bit of achiness at night? It wasn’t post-op normalness after all, and today, food isn’t happy staying down.

My surgeon and I will have more topics to discuss than I had had any plan to. I’ve sent a note to my Dr. R, meantime.  Next week will be interesting.

(Edited to add: my husband just came home from Costco with a huge package of Seckel pears! I’ve been looking for those fruitlessly, fruitlessly, I tell you.  They are THE best pear on the planet, their season is short, they can’t grow here because they need too much cold to set fruit so I can’t grow my own–if you find some, buy them!

I feel better already.  Go Richard!)

At Purlescence I reached back towards some of the baby alpaca on the sale table behind me and got caught wincing. I admitted I’d had a recent near fall and someone had grabbed me on my way over and had saved me. I’m glad they did, but my shoulder’s been begrudging it.

“You need to come with airbags,” one knitter opined about my balance issues.

I hesitated just long enough to almost have some sense of propriety before I opened my mouth and went straight for it and answered her, “I do, now.”

So.  ‘Hem.  Meantime.  I read somewhere that a Slinky toy on a birdfeeder pole will send the squirrels and their ex-seed-ing greed back down to earth.  Curious.  That could be entertaining, along the lines of the kid I saw trying to run up the then-World’s Longest Escalator (the downward side, of course) at the Montreal World’s Fair, Expo ‘67.  I was in third grade at the time and stunned, stuck between being awed at his having gotten halfway up–IF he’d started running at the bottom, good and honest–and the idiocy of the idea. I remember looking up at whichever parent was closest and half-asking if I could try that or was it as dumb as it looked.

They quickly affirmed it would be stupid.  And don’t.  I think they could just picture all six of their offspring suddenly taking off trying to beat each other going the wrong way through a crowd unhappy at being pushed at long narrow heights, and somehow that idea just didn’t appeal.

Dunno if they make Slinkys wide enough for my awning poles, but, hey.  I thought it would be worth checking out; we were going to Target anyway.

Ever try to find a low-tech toy these days?

Online later, I did find them. And variations, including–now wait a moment.  I’m assuming someone placed a special order and that they had to make so many and now they’re just trying to sell off the rest of the stock.  (Tell me this isn’t in their normal line!)  How about: 14k gold-plated. Slinkys!

This is so begging for CEO jokes.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around and around and around and…but I think it’s flipping out.  Can you just picture it? A golden pawshake for the high-fliers.

The big annual Labor Day block party.

Random Hershey’s cookbook cake recipe–using mini muffin pans, it made three dozen.  (Note to self: fancy schmancy Williams Sonoma one?  The pan looks artsy, the results, not so much. Go for plain and round only next time, like the ones shown here.)  Bake 13 minutes.

Ganache: 1 1/4 to 1 1/3 c heavy cream, ~17 oz good dark chocolate (one Trader Joe’s Pound Plus Bittersweet bar.)  Break chocolate by smashing bar (still wrapped!) to the floor repeatedly.  Thwack.  Melt chocolate in cream, stir; will semi-set fairly quickly.

Raspberries: rinsed, then carefully individually dried off.

Three of my neighbors in this square block work at Stanford Hospital. One is about to start a new job in a different department; I told her the names of my favorite nurses she’d be working with and to tell them hello for me.

I didn’t mention that the last time before this month that I finished a pair of socks, it was six years ago, done as a thank you to the highly empathetic B. for being willing to walk in his patients’ shoes. Earlier this year, I found myself saying to someone at the nurses’ station, “I’d know the back of that head anywhere!” and he turned and we had a delighted reunion, IV pole and all.

I spoke in church briefly today about a man from a local ward (congregation in Mormon speak), not ours but the next one over, whose volunteer assignment is to offer the Sacrament on the Sabbath to members of our church who are hospitalized at Stanford.

And thus a month ago he found himself with a list of names and room numbers in hand, walking into my room for the fourth time this year, where, there I was, IV and all all over again.  He exclaimed, It’s YOU! How ARE you!

Much better as of right now, and thanks.

Such a simple act: kneeling by my bedside.  The heartfelt prayer.  A little bread.  The second prayer.  A little water.

Such a powerful act: coming to one who cannot come to you.  Declaring by how he lives that there are no strangers now, only friends.  Being with another in their extremity, completely present for them in the moment, offering a shared faith in the light and love of God that surpasses all such circumstances.  He brought to me, in his own way and fulfilling his own part, a healing.

Looking back at all that I went through this past year, I said today, the pain simply falls away: all that is left is the moments of light.  The love.  God’s.  His. The doctors’. The nurses’. Every person who cared.  It is made so visible by their choices in those circumstances.

I still don’t remember that man’s name.  But I will always know that warm smile.

From the day I was told I would have this surgery, I told Dr. S, I started knitting.

But the first thing yesterday was a young nurse who came in and asked me a set number of questions. One was standard for patients who’ve had a resection, but there was no resection done here–I laughed, answering, “Don’t have the body parts for that anymore!”

She clearly felt put on the spot. I remember being young and intimidated by older people (wait–older? Hey!…)  My heart went out to her–it’s okay!  Certainly not something to worry over.

The surgeon was running late and I made him much later. I didn’t want to miss anybody. The more he saw what I’d done as I pulled things out of my bag, the happier he got about the whole thing too.  I couldn’t remember everybody’s names; I’m not great at learning new information when I’m drugged out in the hospital.  I had individual projects in ziploc bags, a card to each, but in some, they were still waiting for the names to be added.  Dear (blank).

He helped by looking up my records and scanning down the screen for me, trying not to miss anybody either. I explained I was on my way to E ward after that to go see the nurses.

You know, he could have thought of his schedule and gotten annoyed at my hijacking his time. Instead, the grin on his face just kept getting bigger and bigger as I pulled out one  after another–let’s see, got Dr. X, Y, and Z here, what was the name of? And…? Anyone else?

“Oh, that’s COOL!” to the piano-pattern hat.  He described exactly the intended recipient I was thinking of, and said, “Oh, that’s Lionel.”

I looked at him, cracking up: “I can NOT call him Lionel. What was his *name*?”

Oh. Right. Dr…

And another–he spelled it out but I just wasn’t getting it. With a high-frequency loss, V, C, T, G and the like all sound like the vowel E: no consonant sounds need apply when there is no context to guess by.  So he tore off a small piece of the paper covering the exam table and wrote it out for me. Okay, got it! (Resourceful on the spot–I like it!)

He held up the pink shawl for his wife and he and the young nurse admired it while I explained the tradition of lace wedding ring shawls. He took his wedding band off and pictured it against the stitches and asked, and I grinned, “Probably better yours than your wife’s size!” while saying that the reinforced neck edge would be the only reason it wouldn’t go through. He loved it.

He had done micro-sized stitches that had healed up unbelievably fast, with so much less pain than I’d expected–I mean, I knew it was a bigger surgery in January, but–and so I was giving tiny stitches in baby alpaca back in thanks. He was deeply gratified.  And to my surprise, a little abashed (but very pleased) at my complimenting his work.

The surgeon who’d assisted him was, as it turned out, the surgeon I’d had in January; her new job wasn’t so far away after all. I was thrilled to get to see her again three weeks ago.  (She’s the one who ran into me downtown last Saturday.)  There was a skein of Sea Silk at Purlescence–the Glacier–in exactly the colors I’d seen her wearing many a time, so, having already knit her a full shawl back then, that skein had leaped out at me  as a scarf for her. A little variety in the wardrobe.

At the end, I pulled a Purlescence bag out of my bag so he would have a Santa Claus pack to haul the loot around in.

And then one more thing: the young nurse, having watched all this going on, was suddenly stunned when I reached back into the main bag, pulled out a scarf that would go well with her coloring, and tossed it (I still had that silly gown on, there are limits to one’s dignity in such circumstances) across to her.

And at last I got to see her really happy too.

Afterwards, I walked over to the main hospital to give out nine more scarves.  Lace flowers to match Stanford’s gardens, lace leaves for the plants, etc.  I went hither and yarn…  I finally got one to one of the nurses I’d had while in the oncology unit back when that had been the only available bed in the hospital last time. She was a good one. She needed to know she was remembered.

Wait, what floor had I been on again this time?  Okay, that’s the bone marrow unit, that’s the post-surgery ICU, been there (says Stanford Accounting, don’t remember it) but not that…  They’d closed off an inner corridor and my visual memory, always shaky since early in my lupus, was just lost.  I got a whole lot of walking done.

I didn’t get to see everybody I wanted to, but when I finally went, oh, duh. Right. THAT floor!, the nurse at the desk got to anticipate playing Santa too, with a big grin on her face. This time, I left the stack of scarves in a sweater-sized ziploc with a list of names. People could pick what they liked. The one person who had a specific one coming her way, in pink to match her scrubs three weeks ago, I did get to see and hug in thanks for her caring. Very cool.

It was her project I had had in my hands when Dr. S had come into my hospital room and, in answer to my query, had said his wife liked that color.  It was her scarf I took to the shelves at Purlescence, looking for a match. And they do.

It wasn’t till I was almost asleep last night that I realized that that blue Half Moon Bay pattern hadn’t come home with me–I’m pretty sure there was one more scarf in that bag than there were names I’d remembered.  Cool.  Maybe that first-night’s nurse whose name and face were lost to my post-anesthesia haze got one after all.

By, say, wearing a cool Sock Summit t-shirt and a Sock Summit pin and wearing Sock Gate-colorway socks, dyed by Tina (you have to knit them first) when actually, no, you weren’t at Sock Summit.

This drive-by knitting gift landed in my mailbox today, from Nancy, crediting JoAnne, with a little tag in there from Ellen, and saying Stephanie approved.  A group hug, it sounds like.  Thank you doesn’t begin to express the sense of wonder at being included like this.  Wow.  Cool.  Thank you!

I confess to cowardice last month: I did tell my surgeon there was a knitting conference. I waited to see his reaction before I was going to specify that it was actually not just that, but a sock knitting conference–and then somehow as we talked about things related to the kinds of stitches he was going to be doing, it never quite came up.

Heh.  I know how I can make it obvious now. Now that I’ve broken him in on the general idea, with my husband enthusiastically nodding that oh yes, thousands of knitters come to these knitting conferences, I can show that indeed we do.

And now that I have been made well at his and the other surgeons’ hands, next time I won’t have to miss it. Or even worry about missing it.  I can’t tell you what a gift that is.

Meantime, this is what Sea Silk looks like in Glacier when it’s damp, which it won’t be for very long. One more finished!  Silly doctors probably don’t realize the post-op is supposed to be a grand reunion time: my head surgeon will just have to go play a knitterly Santa Claus afterwards, I imagine.  Think he’ll mind?