I checked my stash when I went to take this picture after getting home–I was surprised at how few I had left.  Time to replenish.

The story: sometimes it’s more about the parents.

There’s a Costco a mile from our house and there were things needing picking up; we don’t shop on Sundays, and waiting till Monday was going to be a pain.  And…  Things were such that if I didn’t go right then, nobody was going and it was twelve minutes to closing time.

I’ve been trying to avoid exposure to germs especially right now.  We don’t need any delays re the surgery.  And yet.  I ignored the crazy bod and asserted, hey, I’m on it, and somehow nobody objected.

I knew I had to be in and out of there pretty quickly and grabbed the few things on the list fast before the ohmygoshthestoreisclosing crowd got too big at checkout.  I had one moment standing in line where I felt like take a deep breath, c’mon, you can make it.

I needed a distraction from the Crohn’s noise, and it turned out, I got it.  There was a toddler in a shopping cart near the door who had been out and about just a bit longer than she could handle. She wasn’t in meltdown mode, but she was quivering on the edge.

And so, it looked like, was her mom, who was gamely trying to keep her daughter happy.  The mom’s dress proclaimed her as non-mainstream.  Whether she was new to this country or not, I don’t know, although so many people are in this area–but one thing I do know is, it’s wonderful but it is also hard to be the mother of a small child.

Little ones mimic not only our words as they learn to talk, but also our moods. They are absolutely unerring in picking up on how we feel. It is so easy to scoop them up and cheer them up and make their entire world wonderful; it is so easy to be cheered up by them; but the burden of parenthood is that when we’re stressed, it doesn’t take long before they are too. And they can be fairly loud about making it known that they want everything fixed NOW.

Which too many in the world at large tend not to approve of, which doesn’t make matters easier.

And yet.  They encourage us to live up to the best in ourselves to make them laugh again too by the very fact that they come around so easily.  How many middle-aged parents, remembering what it was like when their children were little, will make smiley faces and play peek-a-boo with a little one in a cart?  We remember. And we borrow back from Time the delight of pleasing toddlers: all little children are our children too now.

That mom looked like she was trying, but please (glancing in the direction of her distracted husband) get her out of this place and let her go home.

Costco requires its members to let their receipt be looked over on their way out the door.  There was another lineup–again, not too bad.  I pulled my cart over and waved the guy behind me forward as I fished in my purse.

There was just one in there: a bright green handknitted hummingbird from the women’s cooperative in Peru, with a red throat and a flower at the end of its beak.  Cool. I took a few steps over and handed it to the mom:  “It’s for helping cheer her up.”

She looked at me and at it, stunned. She said nothing; I don’t know if we had English in common.  “It’s a finger puppet.  Merry Christmas,” not wanting to invoke religion at all but rather the idea of a gift freely given and not expected back.

I returned to my cart and was almost immediately up to the door guy, and just as I turned going out, done, I glanced back–to where she was waiting for me to. She caught my eye, smiled, and waved.

And her little daughter was happy.

I floated all the way home, feeling like, and *that’s* why nobody else could put things down just then to run to the store before it closed!

I’ve tried to keep it at arm’s length, but it hogs the air around here and keeps finding its way out in bits and pieces on the blog.

I so dearly want to go to Sock Summit. I particularly wish I could thank Barbara Walker in person for her generosity in letting me use some of her lace patterns within the shawls in my book.

I can’t.

I want to go to Warren’s shop in San Rafael, just north of San Francisco, for one last time before he closes his doors the end of this month, to wish a good man well with whatever comes next.

At least I’ll get to see him at Stitches West next year.

I keep thinking of fun day trips to do with Michelle, and she just looks at me and goes, Are you up to that?

Oh. Right. Well, hey, brownie points for positive thinking.

I made it to Knit Night at Purlescence last night; face time with friends won out, and here’s Jasmin trying on the Monterey, to my great delight at her enthusiasm over it.

I talked to pathology today and arranged to pick up my slides to take to my new surgeon (my old one having left) at Stanford.  There is one more test to run first that might delay what seems surely inevitable at this point.  I’ve been bleeding at least ten times a day, no meds are working, (I know–same old, same old), it could easily fistulize and cause an emergency, and that 10″ stump has to go.

When so many of you were praying for the Humira to work last January, and it seemed not to?  But: the rectum healed up enough after those doses that they were able to staple it off rather than creating another stoma with it. Given what the thing has done since then, I am grateful in the extreme for that–it has made this situation far, far easier.

Right now all we can do is wait while I try not to waste my breath wishing the operation  were weeks in the past already.  That day will come. I’m holding my blankets close for comfort: Robert’s, (skip about halfway down the post), the one Elizabeth‘s group made, the two Anniebee‘s group made, and the one from the South Bay Knitters I’ve had for several years now that they made as a congratulations on getting “Wrapped in Comfort” accepted for publication. I still have the nametags on their squares telling who knit which.

I have a new pattern I wanted to rework in a laceweight with more detail than the fingering yarn I first knitted it up in, and what shows up on my doorstep today from Lisa?… Baby alpaca laceweight, my favorite, gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous and dyed and gifted on the spot as soon as she knew.  Wow.  I can’t wait to dive into it. There is such a joy in creating something that’s never been in the world before and then sharing it.

As so many of you did for me.  Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, every square knitter and afghan put-er-together-er and every person who has prayed, read, Thought Good Thoughts.  It all helps, and I wrap it around me gratefully.  Thank you.  This is just a blip, and we’ll get through it just like the last time.

Remember when the employee of Caremark, the prescription distributor my insurance company contracts with, told me they weren’t sure they wanted the liability of selling me my prescribed Humira?  At a time it looked like nothing else would keep me alive?  I wanted to say to them, all drugs have side effects and if you can’t handle that simple fact of life, what on earth are you doing in this business?  And why do you have any say whatsoever?  You’re just a supplier. My insurance has (FINALLY!) approved that Humira.  It is approved by the FDA for the disease I have.  Send me the flippin’ med, fer cryin’ out loud, since it’s one I cannot pick up at a drugstore and cannot do anything about on my own.

And we all know how that one went. Nada, despite frantic phone calls from us, from my doctor, even from that Caremark employee’s secretary responding to me by walking around the floor trying to find where that woman went so she would finally take my call again and do the right thing.

And then my readers saved the day by bombarding them with messages till they not only caved when the weekend was over, but they actually grovelled.  Which was a little too satisfying for my own good.

So. On the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, as I’ve written here, I was in Urgent Care again in great pain with a new flare, and one of the things the doctor I saw did was to prescribe me Zofran.

When my Crohn’s flares, I barf.  I never did once during all my pregnancies and I used to pride myself on having an iron stomach. Shows you what I knew.  So.  It is somewhat unusual for Crohn’s to cause barfing, and I can assure anybody that thank you, I’d prefer to be normal on that one.  But all the iron-stomach thinking and determination I’ve tried gets me nowhere these days: in the hospital, they had to keep me on two different high-powered IV anti-nausea meds at a time pretty constantly.

I could draw you graphic pictures of what I do on Phenargan, the entry-level med. Let’s not.

Based on all that, the Urgent Care doctor prescribed me Zofran instead, and rightfully so.

Which the insurance company denied. And not only denied, but since it was a holiday weekend, they had nobody on staff to even begin to appeal it to to get me through the long weekend. The doctor filling in for my Dr. R. reiterated to them a few days later my need for that med; with my very low blood pressure, barfing is an emergency and I need to have access to it.

I got a letter Saturday. Not from Blue Cross, my insurer, but from Caremark, who, like I say, they contract with, and who my local pharmacy had to get the okay from.  And I quote:

“The request was denied for the following reason:

The patient is not receiving moderate to severely emetogenic chemotherapy, total body irradiation or fractionated abdominal irradiation. The patient is not less than 18 years of age with a diagnosis of gastroenteritis and dehydration.”

I don’t have cancer so go ahead and barf. Nice.

And we wonder why the insurance companies don’t want the accountability that would be a natural part of the competition of having people having a choice of a government plan vs. them?  Right now, their only accountability is done legislative piece by piece, state by state, as outraged people get the one part of medical neglect they’ve been subjected to fixed by the demand of the law, while other parts wait for someone to suffer loudly enough.

My friend and hero Marnie took on a quarter million dollars in medical debt to adopt her kids, because at the time insurance companies were allowed to deny coverage to babies till they’d proven they were healthy their first month and forever if they weren’t.  That loophole was so egregious as to spark a Federal law outlawing it, too late for her.

We need a better system.  We need the will to do it. I’m not one demanding a single payer, but I do say, and loudly, that the insurance companies MUST be held accountable.  And the only way to do that, short of lawsuits that drive up healthcare costs and enrich the lawyers, is if they have true competition, which they do not now.  You know why they’re fighting so hard against the government providing an optional plan.  They’d have to change.

I called my Dad today to wish him a happy birthday. (This is an old photo but I think it captures him so well.)

He gave me a mild scold that I’d been talking about birds on my blog and avoiding telling what’s going on.  I allowed as how that was true.  But they’re so cute!

So.  How ’bout them peregrines?  Two were snoozing at the end of the ledge this afternoon, and one gets up after awhile and decides it’s time to go play.  He (of course it’s Veer, who else) nudges his sister with his beak. She’s snoozing. He tries again; nothing doing. He picks up that big foot of his and gives her a decided shove.

Veer–let me explain this to you.  I am ignoring you.  I am ASLEEP.  Notice the closed eyes?

He puts his foot out again and broadsides her.  Waits for a response.  Nada.

Does it again, at which point she turns her head away and does all but roll her eyes, which are now finally open.  VEER!  I. Am. NOT. getting. UP!

On the other side of siblinghood, yesterday, when Kya was up on that roof drying off from her ordeal, a report came in this morning that said that she’d flattened herself down in the way that’s referred to as “pancaking,” the way the babies sleep, with feet out behind and bellies flat, to soon see one of her siblings (one report said Veer, one, Ilahay) who’d flown up there to keep her company.  The arrival pancaked down beside her and stayed there till Kya was ready to pick herself up and give it a go again.  She was not alone.

She ended up eventually safely back in the nest.

I don’t know if that was her on the ledge today with her brother or if it was another sister.  C’mon! There’s a gorgeous world waiting out there for us. I’ve seen it!  Let’s go fly!

Give it a rest for now, okay, Veer?

Oh, alright, be that way, and he half flew half ran off down the ledge and away.

——————-

And just because it’s Dad’s birthday and he wants me to, okay, yes,  I’ll add a report.  My Dr. R finally got back from his sabbatical, something I’d been waiting for (along with probably half the population in town, it must feel like to him.)

Bleeding below the endpoint of the colectomy surgery, pain above in upper GI, although less of the latter now.  So.  I’m to go on prednisone again while hoping it’s not enough to set off a diabetes reaction again, come in for x-rays next Thursday and see him again the next day, and meantime he scoped that bleeding stapled-off stump.  (The big G search engine is not my friend on any further description here and that’s probably more than you want to read anyway.)  Totally Crohn’s-y looking.  Further surgery is one eventual option, but not yet.  Biopsies taken.

And I had not told him anything about it nor said anything to her this morning, but it was all I could do not to snicker as he surprised me by telling the nurse I’d “already been prepped” for the scope: she had shoved a pamphlet at me last week with pre-sigmoidoscopy dietary restrictions.  I’d tried to explain to her that there was no colon.

She insisted.

No connection.  Does Not Apply.

She still insisted.

I drank my thoroughly-dairy-containing hot cocoa yesterday morning and this with a feeling that it was an act of defiance.

Guess who was assisting at the scope.  Not that I’d said anything to her, but.  A lesson to myself not to roll my eyes at any nurse ever, even just from within, because you never know when you’ll need them, and besides.  Who doesn’t need a little gentleness their way anyway.  It was probably at least partly a language barrier, which must be very difficult for her and I of all people, with my deafness issues, knew it.

Meantime, I am enjoying my time chuckling at the antics of teenage birds acting so much like my kids did and my siblings and I before that, while grateful to good parents who helped us learn to spread our wings well.  Happy birthday, Dad!

I got told to take some benedryl this morning and a massive dose of prednisone, which is a steroid, last night, prior to coming in for the CT scan, due to previously having had an allergic reaction to topical iodine. I wanted to argue with the radiologist that I’d been told by a doctor in the hospital, prior to a CT scan there, that iodine is a mineral and one cannot physically be allergic to it, only to what it’s mixed with.  But I decided, eh. Just make them happy. I took it.

Good thing.  Yesterday evening I’d been back to serious pain, holding my stomach to be able to walk down the hall.  Took the pred, went to bed… And although I was quickly wired to the max, the pain, I suddenly realized, was almost gone.

It was absolutely stunning. Pred has never touched my Crohn’s, ever, at any dose. They had me on 200 mg/day via IV in the hospital, and, nada.

I had a longstanding appointment anyway with my surgeon for right after the CT scan, and she was delighted.  “Different body parts sometimes respond differently to the same med, and you’ve only ever had Crohn’s in your colon before.”

She thought she saw a Crohn’s spot on the small intestine in the scan; the radiologist’s preliminary report didn’t think so or didn’t catch it.  Two pairs of eyes is a good thing. We’ll see how that settles out; as the surgeon cautioned, “I’m not a radiologist.” (Ed. to add: they talked, the radiologist went carefully over it again, and said no, it was normal. There is another test that could be run, but Dr. R will have to order it when he gets back.)

But there is now a definitely-maybe hope of being successfully treated. I can’t tell you how good that feels.  It’s not gone, but I’ll take all the improvement I can get.

Oh, and, I tried to knit my Monterey shawl during the long wait between the half dozen large paper cups of dye I had to drink and the actual scan, I really tried. But benedryl and no sleep and a complex pattern–I got about a dozen stitches into a row, shook my head at a mistake, couldn’t see what I’d done for the life of me–that’s when you know I’m drugged out–and tinked back to the beginning and stuffed it back in my knitting bag. I had carefully packed a spare ball of yarn and needles just in case, picked it up, and launched into a scarf in the Michelle shawl lace pattern.  Something utterly brainless, silk and merino comfort knitting to comfort someone else by.  So many people have knitted for me lately.  Time to get back to work on giving back.

I got in today.  The nurse on the phone sounded again reluctant, at which point I played the trump card of the Urgent Care doctor having said upper-GI inflammation and that I was to be seen in GI on Tuesday.  Oh. She let me in.

I adore the doctor I got in to see.  Nancy, she’s the one your shawl went to. (And she was not there Friday.)

It might not be a new flare; it might be an adhesion from the surgery. Or a fistula. Or even another blockage (don’t think so).  CT scan tomorrow with the requisite fasting and pre-procedure meds.

Meantime, here are a couple of chick flicks for those so interested. The second is of last year’s banding, with the parents screaming past the guy’s head every few seconds–you can tell why he’s wearing a hard helmet!

I slept in today and felt quite a bit better; yesterday was about as bad as I want to get.

Memorial Day has me thinking about my uncle. EG in the title, of course, is for the Enola Gay he flew on.

On a different note.  The baby peregrines are supposed to fledge Friday or so. (I’m wondering about the one that is two days younger than the others.)  The falconatics have a listserv where they’ve been talking about breaking out the chocolate in celebration come the day, and one said, we’d have to open a whole chocolate shop!

To which I replied that it would need to be dark chocolate to celebrate Clara silhouetted against the city lights.  Only, make sure it’s not a fly-by-night operation.

I’ve gone from a calm yeah, yeah, whatever–hey, no blood through the stoma, which they were glad to hear, so how bad can it be, to wanting to type a screaming NO NO NO NO NO!!! to semi-calm again.  Yes, we did go to Urgent Care, the deciding factor being that there’s no question they would have access to my electronic medical records there; the peer pressure via the blog was very helpful in getting me out the door, and thank you.

I did not know there was such a thing as drinkable lidocaine with maalox. I told the doctor I preferred chocolate.  He chuckled.  He came back awhile later and asked if it helped; it did. I got the impression he almost hoped it didn’t, that he wanted to be wrong.  Looks like upper GI inflammation.  That area would be your stomach, and…  What do they treat your Crohn’s with?

…oh.

He allowed as how he could do a full workup with a CT scan, but it could wait till tomorrow with the GI doctors taking over. Oh, right, sorry, Tuesday.

We got home.  The phone rang. My friends Valerie and Al: his mother was visiting, they wanted to go to Santa Cruz but she wasn’t up to the walk, would it be possible to borrow my wheelchair?

Hey, not only a wheelchair.  When they got here, I apologized for the ratty-looking air cushion that we hadn’t replaced because of the unspeakable price tag, so please, no keys in the pockets, it’s punctureable.  But the chair alone would make her sore after a half hour or so, and with the cushion she’d feel wonderful however long they took and wherever they might go.

I took a risk and let my cushion I can’t afford to replace go to make an elderly woman I’d never met before today more comfortable in her day, and it totally made mine.

Of all the times she might have visited, of all the days they might have decided to drive over the hill to the beach at Santa Cruz, I needed it to be today, which they could never have known.  And so they did.  I can just hear the wheels going bumpitybumpitybumpity down the boardwalk from here.

(p.s. Today is my son Richard and his wife Kim’s first anniversary, and I can’t tell you how grateful and honored I feel to have Kim in the family. Happy anniversary!)

There was a new receptionist yesterday, she made a rookie mistake, and I didn’t correct for it.   I shouldn’t be making rookie mistakes myself by now, that was my fault.

In Family Practice, the receptionists have seemed to me to be empowered to simply create you a same-day appointment if the need is compelling. It wasn’t till after everything settled down yesterday and I’d had time to think that I realized that maybe that’s just through the one woman I know there who’s been on that job for all the 22 years we’ve lived here; she knows me and knows that my doctor and nurse in FP know me–that I don’t waste their time.  If I say I need to be seen, I do.

So when I called early yesterday morning to the GI department, I wondered if we might be able to do that, given how compelling the symptoms were to me: just give me an appointment, okay?

The result is that the new receptionist, who I’m sure could not in fact do that, made the mistake of sending a message to a nurse rather than connecting me to that nurse’s voicemail to do so myself. Which I should have insisted on, so that the nurse (who was also new and didn’t know me) would get a clear message of symptoms and would hear my voice in the process–that’s actually pretty important.

So some of the blame is absolutely mine in yesterday’s mess.

Last night was rough. Today not so much–but.  I sent a note off to my Dr. R in case he or whoever’s on call might be checking his messages, and something about spelling it all out like that… I think I may well let myself be talked into going to Urgent Care later after all.

Meantime, thank you, everybody, for your support. It helps.

I had a conversation once with my Dr R about another doctor whose nurse wasn’t returning my phone calls over a worrisome subject outside Dr. R’s field. “He doesn’t understand,” I said, “I don’t complain. And if I *do* complain, LISTEN UP!”

Dr R agreed, “You don’t complain,” and I knew what he was thinking: about the time six years ago when I kept thinking I was surely getting better till the morning it all suddenly went south fast and my survival was no sure thing. He made me promise forevermore after that to tell him when I wasn’t doing well.

I’m not doing well. I know, I was, it was nice while it lasted.

He’s on sabbatical. The receptionist said his nurse would ask the other doctors’ nurses if one of them could fit me in today. Five hours later, no phone call–when I called again and said, here, let me add some context to that, I had a total colectomy four months ago, I got a receptionist in what-can-I-do mode telling me she’d told the nurse and the nurse would call me back.

Yeah, I’ve been here before. When that one doctor did not answer me for four days I finally parked myself in his waiting room before he arrived for work that morning and demanded to be seen. It worked.

Abdominal pain as a description may not be a big deal to a gastroenterologist who doesn’t know me, but I know me and random doubling over when I eat or walk is Not A Good Sign. See me. Now.

—————-

Follow-up,  3:30: They blew me off. But at least I made them do so to my face rather than by their having me waiting by the phone for twelve hours.  They told me to go to Urgent Care.

It’s a holiday weekend and clearly none of them wanted to put in any extra time.

You go to Urgent Care to get an IV. You do not go there to get a diagnosis. I got sent there once under similar circumstances and got a doctor who denied I had Crohn’s, denied the reality of the Asacol I’d been on for five years for Crohn’s, insisted I must have eaten raspberries with salmonella, insisted he saw that a lot lately (and on how many others of them were you wrong, too, sir?), tested me, and it came back negative as I knew it would.  He insisted on re-testing me and culturing for ten days because by golly it was going to prove him right!

It stayed negative. Fancy that.

I figure today, well, if I’m healthy enough to manage driving myself there and back, then I guess I’ve validated their demand that I not get sick till Tuesday when the holiday weekend is over.

(Hey, wait, I guess I *can* take a picture at 9:35 pm! Flying totally blind, but hey, that’s what flashes are for. Does this count as kinnearing?)

Thank you Dr. R. for telling me if I went ahead and had that colectomy that up till then I’d been so afraid of, that after recovery, I would feel wonderful…

When we were at that hardware store Saturday, I also picked up a few chocolate mint plants.  When we got home, I planted them along a narrow strip at the front where they would be hemmed in by concrete: the walkway ahead of them, the foundation of the house behind, in a small bed less than a foot wide set between. Rinsed mint leaves dipped in sugar is a favorite of mine, and who can resist one that has chocolate as part of its very name? We would get along well.

Michelle asked me later, when she got home, “But Mom, don’t you know mint roots can grow through concrete?”  I knew they were invasive, but as in, right there right into the house?

Huh. Well, my mom says her Aunt Betty’s old house was held up by the ivy that grew clear into the closets on the second floor (wood is wood, right?), and I know that house has been standing since at least the late 1800’s.  Mint smells better than ivy.  Still.  Um.  I might have to eat a lot? We might replace zucchini in the proverbial scenario where the neighbors close the curtains and refuse to answer the door when they see us coming bringing some to share?

I planted two tomatoes out front: I thought that’s where Richard wanted them. He thought it was where I wanted them and that he was being agreeable. Turns out neither of us really wanted them there.  Again, that was Saturday evening; tonight in the dusk (after somewhat more careful consultation) they and the cages that were around them got slipped into the back yard and disappeared from the front.  You know, just messing with the neighbors’ minds a little. It was amazing to me to see how much growth they’d put out in two days of having extra dirt and sun to kick back in, basking in the warmth.

I was careful to take extra soil with the original rootballs.

Someone, I’m not sure who, topped the fig tree last fall.  Why? …Instead of soaring straight up, now it’s growing thickly in two parts from the cut at the top.  It’s right at the fence line.  I’m sitting here thinking at the folks behind us, half for you, half for me.  We’ll see how it goes. Again with the consultation concept: I’ll ask them if they want it there and if not, out it will go and a new one will be planted elsewhere. Having now owned a fig tree, I want a fig tree.

I watered the apple and plum trees, (the Meyer lemon can fend for itself for the moment) noting that despite the blossoms earlier, there was no sign of growing plumlets on the baby Santa Rosa and a few leaves looked well chewed. Okay, I guess not this year. Next year; all the more to look forward to (while I go read up on the subject to make sure it will happen then).

I tried to plant the hydrangea to top the evening off, but I ran out of daylight, since I can only garden outside when the UV risk is essentially zero–but the late evenings are definitely mine now.  Lift a spade full of rocks?  I can do this. For so very, very long, I could not, not the digging, not the lifting, not the carrying the hose from front to back, not the spading-out where I wanted those tomatoes, but now, I can.  All this energy!

At least today I knew where the spade was; those mint plants and the tomatoes in their first spot got planted with a large serving spoon from the kitchen.  Tells you how long it’s been.

In the “everything happens for a reason” department…

I wanted to get that birdfeeder set up that I got for Mother’s Day; we needed a large screw to put into the end of the porch overhang so that I could have it right outside my window here as I sit at the computer. Richard promises not to bump his head on it. And we needed a small metal trashcan to keep the seed in outside.

Every time we made plans to go to the hardware store this past week, which is not even a mile from our house, somehow it just didn’t happen. Till last night.

It was near to closing time and the store was pretty quiet.  We were going up and down the far aisles after we found the small trashcan: chewproof metal with a small hole already in the center of the lid so the seed can air out.  Item one done.

As we looked, there was a man with his own cart looking for something or other; we did the usual not-really-paying-attention-to-each-other as we passed.

I stopped.  Richard continued forward with our cart, but I backed up. I went over to the guy, and told him, “I like your T-shirt.” That stopped him as he did the sudden surprised reaction of thinking wait, which one am I wearing?  Oh, right.  Stanford Blood Center written across the front.

I told him, “Seven people donated blood in January and saved my life.”

He looked in my eyes in wonder and gratitude, then got a faraway look and his eyes got misty.  I added, “Thank you,” and turned at the end of the aisle and away.

I was actually on the verge of deleting the draft I was writing yesterday, thinking who wants to read this stuff, when that phone rang.  It was so stunning to me that that nurse would call immediately after I’d finished the last sentence and that she would initiate it when I thought that was something I had to do, and I hadn’t, that I had to add in her call and put that post out there.

The upshot is, she found an infectious diseases specialist covered by my insurance, a woman who happens to have a particular interest in prosthetics.  There you go. I got the necessary referral arranged and Monday in I go. Perfect.

The samples arrived from the manufacturer this morning.  Not even afternoon delivery–they paid the extra for FedEx morning arrival.  Go Hollister. Go stoma nurses at Stanford. Wow.

I am feeling considerably more cheerful today about the whole thing, as one might imagine.

I’ve definitely got some thank-you knitting to get done.

TMI from a tired blogger:

The good part, I suppose, of looking up staphylococcus aureus (yowsers!) is that I’ve become even more obsessive about washing my hands. Rubbing my sleepy eyes after reading that article landed hard in the Thou Shalt Nots.

I went back to dermatology yesterday.   Then called the stoma nurse today: leaking bags waking me up in the middle of the night four times in one week on top of that still-there-staph aureus infection is kinda getting old.   Not to mention expensive–if I use too many in a month, I get to pay for the extras at about $30 retail a shot.

The stoma nurse pulled strings and has a different type of skin barrier being overnighted to me now as samples (bless her!) to try that hopefully won’t give way, and said the weeping skin won’t heal if the adhesive is being pulled off too often–keep it to every other day, no more.

The dermatologist says the skin needs an antibiotic gel applied twice a day in order to heal.

Uh, guys…

Just as I finished typing the above, the phone rang. It was a nurse from my husband’s employer, wanting to see how I’d been doing since February and could she help with anything?

So she is now going to confer with an infectious diseases specialist to see if she can get me any more information.  While I’m sitting here marveling at the out-of-the-blueness and the timing of her call. Wow.

Meantime, some knitting is still actually going on over here, slowly but surely, on my new Grafton needles handmade in–I’ve come to really love the place–Vermont.

I spent today watching this little Picotee slowly open up.

Quite a few of my older amaryllis bulbs have been blooming with unusually short stems this year, including these two and the budding one lurking behind them.

They’re typically marketed as Christmas presents and bloom around the winter holidays on towering two- to three-foot stalks, their leaves lasting eight months or so.  Then you quit watering them, let them rest for one and a half to three months, start up again and wait for them to rebloom.  Rinse, rest, repeat.

I like to have some in full flower as far into the year as I can, so I stretch out the drying-out periods to stagger the timing; last year I had flowers all the way to the end of May.  Cool!

So. Around the middle of this past December, I did a mass watering of my several dozen older bulbs to get them started, knowing some would respond quickly, some slower.

But I was already three weeks into my Crohn’s flare, and as many know, it got bad fast after that. Carrying heavy pitchers of water around was something that got given up real fast. I worried about killing my bulbs off–one watering in the middle of five months?  But there was not a thing I could do about it.  And they just were not the first thing on anyone else’s mind during those days, as one might well imagine.

Mom eventually planted the ones Dad gave me for my birthday and took on the watering.

My older bulbs could have put all their energy into sheer survival mode, green only.  Some did. But some, with the beginnings of buds already formed inside the bulbs, were determined to bloom the moment it became possible, however  it could be done.

And those are the ones with the short stems now, giving it all they’ve got. A green hummingbird enjoyed them a few days ago.  And suddenly our roses are blooming en masse to celebrate spring too; I almost caught a honeybee in this picture.

Lene? The bulb you gave me a year ago started to send up its first two leaves right away, then they died off in the drought. I started watering it anyway when I could again.  It took it weeks to respond, long enough that I wasn’t sure why I was still trying, but now it’s got two unusually wide, healthy young leaves making up for lost time.

Amaryllises need four leaves producing food for the bulb for them to bloom the next year.

I can wait.

I’ve got all the time in the world now.