Years ago, I was doing Stitches West via wheelchair.

I had inherited a wheelchair pressure cushion (something like this only I think heavier duty) from a late friend and it was so comfortable that I ended up commandeering it for my knitting perch. I’ve had it about 25 years now. It has lasted.

So. Friends drove, we carpooled, and at the end of the day putting all that back into their car I heard something.

What. Is. That. Sound.

Oh, we heard that ever since this morning, they said, we just didn’t know what or where it was.

Turns out the nozzle had somehow come slightly open: the entire joyous day of running into old knitting friends and fondling new yarns, my seat had been playing whoopee cushion.

It flattened out about a month ago and Richard could use it right now so a friend came by with a bicycle pump today and we got it nice and full and it seems to be holding just fine and I guess I just knocked it loose again while rummaging around for something. Yay. But it takes me straight back to that bemused, feigned-nonchalance answer from my friend. Just before my disbelief and then our all cracking up.

But my story has been completely outdone.

Richard’s first night in the hospital, they looked at this 6’8″ guy with the operated-on foot in this normal-person bed and went, nope, and moved him down the hall to a bigger one. Still a tad short but better.

Friday, someone decided this just wouldn’t do when they did in fact have one longer than that, so while he was walking the hall with the nurse they moved that one into his room. Great.

Except.

By the next morning, after I’d started timing the (insert definitive expletive of one’s choice) thing, he’d figured it out: it was an air mattress. There had to be some small leak somewhere. That steady jackhammer-loud blast that went off for 50 seconds out of every five minutes round the clock?

So. Loud.

That was the sound of its compressor helpfully pumping it back up.

C. Striatum and Staphyloccocus Aureas are not our friends. But the pathology report finally came in today saying the surgery had cleared all the edges.

At 4 pm, he finally got to climb in the car on this ninth day and I drove him home.

His dad years ago needed to use a cane and refused to consider it. I went looking and had one shipped to him that I thought might change his mind: solid wood with cut-out grooves winding up it in a lighter shade. He declared it the nicest he’d ever seen and used it. (Score!) It was sent to us after he died.

Today we found out it was long enough for his taller son and it met the discharge requirements re mobility aids. Yay.

It is 8:40 pm and we are still waiting on the promised delivery of the IV meds that I’m supposed to start him on in an hour. A nurse will come by tomorrow, Sunday and all, to run the next set and make sure everything looks good.

He’s home, he’s home, he’s home.

—

P.S. At 9:20 it came. Ideally the refrigerated antibiotic is supposed to be left out an hour or two to come to room temperature (and must not be run under warm water nor put in a microwave), but they told us straight from the fridge is fine–it just feels really cold going into your veins. And of course that’s the one he needed tonight. Out of the icepacks and into his arm.

Been there, done that, threw on three warmed hospital blankets when it was me, so we’ll find out how it goes for him. But he’s got it and it’s going.

A week of driving to the hospital in stormy weather: yesterday I walked out to my car just in time to see a mom and teenage boy at theirs next to mine taking photos of the large limb a eucalyptus had dropped on their car. Not sure if the branch on the other side had been part of the first or not as he pulled it out of the way.

Today, blue sky and new snow on the nearby mountains.

I did not park under the trees.

This afternoon we watched a video and then with Richard and a nurse watching I practiced sanitizing edges and connecting examples of IV meds and saline syringes and how to do which dose how fast and how often. You set everything out in order on the sanitized tray and then you work your way across according to specific time intervals. (Write it out, I said. Yes they will.)

And then they kept him there.

The tall balding absolute beanpole of a nurse who loves his patients and looks and has a ready smile like Alex Pretti got assigned to him this evening and I didn’t say anything to the guy because I’m sure he’s heard it a lot and how can it not break your heart all over again.

Friends came to visit.

Turns out that from church this week, G had a pulmonary embolism, J had a burst appendix, L had a stroke, Richard of course…

And someone had a baby a few days ago.

I remember the wild thoughts with our first of, They’re sending ME home with this tiny thing? They think we know anything about being parents? Don’t they know we’ve never done this before? Don’t they know we have no idea what on earth we’re doing?

And then, day by single long day, you find out you can, in fact, do this, that you do learn as you go and it’s the wanting to do your best by others that makes it all somehow, inexplicably work out.

It’s all about learning to trust the life that is in us.

Home tomorrow maybe. Third toe needing detachment too maybe. PCC line is in. The final Infectious report is not.

Another day, got interrupted amidst decreasing so a few rows left to go on project #3–only because I didn’t realize I’d done 68 stitches not 70 (did I drop some of the cast on?) until it was the day’s worth of work and it took me a few minutes to figure out whether/what/if I was going to do anything about it. So sad too bad the decreases aren’t spaced perfectly, if it doesn’t pass the galloping horse test put it on a Ford Mustang and rev it up. It’s just a hat. I’m not doing it again.

Hat, cowl, hat. After reading up on his infectious agents I’m not letting anything I’m working on touch anything there it doesn’t have to no matter how good he looks.

Which stashling should I use up tomorrow.

The slightly taller/broader RN was the guy who leaned his head in Richard’s door briefly yesterday morning after he’d seen me go by before I had any idea who he was and said something I didn’t catch, ending with, Thank you, with a big smile, and disappeared as fast as he’d come.

So I missed most of the words, but the joy! It was palpable. His whole being absolutely radiated love and my first thought was, he must have confused us with someone else, someone he loved.

Later we got the rest of the story.

The other outcome was that my husband decided there had to be a better captions app than the two I’ve tried and went searching till he found the one the others should have been like all along–one that actually works in a conversation in a room with background noise and with people at various distances away.

I cannot begin to tell you how life-changing that is going to be. It already is.

Thank Stanford for fighting insurers over billing, clearly, because of how it got us bumped to that other hospital. Not a sentence I’d thought I’d be writing.

When I said that podiatrist customer had changed lives? I had no idea.

Turns out there were two kids running the ski department of that outdoors outfitter. The customer helped the one get into podiatry school.

The two good friends who’d been working side by side there never saw each other again.

I came around the corner this morning and standing at the nurse’s station with his back to me was a middle-aged man with the same general build, the same haircut, the same touch of gray at the ear–but he seemed too tall and a smidgen too broad to be our doctor.

Richard’s hospitalization had brought them to the same floor.

Our doctor’s friend had gone to nursing school and was now the senior RN on the floor. There each other was. For the first time in all these years.

The bed was upright and it probably helped to be tall; he assured me, No–trees, clouds, I can see out the window. Not all of it but yeah, I can see.

Good, I feel much better about that.

Meantime, I was stepping out the door today when a crow tumbled–no other word could describe it–out of the holly bush right in front of me and took off on foot, one disjointed wing at a funky angle after its roll down that prickliness.

I later did a search on whether crows fake injuries to lead you away from their nests, and the answer was, very rarely; they’ll be aggressive, they’ll caw for other crows to help them defend and mob, but faking injuries is pretty much for smaller more vulnerable birds, especially ground-nesting ones.

We’ve all seen crows playing king of the mountain at the tippy top of the highest tree around. They like height.

So, let’s see, there’s a snowy plover video here. But that one faked it with both wings. This was just one, and its quick walk was a bit awkward, too.

It couldn’t possibly have had a nest in that short holly bush–there’s no room in those tight spaces for a bird that size even if it wanted to. It was probably there to go after the berries. I wondered if one of the very small species that sometimes does nest in there (with a name like flycatcher you know they and their meals are small) had attacked it from inside there when it landed? I don’t know.

Did you run under my car. How am I supposed to get you to leave.

Now it was up against the neighbor’s house near a bush, that wing and walk still odd. My holly was out of sight and it did not fly to return to it. It cawed loudly, one loud yell, a pause, then another, just as a hawk soared from behind that house and coming into my view–but I don’t think the crow could see it yet. Huh.

I said to Richard later, If it actually was injured, why would it call attention to itself by yelling like that?

To call in reinforcements.

Oh of course. Yes that makes sense.

There was a neighbor I don’t know taking a determined fast walk just then, barbells in hand. I almost asked her, Did you see that crow being weird?!

But the question, um, might have seemed a tad close to home on the part of the one asking it so never mind, I didn’t.

I had questions.

Who designs a new hospital such that there’s a big window in the room but the patient in the bed cannot see out it? His view was entirely blocked by the curving wall of the bathroom on the side of the room where the head of the bed goes. Maybe to entice the patient to start to be ambulatory? Okay, but when they most need to see the sky, anything at all beyond the whirrs and the beeps and the medical gear? They can’t. Only the light reflected off the wall over on that side. The mind boggles.

Maybe they were trying to protect from shattering glass in an earthquake? That’s the only thing that made sense. But Stanford is more seismic-safe in their new building and they didn’t do that. (The new seismic code went into effect a few years ago and a lot of hospital buildings got replaced.)

My view at home with the coming storm putting an exclamation point on the colors.

I had another question I wasn’t ever about to ask: how does one aspire to, I mean, cut off toes when one grows up? What would pull someone to that?

The podiatrist came in and, having a little time today, out of the blue chatted a bit about himself.

He’d thought of going to medical school but being a pilot sounded pretty cool, too, and he was leaning that way. Meantime he was working at one of those big outdoor outfitters, fitting people to their new ski boots–and he was good at it. Really good at it.

A podiatrist came in with his son and complimented his skills. That led to the doctor saying, You know–you really should be a podiatrist. Podiatry needs you.

He believed in the young guy, his enthusiasm rubbed off on him, he (the good now-doctor reminiscing chuckled) pulled some strings and got him in. And so the kid did go to medical school so that he could become a podiatrist, too, and here he was.

And I thought gratefully, one random stranger taking the personal interest and the time for someone else’s child changed so many lives.

He took off the bandaging a nurse had changed not an hour before to inspect how it had done overnight. It frankly looked a lot better than I thought it would: how does one make sense of half a big toe and the missing one next to it? How does the mind look at that and think yes, yes, that makes sense.

It doesn’t but in those skilled hands it had become okay, and I understood now how Richard had so trusted the guy to make the right decision and then to do the thing right. That foot looked the healthiest I’d seen it since August by far. It was such a relief to have all that infection we’d fought and fought against in a slowly losing agonizing battle for half an hour every night month after month simply–gone.

Two canceled trips to see grandkids last year.

There will be healing, and then we can start to plan our life the way we envision it again. It’s been awhile.

I’m going to put the p.s. up here because maybe it belongs there: typing all this out got me to realize that part of the problem could have been how immigrant nurses have been treated in this country the last few months and thus how many are no longer there. But on with the story.

—-

Come 11:30 for the 1:00, they said.

Well that’s a nuisance. (It was rather late in the day for the don’t-eat-don’t-drink.)

You know hospitals always do that, I answered.

People came. Patients got taken back. People left. People came back to pick up their family member being wheeled out. We sat there.

1:00 became 2:00. Finally they took him back and the nurse said she’d come get me as soon as he was all set up.

Right, I knew the drill, he gets into the hospital gown and they do all the set up, you kiss each other goodbye, you go back out to the waiting room and they call you when he comes to.

They didn’t do any of that.

The receptionist who’d checked us in left for the day minutes after we arrived and left her station unmanned.

Pretty soon it was just me sitting alone in that room, knitting away. A few hours in, I put down the knitting and picked up my book. You know how some books, you finish them and immediately start them right over because they’re that good? This emphatically will not be one of them. Oh well.

One guy came in and looked around and around, staring at the desk: why was nobody there? His distress was obvious so I spoke up, to his relief. But they called me! he said. Then they’ll be wheeling her out soon, I assured him. About ten minutes later that same nurse did.

And again assured me Richard would be soon. I said to her, it has been five hours since I’ve seen a bathroom and where on earth is one???

Oh, it’s right over there! (Ie between the inner and outer doors to outside. You don’t often see double sets of doors in California because we don’t have terrible weather but that building did. Hello? Could we please please add some signs?) Okay, I told her, thanks!

And then nothing.

The lights in the room suddenly dimmed and stayed dimmed. Oh thanks.

I needed to refill my water bottle and was glad I could now. I looked at those inner doors: I did not trust them. But I had to have that water and there was no other source.

It was after 5:00 and yes, I got locked out of the building. But, but, but, this is where I have to be for them to come get me to go be with my husband!

I stood there outside the glass doors thinking what on earth am I supposed to do, when at last two orderlies pushing carts walked past at the far side of the room. I tapped on the window and explained my plight. They stopped (bless them), tracked down permission and opened the door for me and disappeared quickly.

Five and a half hours. The second half entirely alone other than that brief encounter. There wasn’t even bad cafeteria food to retreat to: I had been told twice that I’d be called for any time now and this was a small building away from the main hospital building. (They seem to be connected in back these days with all the new construction.)

All I can figure is, they had told Richard yesterday that they would call and he had explained that texting is a better way to reach me because I can’t hear. But texting isn’t in their habit pattern and they simply forgot–but either way, I certainly wasn’t allowed to go through those patient doors by myself to go looking for him. I, meantime, was busy stomping down all kinds of thoughts like did he have a heart attack and they’re too busy trying to save his life to go get me.

When at long last I got their attention and got escorted back there, I sent a note to our Mormon bishop, who had wanted to know how things were going. The answer to that medically was, it was a worst-case scenario of what had been but a best-case scenario of what could have happened if they didn’t stop it now.

But I told him I had never encountered a situation like today’s.

He sympathized–and, it turns out, he was sure his friend the CEO of that hospital would want to hear the story.

What a day.

You don’t interrupt someone in the middle of a doctor appointment–but it had been three hours. Text.

A few minutes later: Four plans. Complicated. Tell you when I get home.

And then didn’t show.

Are you in the hospital.

Didn’t answer.

I hoped that was because he was driving and on his way.

I was putting his cold late dinner in the fridge and was about to call a friend to give her a heads-up that I might need to beg a ride to the hospital when the door opened and there he was. And yes a hospital is one of the plans–but not today and, turns out, not that one. Sitting around waiting for the first one to say no, they’re in a billing dispute with your provider’s corporate overlord is how everyone wanted to spend their time today. The second one said no problem, you’re in.

But at last we know what comes next. We can do this.

Dannette stopped by today, one of my old Purlescence friends. That shop’s been gone about ten years now.

An Anya apricot seedling got us to finally reconnect in person. I had two up for grabs: a 42″ one in a big pot that was going to be a handful to transport and a 24″ one in a one gallon pot. Both were started last year and I’m sure the one will catch up quickly to the other once its roots have some space.

The big one had clearly sounded good beforehand because it’s a nice-sized tree but in person, the small one was so much easier to just pick up and put in her car that it was an easy call.

We caught up a bit. The cute baby that Stephanie Pearl-McPhee bounced in her arms after a book signing that we carpooled for to San Francisco is somehow 12 now, with her oldest in high school.

I reminisced about being at knit night at Purlescence when I excused myself and walked outside to take a call and then walked back in and announced to the crowd, This is my son. He’s calling to say he’s engaged! The whole room roared congratulations and huzzahs as I held the phone out for him to be able to hear.

His oldest is in high school too, now.

Times change around us, we get older, but with friends you just pick up right where we left off.

She’s finally going to have her apricot tree!

I made myself take a good hard look at it. It wasn’t doing it for me, and spending more time on it was just going to make me avoid wasting more time on it in an endless loop of not getting it done. Out!

Doing that much had clarified what I didn’t want and what I did.

Thus the new baby afghan is 3″ long and I’m really happy with it this time. And just in time: next thing you know, I got a text.

There is another new baby on the way.

My father had an aunt who married late and had time for one pregnancy and got identical twins whom I still couldn’t tell apart when they were in their 80’s, but in this case it will just be the one. Long longed for and at long last, and she’ll have the best parents one could possibly hope for. I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled I am for them.

I had an OB years ago who had a poster in his office with a caption that read, A baby is G_d’s opinion that the world should go on.

Our daughter’s flying home tonight. She picked up a bug on the incoming and spent the week wearing a mask to avoid infecting us and a lot of time asleep, but started to pick up again yesterday.

The baby blanket is at long last done and I found the yarn in the stash that I think the next one will probably be made out of. Let me do some more sketches first. Starfish in gansey stitches, what other tidal creatures would work with that idea.

If you’re going to be bewildered, at least have it be by something that doesn’t matter in the slightest, right?

I wanted silver. I settled for gold because I finally had my new post-op prescription in hand and I wanted my new, clearer eyesight and I wanted it now.

Oh Costco. Rose gold? With pink temples? That is not what I saw in the store. How did that happen.

I picked them up Wednesday night and waited till Thursday morning to start wearing them because the lenses were so different; I could have New Year’s Day to get used to them.

Today I saw more. Wait.

Who–seriously, who???–thought that a pair of women’s bifocals needed the joints where the temples meet the frame to be covered by–

I mean seriously–

metal teddy bear faces??? (I held them out to Richard and said, Please tell me at least those aren’t cats, no aspersion on cats but on stereotypes.)

No, those are teddy bears, you’re right.

I am dying to know who thought that that was the best possible idea to do to sell their product. It feels like a UC Berkeley prank in Stanford country: Go bears! Go Tree!

So, (whistling innocently) what are their cat’s-eye frames doing for their side hustle?