Wow, what a day! Okay, I’m going to let myself be distracted a moment first by saying, Lisa, Tina: if only you could have seen all that colorwork on display! Bright silk saris in cheerful fuschia and orange, fuschia and turquoise, fuschia and gold and coral and black, and did I mention fuschia?  Reds, reds, reds, orangy-reds mixed with purply deep blues and a flash of teal.  Over to the right, blue and purple.  Over to the left, resist-dyed bright red with tiny white stars that at first glance looked like Barbara Walker’s Rose Garden lace pattern, as if all our patterns overlap somewhere in space, as if to pronounce, we are universal in our creativity and our humanity.

Bright pink, lime, you name it; down near the stage, weft of sage green, warp of fuschia, shimmering in vertical changes as the wearer walked.  Such a glorious intensity everywhere that we so seldom see in our Western culture.  Color!

M outshone them all. By far.

We’d been invited to the dance recital of the baby down our street from our New Hampshire days, the adorable little girl whose parents came over and played an evening of Scrabble with us after her family moved out here too; a teen, I think, by the time we ran into them at the Aquarium in Monterey–the time I totally embarrassed her big brother by telling him I remembered him going down their steep (to a three-year-old) old driveway on his Big Wheels. Just what every teenage boy wants so much to be told in public.  Right.

We’d visited with the parents since then but the children had been away at college. Now they were graduated and there, and M, long a dancer, had taken to serious study of the religious dances of her parents’ native land.  She had studied under a master on two continents.

It was far more than a recital; it was a two hour concert with seven musicians in accompaniment.   The auditorium was packed.  As fluid as the river she was portraying here, as determined as the trunk of the elephant there, as graceful as–there simply are no words.  M had studied and practiced long towards perfection and it showed.  Michelle and I kept glancing at each other and going wow, not wanting to miss a second of it by turning away a moment too long.

At the end her master teacher pronounced that M, too, now, was a master and a guru.  She had succeeded.

Her father, taking the podium, wondered out loud at a life’s journey taking such faraway turns: New Hampshire–M totally made my day by looking straight at us, way in the back, immediately as he said that; she had not seen us before the program, but she recognized us–and in their life here in California and visits to way back home.  And here we all were together from all these places in celebration of her accomplishments and hard work.

To life!

(p.s. Yes, I finished her wool/silk scarf in time. It is not bright. The colors are quiet.  But I think it’ll be okay. And V and V, if it’s not, rat your daughter out for me, wouldja? My needles love to dance.)

Northern California as seen through a Marylander’s eyes:

It didn’t come with a massive temper tantrum that rips whole houses off their foundations. No lightning strikes, no massive blasts of thunder, no counting the seconds between to see how many miles away the eye of the storm was and how safe one might hope to be from falling poplar limbs a hundred feet above the house.

Just the sky weeping ever so very gently.

I got one, count’em, one, raindrop on me while going to fetch the paper.

Well, now. Can I stand the excitement.

(p.s. Yes, dessert before dinner. The Crown Mountain batt that Jasmin spun up for me just couldn’t wait any longer.)

I’ve hesitated to post this, because the last thing on earth I want to do is sound in any way like I’m trying to make a buck.  And yet, the whole subject means so much to me: it’s not about the book.

My first thought on waking up this morning:  I’m so glad for the life of my younger brother.

His subway into Manhattan was late.

My second thought was: And for my cousin David’s, who from his office watched the first, then the second. And made the long trek home on foot, with some shopkeepers somehow taking the personal risk to stay on the scene to be able to hand out water to the stranded walkers.

May the heartfelt coming-together of people of many faiths that I wrote about in my book, the experience that propelled me to do that work–all the writing, all the knitting, all the hours and months and even years involved, because I wanted that one particular story in print and out there in the world if I never wrote anything else–grow and be and become the triumph indestructible, a testament to the world.  “May America always be like this!” one man there exclaimed that day.

Amen.

In his honor, I am going to try to get this to post at 9:09 on 9/9/09.  (Did it!)

At the block party Monday, I was talking to a couple who are exactly at the stage I was a dozen years ago: spending afternoons driving kids to sports, music lessons, you name it, go go go.  I told them, Yeah, I used to put 200 miles a week on my car just driving kids, and the husband nodded, So you get it.

Oh yes.

But one of the things that concerned the mom was, as their first kid headed into high school, how do you stay engaged with the school environment the way you did when they were in elementary?

The short answer, of course, is, you don’t.  You can volunteer here or there, you can be very active on the scene, but you can’t stay involved in everything to the same degree you did when there was just a single teacher in your child’s life.

And yet, I told her. Let me tell you a story.

My oldest had had a friend whom I often dropped off on our way home in the afternoons; no big deal to me, and an easy way to get to know my daughter’s friend a little.  (There are no school buses–Proposition 13 got rid of those in the 70’s.)

One day Sam and Jo were late coming out.   Really late.  There were things to get to, reasons to get uptight.

And yet, somehow that day, I just didn’t.  I told the other kids, who were already in the car since the younger schools let out first, Dunno what the holdup is, but whatever, they’ll show up, they know we’re here.

When they did, I saw Jo a step ahead walking towards our car because Sam had taken a step behind her in order to privately shake her head and wave her arms frantically at me in a silent, fervent plea: Mom! Don’t be mad! (Okay, the fact that she felt she needed to should tell you right there that I was hardly a perfect parent.)

But mad?  Nah.  Totally relaxed.  Good to see you, girls, how ya doin’, isn’t it a beautiful day out today?

They got in, I took Jo home, and then Sam could finally let it out. She told me Jo had had a particularly hard day and that Mr. Hodges, their math teacher, had taken the time after school to let the kid spill her guts and listen to her.  He had made it very clear she mattered to him for those 40 minutes and that she could come talk to him anytime.  And this was a proud new dad who would want to hurry home to his baby, so I knew what it had taken for him to do that.

Okay, for this next part, before you get too impressed, understand that I had wanted to do this for quite some time and had been looking for an excuse.  I made half of these for us.  So.

The next day I made a double batch of cinnamon rolls.  Now, when I make cinnamon rolls, they’re more a pastry than a bread and they are *good*.  I timed them to come out of the oven just so, popped them out of the pan, and drove to the high school and parked. When the kids showed up, I asked where Mr. Hodges’ classroom was, quick, before he goes home!

To say he was blown away does not begin to tell it.  Still-hot cinnamon rolls? Homemade just for him?  For talking to someone else’s kid, even?!

I told him, for my kid too: Sam knows now that if she has a problem and needs an adult to talk to, you’re absolutely someone she can turn to.  That is the greatest gift a parent of a teenager could ask for, and I wanted to make clear how grateful I was for that.  And for Jo’s sake too.

He couldn’t get over it.  He told me  that in his years teaching he had, a few times, had parents send him a fruit basket or some such, but not once–not ever–had a parent actually sought him personally out to thank him in person.

To which I would say, about time!

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.

As our family started praying for my sister-in-law, whose breast biopsy came back positive a few days ago, I got another message.

One of the wonders of the Internet is how easy it is to reconnect with people whom you knew back when.

One of the wonders of continuing to be alive on this planet is learning how, when you once care about another human being, however much, wherever they may go forth to in this life, you wish them well in it all. And that that never stops. Ever.  The caring only grows more important, even when it takes you by surprise because you simply hadn’t had occasion to think of the person in years. But they matter, and they always will.

I spend very little time at Facebook: this is where the bandwidth real estate is my own.  And yet, forgotten password or no, somehow one old friend after another showed up and there it was.

And so I got asked today by another Churchill grad, someone I’d known since elementary, how life was now.  It stumped me. How was hers, too?  How on earth does one sum up 18-50? Got married, had kids, and in my case, wrote a book?  If you add up my four kids’ ages, that’s 96 Mom-years; that could get a little wordy. By mentioning having systemic lupus and Crohn’s both? Nah, that’s just the background noise. Tell her to read this entire blog back to front?  (Spare her!)

It may not have been the best answer, but I responded saying I’d always wanted to be a writer; published now and off to a good start. And then it seemed the best way to sum up the whole rest of everything else was simply to link to the story of the man with that Stanford Blood Center t-shirt on.  The everyday trip to the store.  And yet.

The context that had brought us together was the group “Pray for Chuck Heidel,”  a tall kid who’d teased me in junior high math class but a kid who by late high school had transformed into the downright decent, good person he’d been all along, as most kids do. He’d been a member of a champion football team that had included Brian Holloway and Jeff Kemp: I was by no means part of the jock scene, but we had a crop of decent people among ours that defied stereotypes.  One of them, I said to at the 20th reunion, “I don’t remember much about you: but I remember that you were always a friend to anyone.”

Chuck was recently in a bike accident and was airlifted to the U of MD Trauma Center.  Unconscious.  Paralysis. Blood clots. Intubation.  As I read the reports of what he’d been enduring since then, I kept thinking, I had that in January. I went through that in February. I had that three weeks ago.  Part of me wanted to tell his family that his voice will sound normal within two weeks because he didn’t try to talk while he had that tube down his throat–he was unconscious then. Part of me wants to make jokes about hospital food while jumping up and down that he can swallow again. And he lifted a glass to his lips!

There was his daughter’s awe at her father’s example of asking the family to gather round him to pray for the patient next door, in worse shape than he.

And that, I could tell her as a patient, is how one copes. By finding a way to bring forward the best in oneself, the faith if we have faith, our goodwill in all circumstances, looking for any way of serving those around us in order not to have the bodily damage hog all the attention.

Because the love never stops. The caring never ends. It only grows with each new experience.

Note that that number is virtually all for our alleged electrical use for the past three weeks. Embiggen for the full effect. (After all, they did.)

We’re totally solar.

Over the phone, he recognized who I was from my visit to City Hall.  “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!”

Oh, hey, sir, laugh–it’s a whole lot more fun.

“Don’t pay that!”

As if!

“I have your account marked so it won’t be hit with any late fees or anything while we straighten this out.”

Uh, yeah.  And toss out that $808 utility user tax hit while you’re at it, ‘mkay? Thanks.

Isn’t it nice when you get to give someone a funny work story to tell for years?

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.

I was finishing up knitting the purple baby alpaca this afternoon when the doorbell rang.  I wonder?…

There were two absolutely adorable little blond boys, ages 4 and 6, a little shy as they looked up at the stranger in the strange house, a get-well note in their hands and with their smiling grandmother, who had driven them, standing behind.

A moment of confusion on my part and then I got it.

A little before my surgery, the local paper had run a story on their family: the dad with the Silicon Valley job and the small in-town yard but a little bit of the Woodstock “got to get back to the land, and set my soul free” in him, and so, he had set up a small beekeeping operation with his little boys.

Who get to deliver the goods. But they’ll only go as far as a four-year-old’s attention span.  We’re on the far end of town (and there’s only so much honey for their subscribers); we just barely squeaked in.

Delivery times are, as I understand it, whenever there is honey to share; I told the dad in an email when I signed up that I was going to be heading into surgery and if nobody was home, would it be okay to just drop it off at the door? He said he would send a honeybee to buzz my window hello at Stanford for me.  I was charmed.

But I got to see the boys instead.  It took me a moment to register that oh, right, as I opened the door, not seeing their jar of honey quite at first.  Lost in the cuteness.

And I have to tell you, that is the best-tasting honey I have had in years. Note that the jar isn’t quite full–it was earlier… (Yes, Mom.  You used to catch me dipping a spoon in the honey back in the days when I, too, was little.  Haven’t changed a bit.)

Phyllis asked me, while on the phone yesterday, and I told her my soapdish dispenser I’d bought from Mel and Kris had broken and that I’d love it if she could pick one out for me from their display and have me pay her back.

This morning, at church, she handed it to me and told me that when they’d found out who it was for, they wouldn’t accept any money. (Insert futile protest of “But you’ve got to earn a living, you know!”)

Note that they didn’t confess later to me when I came by after all; they wanted Phyllis to get the delight of having me be surprised.   Did I mention that they are really nice people?!

One of the reasons for my escape later was this:  I wanted…  Now that I knew they were there, I needed something that was meaningful to me and small enough for me to be able to carry back to my car  (even though I didn’t end up carrying nor walking with it.)  I needed it  small and lightweight for Deb to carry, too, luggage and plane rides being what they are.

So I bought a small ceramic bowl.  Mel and Kris do beautiful work.  It is the handthrown pottery equivalent of cupping your two hands together.  I’ve had one for awhile that I love; the colorwork and sense of their presence gives a certain reverence to the start of my days as I mix cocoa (a lot) and sugar (not much) in mine, then pour the mixture into a mug of hot milk. Perfect.

Today I got to give the new little bowl to my friend Deb, who stopped by after flying into the area from back East.  I had no idea she loved to collect beautiful ceramics; it had simply seemed like the right thing.  It was fun to watch her delighted reaction.

She, on the other hand, had knitted me an exquisite lace bookmark, and it matched the lace socks she and her daughter Kate had knitted me earlier.

She also knitted for both of the get-well afghan projects that were going on unbeknownst to me in January.  She knew it would mean much to me that she knit one of those squares with leftover yarn from my socks at the center, surrounded by yarn from her late son’s socks. As a matter of fact, one of her squares was knit with such an intensity and speed that it was the first to arrive.

I got to show her, finally in person like I wish I could for Anniebee and Elizabeth who did the piecing together and for everybody who worked on them, the finished afghans.  We shared stories. We laughed. We missed Robbie, my son John’s age, sharing hospital stories, and wept.  And hugged.

Some friends you can never get ahead of.  But they are also the kind of people where that doesn’t matter.  It was such a rare treat to get to see Deb as well as Mel and Kris; it has been a weekend all around of holding friends close in much love. (Phyll and Lee, you too.)

For weeks now, I’ve been wondering if I would get the same phone call as last year.

I did.

Phyl and Lee again went to the city’s annual juried Art Fair that takes over University Avenue for three days, and again called me to tell me they’d found Mel and Kris:  They’re at this corner (they knew I couldn’t walk the length of the avenue.)  Did I want to come see them? (Mel and Kris created this, among many other things.)

How badly you could not begin to know, I thought.

So. The hubby and daughter go off to the grocery store and I make my escape, noting that my old car, not having been driven for three weeks, has gotten dusty and bird-pooped-0n and is not a pretty sight.  My hair looks about as bad.  Oh well.

Last year, when I saw those two, I found out that my feeling that I needed to put them in my daily prayers had coincided with when Kris was a trauma patient who had barely survived.

Today, we threw our arms around each other, and since they’d already talked to Phyllis, they were stunned to see me.  (Probably not as stunned as one of my two surgeons who had just gotten out of her car as I was looking for my own parking space.  I waved hi, thrilled to see her, and I think I’m going to hear about it at my post-op.  Driving at two and a half weeks?! Busted!)

And it turns out.  Mel and Kris aren’t on the ‘net much, which I knew, and they hadn’t heard, till earlier today.  I knew they were moving and I didn’t have their new address, so I’d figured I’d just have to wait till I saw them with their pottery at another fair to get back in touch.

Kris told me:

Last summer she had had a bum knee and, she reminded me, I had this cane I’d given her.  I’d told her not to give it back.  She thought she should, though, but in the still-ongoing move, it had gotten misplaced.  It finally turned up–in January.  She immediately strongly felt, looking at it, that she should pray for me.

So she put that cane where she would see it every day going past her work station to remind her, and every time she saw it she said a little prayer for me. She didn’t know why but it just seemed important and the right thing to do.

I told her a little about what January was like. And since then.

She was as gobsmacked as I was when I found out the same kind of thing after I’d started praying for her.

And here I was. Surgery Aug 5th. Drove myself there (pillow under seatbelt). Looking peachy-fine.  It was near closing-down time, so I wasn’t in the way of too many people.  We had such a good visit!  Finally, she said I needed to rest even if I didn’t feel yet like I did–we knew, both of us, that she was right–and Mel drove me the two and a half blocks to my car over my gentle protests, since his was right there by the booth.

I cannot tell you how glad I am that I went and that I got to see them.

My surgeon saw me. My husband and daughter got home before I did.  I am SO busted.  And so very, very happy at how it all turned out.

Thinking back to the first pre-op appointment: there was a parade of people, from a medical researcher hoping to sign up a new subject to a physician’s assistant to a younger woman who came in after the doctor with forms in hand, asking my permission to let her be a part of the surgical team as part of her training.

I liked her on the spot and told her yes.

When she greeted me just before the operation last Wednesday, I looked her in the eye, smiled, and told her in a tone that I think affirmed that I believed she would, “Do a good job.”

She stopped by often afterwards to check on me, and Sunday, from my hospital bed, I reminded her that I had said that. And then I told her: “When I was brought into the recovery room, I saw your face.  I knew that you knew you had.  And you were proud.”

I got to see her beaming proudly all over again.

I’ve been thinking for a few days, and it seems only one yarn will do.  There’s enough for a good scarf yet.  If you’ve read the story of the Bluejay shawl, shown above (with most of its fulness at the back of the chair), you understand why the leftover yarn I have from that project would be the perfect yarn for a young colorectal surgeon.  A beautiful outcome from a situation rather less so, and… Yeah. That one.  My way of saying thank you.

And, like every patient–and doctor or nurse for that matter–that skein of indigo baby alpaca, so unusually custom-dyed, is a one of a kind. As far as my dyepot adventures are concerned, having no desire to, say, scatter suet or peanuts or birdseed on my wet hanks and wait for the moment, there will never again be anything quite like it.

I was just coming out of my room on Richard’s arm for a walk when a young dad approached with a baby in a front pack, I’d guess about 14 months old,  wiggling her little legs in delight at life in general.

Turned out they belonged to my new roommate.  I got to hear happy baby babbling sounds at the same time I was reading an essay in Sharon Randall’s book about her son’s wedding, wherein she reminisces about what it was like to be a first-time mother to him and how wonderful it was to see her son a happy man with a wonderful wife, and yet, admitting how much she missed hearing the language that only the little ones can speak.

I wanted to hand my roommate the book on the spot.  But instead, when her baby started sounding fussy, I called out to them, (well yes of *course* I had one with me) and offered her husband a fingerpuppet for her, figuring he was the most mobile person in the room just then.

Then I got to listen to happy babbling sounds mixed with little-person giggles. If I hadn’t had a newly-stitched-up belly, I’d have asked for a chance to get to hold the baby, too.

The dad was in and out for a moment here and there, and after that fingerpuppet, as he was coming back in, his daughter in his arms, she eyeballed me with the very biggest grin on her face.  She knew a grandma type on the spot.  I was utterly charmed.

One last thing I had to go through before they could send me home: they had to remove a tube.  It didn’t look so big or bad, really, and a medical student was sent to go do the job.  I was on vicodin, but my stars. I couldn’t help but gasp and I was holding tight to the side of the bed and Richard’s hand.

The student said, It’s not supposed to be this bad, excuse me a moment, and she went running for a member of the surgery team.

They decided to give me a dose in my IV of dilaudad to make it easier on me. Almost immediately after it went in…

…Their voices got thin and tinny like a static-y radio, the highest frequencies (ie some of the consonants in the words) disappeared, and I was struggling to hear.

Oh! Was I on that coming out of surgery?

Yes, answered the resident.

Now we know.  Now we know.  Thank goodness for a tube that didn’t want to come out.  And then when it did come out, I could see why: the part inside was a whole lot wider. Think about a size 13 needle trying to squeeze through a size 5 opening, and they mentioned there were probably blood clots getting in the way as well.

Anyway, that’s done and I’m home.

And came home to what Michelle had described as looking like a pillow from Peru.  It was a thin muslin fabric, hand whip-stitched closed along one edge.  I carefully cut it open and she and I spread out and sorted 100 finger puppets.  Dolls, fish, birds, animals, alligators, bugs, even a few cartoon characters.  Cost with shipping was 36 cents each.

I felt like a little kid counting their Halloween loot. I said to Michelle, “Look at all this happiness waiting to happen!”

She got the first smile.

I love Romi’s *roving badge touring Sock Summit!  So much for Monty Python: “Badges? Badges! We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” Yes, we do.  What a cool idea.

I tried to catch up on my email yesterday and found it too big a job, but I want you all to know how much I appreciate every note and every comment. I didn’t say things too well on the blog, though: they took me off the IV painkiller, but oh goodness, I am definitely still on vicodin.

The roommate I’ve had all along got discharged this morning and came over to say goodbye before she left. She couldn’t quite stand up straight yet, she said.  She was wearing bluejeans and I winced for her and silently wished she had a jumper to go home in too.  But I realized afterwards that I’d let that distract me and I’d missed my chance to tell her something far more important: that when her husband and family had come in every evening, the joy and the love that radiated through the curtain was just wonderful to hear and a real blessing to me that I’d needed.  I’m too deaf to have overheard any conversations, but the part that mattered, that came through loud and clear.  The caring. The joy.

My abysmally low blood pressure was getting in the way of my healing–there’s a risk of pneumonia if you don’t get moving post-op, and I did just enough coughing to realize I surely didn’t want to go there.  But at the same time, they didn’t want me walking if I couldn’t get that top number to 80.  One of the surgeons on duty decided last night to try infusing me with albumen to see if that would help.

Boy did it.  I was walking for ten minutes soon after, with the very last of the IV bottle bubbling up–Richard said it looked like angel food cake batter being worked up. So now I can say I’ve mainlined angel food cake (still waiting to be able to claim that on chocolate.)  Pass the whipped cream.

I asked the nurse where the albumen comes from; she didn’t know. Richard promptly googled from the laptop and answered, Cows.

Cows?

Cows.

So does this mean someone who’s allergic to eggs could still have angel food cake? (Notice the one-track mind.) Freeze some crushed Heath bars to sprinkle in that whipped cream, okay?

Meantime, nobody’s been able to find that ziploc stuffed with scarves since I arrived. I’m sure I’ll find them immediately once I’m the one looking. But I managed to sit up long enough to finish a nearly-done one this morning, and the nurse I’ve had for the last few days was not comprehending as I explained how to rinse and lay it out to dry for the lacework to stand out and the thing to lengthen. It matched her shirt pretty well.  It was fun watching her face light up when she realized I really meant this thing she’d seen me working on was for her. Elann Baby Silk yarn, baby alpaca/silk.

Seeing someone’s face light up at being knit for.  Reclaiming Real Life in that moment.  Getting better is a cakewalk now.

*Roving is the word for fiber that has been washed, carded, and is ready to spin. I just needed to let Don in on the pun here.

Coming into recovery was scary–I couldnt hear. With my hearing aids. Nobody knows why.  It’s gradually coming back and is better mostly.

the phlebotomist filled a glove with warm water to raise a vein–and dropped it casually on my belly. The small scream she got still didnt clue her in much–she then leaned it against my belly.

ive made a point of saying shes not to work on me again. she wasnt mean, just in way too much of a hurry.

Im trying to be a nice patient but Im not doing a great job yet.