No News Is Good News

I've heard nothing from Z. I didn't expect to. I doubt if I will unless it's bad news, so if I don't hear from her I assume she's doing fine. I'm sure she's happy to be with her sons and daughter-in-law and granddaughters. I started missing her months ago, so this is nothing new. But I wonder if I'll always miss her. It didn't feel like this when we were young and off living our lives in different parts of the world. Then I always knew that we would meet up and catch up and our friendship would go on forever. Forever comes to an end eventually. I bump up against that reality almost every day now. It's the reminder that my days are numbered and I better get about finishing the things I started and trying to make the most of time left to me.

I'm Slipping Down the Rabbit Hole

There have been things going on with me I'm barely aware of. But yesterday when I had to get up at 7:30 AM (a reasonable hour to most of you, but the middle of the night for me} and forego coffee to have an ultrasound of my liver and spleen it hit me that my low platelet count is a potentially serious problem.

A big storm is blowing in and I've been running around putting cushions and dog beds, rugs and baskets and garden tools in the shed. I still need to pick pears, cut my Pucchinis or Zumpkins, toss the vine. I have to pick a few more plums, put the ladder away, bag the debris and toss it in the garbage.

I grocery shopped earlier today and now need to reorganize my cupboards, clean the fridge. Anything to keep from thinking. I've cancelled scheduled dental work because I don't know how I'll afford it now that this diagnostic process goes forward. What looms on the near horizon is a bone marrow test. I've just had a couple of routine tests that are considered preventive and will be paid by Medicare which might be of interest in the search for solving the low platelet mystery. But none of the possibilities (and there are many) sound good to me.

I called my therapist to let him know that this morning it was clear to me I'm teetering on the abyss that is depression. I had no desire to get up today. I might have slept till noon or later, if Nick hadn't called and told me he was coming over in a half hour to pick plums. He's offered to be my medical trustee, to be he one with power of attorney to make sure my wishes are honored.

Ms M is talking about moving. This afternoon she's looking at a job as the maintenance person for an apartment building. There would be housing, but she has big Roscoe, a yellow lab who has spent most of his life here with a pack of dogs and a permanent baby sitter. He'll miss us and we'll miss him. And she won't have benefits. I hope she doesn't do this, but a landmark birthday looms and she's lived here a long time. Boredom is driving her now. Maybe a bit of fear as well.

I have no apatite for twitter now. I'm starting to look inward again. There's work to do. I am half way through a difficult rewrite on the novel. It is becoming a complex jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces are here, what is missing is a frame to hold them in tight frightening suspension. I need to finish, give it my best shot and then move on. When you think you see the end looming you want to tidy up all the lose ends finding that one tiny missing piece.

Then again, when it's cold and raining hard, I may feel smug, snug and peachy. You never know.

Emptying Closets

We sit on her back porch for a half an hour or so talking about her recent medical history, and now she admits that Ackerly and Hitchcock are probably better at what they do than the doctors in San Diego she hasn't yet met who will fill Ackerly's prescription for the radiation she was refusing to believe she needed here. She says Ackerly wasted three weeks he could have been treating her. I remember it well and start to remind her and then realize that there is no point now in going over the recent past. She was barefoot the whole time I was there. I thought she looked good, her hair freshly brushed, a bit of color in her face. But she insists she looks half dead. Truth is, in the past several years I have seen her look much worse. Grey and bone thin, hair in a tangle, knotted, skin hanging from her bones. But there is no point looking back. I am here to empty closets. We will go through all her upstairs closets so her son and his girlfriend can move in and put their stuff away. They will put their furniture in storage. She is leaving everything behind but doesn't talk much about returning, though she has said she will come back. This is good that she has stated her intention to come back.

Out of two packed closets she has a small pile of things she will take with her to San Diego, a larger pile she will store in the basement and a huge pile that goes to the Junior League. She has made a pile she believes her new granddaughter's mother can sell. I have a feeling the young woman will just take the whole gigantic pile of once nice clothes to the Junior League drop up the street and be done with it. While we did the sorting I noticed how many things were once mine or my mothers. Z has several once lovely pieces that belonged to her long dead mother. Only two of her mother's beautiful things survived the moths: A perfect little black dress and a good winter coat. We both love the little black dress, too small for me or her or her son's beloved. And so off it goes to the Junior League. The good winter coat is in very good shape and actually fits me quite well. I am now about the same age her mother was when she bought the coat. Or so I guess. It will be warm and dressy enough that if I do go out and wear the new dressy brown dress, the coat will find a warm body inside it once again. It's a long shot. But without the clothes to wear there is very little chance I'll ever venture out again, after dark, dressed for an occasion, so long as I live. Anythings possible I guess.

When I left I turned to see Z drift out to the back porch. We blew kisses to one another. And the two grandchildren, and the young woman were alone in the mess of Z's drifting life, the house undusted since her only daughter left almost a month ago. I have offered to do such things as dust, but we both know it's not high on my list of priorities in my own house, so why would it be a priority of mine for her? Well, it just is. But she has put me off and I have let her. I feel guilty that she has been so reluctant to let me do those kinds of things for her, but she has had her middle son taking care of her for at least a couple of weeks, and it's just not something he would notice or do. I wonder who dusts for him?

Z leaves alone Sunday to fly to San Diego. Nothing will ever be the same again. This is the first time I have ever thought that, though I know things change moment by moment never to be the same again ever. You can see the shape of the mass under her skin, strangling her. They will start Radiation Tuesday.

Now I am cleaning my own closet as if my life depended on it.

The Z of Time and Illness

The passage of time is a mystery to me
Like the days that pass when I do nothing
And the tasks go undone, the weeds take over
The tree, though topped stands like a hulking monster
It presses on the fence, tangled round it's gorgeous trunk
The upper limbs rank with the scent of early decay and last night's
Rain so rare this time of year I will remember it as April not late
May, early June, my birthday always comes too soon

The sister of my soul, my whole life long, the level headed one
Now puts her fate in the hands of anyone with a crackpot theory
Or so I think, other than the doctor who says, it's there where the
Trachea branches into the primary bronchi just before it reaches the
Fertile soil of the lungs in and out of hardly any oxygen there rests the mass
Growing like the weeds, the vines, the knot of trunk that pushes on the fence.

No air flows and a vocal chord is paralyzed making the voice a high tight complaint
The lack of options narrows down to doing almost nothing, or getting up and fighting
As if all life depended on it. Her blood depleted of breath's oxygen one lung closed
She wants to think it over. Odd that she, the child of a mathematician who was the
Perfect parent, has rejected hard science, medicine, the certainty of numbers, pulse ox
Sed rate in favor of intuition, the spirituality of mysticism, the soul's belief in the souls truth

I can do nothing but await her fate as if my own life depended on this one decision still unmade.

My Best Friend Needs Me

My best friend is having a life threatening medical crisis. She needs me. I'll write when I can, but please don't leave me.

I Apologize

Please forgive my inattentiveness. I have been sick. In the midst of being sick, the painting on one of the soaring triangles of my ceiling was scheduled. I over did it moving books and bookcases. Then I over did it after the painting was finished, cleaning things before putting them back. I mopped floors. All of this you know, but I have neglected you. I haven't visited. I haven't left you the love notes disguised as comments that you so richly deserve. Please forgive me.

The weather has been dreadful, either snowing or raining. Yes we need the water, but just when my pear tree budded the weather turned treacherous and we've had hard freezes at night. So much for a nice crop of pears.

And I have amazing things to tell you. Oh yes, even sick life swirls around me, and offers come I can't refuse. I should be confined to my bed, but my Imac is not in my bed. So commenting will be sparse for a few more days.

And then I must tell you all about Ricardo. I'm hoping he'll be my future son in law. Oh if only your daughters would let you arrange their marriages they wouldn't marry schmucks. Ms. M says, "Would you have dated a man your mother picked out for you?" And I say, "You wouldn't ask that question if you'd known my mother. She was a crazy bitch." Ms. M smiles and cocks an eyebrow in my direction and says nothing more on the subject. This is just the beginning of a very long story.

Now I have to get my orange juice and crawl back in bed. I've heated the newest sleep mask Ms M gave me at Christmas time. This is the first time I've had sinus pain in a very long time. But I'm so glad to have the comfort of this new sleep mask. Sky lights make it impossible to get this place dark in the daytime. Light is hurting my head. Every muscle and joint aches, and I'm running a low grade fever. Thankfully the mad dashes for the crapper have ceased. But now I'm either drenched in sweat or shivering. And I hate being sick. I still owe Nick a birthday celebration.

But don't be mad at me for not visiting you. If I had a laptop I could drag into bed with me. I'd be blog hopping like mad.

Sick and Tried

I've been sick for a couple of months or more. Not sick enough to go to the hospital, but sick enough to go to the doctor five times and still I'm sick. For a few moments I forgot how sick I was and spent my time cleaning and shopping and preparing to cook for Cal. I spent one entire day sprucing myself up for the imagined romantic seduction. Now I think part of this illness might be mere mortification at my own foolishness. And yet, I'm sick, there is no getting around it, I'm sick. My symptoms include fatigue, a terrible cough, wheezing on every breath, in and out, and the loss of my voice. Without my voice I have nothing to say. Really. Maybe without my voice I can't think.

Yes, I know there has been a lot of interesting news. Yes, I could write about any of it and have a post ready for you to read and comment on as if I really did have an original thought. Yes, I could pretend to be cruising along happy as a clam, but I'm sick. And once I bang out something on this keyboard, I won't have enough energy to visit you, to comment on your smart, witty, thoughtful, brilliant posts. I'm too sick.

I'm on my second round of antibiotics. Along with the first round (a Zpack) I was on a weeks worth of prednisone which made me feel great. No wonder athletes like the steroids. I felt invincible. So I wheezed. I felt great. Then, when the steroids ran out, I didn't feel better at all. But romance was just around the corner, so I plowed on through the cleaning, and hair coloring, the shopping and laundry. Endorphins and hope kept me going.

Then after the debacle that was my imaginary romance, I realized just how sick I felt. There is no real depression in this illness. Just wheezing, coughing, and no voice. I have had four "breathing treatments" two rounds of steroids and bed rest. I'm now on a different antibiotic, two types of inhalers, my second round of antibiotics, plus Mucinex, and Delsym cough medicine. And still I croak and wheeze.

It is the ugly season here--that time between real winter and the promise of spring. I know it will be Spring again and then I will be full of energy and enthusiasm for one project or another that will keep me outside. I'm hoping by then I'll feel well and full of energy. But for now, I'm sick and oddly tired.