Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?

This is the six month anniversary of my last journal post. Exactly. Jan 13, 2012 to July 13, 2012. That's a pure coincidence, though.

I haven't had much to say, I guess. Or at least, wasn't motivated to say it anyhow. I'm using eyedrops twice a day to treat my glaucoma, and so far it seems to be working. At my last checkup the pressure in my eyes was down by a third, which is where the eye doc wanted it. I'll go back at the end of the year for another visual field test to see if there's any change. Ideally, there won't be any, and we'll just stick with the current regimen. If there is, we'll fiddle with it.

My father died in March. It was hardly unexpected. He'd been in home hospice care for almost two years, in a very slow decline. I suspect--well, actually I know, because he said as much when I visited two years ago when he first went into hospice--that he was ready for it to be over. He'd had open heart surgery for calcified valves, and was still suffering from congestive heart failure. He was weak, and seldom got out at first and then was confined to his home, and finally to his bedroom.

He said more than a few times over the years that he'd never expected to get this old. He was 77 when he died. I'm not sure why he felt that way. Anyhow, mom and my sister were with him when he died. Snippy and I flew back home to Virginia for the funeral. Snippy was a rock, taking good care of me all the while.

I had flown back to Virginia twice in the last few years, each time thinking it was the last time I'd see my dad. First when he had his open heart surgery. I still remember flying into Dulles the night before his surgery. I rented a car and drove to Lynchburg, speeding much of the way (and really flying along some of those stretches of highway not giving a damn if I got pulled over for speeding because I feared I'd miss a chance to see him if I got there too late that night). I was half-convinced he wouldn't survive the surgery. No good reason for it, just the fact that it was open heart surgery.

He survived it, obviously, and recovered. But he suffered from congestive heart failure, which they treated with drugs and whatnot until they concluded that it wasn't fixable, at which point he went into hospice. Hospice is typically six months or less, so I flew back again for what I thought would be (and was) the last visit I had with him, though he hung on for almost two years.

So I thought I was prepared for it when he died. My lovely and talented wife told me you're never really prepared, though, and she was right. It hit me harder (and in more ways) than I expected. It still does. My strongest memory of the trip is going upstairs in my childhood home after the funeral to find my mother leaning on their bed sobbing because she'd just buried the man she loved and had been married to for 55 years. I hugged her and cried a little myself, then closed the door and left her to it. That was the first and only time I saw her really cry during that visit. (She's not the only one to cry in private. I do too, like now.)

Snippy chronicled the high-stress couple of years we've had in her journal fairly recently, so I won't list all our travails. But it's been tough, and losing my dad didn't help. I had big plans for this year, which we both hoped would be better. I had been intending to write a lot, and publish. Instead I haven't written a goddamn thing this year. (Well, okay, one short story.) So when I get together with my mastermind pals (when and if) to see how we've progressed on our goals, I expect to be gently mocked for failing so big.

Still, I am finally starting to write again. So that's something.

(Long, long pause.) That's all I have for now.

You know the drill. ( Cut for TMI about abdominal surgery. )

I saw my surgeon today.

( Cut for possible medical TMI... )

If I still have a job. See, I just started a new job a bit less than a month ago. It's part-time, with no benefits, but it brings in enough money to ease our finances while still giving me time to work at my writing.* But even if it were full-time and had benefits, I've only been there about three weeks. So tomorrow I'm going to have to tell my boss that I am going to be unavailable for about three weeks, starting next week. And I'll tell her that I'd like to come back to work after that--but that if they have to let me go and get someone else in to do the job, I'll understand. And I will.

And even if I have to find a new job, I'm a lot more hopeful about my prospects than I would have been a couple of months ago. For whatever reason, I got lots of return calls to applications and emailed resumes in this last round of job hunting--a far better response than I'd gotten in any of the time since I was laid off. Some of it was no doubt due to the Christmas shopping season; I applied for some seasonal work. But a lot of the responses were for office jobs of the non-seasonal sort. One temp agency in particular has been very persistent in trying to get hold of me. I told them I'd gotten a job and was unavailable, but they'll be my first stop if I have to go job-hunting again after I recover.

*In theory. What with illness, surgical procedures, and other fun, Snippy and I have been doing well just to handle the basics of working and doing the absolute minimum of household chores. But eventually...I'll start writing and publishing again. Because that, not another dayjob is our real hope of changing our financial situation in the long run.

I'm sitting at my computer instead of lying in bed, asleep. My sleep schedule is all shot to hell. Admittedly, it's never been terribly regular, and I accuse my father of being a bad role model in that regard. All through my childhood, my father worked irregular hours. He was manager (and salesman, and chief engineer, and ultimately owner) of the radio station he worked for/owned. And some of his work (weekly transmitter frequency checks that had to be done in the middle of the night, for one) required odd hours. Other work--like sales--had to be done during regular business hours. So, unsurprisingly, he always had a variable schedule.

So I come by my nightowl tendencies honestly. But in this case, it's because I've spent the last forty-eight hours in bed. I've been working the job hunting gig with a vengeance lately, scoring a number of interviews over the last couple of weeks--and doing a lot of cold-calling and resume dropping (or application collecting) as well. I had an interview for a seasonal retail job at Old Navy Monday afternoon. It was group interview, and it was obvious to me almost immediately that I was not what they were looking for. No real surprise--to me OR to my lovely wife--but I went anyhow. Just another in a long time of handshaking face-to-face encounters with the public.

Then I drove home. And the sun, low on the horizon at this time of year, was like daggers in my eyes (and I'm light sensitive at the best of times). So I gobbled some Tylenol and thought nothing more about it. Until later than evening, when the headache came back, and I felt the slightest tickle of a sore throat. I took more painkillers and hoped desperately that I wasn't getting sick--I have a writing workshop at the coast coming up this week (later today, as I write this). But no such luck.

By bedtime I had a pounding sinus headache, my throat was closing up, and I began to shiver. I climbed into bed feeling sick as a dog, and I've spent most of the last two days there. I spent a lot of my time sleeping, and when I wasn't sleeping I was mostly dozing or lying there in a stupor watching the science channel. Fortunately, the virus (or whatever) seems to be as short-lived as it was sudden. My throat's still a tiny bit sore, but my other symptoms are mostly gone. I'm good to go for tomorrow's start of my four-day workshop, thank god. I'd have been really pissed off I'd had to cancel.

But that does mean that after two days in bed, I'm not at all sleepy despite needing to get up, pack, and make the trip tomorrow--to say nothing beginning the workshop tomorrow evening. Still, I'll manage.

Of course, my wife had her own drama this week, and I was too sick to give her the emotional support she wanted and needed. Which sucks. And we'll be apart for the next four days. On the other hand, she'll have the whole bed to herself for that time, with no cover-stealing husband to contend with.

And I did get a job. Not at Old Navy (thank god). No, I'll be doing part-time data entry work. More money, regular hours, and no dealing with the public, and with time left over to work on building my publishing empire. It's not ideal--it's in Beaverton, rather than across the street--but I can live with a commute if I have to. Having more money coming in will ease a lot of tensions in our household.

And speaking tension, I know my lovely wife posted in her own journal that she'd choked on some food this weekend. She couldn't breathe (or not enough to matter) and I gave her the Heimlich maneuver. And saved her life. Which scares the hell out of me. Not that she could have died--as she said to me when I was very lovey-dovey to her over the next couple of days--she could get hit by a bus ANY day and die. Which is true. But that wouldn't be a situation in which I was in a position to save her and might have failed. That's what really scared me; that I could have failed to save her. Losing her would be awful enough, but to do so through some failing of my own would be even worse.

So I guess we can write off "surgeon" as a potential field of employment for me. Some people may thrive on that kind of thing--I'm looking at you, Rory--but that's more excitement than I really want in my life.

So early in August I was looking for work. Just part-time, something to bring a little money in while I continue writing, and so my lovely and talented wife wouldn't feel like the sole and too-often unappreciated breadwinner. I went 'round the mall applying at various stores. I got a call back from Macy's, and went in for an interview.

I got a job offer. I'd be working early mornings (mostly), getting stuff into the store (the night crew move it from the trucks into storage, then it gets put on display in the stores later). I'm not a morning person, but I can go to work at oh-dark-thirty if I have to. I've done it before. They had me fill out an electronic form for a background check, but otherwise I was good to go. It was part-time work, right across the street, and it wouldn't interfere with my picking up Snippy after work because I'd be working mornings. Not a lot of money, but otherwise great.

So I waited, as instructed, for news on when I was to start.

And I waited. I emailed them, just to make sure I hadn't overlooked anything I needed to do. Got an email back saying that the background check was "in process" and they'd get back to me.

So I waited. And waited. Well, it's only a seasonal job. Maybe it starts later than I thought. I waited some more. Emailed them again, and got no reply. So today I went back to the store and asked about it. They couldn't answer me immediately, but the lady in HR got my phone number.

She called me later this afternoon. Seems that my paperwork got filed in the "didn't get hired" drawer instead of the "hired" drawer. So I never got contacted and--surprise!--all the jobs in question have been filled. Well, shazbat! They do have more jobs to fill come early October. These would be "recovery" folks--they tidy up the store and bring out new stock after the customers have messed it all up. Same pay, but these are evening jobs. I say again, SHAZBAT!

If I don't find anything else, I'll take that. But I'm damned annoyed (and frustrated) that a much better-fitting job slipped through my fingers. My lovely and talented wife was likewise annoyed and frustrated, and angry at me for not following up sooner. I could argue "how the hell am I supposed to know they lost my paperwork?" but really, the end result is the same: the job I really preferred to take is gone. And I wasn't looking for something else because I thought I had this one.

So I guess I'll go back to looking for part-time work. Until and unless they actually come through with one this time.

Well, half of it, anyhow. The left side. I just got home from having a filling replaced.

For the last few months, I'd been feeling pressure on one of my lower molars when I chewed with it. I made an appointment with the dentist and had it looked at, but she didn't see anything awry. So time passed, and the pressure seemed to increase. Last night I was eating a cookie and suddenly felt something hard between my teeth. What's this?

Well, juding by the sharp edge I felt with a fingertip when I explored the tooth, my tooth had chipped. Fortunately, there was no pain. Nonetheless, I called to make an appointment this morning as soon as the dental office opened. I got one for 9 a.m. at another office, not my usual one. I drove out there, had an x-ray taken, and then got treatment.

Turns out it wasn't a cracked or chipped tooth. I'd simply lost a filling. So they numbed me up, cleaned out the cavity, and refilled it.

They NUMBED ME UP. As in, they gave me a shot of novacaine. In my mouth. Which, for those unfamiliar with my dental history, was a landmark event.

I had an...unfortunate experience (to put it mildly) with a dentist when I was a child involving several (and incredibly painful) injections prior to some dental work. My mother found another family dentist later. That was the last time I ever submitted to having any sort of injection for dental care.

It was NOT the last time I had cavities filled. Throughout the rest of my childhood, teenage years, and until I was a young man and living too far from my childhood home to make it practical, I stuck with that local dentist, who filled my cavities without anaesthetic. He had an old-fashioned drill, slower than the ones that produce the familiar high-pitched whine we all know and love, but which was also easier on my nerves (in every sense of the word). It was sometimes uncomfortable, but I was more than happy to accept some discomfort rather than face the needle.

As it happens, I've not had any new cavities in my adult life. But I lived in fear of the day when I would have to get one filled--by some other dentist, who wouldn't have that familiar, slow and relatively painless drill.

That day came today. And it was...anticlimactic. I was rigid as a board when the dentist brought the syringe into my line of sight, but they'd used some anaesthetic gel on my gum, so the actual injection was mildly uncomfortable and nothing more. Then they cleaned out the cavity, filled it, and sent me on my way quickly and professionally.

It was a great relief. I curse that long-ago dentist for the butcher he was, but the women today (the dentist and her assistant) were wonderful.

It's been more than two weeks since I last killed a man posted to my journal. I just don't feel the urge to post that much these days, but I do mostly so my lovely and talented wife can keep up with my thoughts and feelings. (I communicate much better in writing than verbally.)

So...just got back from another trip to the mall right across the street. Twoson and I are pounding the pavement (or the tiles) looking for work. I've been instructing him in the fine art of making cold calls on mall stores. He's getting better at it, and finding it easier to do. The first time I providing an incentive--when we finished our quota of calls I'd buy us lunch in the food court. This time we didn't do that, but we still did our quota of calls, and a couple more for good measure.

I've got an interview next week with one of the big anchor stores for a "sales associate, part-time" position (I'm looking for part-time work so I still have time to write) which would be a stocking position. That suits me fine. Stocking and restocking is more my speed than sales anyhow. I'm hoping to get it. It would be almost perfect: part-time, across the street from the apartment, and nothing too mentally or socially taxing.

Today we got a very encouraging response at a jewelers. The lady behind the counter urged us to go their website and fill out the application online ASAP as they're hiring. So that's first on our agenda, ahead of all the other online applications. Virtually all the stores simply give us a website address to apply to. We can haz the future.

Later today I have a therapy session. Snippy asked me to consider therapy a few weeks back. She was under the impression (and, I think, correctly) that I was depressed. What with all the change in our lives in the last year (selling our house, moving to the apartment, my father being in hospice care, Snippy and I being deathly ill in May and June, my hospitalization, etc.) I've definitely been off my game. And she needs me functioning so I can take care of her; that's a big part of my raison d'etre around here--and I wouldn't have it any other way.

So I agreed. I've had three or four sessions now. I think they're helpful. The first couple of sessions I talked about my writing, or the lack thereof lately, and my resistance to sitting down and writing, though I enjoy it when I finally do it (and really enjoy the feeling of accomplishment when I am productive). That's just old-fashioned anxiety, and something I'll probably always have to battle. Most writers (most people, for that matter) do.

Last week we went into an argument Snippy and I had, and why it happened. That was more difficult. It required more self-analysis, which is...not my forte, shall we say? I expect we'll talk more about it today.

My writing is going better, though not as well as I'd like. I'd like to be producing more words (and more finished stories), but I'm definitely trending upward, so that's good. I'm even seeing some money from my writing now. Nowhere near enough to constitute even a part-time job's worth (if that were the case, I wouldn't need an outside job), but that too is trending upward as I publish more material, and that should continue.

I started self-publishing in January of this year. Dean has written repeatedly that you won't REALLY know how you're selling for months. Smashwords, for instance, publishes your work to a bunch of other retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel, Apple, and others) both domestically and abroad. Some of those sites report monthly, others quarterly. Then Smashwords has to report to you. If one or more sites are slow to report, it could be near the end of the SECOND quarter (or even the one after that) before you find out how well you sold in JANUARY.

I've made money in three digits (excluding cents) so far this year. Not a lot, but it's a start--and I'm only just starting to see results from downstream sites (as explained above). Plus, in January I only had a couple of stories up. Now I'm up to over a dozen; given months and months to wait before all the sales on all of those are reported and...there's no telling. In the mean time, I need to write, write, write and publish, publish, publish.

I'll be attending a workshop on self-publishing in October. I got my first assignment for that class by email today. I was to read Dean's "How To Think Like A Publisher blog posts (done); choose a publisher name (Gelastic press--long since done), and establish accounts on Smashwords (ditto), PubIt (ditto), Amazon (ditto), and Createspace (done), register my Publisher name with the state as a DBA (done today), and establish a bank account I can use with all the above publishing account (also done).

I've started running again. The Couch Potato to 5K program. I downloaded an app to my phone that tells me when to run and when to walk, and keep track of mileage and pace. I'm going to have to get an audio & music-streaming bluetooth headset, though. Carrying the phone is a pain in the ass when I'm running, and when it's in its belt pouch I CAN'T HEAR IT. Still, it's a useful app; I don't have to carry a stopwatch and try to remember which intervals I'm doing on a given day. My legs are very sore; after being bedridden for a while, and very low energy for so long afterward, I have no stamina and no strength.

But that's why I started running again, so I can get that back.

Time for lunch now. I didn't eat breakfast.

Time flies when you're having fun.

Or not.

I've recovered from my exciting medical adventures...mostly. I have very little stamina after my illness, and all that time lying around. It's easy to overdo it, to work a little too hard and then wind up exhausted enough that I do little or nothing the next day. It's a fine line to walk; if you don't do enough, you can't improve your fitness, but if you do too much it wears you out and you risk losing ground while you recover.

Occasionally, if I squat or crouch to do something and then stand too quickly, I get light-headed and dizzy. And my sleep schedule has been all screwed up, too. While sick in bed, and then while in the hospital, I slept, basically, when I was too tired NOT to sleep. The clock had little or nothing to do with it. So now that I'm on the mend, I've had real trouble sleeping when I should.

I'll go to bed and lie awake forever, tossing and turning, and rotating like a leg of lamb on a spit (prone, one my left side, supine, on my right side, over and over again). Or my feet dance. The thing is, I'm sleepy when I go to bed, but I'm unable to relax and go to sleep. I end up restless in bed or I get up for a while. I've been getting to sleep (again, when I'm exhausted) about 3 or 4 in the morning. Or one night recently, not at all.* Last night I finally managed to get to sleep around midnight-thirty or 1 a.m. and slept til morning. So I hope the worst is behind me.

In non-medical news...

Snippy and I attended a Fourth (Third) of July BBQ hosted by one of our gaming group up in Vancouver. A couple of other gaming group members were there, along with a few other people. It was small, but very enjoyable. We ate, we drank, we talked about games and gaming and movies and television, and generally had a wonderful time. Snippy provided homemade banana ice cream for dessert, which was a big hit. After dark we set off lots of fireworks.

We really enjoyed that party. It was a very pleasant, relaxed time.

On Monday Snippy and I had a lovely picnic lunch together. She asked me to arrange it, so I did. We abandoned our plans to picnic at Happy Valley Park, which was teeming with Fourth of July celebrants. We drove around, visiting Willamette National Cemetary (which a very peaceful place, and lovely), and then had our picnic at another park a few miles away. We sat in the shade, ate our sandwiches (and chips), drank our drinks, read our books, and had some nice, relaxed conversations. Plus, lemon tarts for dessert!

That was another very relaxed, enjoyable outing. Our ideal outing is a trip to the coast, to the beach; but this was almost as good, and a lot easier and cheaper and less time-consuming to achieve. We'll be doing it again, often. It gets us out of the apartment, and just doing that makes it easier to relax. There's sunshine (or shade) and fresh air--and a delightful absence of visual reminders of all the endless chores waiting to be done. It's easy to forget just how oppressive that constant (but often unconscious) pressure can be. Getting out and away from it all is a big help.

Thursday evening, Snippy and I will be gaming. It's the second session of a new GURPS steampunk-style game. We're revising her character (a voudun) and I'm swapping out my original character idea (a ghost) for something else entirely. I designed him by 3rd edition rules, but I can't afford him under 4th edition--plus, he just wouldn't be as much fun to play as I'd imagined. So I'm bringing in a minor Spanish noble, a spy for the Spanish government tasked to obtain magical/high-tech treasures for his masters, to aid Spain in becoming more of a power in the world. He's immortal, having drunk from the Fountain of Youth centuries ago.**

This weekend I'll be going to the coast solo for a four-day writing workshop. Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Rusch are teaching a workshop on writing blurbs, story pitches, back cover copy and other promotional text to help sell your stories/novels. As I am currently self-publishing, I think I can use all the advice and practice I can get. There'll be a lot of writing involved, so I spent the morning making sure my laptop would talk to my printer (I'll be taking them to the workshop), which required buying a USB cable. But now it's ready to rock and roll.

*Well, maybe a few brief catnaps, but I never remember them happening. I laid awake until the sun rose.

**But, of course, in classic pulp fashion, either the fountain itself or the treacherous and unstable route by which one may reach it, was destroyed shortly thereafter, so no sharing its bounty with my friends and relatives....

In our last exciting episode (June 3) I had a thoracentesis. The doctors drew fluid off my lung to help my breathing. And it did. For a day or so.

Alas, I got worse still. I spent a week taking antibiotics, and suffering from fevers and sweats, and terrible pain in my belly. I thought the pain was due to constipation and gas from the hydrocodone and codeine I was taking. It would seem to ease slightly over the course of a day, but it always came roaring back. And it was bad, really bad. I had never imagined that constipation and gas could be so agonizing.

Well, one thing led to another, and finally my doctor had me come into the hospital on June 10th. My wife left work to drive me to the hospital. I checked in, settled into a room, and eventually got a CT scan. My doctors consulted the results and then took me down to radiology again*, where they inserted a tube into my lung (through my back) to drain off as much of the fluid as possible. There was plenty of it, and infected to boot.

Over the next few days, I was in miserable shape, so sick and weak that I didn't really give a damn what they did to me despite my normal aversion to needles. Insert an IV? Numerous blood draws? Poke a tube into my torso? Sure, whatever. I spent another night in terrible pain until they gave me morphine, which helped...a little. Finally, they started giving me Dilaudid (a VERY potent narcotic), which gave me relief. I got an IV hit of it every two hours for a while.

They took me down to radiology for another, more complete CT scan, having discovered that I had an abscess in my abdomen. While I was there, they put ANOTHER tube in me, this time in my belly, to drain the abscess. All this time was on nearly constant IV antibiotics, as well as fluids. I was allowed nothing by mouth for about three days because they thought they might have to do surgery. It didn't happen, thankfully, but it was a near thing.

I spent six days in the hospital before being discharged this past Thursday. They removed the chest tube, but left the drain my abdomen, and put in a midline IV in my left upper arm. I came home, where I've been resting. A home care nurse came to see me the next day to change the dressings around my IV and drain, and to show me how to give myself IV antibiotics. I flush the drain twice a day with saline, and give myself a daily injection of another antibiotic, in addition to a number of oral medicines (include antibiotic pills) I'm taking for a week.

In a couple of days I'll see one of my doctors (a surgeon), when--I hope and pray--he'll remove the drain from my side. In four weeks I'll get another CT scan and see a pulmonary doctor to check up on my lung. I'm also going to have to get a colonoscopy (oh boy oh boy!) because they still aren't sure what happened. Apparently I had like ten doctors consulting on my case; I was the medical mystery of the week. They don't think the lung issue (caused by pneumonia) is related to the abdominal issue, but doctors--like cops--don't like coincidences either, so they really aren't sure what happened (as far as I know). Possibly it was a rupture of some kind in my colon (diverticulitis?) or maybe my appendix. A colonoscopy and/or CT scan may reveal the cause, and determine whether surgery is required down the line to fix it and/or make sure it doesn't recur. I hope it isn't necessary, but we'll do what we have to do.

So now I know that consistent or recurring severe belly pain is more serious than I thought at the time. This has been a miserable two months. My lovely wife was down with the nasty virus that causes pneumonia for much of May, and then I got it--and things went from bad to worse. She's still recovering her strength, while working full time AND taking care of me AND keeping food and supplies in the house AND trying to do some of the housework that's accumulated while we were both sick for a month. She's a rock, and I can't say how much I love and admire her.

The physical pain on this whole ordeal was bad enough, but I was completely unprepared for the emotional cost. The first couple of days of my hospital stay I was too weak and sick to feel much of anything, but as I started to improve (marginally at first), I was paradoxically feeling better enough to feel bad.

I felt like the situation was never going to end, that the rest of my life would be spent in this state, with tubes in one side of my body, an IV in the other, and simply getting up to walk to the bathroom was a major feat. I felt like I'd be feeble and dependent forever. I would never be as healthy and active as I'd been before I'd gotten sick so very long ago. I broke into tears a number of times, filled with despair and grief, and afraid that Snippy would leave me because I wasn't just not a help to her, but a burden. One she didn't need in addition to all her other burdens. She, of course, consoled me and reassured me that my fears were groundless.

I didn't sleep well in the hospital. All the jokes about being awakened frequently have a basis in fact. I had IVs started and changed, was awakened for blood draws, or to check my vital signs, to take pills (when I could take things by mouth again) and so forth. I slept when I was too exhausted NOT to sleep, or when a hit of dilaudid made me feel lightheaded and relaxed. But I spent a lot of time dozing, not really sleeping but too punchy to have any attention to pay to things. I had my Nook with me, but I never read anything the whole time I was in the hospital, I just didn't have the mental energy.

I often woke in the night covered in sweat (I had fevers for days, even after they started the IV antibiotics). I remember waking one night covered in sweat, and feeling like I was in a nightmare. I stripped off my sweat-soaked hospital gown and sat there with sweat soaking my hair and cooling on my skin all over, tethered by IV and drain tubes, ready to cry or scream or both, feeling trapped in a dark, empty hospital, afraid that if I called for a nurse nobody would come. I knew on one level that it wasn't true, but I felt that way. It was like being chained down, imprisoned by my own rebellious body, in a nightmarish scenario that would never end.

That was probably the nadir of my time in the hospital. The next day, I was frantic to get out. Not ready, physically, but I'd reached the end of my emotional rope. I wanted nothing as much as I wanted to escape my situation.

I'm home now. I've been home for five days. I still have occasional moments of despair and grief, and fear that I'm a useless burden on my wife, who deserves far better. But they're passing, and I'm getting stronger. I'll be a long while recuperating completely (my wife hasn't entirely recovered from her own bout of pneumonia and she wasn't as sick as I was), but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Most of the time, anyhow.

I'm sleeping on a separate bed from my wife, an inflatable bed we bought when I came home from the hospital. I fear to share our bed with her while I have the drain in my side. An irrational fear, probably, but I feel better for having a bed to myself. Plus, she needs her sleep given that she's working fulltime in addition to all the other chores that have fallen to her, so I hope it lets her sleep better too.

I'm really, really hoping to get this damn drain out of my side this week. And then the IV midline as well, once I'm done with the antibiotic injections. Those will be big days for me. In the mean time, I'm resting a lot, taking naps when I can, and generally doing my best to heal up. I'm also moving around the apartment at times, and even doing a few chores. They need doing and I need the exercise after spending so much time lying in bed, plus the exercise tires me out so I can sleep.

This has been quite an experience. It's not over yet, especially if I end up needing surgery later on. But if I won't be back to normal for a while, I can at least see it from here. Which I couldn't a few days ago (and still can't on increasingly infrequent occasions). I'm sure some of this will find its way into my writing eventually, too. "Write what you know," they say. And I know a hell of a lot more about some things now than I ever did before.




*Apparently, in addition to doing CT and MRI scans, they specialize in putting tubes in you down there.

It has sucked. Full stop.

It started off pretty good. My lovely and talented wife, Snippy, and I went to Lincoln City for the weekend. Got up Saturday morning and drove down. Got a nice suite overlooking the ocean. We could see and hear the surf from our room. Had delicious meals at Kyllo's restaurant. Returned home Sunday afternoon.

Alas, Snippy was already succumbing to illness when we went to the coast. By Sunday afternoon, she was considerably worse. I wasn't doing great, myself.

So...she missed a week of work. She's been deathly ill, feverish, with headaches, sinus pressure, sinus drainage, wracked by coughs, barely able to lie in bed (or, occasionally, sit in the recliner next to the bed) and watch tv when she wasn't up to reading. I've been waiting on her hand and foot. On Thursday, when it was clear that she was not getting any better, she called her doctor. Phone discussions followed, and she received an Rx for antibiotics. I went and picked them up. She's improving now--the fever's gone and she has some life in her again--but clearly isn't over it yet. She's probably going to stay home from work again tomorrow.

I'm sick as well. I don't know if it's the same thing, only less intense, or if it's something else. But while I have fatigue, sinus pressure, headache, sinus drainage, a persistent cough, and general malaise, I'm not bedridden. (Which is not to say that I haven't slept or dozed plenty when I had the chance--it doesn't take much to exhaust me at the moment.) But taking care of her, and the occasional short trip out to the drug or grocery store for foodstuffs or supplies is about all I'm good for lately. I sure as heck haven't written anything this week. I have no concentration.

Twoson has it too. Just like me. We're a fun, sickly bunch at the moment.

On the plus side, I got a personal rejection on a short story. The editor "was impressed" with the story, though he couldn't use it, and invited me to send them more. He said he wasn't generally interested in vampire stories, but he was "engrossed" by mine, which was an atypical tale. So...yay!

I've been exploring Second Life on my computer lately. Largely because it requires almost no brainpower to do. I'll have plenty to say about it, eventually. But right now...I don't have the concentration to really go into it. And I should go check up on my poor sick wife anyhow.

Later.