Reverse Roller Coaster Ride

February 19, 2011
Roller Coaster Riding

Well, this week has not been filled with my finest hours! Taking the roller coaster ride backwards as a retrospective trip, here it is:

TODAY I have a black eye that hurts and doesn't see too well.

YESTERDAY:    This is the result of the surgical procedure I had yesterday morning, during which the surgeon removed my eyelashes and then excised the lesion and sent it for a biopsy, and said he thought it might not be skin cancer.

I almost didn't make it to have that surgery done because at about 7 a.m. my car refused to climb the hill of  water-covered ice leading out to the public road.  I tried backing down, but driving in reverse has never been my forte and so I landed in huge piles of snow precipitously close to the place where the run-off stream comes down through a concrete pipe with a diameter of about three feet under the road. 

I crawled out the passenger side and called Peter for help. But I got a wrong number and some very kind old man told me how sorry he was that I was in trouble but he couldn't help.  By the time I got hold of Peter I was smiling at my good fortune that I had disturbed a kindly soul.

Then I called Peter and he came over immediately and told me that he could not come down the hill either because of the conditions, and he couldn't get me out without help.And his truck was in really bad shape and he doubted whether it would make it to Tammy's and back.  We solved the problem by having Tammy (also rousted out of bed and unshowered, coffee-ed or fed) meet us in Chelsea.

Tammy and I headed in to the General's Eye Institute and had a breakfast that made me feel a little queasy.

Then I had the procedure done.  I came out of it feeling decidedly light headed, but the pain didn't begin for another while.  I was awfully glad that Tammy was driving me because I could not have driven myself.

Tammy got ready for an afternoon job and Carlos drove me back home stopping enroute to get the things I needed from the pharmacy, and, now that things were mushy enough back at the culvert, shoveling enough snow away to back my car into its parking spot so that the road could be sanded.

Kenya and I spent the rest of the day following doctor's orders and taking it easy.

THURSDAY: That is also how we spent Thursday ... all day ... recuperating.  Nothing to say.  I slept all day.

WEDNESDAY: Wednesday started out beautifully.  I went skiing with Mary, a friend I met through snow shoeing.  We had a great morning and then had lunch afterwards at Molo's.

I called Tammy around 2:40 and learned that a terrible flu had raged like some kind of manic cyclone  through their entire household.  It hit suddenly without warning, tossed their digestive systems into chaos for 24 hours and then left them with no energy at all for the next day.  I had visited them on Monday.  We both hoped that I had not contracted it.

It was no longer than fifteen minutes later that the first wave of nausea hit me.  I spent the next 24 hours making love to a stainless steel bowl which received first the contents of my stomach ... the wine and clam chowder I'd eaten in Wakefield a few hours before, and then wave after wave of intestinal contents.  That terrified me because I seldom vomit, and never vomit up what looks, smells, and tastes like feces.  Yes, yes, how would I know what feces taste like, right?  Well, now I know.  You don't want to have the first hand experience necessary to find out what it tastes likes, believe me.

SO ... back to the PRESENT:

Now I wait for 6 weeks to find out what the biopsy revealed.  In the meantime I find out why there seemed to be a blockage preventing those fecal contents from taking their usual route.  And I take it easy until I feel like my old self again.  The antibiotics that I have to put in my eye four times a day cause blurring vision so I suspect I will not be reading or writing too much for a while.  Bear with me once again, please.

In other news this week  ... I read Eat, Pray, Love and watched the movie again as I did so.  They are both wonderful experiences, not identical, but definitely complementary.  And now I have started a book about orphaned twin boys born in Ethiopia to an Indian nun and the British doctor at the hospital where she assisted him.  The little I have read makes me sorry I may have to postpone reading for a while.  last night I watched Dangerous Beauty again ... about the Venetian courtesan ... a movie about love of all kinds ... and I started to watch Passchendaele.  That will be on the agenda for today.

Kenya cried all last night because the wind howled and whistled in at the corners of the house making her feel threatened and uneasy.The only thing that seemed to calm her was having her tummy and throat stroked while she lay in my arms.  I hope that we will both get more sleep tonight.

I also hope that this return to winter weather will allow all of you to enjoy Winterlude or whatever February activities you enjoy when it is cold and blustery.  Me ... I plan to watch the end of Passchendaele and take it easy this next few days.