May 27, 2006 (9:48pm)

I want to thank Jo Heath for coming to my aid with the house survey. I faxed her the form, and she went to our house and took all the asked-for measurements and pictures (she took about forty of those!). I am so grateful for her generous offer to do this. I really, really didn’t want to make a trip to Auburn and back to do it myself.

I had to laugh at one of the pictures she took. Amazingly, Blackjack was in the photo. Poor kitty. Normally the sight of any human other than Gary or me would send him under the bed or out the cat door, so he must be craving attention if he braved being seen by an unknown person. Sylvia, our neighbor who is feeding the cats, says they’ve both become quite friendly to her. I hope they remember us when we come home. (About a year after we got them, Gary went off on sabbatical for a quarter. For about a week afer he came back, the cats hid behind the couch every time they saw him.) I showed Gary Jo’s picture of Blackjack, and he got a wistful look on his face, saying that he really missed “the boys” and was really looking forward to going home and petting them. He wondered if they’d be afraid of the wheelchair. I said they might be at the beginning but I was sure they’d quickly get used to it, and that they’d probably like his readily available lap. He said probably so, and we both simultaneously realized he’d have to put a pad on his lap to protect him from getting scratched when they “make biscuits,” as he won’t be able to feel that any more.

Gary was snoring away when I came in this (Saturday) morning, but he soon woke up. He said he’d only managed two hours of proning last night. He also said the doc who’d done his flap came in to look at it and said it looked excellent. Keep your fingers crossed that it continues to do so.

I got a look at it myself a bit later, and I couldn’t help thinking that the area in question reminded me of those old horror movies where the Frankenstein is held together by big zippers. I told Gary he had a huge (on later reflection, I shouldn’t have used the word “huge”) triangle of staples on his behind, and at the apex of the bottom left angle another short line of staples extended. I also told him he had three slim tubes coming out of the small of his back, leading to small attached bags that collect the drainage from the wound. I told him, combined with his finger, he was looking more and more Borg-like. He joked that they had grafted tails onto him (meaning the “drains”).

Though he was still a little worn out from the surgery, he had already done some weights. He also told me he’d been able to eat all his breakfast again. I said I’d noticed his appetite had improved this past week and he was eating much more than before. He said his primary doctor (Lin) told him that as long as he wasn’t nauseous (which had happened one time a few days after he got here) he should pack it in; as a result his increased eating isn’t completely a matter of appetite but of determination. It also helps that his jaw muscles are getting used to eating again; I guess after a month of not being used, they atrophy too – he said they definitely tired out when he first started eating again.

He asked for the copy of one of his papers that he’d had me print out so he could make final corrections for publication, and while he did that and snoozed some more, I looked over yesterday’s blog entry and then uploaded it, put it on the website, and mailed it out to people – we got internet connection in his room a few days ago, though Gary still isn’t up to doing anything on it. He did want to know the URL of the blog, but I wouldn’t tell him. I’m afraid that when he looks at the blog he’s going to be embarrassed by what I’ve written and then I’ll either have to stop writing it or I’ll have to start censoring myself about what gets written (of course, maybe neither of those outcomes would be a bad thing ;-)), or another possibility is it might cause him to censor what he says to me because he’ll be acutely aware that it could show up on the blog.

Around noontime they turned him to his other side, and he decided to do a bit more of the weights, since being on his side means it really isn’t convenient/possible in the same session to do all the exercises with both arms. He said the OT had come in earlier and told him she expected him to look like Arnold Schwarzenneger by the time these five weeks of healing from the surgery were up. I joked that that was better than Pee Wee Herman (hey, I can be cruel). He laughed, then said he had noticed his laugh was different and said he had been told that nerves for laughing were below the T4 level . I said I hadn’t noticed and to laugh again so I could see. He looked nonplused, then started laughing at my request that he laugh. Then I saw what he meant – his laugh seemed like it was from the throat up. “No belly laughs,” he put it. “But I still find things funny,” he assured me in complete seriousness, which sent us in to more peals of laughter (we’re easily amused) at the thought that I might have worried it was otherwise – I mean, I have enough evidence to the contrary. He sobered and said it would be terrible not to find things funny anymore.

But we had plenty of opportunity to see that his funny bone hadn’t been broken, since as he did his weights we went into Schwarzenneger routines. “I’ll be back,” “You’ll no longer be a girly-man,” etc. I wish I could remember those skits from old Saturday Night Lives where they parodied musclemen.

As he worked out, I told him again that I was very lucky with my apartment, that I thought I might have gotten the best location in terms of noise. In the apartment building across the parking lot, I notice the people on the upper floor like to sit on their terraces, which face the parking lot, and socialize. Their voices carry, but as I’m tucked into the back side of the other building, I can’t hear them unless I go outside. Also in the apartment kitty-corner to me, I always hear some little kid crying when I pass by, so I am glad I don’t have the apartment next to them. This started Gary laughing again. He told me that the previous night after I’d gone, his roommate’s speaker phone had gone off, and he’d recalled how I’d said if I were him I’d have to kill the guy. He said he’d flashed on the image of the people from CSI confronting me with incontrovertible evidence of how I’d been the one to commit the murder, and how I’d then laughed and said with a maniacal gleam in my eye, “Yes, I killed him, and I’m glad.” Maybe no one else has noticed this, but it seems to us the CSI’s seem to have gone down in quality from how they first were, with the perpetrators seemingly always completely unrepentant about killing someone, indeed feeling the act was justified for some trivial reason.

I could empathize with them if the reason was because they found their victims too noisy ;-).

Norma called me about that time, and when I asked if she wanted to talk to Gary, she seemed astonished that it was now possible to do so. They happily chatted away. She and the rest of Gary’s siblings, as well as one of his nephews, will be visiting us mid-June. (Hmm, I just realized they’ll be coming the day before I’m getting kicked out of my apartment; I may recruit some moving help ;-) Gary’s cousin Helen has offered me the use of her condo for a few days at that time (!), and perhaps longer depending on when the remodeller needs to work on it.)

My little sister then called, and she wanted to know the URL of the blog. Unthinkingly, I gave it to her. After we hung up, Gary pointed out he too now knew the URL. Damn. I’ll just have to keep his computer out of reach. Or get one of those parenting programs that disallows children from accessing certain websites.

Non sequitur. When I walk down the hall from the elevator to Gary’s room, I often see one or more of the patients just sitting in wheelchairs close to the nurses’ station; I often see one young man in particular. It occurred to me that he and these others might be people who don’t have anyone here with them and so they are sat close to the nurses’ station (I’m not sure these patients can move their own chairs) so that they can be around others and the bustle of activity and not always stuck in their rooms on their own. I told my theory to Gary, and he thought it likely, saying it would be very hard to go through this on one’s own. He’s said that several times, and he pointed out that he can never say that without choking up, that he so appreciates me being here with him through this. I remember how hard it was for me that fall a year after I got CFS. I felt so sick most of the time, and Gary was off on sabbatical. I didn’t feel it fair to ask him to come home, but I felt very alone (my fault, since I didn’t reach out to anyone). Anyway, when this happened to him, I knew I didn’t want him to feel alone the way I had.

Sasha and Lauren Shibakov came to visit us in the evening. They brought Gary six bars of dark chocolate (the kind he likes), two of them organic, so they’re healthy ;-). Combined with the four bars I had bought him, I think he’s set for a while. (But he does have room for the French chocolates, Laura ;-).) They also brought me some organic zukes :-). I had emailed them and asked that if they went by an Indian store (they were going to the DeKalb Farmers Market and I knew there were such stores close by) could they pick me up some Indian Basmati rice (American basmati is different, actually being a hybrid of American and Indian rices). I was going to be out of basmati as of Sunday (today), and strangely that seems to be the only kind of rice I tolerate on a regular basis (more strangely, in the past I discovered that the brand makes a difference, so always get one particular brand to be safe). They agreed to do this, but I had forgotten to tell them where they could get it, and a later email didn’t make it to them on time. So when they were here, after already having done their shopping, they still offered to take me to the store to get some. Then they said I didn’t need to come along, that I could stay with Gary. I felt funny about sending them off on some trip just for my rice, especially if I wasn’t going to accompany them, but they said it was fine; besides, Sasha pointed out, based on my blog it wasn’t like I was going to be useful as a navigator.

So they got my rice and did some shopping of their own at Patel Brothers. They picked up some wonderful mangoes for themselves and Gary – I brought one back to the hospital this morning cuz it looks and smells ready for eating. Ripe mangoes give off such a wonderful perfume. I am an expert at cutting them so that they open up into a diamond pattern, having picked up this technique from some gourmet cooking show I watched long ago.

Sasha and Lauren said they thought of transferring my rice and the mangoes to my car, which they had parked right next to, solving the problem of my car being locked by Lauren using a rock. You may remember this was the same solution she put forth the last time they visited when they found me next to my car with my keys locked inside (is this the type of thing they taught you in engineering school, Lauren?). They stayed awhile longer, and then we said our goodbyes, and shortly after I said goodnight to Gary.

Now it is Sunday morning, and so far it is pretty much a repeat of yesterday. He says he always feels off in the mornings, maybe cuz his sleep isn’t deep and uninterrupted for eight hours here. He generally feels better by noontime though. I found him doing his weights, and now he is snoring away again.

A short time later, the nurse came in to turn Gary to his other side. I asked her some questions about Gary’s position, because he seemed too far over on his back. He had slipped over some, and she showed me how to reposition him. But she also told me that I was being too much of perfectionist about the positioning, and to relax and take a deep breath. Of course, being told to calm down just makes me mad ;-). Anyway, now I know how to reposition him. But I do understand it is a compromise between the ideal position and his comfort – he isn’t comfortable being over on his side as much as the ideal would be, and since he’s the one who has to put up with it for the next five weeks, I can’t very well fuss about it to the extent I would like to.

But I reserve the right to fuss a little. ;-)

We called his mom in the early afternoon and got the news that she will be making the trip to come visit him when the rest of her children do. Gary was thrilled that she would be able to make the trip too.