Imbolc Valentine Moon
Two saline flushes, then the heparin lock. Clamp the picc line. Half of the thiamine bottle, one each of the white cap and blue cap bottles, all injected into the tpn bag of milky, 950 calorie nutrition. The thiamine is yellow and floods into the bag creating a branched, river like stream. Shake the bag so that the vitamins and other additives mix up. Spike the bag with the plastic spike that connects to the tubing. Clamp the tubing. Connect the cassette that holds the tubing to the pump. It slides in and locks. New battery for the pump. Turn pump on. Wait, go through the pump’s programming. Unclamp the tubing. (lots of alcohol wipes in here. sterile technique required since the picc line ends just above the heart.) The tpn nutrients gradually, a milliliter at a time, snake up to the connector. Saline flush. Wipe. Connect tubing to picc lock. And, voila, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I do this by myself this morning, with Kate’s assistance of course. The tpn pump, in Kate’s case, runs almost 24 hours, delivering approximately 41 milliliters of nutrition an hour, every hour. The objective here is not so much weight gain as getting her tuned up nutritionally for surgery. The feeding tube placement procedure is not major surgery, but it is surgery and she is frail. Most of the time people learn how to do this for a much longer duration. In our case 10 days. Learning new things everyday.
Still slowly emerging out of the cocoon in which illness places us all. Perhaps I’ll have imaginal cells (a real thing, see butterflies) which will alter my being, transform me into someone new after the last three weeks. I’m ready for some new, even if it’s taking up again the things I was doing before with changed purpose.
It’s 10 degrees here on Shadow Mountain, but, in Colorado fashion, a warmup is on the way. 47 on Tuesday.
And, btw, yes, it has occurred to us that 8,800 feet is not the best position for us with our ailments. Not likely to change soon however with the dogs and my almost pathological aversion to the idea of moving. The move that got us here felt like a last time for that sort of thing. Difficult.
Chronic illnesses must have some similarity in their psychological impact. Maybe related to grieving. In the first days of a diagnosis there is confusion, distress, yet also relief that this thing has a name. Searching for a cure becomes a family enterprise, the internet glows red hot with old medical journal articles, new experimental this or that, group therapy by fellow sufferers. This serves to educate everyone, yet it also embeds the illness more and more firmly in daily life. There are no days or nights when the illness isn’t there. It hovers, even on good days or weeks, a known guest, but not a welcome one.
This is not the end. The armistice finally crumbles under a sudden resurgence of symptoms. Or, new ones. Or, the failure of a remedy. Despair. Perhaps depression. Maybe it is forever. I just thought that in a moment of exhaustion, but what if it’s true?
Better to suspend hope for results. Better to stay with the day-to-day. Better to focus on spirituality, on matters of the soul. Why this latter in the time of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, flat earth atheists? Because the one thing illness does not touch is our soul, that part of us that links us to the eternal, to the cosmos, to the ongoingness of things.
This morning the waning crescent moon had its horns turned up toward Venus and Jupiter, Saturn hovered beneath it. Antares and Scorpio glittered beside them. We have much less light pollution than the Denver metro.
Any of these things separately, happy, joyful tasks. All of them on the same day, a day that started with fatigue on waking? The happiness and joy would have to be in retrospect. I make chicken soup from scratch, with a whole chicken, cut up celery, onions, carrots, and garlic sauteed first. Wine to deglaze. Add water, lot of water. The chicken in its wire mesh cage. Wait for it to boil. Up here, longer than normal. An hour or so of simmering, then a package of frozen peas and one of frozen corn. Another ten minute. Retrieve the chicken, set it out to cool. Later, pick the meat from the bones. Put it in the soup. A lot of standing.
I’m not describing this well. I was a runner in a marathon. My resources had tapped out around 5 pm. As I got onto 6th street going east past Santa Fe, I hit the wall. Still had to cross Denver, get into Aurora, see Jon, then Maria’s. By the time I pulled out of the Stanley Marketplace parking lot, empanadas steaming in their cardboard box, I had half the marathon to finish. But I was already finished. My bed, however, was over an hour away, 45 miles, the first 20 miles back across the Denver metro. No choice.
Snowing here. About an inch already. Then comes the cold. But not like the cold my friends in Minnesota are going to feel. For example, Tue -7 for a high, -27 for a low. Wed -15 for a high, -30 for a low. Also, winds in the 10 to 19 mph range. Wind chill will be brutal. Enduring the last of any January will qualify you for Minnesota macho. Plan a trip there now to claim it for yourself.
The bulgogi was good. So was the dumpling soup. The porkbelly last night? Not so much. Got a little rushed since I fried the smelt at the same time. Shouldn’t have done both. The smelt, which I realize now were considerably smaller than the Lake Superior smelt, fried up fine, but I bunched them together too much. And, fried things don’t work so well as left overs. In the trash after my meal. SeoAh sent me her sauce for the porkbelly, which I used. It couldn’t rescue a too fatty, not enough taste dish. Not sure I’ll try that one again. Didn’t seem worth learning how to do well. Tonight straight up American fare. Macaroni and cheese? Hamburgers? Steak and potatoes? Something more in my wheelhouse.
8-10 inches of new, fluffy snow Monday night and yesterday. Looking out our bedroom window at night I see Christmas. Flocked trees. The full moon shining on fresh powder. A significant chill in the air. 7 degrees.
*”Tu B’Shvat is the New Year for the Trees. As in all other points in the Jewish calendar, Tu B’Shvat offers a unique opportunity for insight into living and personal growth. Throughout the centuries, Kabbalists have used the tree as a metaphor to understand God’s relationship to the spiritual and physical worlds. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, in his 18th century classic The Way of God, teaches that the higher spiritual realms are roots that ultimately manifest their influence through branches and leaves in the lower realms.
Shhh. Don’t tell anybody or you might jinx it, but I think Kate’s starting to gain weight. She’s at 84, past the 82 pound barrier that seemed so intractable. yay. shhh.
Went out to DIA late last night and picked up SeoAh’s husband. Got back here about 11:00 pm, well past my sell by date in terms of sleep. The dogs didn’t get fed until 7:30 am. Gabe’s here, too. Jon brought him up last night. Jon and Ruth will go skiing today at A-Basin, then pick Gabe up on their way home. It’s been a very family oriented Christmas and New Years and January. Friends, too.
