Fall Healing Moon
If you’re interested and haven’t found Kate’s Caringbridge website, you can keep up more often on it.
She’s progressing, as I’ve posted there. Her attitude has brightened, she’s eaten solid foods including fish and pasta, and she passed a fitness test that qualifies her for in-hospital acute care rehab. Nausea is still an issue though Ativan seems to knock it back. Now the questions turn to recovery, to discharge. Still not clear even though this is day 11, unusual in these days of get’em outta here hospitalizations.
Annie’s been in to see Kate each day, bought stuffed animals for her, has helped with the dogs and the dishes, made it possible for me to see Kate without worrying about home stuff. Thanks, Annie.
Here’s how it is with me. I’m tired. Even though I’ve been able to extinguish anxiety, at least of a crippling sort, I’m still concerned about what’s happening to Kate, traveling with her along the emotional and physical ups and downs. When I go in to see her, it’s usually six hours plus, sometimes more, before I return home. At the hospital I see many more people than I usually do in a day, wearing for this introvert who’s happy alone most of the time.
All this drains me, of something. Not sure what, exactly, but by the time I get home, reading, do anything with intellectual nuance repels me. I suppose I could do it if I knuckled down, but that’s sort of the point, the draining part of all this takes away my will to buckle down, get more done. That’s part of what I’m allowing to be the case, part of the flow of the chi that I simply acknowledge, accept.
Interestingly, I have found physical labor soothing. On Sunday I went over to Big R and bought a 4x6x3/4 rubber horse stall mat. Kate had this idea a while back to mind the gap between our house and the garage. I mentioned it a few posts back. Got the pallets she wanted and I came up with the idea of using these mats as the surface for the pallets.
Cutting the mat proved a challenge. Getting just one was to see how difficult this was gonna be. Very. I tried a bolt cutter. I tried a hack saw and a miter saw. Then I had what was probably not one of my brightest ideas, the chain saw. It worked. But. The rubber particles produced covered the floor, my eyes (I put on goggles.), and got into the chain saw’s filter, pushing out an acrid, afternoon at the dragstrip sort of smell. Hmm. Better stop.
That was when I decided to check the internet. Oh, a box cutter. I had one, so I used it. It was a little dull and the mat’s are 3/4 inch thick. Not to mention that I’m 71. Difficult. But it worked. I got a somewhat clumsily cut mat that was 44.5 by 44.5, the width of the larger pallets. Plunked it down. These mats by the way are also heavy. “Like moving a body,” said the guy at Big R who loaded it in my Rav4. I’m pleased to say that after the snow and ice of the last two days, it maintained its grippiness and snow removal from it was easy. Two more to go.
If it gets a bit warmer and less inclement, I plan to start splitting wood.
Though when we went to the E.R. a week ago Friday this felt like a sprint, it’s obvious now it’s a marathon. For both of us. We have Beth Evergreen folks and family, other friends. So important at times like these, even for committed introverts (as we both are).
BTW: When I came home yesterday afternoon, the internet was down. I knew that meant we’d had a power outage. A transformer near Aspen Park. The point here: the generator was chugging away, keeping the lights on. Literally. Made me happy I went through all that bullshit to get it installed. Power was out for about 4 hours.
