I Was Supposed to Go Home This Week

Mom and Dad drove down last night from home. They brought my dog, pope John Paul III, who is a Golden Retriever or a mixed breed who is primarily Golden Retriever, depending upon which vet one chooses to believe. He was a pound puppy, so we'll never know for certain without DNA testing, and we don't care, so we'll never bother. We've had him since he was four months old. I was ten, and it was the summer before my sixth-grade year when he joined our family. That makes him six-and-one-half years old. It seems like he's been with us forever. I wish he could stay with me at the hospital. The nurse said when I'm off quarantine, the next time my parents bring the dog, I can at least bring him up to my ward. I've been told that crazy people benefit from dogs.

The people in my ward are fond of referring to ourselves as crazy people. At first it made the staff angry, but now they play along. If you read my last post, you know that one of the questions they asked each of us upon intake was if we had ever become angry when someone refused to acknowledge us as a deity. Gradually, as we got to know each other better, we started to compare notes. All of us found that particular question quite amusing. As soosn as I'm out of quarantine, which should be in two days or less, we're going to have a deity day. We're each going to dress as the religious iconic figure of our choosing and be really irate if anyone calls us by our real names and not our deity names. I hate to be trite, but i'll probably go either as the blessed Virgin, or possibly her cousin Elizabeth, who was John the Baptist's mother. My third choice would be Mary Magdalene. i don't quite have the body, but I could stuff. None of these are outright deities, but the Catholic Church recognizes them as saints, so that's close enough. Had I not gotten sick, we could have done this on All Saints' Day, which is today, but the other crazy people are postponing it so I can participate beyond looking through the window in my costume. We'll all wear name tags so there will be no excuse for staff to fail to acknowledge us properly, and it would be rather difficult to tell whom we're supposedly representing with the costume material available here.

I was supposed to go home today for a week, but my sickness has the schedule messed up. I knew before my parents came last night that I wouldn't be going back with them. It was good that I knew in advance. Those sorts of surprises aren't nice ones to spring on people. aS it was, I enjoyed having a late dinner at an outdoor restaurant where Kelso could come. My Dad has a bogus "service dog" tag for him, but we don't push it so far as to take him inside small enough places where people who might be allergic could be affected. As it was, he sat nicely by our outdoor table.

The hospital staff let me spend the night in my parents motel room. They told my parents just to report after our stay that one of us might have developed the influenza virus so that they could take precautions, but that I'm not highly contagious anyway with the amount of drugs I'm taking to combat this thing. The hospital just has to be cautious both for the sake of other patients and to protect me from any new infectious bacteria or viruses to which I might be susceptible in my weakened state. Today we walked along the beach with the dog and had both breakfast and lunch on the beach. I wanted to run but my dad said it's not oK for me to run yet. He said it was a good sign that I wanted to, but that I probably needed a week before vigorous exercise. I have to check with the regular pediatrician on my case. The leg's coming along nicely. I still limp a bit, but not terribly.

My parents left at about 3:00. Then it was back into the mask and up the elevator to the loony bin. They put the piano in my room since no one else ever plays it. It has a canvas cover over it, which I take off when I play it. after I'm offically de-contaminated and released to the general population, they'll wipe down the keyboard of the piano with Lysol. The nurses come up to my window and request moldy oldy songs from their respective decades. If I can play the request, they slip a dollar under the door. I've only felt like playing for about the last two days, and part of that time was spent with my parents, but I hope to colllect a few more bucks before I leave isolation.

Next week my father will be working in southern California. I'll probably fly home with him and spend a week there. I'm looking forward to getting home if only for a week, even if I have to go to school all but one day, but the sleep thing already has me nervous. I can usually get in a good six hours here. I was sleeping more when I was on heavier cough medicine, but with regular sleep medication, it's more like six hours. i don't know if I can keep it up at hime. There's really no point in worrying now, but I can't help it.

The nurses brought a variety of candy to my door since I couldn't trick-or-treat. This was very nice, epecially since I'm too old to trick-or-treat anyway. The others had a party and made popcorn balls and watched semi-scary movies. They sent two popcorn balls to me. I think they watched the movies that are unrealistic enough as to be more stupid than scary, because some of the people's issues in here could be worsened by genuinely scary movies.

Rebecca, I think it's terribly cute that Benny thinks he can get whatever he wants by saying, "Trick-or treat." I wish I had thought of that as a child. If I were you, I would not appreciate the doctors analyzing my dreams, either, beyond being flattered about their interest in me. Tell them that unless you have proof that they have some expertise in dream analysis, they have no business dabbling in the analysis of your dreams. I ordered The Analyzing Your Dreams Dictionary by Rosalynne Clements online. Some of the things she writes make perfect sense, while other things are pretty far into the ozone layer. One must pick and choose what to believe. I happen to know that regular medical school doesn't cover dream analysis, so unless they've done residencies in psychiatry, they're not experts.

Matt, on Religious Icon Day, one of the guys plans to dress up as Joseph Smith, while another wants to be Warren Jeffs. Pulling off either look will be difficult with no costumes, although for the Warren Jeffs look, one probably just needs to look like a total nerd. For Joseph Smith or Warren Jeffs, one should probably proposes to every woman he sees. In any event, they'll have name tags to identify themselves so no one confuses them with mere mortals. Regarding your whooping cough, I wonder if you and your siblings were given a bad batch of the vaccine, or if it was just bad timing and you would have gotten the disease even without the vaccine because you didn't get it soon enough. What do you think?

I got an H1N1 vaccine last year that was a bad batch. It didn't give me the disease, but the serum delivered in that particular load wasn't strong enough, and the people who got vaccines from that lot weren't adequately protected. Some got H1N1 and some didn't, but it was all in spite of the shot. It made me really angry to have been injected for nothing. I hate injections. I hate them so much, in fact, that my father came in and gave it to me at 5;30 a.m. while I was still asleep. It woke me, of course, and he had to listen to me scream afterward, but he said at least he didn't have to chase me all over the house or drag me into a doctor's office. And it was all for nothing, since the shot was ineffective! I ended up getting pneumonia from the stupid H1N1. If dad was going to inject me against my will at the age of 15, he could at least have given me a vaccine that worked! When I write a tell-all book about my childhood (anyone can do it and vanity publish it quite cheaply these days) one can be certain that I'll devote an entire chapter to the H1N1 vaccine that was forced on me.

I must get back into bed and pretend to be asleep for now so the psychs don't up my meds for tomorrow and turn me into a zombie.

Until next time, have a prosperous week.