This is not a photo of my brother and me. I just liked it.
My sleep schedule, which is erratic even times of perfect health, has not yet returned to normal even for me. I've been awake since just before 3:00 a.m. PDT. My brother must be experiencing his own sleep issues, as he saw the dim light of the TV (which was on "mute" so the sound could not have awakened him) under my door and came in to chat. Matthew has made the decision to forego his final year of athletic eligibility and to graduate in three years, as I will do. Incidentally, his decision will be kept quiet, as he would be given minimal playing time in the upcoming season if the coaching staff knew of his plan not to return for year number four. Some would consider his choice to withhold this rather significant bit of information to be unethical, but in the world of college athletics, where even in the most upstanding of programs, athletes are essentially treated as slabs of beef, it's a dog-eat-dog world, and in this particular case, Matthew happens to be the dog who will not go hungry.
We discussed medical school and how to handle the application process in relation to one another.
We considered tossing a coin, and whichever of us won would name our first choice medical school, and the other would not apply there. Then the other would name our first choice, or our second choice if the other's first choice was the same, and the other one would not apply there.
We're concerned, and I think our concern is legitimate, that we're not both going to be admitted to the same school. It could happen, but the odds are against it. We're assuming that at our top choice schools, an element of nepotism may be involved, and a given school is not likely to grant nepotistic favor to members of the same family in the same year. The assumption may be wrong. It may be that neither of us even needs nepotistic favor, or it may be that our familial clout is not is not as great as we think it is, and that neither of us will be favored because of Dad's eminence.
Furthermore, even without nepotism, I suspect being twins will not work in our favor in terms of gaining admittance to the same school. All the way down to kindergarten, schools generally don't put siblings, who would most often be twins, in the same class if there is another option. While in med school we wouldn't necessarily have to be in the same actual sections of courses, and even if we were, perhaps the school would consider it our problem and not theirs, I just can't see it as being a positive factor from their point of view. It would become more of an issue when we reach year #3, when the bulk of time is spent in the hospital and not in the classroom. Having siblings in groups and rotations, and perhaps twins more than regular siblings, could impact group dynamics. Attempting to work around it could be a hassle that many med schools would just as soon avoid.
In the end, we came to a fairly easy solution. We're initially sharing with each other neither our MCAT scores nor the schools to which we will apply, much less which are our top choices. The lack of sharing of MCAT scores is to the benefit of both of us. Unless something wildly unusual happens, I should easily outscore Matthew, which he knows perfectly well, but seeing it in black and white can only make him feel bad. Knowing I've outscored him, if I'm then not admitted to a school of my choice and he is, I will take it personally. Therefore, what good can possibly come of sharing our respective scores? Once all is said and done, if both of us are happy about where we end up, we'll tell each other whatever we feel like sharing. If one of us clearly ends up in a better place, it would probably be just as well not to know all the gory details.
Matthew will take an MCAT prep course at his school, and I'll take one at mine. On weekends when we're both home we'll study together and help each other, and even depend on the many doctors in the family, Dad included, in studying. We'll also enlist help from mom, who obviously isn't an MD, but as someone with a doctorate in educational psychology, has considerable expertise in test-taking skills. We know all the basics, as we prepped before taking the SAT, but my mom has high-level sources. She's personally acquainted with many of the people who wrote the MCAT prep books and designed the courses, and who may have updated information that's not yet been published or included in the classes.
Is it fair to our competitors that our mother knows the right people who can provide us with beneficial information? Not really, but still it would be foolish not to utilize any possible advantage to which we may have access. It wasn't fair that I was born at roughly 30 weeks of gestation. It wasn't fair that I was attacked in a restroom or that the babysitter we had when I was in first grade didn't take care of me and practically allowed me to starve to death. It wasn't fair that I was left to fend for myself in a smoke-filled house while in a very weakened state of health. Matthew, too, has his own baggage, though it sometimes doesn't seem that way to me, and we're both as Caucasian as snow, which certainly will not work to our advantage in a system that, affirmative action being in effect or not, thrives on diversity. Life isn't fair. So if my brother and I have the possibility of advantages in this inherently arbitrary at best and, more realistically, outrightly unfair process, we will make the most of those advantages. I will note, however, that any nepotistic advantages will occur only as a result of recognition of a not-terribly-common surname and any association or familiarity with it that members of acceptance panels may have. My father will not be making calls, sending emails, or writing letters on behalf of either of us, nor will his name be mentioned in any part of the many applications either of us completes and submits. We have our limits in terms of the depths to which we will sink to achieve our goals.
I am highly satisfied with the agreement we have essentially chiseled out of thin air, and I feel much better about the arduous process we're both facing. It's good to know where we stand in terms of one another, and I like the idea of being mutually supportive. Still, however we look at it, we are competitors in a highly competitive system, and it's in both of our best interests to openly acknowledge it without being too cut-throat about it.
This is the view from my bed, which is a large framed prtrait of Billy Joel. Other walls feature equally large framed portraits of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.
I'm quite fond of the music of Billy Joel. I can't say what's my favorite Billy Joel song, as it changes randomly. "Miami 2017" is totally full of the awesome, but so are "She's Always a Woman,"
"Summer at Highland Falls," [one of my favorite teen angst themes], "Allentown," "Only the Good Die Young," "We didn't Start the Fire," "Piano Man," and "Captain Jack." Speaking of "Captain jack," how can one not love a song that works into the lyrics both the terms "pick your nose" and "masturbate"?
I wasn't present for the event, but my Uncle Scott proposed to my Aunt Jillian at the conclusion of his senior recital. He had arranged permission from the professor who was his advisor to play and sing "And Do It Goes" as an encore at his recital in some mid-sized concert hall at BYU. One would not ordinarily play something by Billy Joel other than, perhaps under rare circumstances, on of his forays into the classical realm. Certainly one wouldn't play something that one sang along to at a senior piano recital, but it was all cleared through his advisor, so I suppose it was kosher. He played and sang the song, which is really a bit melancholy to be singing when you're in the process of proposing to the person you hope to marry. Immediately following the conclusion to the song, he quickly removed from insode the piano a single pink rose and a small box containing a wedding ring. He stepped down from the stage and went to where she was seated )one of her friend knew and made sure she had a front-row seat), knelt, and asked for her hand in marriage. she said yes, and the rest is history.
Public proposals are a risky thing. What if she had said no? It would have put something of damper on the post-recital reception. (They had spoken of marriage before, though, so the proposal wasn't totally out of the blue.) Ahmad Rashad proposed to Phylicia Rashad (whom my mom has accompanied on the piano for some charity function once and says is a most gracious and kind person) during an NFL Thanksgiving pregame show. She accepted, and they remained married for something like fifteen years, which is roughly two-and-a-half lifetimes for a show business marriage. Larry King soon followed suit and proposed on live television to someone who [very wisely, in my opinion] said no. Soon enough later, he persuaded one of the Engemanns, (Shawn, formerly Shawnae, I think) a member of a large musical family some of whom to worked with the Osmonds, to marry him in a ceremony by his hospital bed before he underwent some sort of cardiac procedure. The former Ms. Engemann was born in the neighborhood of 1959, which would place her in her early fifties now, while King is pushing 80. A few years ago both of them filed divorce papers, but I believe they've since reconciled. Just from looking at Mr. King, it's hard to imagine that green stuff with presidents' and other prominent historical figures' faces didn't somehow play a part both in Ms. Engemann's decision to marry him and perhaps later in her decision to tear up the divorce papers, but that is nothing more than speculation on my part, as I've never met either of them and would be perfectly happy if such remained the status quo. It was, I believe, the eighth marriage for Larry King. I've digressed considerably, but my original point was that public marriage proposals can be a risky matter. Sometimes they work out, and sometimes the recipient of the request has other plans for his or her future, such as was the case of Larry King and the one that got away.
I'll post here a video of the Billy Joel sang to Aunt Jillian, immediately before proposing. Billy Joel is a great singer and pianist, but my Uncle Scott is far too talented to be called an amateur. I'm sure his rendition was respectable at the very least.
I have great respect for musical artists who compose most of their own work. Billy Joel composes his own music and lyrics. Considering he was originally a high school dropout (he didn't graduate with his classmates; he quit school to work to help his single mother out financially; many years later he wrote an essay or two for his high school and was awarded his official diploma), his lyrics show rare depth and obvious literacy. Some high school lost a great student and probably didn't even realize it at the time. It's unfortunate that arrangements couldn't have been made to allow him to continue his studies and to work as well so he could have enjoyed the small but not wholly insignificant milestone of going through the graduation ceremony with his peers.
Billy Joel has been married three times. Both he and wife number three announced a split. I assume they divorced but I don't really know. His second marriage was to supermodel Christie Brinkley, and produced his only offspring, Alexa Ray Joel. The marriage lasted about nine years, but the two remain on very friendly terms. Alexa is a cute enough young woman, but to me it seems unfortunate that a girl can have a mother as beautiful as Christie Brinkley but can end up looking a great deal more like her father. Billy Joel's looks would be considered by most to be very average. Fortunately for Alexa Ray, in addition to his looks, she inherited musical talent from her father. She says among he earliest memories are of sitting on her father's lap at a piano as he played and sang nursery rhymes to her. (I'd like to offer a shout out to nursery rhymes. They're not said or sung to today's young children nearly as much as they should be. Macabre as the origins of some of them might have been, they're a part of our culture that we cannot afford to let die. Parents and teachers of young children, read, sing and recite Mother Goose rhymes to your children. They are a national treasure we do not want to lose. Save Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, the cow who jumped over the moon, and all the rest. PLEASE !) Ironically, it was Alexa's mother, Christie Brinkley, who insisted that her daughter learn to play the piano, in sort of a "You're Billy Joel's kid and you have to learn to play the piano" type of interaction. It was a smart move on Ms. Brinkley's part, and I'm sure her daughter, who has a modest career as a singer/songwriter, now appreciates her mother's insistence, though Alexa may have resisted to some degree as a youngster.
One of the songs Billy Joel wrote for Alexa, "Goodnight My Angel," is one of the twenty or so songs my own father can play well on the piano. He plays and sings it for me on some nights when I'm having difficulty sleeping. It's a lovely lullaby with a classical tint, and the meaning is deep.
I like Elton John and his music, too. Not that all of these guys don't use backup musicians on a regular basis (and I have to appreciate the use of back-up musicians, as working as one in summers is essentially how my father put himself through medical school, which allows me to have a much more comfortable lifestyle than anyone who hasn't personally earned it really deserves), but anyone who can perform in front of a crowd of thousands with nothing but himself and his instrument, be it piano, guitar, or whatever, has courage beyond what most of us normal people can conceive. Elton John, on the other hand, does not compose his own lyrics, as Billy Joel does. Nevertheless, far be it from me to criticize a musician for composing only melodies and not lyrics, since I do neither. Furthermore, Elton John composed what I consider to be one of the two most beautiful melodies of the modern era of music when he wrote "Your Song." The second of the two most beautiful melodies of modern music is, in my opinion, Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman."
When my Aunt Jillian and Uncle Scott were married in a large Catholic ceremony, she, as the bride, along with her mother, did nearly all the work that goes into throwing together a wedding. The only thing she asked of Scott was that he take care of every aspect of the music, from the ceremony to the reception, as music was his area of expertise. She did put him into contact with my mom, who played piano and organ in the ceremony and helped him with some selections, as he had been Mormon up to that point, and as Mormons emphasize temple weddings where no music is involved. Scott had limited knowledge as to exactly where music fits into a wedding ceremony. Jillian thought the music that was selected for the ceremony was beyond perfect, but she had a bit of an issue with the song he picked for their first dance.
He chose Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman," which, while being an ode to the woman of his dreams, does point out her very human traits. Think of it as something similar to a modern and musical version of the Shakespearean sonnet "My Lover's Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun," which was unusual in its time as, instead of putting his lover on a pedestal and extolling her for more virtues than any one human could conceivably possess, details her foibles, yet tells how much he loves her in spite of them. "She's Always a Woman" is similarly blunt. I think the line from the song my that Aunt Jillian was most affronted by was "She'll ruin your faith with her casual lies," although there were many less-than-complimentary lines to which she could have and probably did take offense. To be honest, though, the song suited and still suits my aunt to the extent that it could have been written specifically for her. She's since gotten over it, and it's one of the first songs she asks her husband to play whenever he's playing for fun or to entertain her.
'She's Got a Way" is a lovely song as well. It's off an album of songs, Songs in the Attic, that Joel released, comprised of a series of songs that seemed to be particularly well-received in concert but never had made any dent in the Billboard charts or any similar list prior to being released on the album. Joel once mentioned that his musical inspiration for the song came from Gordon Lightfoot. While I can't hear the musical resemblance inspiring the reference to Lightfoot, I always appreciate it when one artist gives credit or compliments to another, and in this case I appreciate it especially, as Lightfoot is another of my musical idols, and he, too, composes nearly all of his own music -- both melodies and lyrics.
Billy Joel has come out in favor of a few political candidates, but them seemed to eschew the practice. He made the comment, "People who pay for your tickets, I don't think they want to hear who you're going to vote for and how you think they should vote." I wish more entertainers would keep that in mind. While, as Americans, we're free to voice our views, politically or otherwise, I find it off-putting when entertainers interject themselves into the political process. They are free to support whomever they choose, either with financial contributions or with statements and appearances. On the other hand, I'm concerned about the Americans who are stupid enough to be influenced by the political opinions of entertainers, who have no more or less knowledge than does the average citizen concerning the political process. It doesn't bother me when they appear and sing a few songs, if they're musicians, at political rallies, as it makes what otherwise might be a rather tedious event somewhat more enjoyable. Short of that, I wish entertainers would be less involved in political campaigning. I say this as a liberal, with political leanings that usually benefit from the political endorsements of entertainers, most of whom are liberal as am I. Still, I believe it's not a good practice, and I appreciate Billy Joel's stance in this regard.
When we're all gone, I believe that if future generations retain any good taste in music, the music of Billy Joel will survive. For the sake of those who will someday replace us on this Earth, I hope I'm right.
Dr. Kent came by our house on his way to the hospital this morning, which was at about 6:15. He said he didn't want me to have to get up and come into his office or the hospital. I'm quite aware doctors do not do this for many patients, and that it's not because of anything special about me that affords me such care, but rather, it's because my dad is important and because most doctors really like my mother that I receive red carpet treatment. My parents knew in advance that he was coming. I wish they had told me because I would have at least brushed my teeth and hair before he got there, as opposed to making him wait for four minutes. I will not allow anyone outside my immediate family see me in the morning before my teeth and hair have been brushed and my face has been washed.
He noticed that the stuffed panda he had given me on the day I was released from the hospital was in bed beside me. I explained to him that even though some people may consider me a little old to be sleeping with stuffed animals, I still hadn't quite gotten over having my remaining stuffed animals from childhood accidentally tossed into the dumpster when my family made our last move, and since the panda is the only stuffed animal I presently own, I reserve the right to enjoy it. He told me I should not feel bad, because he knew for a fact that his younger brother, my Uncle Scott, has to share his bed with my Aunt Jillian's terry cloth Casper the Friendly Ghost doll that was her mother's in childhood and that Jillian had coveted for her entire childhood until her brothers finally talked her mom into giving to her when she was something like 23.
He also noticed that I was wearing one of the nighties his wife had made for me. It's kind of funny because the bedding I currently have on my bed consists of a music note comforter in black and white with the comforter reversible in white with large pink polka dots. The top sheet is pink, and the fitted sheet is white with large pink polka dots, matching the underside of the comforter. The pillows match both motifs. (My musical keyboard rug is on the floor. ) The particular nightie Stephanie (his wife) had sewn for me was pink with white polka dots in the exact shade of pink as the background of my comforter, so they were perfect negative images of one another except that the polka dots on the nightie were not quite so huge. He asked if I always dressed to match my bedroom. It's a really comfortable nightie, and I'll wear it a lot. It's long enough that I don't have to wear bottoms with it, although Stephanie did make short bottoms to go with it, but right now having anything fitting, even with very loose elastic, isn't comfortable against my midsection even though the actual incision is below waist level.
We talked more than we ever have before. He apologized for his actions in interfering with Jared's and my relationship, and said he can see now that it was clearly the wrong thing to have done, but at the time he thought he was doing the right thing. I accepted his apology. He also said that with the way Jared has been acting lately, he may have unintentionally done me a favor, and that Jared doesn't at this point in his life deserve anyone as nice, smart, or pretty as I. That part embarrassed me a bit, but I just said thanks and let it go. He said that we're both too young for anything serious at this point in our lives, as we'll all be making decisions, hopefully about what medical schools to attend, and that at our ages, relationships should not play a part in those decisions, but that kids our age should be going out and having fun with others our own ages, and it would be nice if Jared were to get his act together sufficiently so that we could occasionally hang out or attend functions together. He expressed appreciation for my brother Matthew being such a good friend to Jared and said that even though Matthew often seems like a birdbrain to me, where Jared is concerned, he's often the only voice of reason to whom Jared will listen.
He told me that he knew I had absolutely nothing to do with the tattoo, and I should not feel in any way responsible. He also admitted, which somewhat blew me away, that Jared probably should not go on a mission. He said there have been people who have regretted it, and Jared probably would have resented, possibly for the rest if his life, the mission putting him two years behind in his schooling. I totally agree, but Dr. Kent is so very Mormon that hearing the words come out of his mouth caught me thoroughly off-guard. He told me that if his son had to walk around with a tattoo on his arm, there were a whole lot worse things than "ALEXIS" that he could have had engraved into his skin.
He did a great deal more talking than I did, partly because I was still half asleep and partly because I was somewhat stunned by most of what he was saying.
The physical exam was quick and mostly painless, although it can't be entirely pain-free to have someone prod a site where your entire midsection was sliced open and stitched up less than a week earlier. He said the outer wound was healing very nicely and that he hoped my scar would be minimal, not that I'm going to go around showing off that part of my body on a regular basis. He also said all indications were that inner incisions were healing just as well. I'll need an ultrasound in about four weeks to confirm that the inner workings are healing as they should be. He asked if I had any questions or complaints.
My only complaint was that I had been denied the privilege of playing the piano -- particularly the new one -- at all, when it seemed that it would be a relatively harmless activity in which for me to engage. He said that he agreed with me that it should be accessible on a very limited basis. He said he would tell my parents that if I had an ordinarily good day with no new problems, I should be allowed to play for fifteen minutes this afternoon, and that the length of time should be increased by five minutes each day. I thanked him profusely. I asked about the violin. He said we'd have to wait a bit, but maybe in a week to ten days I could start with small intervals, as I would now be doing with the piano. Using the bow arm of the violin involves quite a bit more strain to the midsection than does playing the piano.
Dr. Kent then asked a favor. He said he had heard the new piano had a very nice touch and resonating sound, and he asked if I would be terribly offended if he played it before I was allowed the opportunity. I told him it was the very least I could do for him. I got out of bed and followed him -- rather slowly, but I got there -- down the hall and into the loft sitting area. I sat in a rocker-recliner, which he put into the reclining position by pulling the lever on the side, and he tossed a blanket throw over me that he had picked up from my bedroom. He asked if it would be a problem to play when Matthew was still asleep. My dad, who had wandered into the loft, said that Matthew would sleep all day if someone didn't wake him up at some point. My mother also made her way into the loft and sat on the sofa.
Dr. Kent played a few scales to warm up, then went into a Chopin etude-- probably something he had learned as a kid. He and all his siblings took lessons as children. Then, because he knows I like Billy Joel (one of the four larger-than-life framed black-and-white portraits on my walls is of Billy Joel; the other three are of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven), he played Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman." It's a beautiful song, and it always makes me think of Jillian's and Scott's wedding because they danced their first dance to it.
He pronounced it an exquisite instrument. He has a Steinway, which my mom also does downstairs in the living room, and the Steinway has always been considered the gold standard for pianos except for those people amongst the Bosendorfer snob group. Steinways do have a clarity in their bass notes that is, so far, unmatched by anything else on the market, including Bosendorfers. Still, for overall sound, despite the lower price tag, if given a choice, which I wasn't, I think I'd still choose a Kawai over a Steinway. There's something in the tone quality that I don't hear in other pianos.
Dr.Kent left, reminding me to stay out of automobiles unless absolutely necessary, and saying that he'd be back in a couple of days to check on me again unless he heard sooner from me or from my parents that there was a problem.
It was a most unusual doctor appointment, and a most enlightening one. I think both of us are guilty of having misjudged each other. It's nice that we seem to have ironed out our differences. Whatever does or does not happen with Jared, it's highly unlikely that his father will be a factor.
Buenas dias, senors, senoras, senoritos, y senoritas!
Some people's parents arguments are supposedly scary and very uncomfortable for everyone around. My parents' fights are totally hilarious. They don't fight all that often but when they do, it's over stuff like the time our house had to be tented for termites, so any of our food that couldn't be sealed in plastic and put in the refrigerator had to go to neighbors' houses. I think Matthew and I had just turned ten that year. We were leaving for Utah early the next morning, and my dad asked my mom to make Chex Party Mix because my grandfather likes it. (Personally, I think my dad wanted her to make it for him because my grandfather loves the taste because she puts so freaking much butter in it [about 5 times the amount the recipe on the side of the Chex boxes actually calls for] that he eats it like the food supply in the world is going to go radioactive in the next hour and anything that isn't eaten before then will be inedible and we'll all die of starvation. Meanwhile he's clogging his arteries to the point that the world's greatest cardiac surgeon or neurosurgeon would be helpless to clear his aortas or carotid arteries or whatever. They're secretly trying to kill the man, but that's just my opinion.)
Anyway, it was about 10:00 p.m. the night before we were leaving for Utah, and my mom was trying to make Chex Party Mix. First she looked for the Rice Chex, which were stored in an a box in one neighbor's house. My dad had no idea which neighbor had the Rice Chex, so he had to go door-to-door around the cul-de-sac looking for the Rice Chex. Then she went looking for the Worcestershire sauce, and it was the same situation. "Can't you just make it from whatever ingredients we actually have in the house?" my dad yelled downstairs to her.
"That would be hot buttered Rice Chex," my mother shouted back at him.
They weren't actually hollering at each other because they were angry, but because my dad was upstairs on his computer working on the family Christmas card letter, and my mom was downstairs in the kitchen trying to make the Chex Party Mix, they couldn't hear each other without raising their voices. That, however didn't make it any easier for my brother and me to sleep through the ruckus. We finally both got out of bed and sat at the top of the staircase to watch the scene unfold and to reassure ourselves that the disagreement wasn't going to escalate into domestic violence.
By the time my dad had interrupted the neighbors for the third time to look for another ingredient, he finally drove all the way into Sacramento to an all-night grocery store with a list of needed ingredients for the Chex Party Mix. My dad was so disgusted by the whole incident that it ended up being a featured portion of that year's family Christmas card letter. We are a dysfuntional family -- no doubt about it -- but not to the degree that the people who received our family Christmas card letter that year must have been led to believe.
Yesterday my dad didn't work because I was released from the hospital. Midway through the day, he decided I was doing well enough that I could be left without the direct supervision of an MD for long enough to him to visit the driving range and hit a few golf balls. His car was in the shop. He might have driven my car, since I can't drive it, but he couldn't be seen driving anything as ghetto as a Honda Accord at the golf course. Even my mom's Lexus was pushing his image a bit, but it was the best he could do on a moment's notice. He removed a basket of linen blazers that my mom had in her trunk because she was planning to take them to the cleaners, and he put his golf clubs in her trunk. He opened the gate to the backyard and set the basket just inside the gate. Then he went off on his merry way to hit golf balls. When he got home, he took his golf bag out of my mom's trunk and stored it in its customary location in the garage, but he forgot all about my mom's laundry.
This afternoon my dad came home early to go to the 4-year-olds' birthday party. (Booze is being served to the adults; why else would my dad go to a birthday party for a couple of 4-year-olds?) The New Piano Admiration Society was still upstairs in the loft. My dad came up to have a look at it and to try ut one of his 70's or 80's era rock songs when my mom remembered she needed to take her blazers to the laundry and decided she had just enough time. She went downstairs. Something prompted her to open her trunk and look inside before leaving. The basket of blazers was not where she had left it. She came back inside and hollered at my dad from downstairs, "John, do you know what happened to the basket of linen blazers that were in my trunk?"
He stopped "Come Sail Away" mid-chord (between "Come sail" and "away," to be precise) and muttered "Oh, shit!"
He ran down the stairs and though the kitchen door to the garage. He went out through the open garage door to the gate. He opened the gate and produced the basket of blazers. My mom had come back into the house. Recognzing that there was a problem, he carried the basket of blazers into the house as well. The problem was so profund that the nature of it was evident even to those of us still up in the loft.
It seems that before my dad found the blazers, at least one of the many neighborhood cats had found them as well. The odor of cat urine pervaded the house. "What did you do to my blazers?" my mother demanded.
"I didn't do anything to them," he defended himself. "The cats did it."
"I don't really care who or what urinated all over them. They're useless to me. I refuse to wear clothing peed on by anything," my mother huffed. (I think she's forgotten all about the body fluids my brother and I must have gotten all over her from both ends when we were babies.)
"Why don't we just take them to the dry cleaners and see what happens? Maybe it'll come out," my dad tried to appease her.
"Go rightahead, John," she directed him. "Take 'em to the cleaners. And if you think they're sufficiently rid of cat pee after they're cleaned, you can wear them anytime and anyplace you want. I'm through with them!"
By this time all interest in the new piano had waned. All of us -- Uncle Jerry, Uncle Scott, Uncle Michael, Matthew, and I, even though I could barely stand, were leaning on the banister, watching the drama unfold before us downstairs.
I've never been known for keeping my opinions to myself. Today was no exception to the norm. "It seems like anyone who would throw around eighteen grand plus tax for a third grand piano in one house wouldn't think twice about replacing a few lousy blazers."
"Shut up, Alexis," my brother hissed at me under his breath.
My dad was not half as subtle. "Alexis, shut your mouth before I shut it for you!" he barked at me.
"John knows Jerry, Scott, and I are all mandated reporters," my Uncle Michael casually announced. "He wouldn't dare hit you."
My brother went downstairs, took the basket outside, and emptied its contents into the trash.
My dad asked my mom, "Do you want to go shopping this weekend, or would you rather order the replacements online?"
"I'll order them," my mom answered.
"And I assume the replacements will be considerably more expensive than the originals were," my dad observed.
"You assumed correctly," my mom answered.
Now they've gone off to the 4-year-olds' birthday party. My mom is already happy because she's getting new clothes out of the debaucle. My dad will be happy shortly, because Gerard, the father of one of the birthday boys, ordered something called Olvishol Brugghus, or something like that. It's some sort of stout from Iceland, and my dad believes it is the fluid of the Gods. After one or two of those, my dad will have forgotten that either blazers or cat pee even exist.
The new piano my parents just bought, which I described in a recent post is being delivered TODAY instead of tomorrow. I'm not yet strong enough to hop into my car and cruise the neighborhood until the piano is successfully moved from the truck in which it arrives to the upstairs loft that will be its permanent home. (It's probably more correct to say that the loft will be the piano's semi-permanent home. I doubt if my parents move again that they plan to leave an eighteen-thousand dollar piano for the next owners of our present home, although from the way they've been throwing money around lately, it wouldn't totally shock me if they did just that.) For that matter, I'm not really even sufficiently recovered for someone else to drive me around the area until the moving process has been accomplished. My brother could carry me down to his car, but my dad said I should not be riding in a car unless it's important for me to travel from one place to another, such as to a doctor's appointment, because even the impact of the seat belt against my incision in an abrupt stop could cause major damage. None of our neighbors are home -- everybody works around here -- or I would ask if I could borrow one of their sofas for an hour or so, but my fear is that a crashing piano would create noise that could be heard all over the neighborhood and beyond.
I need drugs to get me through this crisis of sorts. I have many doctors in my bona fide family and in my virtual family, but they're all working today except for my Uncle Jerry who's s semi-retired. He made a few extremely lucky investments early in his career. He now has so much money that the premiums for the malpractice insurance to protect his holdings would cost him more than he could reasonably charge his patients, so he's basically been forced into early retirement even though he's never been found to have committed malpractice in his entire career. It's one of the things wrong with the health care system today. A doctor who would love to work and is in a field of heavy demand -- he's an OB-GYN -- cannot afford to work because so many scheister lawyers are chasing ambulances around just looking for doctors to sue. Uncle Jerry occasionally works because the hospital is so desperate that it pays his insurance premiums in times of heavy demand. He doesn't even ask to be paid. He just doesn't want to come out of the deal financially behind for having worked.
Anyway, I called my Uncle Jerry and told him I need some sort of drug to render me unconscious from the time the piano movers arrive until the piano is installed into its semi-permanent location in the loft. He said he can't justify doing that. "What you're asking for is basically milk of amnesia because you're afraid the piano movers will drop the piano down the stairs," he restated.
"Not that drug specifically," I explained, "but something to knock me out cold."
"Sorry, honey, but I can't do that for you, " he said. "If you're telling me you're in pain and need something for it, I can help you with that. If you're having more anxiety than you can cope with, I might even be able to help you with that, but I can't knock you out cold."
"Do whatever you can, please, " I begged him.
"When's the piano supposed to arrive?" he asked.
'In about forty-five minutes," I answered.
'I'll get there as soon as I can," he told me. He lives about fifteen minutes away. The truth of the matter is that if it were an oversized refrigerator being moved up the stairs, he wouldn't come, but he's a talented pianist. He wants to try out the new piano. The technician will have to tune it before it's playable, but that should only take a few minutes. It will need to be tuned again in a couple of weeks, once it has settled in, but my dad can do that.
So my Uncle Jerry should be here in about five minutes to inject me with something that will keep me from having a complete anxiety attack. I hate injections, which is indicative of my level of anxiety concerning the upstairs move of this piano. Not only could the piano be demolished in one fell swoop; someone could be killed in the process. I'm probably going to have nightmares about it for weeks. I wish my parents could have had the #%&;* thing delivered while I was in the hospital, before I even knew anything about it.
I have strange sleep habits in general, but my sleep vs. wakefulness times usually get even more scrambled after I've had surgery. This particular affliction started with my being awake all night when it first manifested itself. Then I had surgery in the morning and slept all day, and nothing has really come close to settling back into anything resembling normal yet. Time heals most sleep schedules, but for the moment, I'm stuck with being awake at odd hours or with taking sleep-inducing drugs that I'd rather not have. For me, the verdict is easy: I'll find ways to amuse myself in the middle of the night.
My laptop has been confiscated, but this room came with a desktop PC that I rarely use and that my parents probably don't even remember is in here, because it's normally hidden behind the closed door of a shelf. I'm out of bed, but the room also came with an incredibly comfortable pink faux leather desk chair that reclines to whatever angle I desire. I can't stay in it indefinitely, but for the moment, I'm quite comfortable. My body gets very achy from being in bed for too many consecutive hours, so I was ready for a change of venue, anyway. In a few minutes when I finish this post, I'll roll the chair back to my bed because I'm too lazy to walk, and I'll get back in. If I can't sleep, I'll turn on the TV and take advantage of the fact that it's not hospital cable, and I can probably find something besides informercials or The Weather Channel to watch. If I wake up my dad, he'll probably bring his guitar into my room and try to lull me to sleep with the greatest hits of the 70's and 80's. He works a short schedule tomorrow, so it won't kill him if he's awake for an hour in the middle of the night.
Tomorrow is the joint fourth birthday party for Bryson, Jared's little brother, and Christian, the grandson of my honorary Aunt Ilianna and Uncle Jerry (my parents' closest friends; my dad knew them from his days in Florida, and our families have remained close). The two little boys' birthdays are two days apart; Christian turned four yesterday, and Bryson turns four tomorrow. They're not technically related, but Bryson's uncle is married to Christian's aunt, so they consider themselves cousins. Last year they had a joint party that turned out well, so they're doing the same thing this year, although on a slightly smaller scale. Last year I think they invited every kid under twelve in the metropolitan area in addition to everyone over twelve who had any link either by DNA or marriage to either kid. This year it's just preschool classmates, neighbors (they live in the same neighborhood) and legitimate family, including us because we're adopted into their conjoined family, which is a little weird when considering that I dated Jared. Whatever. We did nothing that would result in the creation of offspring, and even had we done so, there is no blood relationship.
I'd love to make n appearance at the party, but I don't think it will be allowed. My surgeon is Christian's father, so I can't go if he says I can't, as he'll certainly be there to see that I disobeyed his orders, and I assume he'll say I can't go. I've had worse disappointments in my life than being denied permission to attend a birthday party for a couple of four-year-olds, so I think I can roll with the punches on this one. Fortunately I purchased gifts for both boys before I got sick, so I don't have to send someone out to do that for me.
My Uncle Michael has volunteered to babysit me during the party, as my parents think I'm too incompetent to pick up a phone and dial either one of their cell numbers or 9-1-1 if I have a crisis. I don't mind. I like my Uncle Michael. We'll watch something off On Demand and make snarky comments about everything we see. He really likes my piano that I have in my room as well, so he'll have to play it since he'll be in here. He doesn't play as well as my mom or I, but he's a little better than Matthew or --this probably goes without saying -- my dad. My dad is a virtuoso guitarist. He took piano lessons as a kid but never thoroughly mastered the instrument. He says what he learned in the lessons as a kid gave him a leg up in theory classes in college and made passing the university piano proficiency exam that all music majors who aren't piano majors must pass very easy. Now he mostly just plays by ear, other than the few classics he knows and the few classic rock pieces -- a few things by Styx, Queen, Don McLean, and a few others. If you opened a hymnal to an unfamiliar hymn and told him to play it, his only chance would be to read the music in his head and then try to play the hymn by ear. Uncle Michael can actually read the notes and play them, and plays by ear to some degree as well. He's very smart, and smart people learn piano more easily than slow people do, plus he inherited the musical gene from his mom's side of the family. I'm not saying my dad is not smart. Piano was just never his thing.
I think my parents have more money than they know what to do with, and I think they need my help in deciding how to spend it. My mom has a something like 10-foot (or a little longer) ebony Steinway in our living room. I have an ebony Kawai baby grand in my room. In our previous home in the Sacramento area, my piano was kept in the upstairs loft area. My room is larger in this house, so since it's my piano, I chose to put it in my room. That left the upstairs loft/sitting area without a piano. A normal person would see that as no particularly big #%$^& deal. A person who wanted to play the piano could go down into the living room, or could even come into my room. I'm not selfish and usually let anyone who wants play my piano as long as his or her hands are clean. Additionally, we have two digital pianos. One my mom bought just so she would never have to depend on anyone else's equipment in a situation where she had to play at an event where a piano was not provided. The other came with my room in the other house, and I moved it here. It comes in handy for occasional rehearsals at university functions. So anyway, we technically had four pianos in our house.
My parents decided that the upstairs loft / sitting area wasn't complete without a piano. They went someplace in Los Angeles and picked out a Kawai grand that's something like nine feet long in some shade of natural wood. The wood supposedly will look better with the wood that's near the sitting area and the banisters than would ebony. I suppose I should commend them on reigning themselves in by not getting another Steinway or, even worse, a Bosendorfer. If I'd known they had so much money to throw around, I wouldn't have worked quite so hard on all my scholarship applications. The piano is supposed to arrive on Thursday. Getting it up the stairway is going to be a really neat trick. It's a wide stairway, but I don't know if it's that wide. They may end up having to have it hydraulically lifted. Regardless of my state of health, I plan to be out of the house when all this goes down. Even those commercials where pianos are being lifted and then go smashing onto a sidewalk six floors below give me the sensation of fingernails scratching on a chalkboard. Seeing or even hearing a piano fall to its destruction in real life might cause me to have a heart attack. I don't really care where it is that I go -- I'll check back into the hospital if it's my only option -- but I'm not hanging around here while they lug that thing up the stairs.
I think I've reached my maximum sitting capacity. It's bedtime again even if I can't sleep.
It's official. Dr. Kent made his obligatory visit at 6:48 a.m. and pronounced me ready to go home as soon as the paperwork could be finalized, which should happen sometime around 8:30. He came bearing gifts, which was uncharacteristically kind of him. His wife, who has been my friend through all the ups and downs of my relationship with her son, had made three pajama/nightgown sets for me -- one for our warmer weather, one for our cooler weather, and one for in-between. Her kindness is not at all surprising; I just wonder where she found the time to sew them, as she has five kids younger than Jared, and the youngest is just two, plus she's getting ready for the four-year-old's birthday party tomorrow.
The really peculiar thing was that he had bought a gift for me himself, presumably from the hospital gift shop. It isn't exactly age appropriate -- it's a stuffed animal -- but: A) it's the thought that counts; B) I don't have any stuffed animals left from childhood because the few I was hanging onto were accidentally thrown out in our last move; and C) it's a panda -- black and white -- which blends in with the black, white, and pink motif of my bedroom. It's somewhat large, and cannot have been cheap, as hospital gift shops are known for virtual highway robbery when it comes to prices. The choice wasn't even a coincidence, as he commented on how he thought it would match my room. I don't think I've ever been given a present from a doctor who was my doctor as opposed to a doctor who's my relative and somewhat obligated. I was very touched by his generosity and thoughtfulness.
Instead of coming across like his usual cross between Vince Lombardi and Dr. Strangeglove, he was nice when giving me his instructions and actually acted as though he wants me to get better and not just like he doesn't want to have to be bothered with seeing me in his office or in the hospital again. He told me to call him at work or at home if I had any concerns, even if my parents were reluctant to do so. I don't think he or hardly any other doctor except my shrink, Dr. Jeff, AKA Chairman Mao, has ever been nice to me when my parents weren't in the room. (Of course my uncles are nice, but they have to be because they're my uncles.) The whole experience rather took me by surprise.
The director of nurses, a nice lady named Olive who's a friend of the family, sent my Aunt Joanne home at abut 6:00 when she came on duty. Olive said she'd run the hospital from my room and wouldn't let anyone give me anything to eat that she hadn't cooked and wouldn't allow any medication to be given to me until she had personally inspected it.
My breakfast has just arrived. I'll eat it, and by the time I've finished, the paperwork for my release should be typed up and ready. This will be the first time I've ever signed my own release papers from a hospital, as I've always been a minor before. I usually insist on wearing real clothing home, but I've decided there's little point in it. I'll just pick out one of my new nightgowns and put it on. Then I'll be ready to get back into bed at home without changing again and needlessly tiring myself out. If someone thinks I'm being slovenly or lazy, he or she can take a flying leap into shark-infested waters. Sharks sightings have been reported off the coastlines of several of our local beaches.
I'll share a quick picture of my new panda. I haven't named him yet, but I will eventually. All my stuffed animals used to have names.
This is the newest addition to my family. I hope my dog is not jealous.
I couldn't find a picture of a rainbow sherbet clown cone, but you can get the gist of it from this one. Doesn't it make you want to reach right through your monitor to grab it and start licking?
I'm being sprung from this joint tomorrow. Dr. Kent, charming soul that he is, told me to consider it parole that can be revoked at any time versus unconditional release, presidential pardon, or anything else of that nature. He said that I will have the medical equivalent of an ankle monitor and that he will KNOW if I'm slipping up and doing things that I shouldn't be doing. I didn't ask how he will KNOW because he won't, and he and I both know it, but it's best if I play along. He'd be having a conniption fit if he knew that I was awake right now, but I slept from 7:30 until 3:06. There's limit to how much even a post surgical patient can sleep. I've been pretending to be asleep each time a nurse walks in to check on me. My Aunt Joanne, who's an MD, is here with me tonight. She's asleep, which is good even though she doesn't have to work tomorrow (today technically), because she has two children who will expect food and someone to mediate their arguments in just a few short hours.
Speaking of food, it's been good. I had a grilled cheese on wheat for lunch with watermelon and 7-Up. For dinner I had a very tasty hamburger cooked exactly the way I like my hamburgers cooked, which is not exactly burnt, but cooked to the point that any ecoli considering hanging around long enough to enter my system has been killed deader than Hitler. (Don't believe those conspiracies about Hitler escaping to South America and that the body they found wasn't really his but was that of a double. Many Nazis did make it south of the border to Mexico, Latin America, and beyond, which is probably why one of the Mexican American families whose children I tutored last semester had the surname of Amptmann and all had sparkly blue eyes, but insisted they were every bit as Mexican as Montezuma. Hitler shot himself, and Eva Braun, the lady love that he eventually married, ate a cyanide capsule. Their bodies were incinerated. Period. Any stories to the contrary are the work of the same conspiracy theorists who came up with The Birther Movement and who claim that JFK is living his old age out in a convalescent hospital in San Angelo, Texas.)
Around 4:30, a nurse will come in and will notice that I'm stirring. She'll offer me drugs, which I'll accept, and I'll be out until Dr. Kent wakes me up at some ungodly hour to pronounce me well enough to be released but with his conditions, consisting mainly of moving no part of my body other than my eyeballs unless given permission by whatever adult is supervising me. I'm probably not supposed to brush away a fly or scratch an itch without permission. Whatever. As long as I'm out of here, I'll make it work. I want to get better at least as much as he wants me to get better.
Cousin Peter, who is not my cousin but is my pseudoaunt Jillian's cousin, is delivering a load of Baskin and Robbins' rainbow sherbet clown cones (made by his ex-wife; it was an amicable parting) to my house tomorrow. It's childish of me, but the sherbet actually tastes better when it's dressed up like a clown. which my father tells me is technically impossible and is ridiculous for someone of my supposed intellect to believe, but I've noticed him sneaking my clown cones and eating them on numerous occasions.
I'm adding one of my favorite songs. It's a Simon and Garfunkel one in which the vocals were pretty much always done just by Garfunkel. I never understood why Simon didn't add harmony, as I think it would have made the song prettier. Regardless, it's a gorgeous song even if I don't really know what exactly it's supposed to mean. My parents have committed their share of screw-ups, as most parents surely do and I probably will myself if someday given the opportunity, but one thing they did well is to impart a love of really good music to my brother and to me. We're well versed in the classics, as in Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin et al, and in both classic and more folk-style rock. I appreciate that they did this for us.
the breakfast you get in a hospital when you know the right people
Yesterday morning my Uncle Michael told the director of nursing at the hospital of my plight with the food. She took one bite of my eggs, then, without even tasting anything else, dumped the entire contents of the tray into the trash and stormed out of the room. My Uncle Michael followed her out.
He came back about ten minutes later and said my breakfast would be ready shortly. The nurse went into the kitchen and threw something of a hissy fit. She then proceeded to help herself to ingredients and cooked my breakfast herself, narrating the process for proper cooking technique as she did so. She picked up a container of salt after she had cracked two eggs onto the grill. "This is known as salt," she explained as she sprinkled some on my eggs as she scrambled them. "If it is not noted on a patient's dietary restrictions that he or she has blood pressure or kidney issues and should not have salt, it is customary to use it when cooking eggs in any form." The asked for the pancake batter and poured two pancakes onto the grill. After waiting about ten seconds, she scooped them off the grill and into the trash. "Who made this crap, and what the hell did you put in it?" she muttered. She asked for the flour, salt, baking powder, another egg, and whatever else goes into pancakes, and mixed batter from scratch without even measuring anything, My Uncle Michael said. She asked for oranges and the juicer, and squeezed fresh orange juice for me. He said it was like watching a SaturdayNightLive parody of a Food Network program.
The end result was that about twenty-five minutes after she first tasted and tossed my original breakfast, I had new breakfast in front of me that was at least as good as it would have been had it been prepared by a local restaurant. I ate it all. The director of nursing said that she would either prepare my meals herself from that point on or would assign the task to a nurse that she knew for a fact had the cooking skills to prepare an edible meal. I can live with that.
It's a bit of a touchy issue, as the director of nursing technically does not oversee kitchen operations, but in the grand hierarchy of hospital status, the director of nursing does outrank the director of food services. Regardless, this lady is the sort that no one, including most doctors, will take on, so I'll eat well for the rest of my stay here.
Dr. Kent, my surgeon, came by very early this morning. he said that if I could manage to eat enough to sustain a gerbil, there's a good chance I'll be released tomorrow instead of Wednesday. Since my food situation has been resolved, I can probably eat enough to sustain four or five gerbils, so things are looking good for a release tomorrow.
We've apparently had a bit of heat wave, but hospital temperatures are whatever you want them to be, so I've been unaffected.
Truthfully, I don't have any particular vengeance [it just sounded like a good thing to say], other than one any patient with functioning taste buds would have against the hospital food production staff. Do they send the people who work in hospital kitchens to the equivalent of anti-culinary school in order to teach them how to prepare food that is tasteless in a best -case scenario, and overwhelmingly unpalatable (I was searching for a word my mom wouldn't edit out when she reads this later today; lately she's had a great deal of time on her hands and uses entirely too much of it to read my blog) in one of the more typical meals they send out?
In the past, I've been expected to make do with hospital breakfasts, which I've done uncomplainingly, relying heavily on boxed cold cereal, but lunches and dinners have been brought in from outside sources. My parents decided I'm getting too old for such special treatment. Mom, Dad, if you want me to eat lunch and dinner, you have two options: 1) teach someone in the hospital kitchen how to cook; 2) bring me something from home or from a local sandwich or fast-food place. I can't be kept here against my will any longer, as I've reached that magical age of eighteen at which I may sign myself out against medical advice. I'm not suicidal, so I won't escape until I know I can walk at least from a sofa to a bathroom and back, but once I've reached that milestone, I'm out of here if it's the only way I can get a decent meal.
Seriously, Jared's little brother Bryson will turn four later this week. I'm confident that, while having someone on standby to ensure that he did not burn himself or set the kitchen on fire, I could direct him step-by-step from my family room couch on how to prepare a scrambled egg that would be at least three times better than the glop that showed up on my tray this morning. (The little boxes of cereal on which I formerly subsisted have diasppeared from stock, probably because they were in such heavy demand here that the vendor who provided them decided it wasn't fair for a single hospital to be allotted every single package that Kelloggs or Post produced.) And Bryson, while he's a bright boy, is neither the next Einstein nor an up-and-coming Bobby Flay. To the best of my knowledge , he's never cooked anything in his entire almost-four-year-long life. I use Bryson as illustration not to extoll his cooking skills but rather to elucidate just how lacking are the culinary skills of the people who work in the food department at this hospital.
I can only imagine the interview process for getting a job in the kitchen here:
Question: "Have you ever cooked anything before in your entire life that anyone has been able to eat?" Answer: Either "No" or a wordless and dull stare into empty space. Conclusion: "You meet our standards of qualification perfectly! If you knew how to cook, you'd make the rest of our staff look bad by comparison. You're hired on the spot pending successful passage of a TB skin test!"
My Uncle Michael is here with me tonight. As one of the more reasonable members of the family, he says he'll taste my breakfast this morning, and if it's really as putrid as what I've described, he'll personally see that the rest of my meals are brought in from outside sources. It's nice that someone listens to me.
I've been too out-of-it to be bored up to this point, but my surgeon is gradually cutting down on my supply of dilaudid and demerol and whatever benzo they've been giving me through my IV tube, so I'm in just enough pain to be uncomfortable, and I'm just lucid enough to be bored. The hospital has cut costs by reducing the level of cable service available to patients since my last stay here. My guess is that the TVs in the CEO's and Chief of Staff's offices still have availability to all the premium channels, but the peons are limited to the Weather Channel and stations that show infomercials at this hour. My Uncle Michael is trying to be accommodating. He's offered to play cards or Scrabble or whatever I want. I wanted to make crank phone calls, but he said no to that. I did play one game of Scrabble with him, but I wish he'd just go to sleep. He has to work tomorrow. I'll be OK with just my computer, which he graciously brought to me unbeknownst to my father or my Uncle Steve, both of whom think I'm not sufficiently recuperated to strike a few keys with my fingers even though the incision is in my abdomen, which is not very cloesely linked to my fingers.
My surgeon apparently did an amazing job of separating the internal scar left from my appendectomy from my right Fallopian (I don't know if that's supposed to be capitalized or not; it's one of the things I need to learn before medical school) tube. My ability to conceive is allegedly as promising as it ever was. (With my medical history, neither fertility nor much of anything else is a given.) I'm supposed to be grateful. I am, actually, but I can't show it too conspicuously because he's Jared's father and he hasn't been the best friend in the world to me in a personal sense. I'm still lucky to have had as skilled a surgeon as he, and would have chosen him myself had I been in any condition to make such a choice at the time even if he has interfered in my personal life in a not terribly positive way on more than one occasion. (As much as he would probably like to have me out of his son's life permanently, he's too professional and too moral to have experienced a convenient slip of the knife.) I will thank him personally and will possibly send him a token gift as well. Maybe I'll give him a gift certificate to the hospital cafeteria -- the one available to the patients. I suspect the food they sell to the staff can't possibly be as atrocious as what they're feeding us or no one with any options at all would choose to work here.
The nurse has shown up with more drugs. They have to wean addicts such as myself off the good stuff gradually, just as they do at "The Betty," so we don't have tonic-clonic (formerly known as grand mal and probably changed to the more esoteric term tonic-clonic so that med school textbook publishers can justify discontinuing the publication of old textbooks and printing new editions that cost 20% more)seizures or other nasty symptoms of withdrawal. After thoroughly inspecting the vials containing the drugs, Uncle Michael has allowed them to be inserted into my IV line. I'm already feeling a bit stoned, and Uncle Michael says my computer is going night-night in three mniutes, but I'm not thoroughly convinced my mental faculties will extend for even that short interval.
This post has probably come across as astoundingly negative. Uncle Michael assures me that such is normal for me at this phase of my recuperation and that I will wake up in the morning with my normally sunny outlook on life. He doesn't know me quite as well as some of my relatives do. Nevertheless, my discomfort is a temporary situation, and it will improve at least to some degree, if not by tomorrow, then by the next day, it seems safe to assume.
Alexis is eating soft foods (sherbet, saltine crackers, jello, peanut butter) and has walked midway down the hall. Had she stopped maybe ten yards earlier, she could have walked back to bed on her own, but she always manages to walk just a bit beyond her midway range to that someone else has to transport her back to bed. What can I say, except that I raised a lazy child.
She extends her greetings and appreciation for your concern to all of you and says she would like to entend them personally except that no one will allow a computer to be within her reach. I, too, extend my appreciation to all of you for caring.
She asked me for some reason to end the message with the pound sign. Whatever.
Alexis went in for surgery following an ultrasound and an abdominal X-ray, which confirmed that a somewhat unusual adhesion - between the site of her ruptured appendix and her right fallopian tube - had formed. Because of the delicate nature of the fallopian tube and the desire to cause as little damage to it as possible, the surgery was done with a full laparotomy as opposed to a laparoscopy, which had been anticipated. The outcome was well worth any additional hospitalization and inconvenience to Alexis, however, as the Fallopian tube came out of the procedure intact. She had an excellent surgeon, my big brother, who demonstrated why he's the surgeon of choice in such cases.
She should remain in the hospital until maybe Wednesday of next week, at which time she'll be released but will be allowed very little physical activity other than walking short distances for at least four weeks. She is very sad to report that she will have to discontinue her internship at the lab of which she was so fond, and that the producers of university production of "Grease" will be forced to find another rehearsal accompanist. She will be allowed to start practicing her violin again for very short intervals in no more than three weeks.
Adhesions are far from uncommon after ruptured appendices, but the organ to which the wound chose to attach itself, the fallopian tube, is not a common occurrence. It was caught early, most likely because her level of physical activity and body contortion in gymnastics, diving, and hurdling caused the pain to appear at an earlier point than it would otherwise have been noticed. Physical activity is a good thing! She's probably been experiencing pain for quite a bit longer than she let anyone know, but still it was caught early, and I think we all understand her lack of desire to complain about every ache and pain.
In her currently strung out state - she's feeling little pain thanks to modern painkillers - she says hello to friends everywhere and particularly, she says, to the roughly four people who read her blog occasionally.
This is a generic abdominal ultrasound; it's not mine. I'll be undergoing the procedure in about four hours. It's one of the few diagnostic procedures that is both painless and isn't going to eventually kill me with cumulative residual radiation. Someday it will probably be discovered that the soundwaves cause deafness or pelvic inflammatory disease, but at least, for the present, it's considered to be a harmless procedure..
I am awake at this lovely hour because of extreme abdominal pain. One thing we know it is not is appendicitis, because my appendix was removed a couple of summers ago. An appendix can regenerate itself (it does so only rarely), but not in two years. It appears, for reasons we need not get into, not to be a bowel obstruction, either, which is a good thing. Bowel obstructions are rarely if ever good.
My dad thinks it's adhesions from a prior surgery. I've had two kidney surgeies, an appendectomy, and a splenectomy. The appendectomy is the one most likely to result in adhesions, although the location of the pain is vague enough that it doesn't automatically point to that as the culprit. The pain is centralized enough now that it could also be gall bladder or kidney stone issues, neither of which have been a problem for me before. It could even just be a bad stomachache from something I ate or something I contracted, though I only have a low-grade fever. My dad is convinced that it's adhesions. My mom is certain I picked up something at the lab where I'm interning, where they use interns to dispose of waste in a not entirely safe matter and to mop up toxic spills. My dad, who was the first one to suggest the tasks the lab personnel were giving the interns there are hazardous, says my mom is letting her imagination run wild, and the odds of my having contracted some lab-created superbacteria are quite remote and sound like something from deep in the entrails of her memories from her early childhood days when she used to watch soap operas with her older sisters, or maybe from an episode of House, M.D.
Blood and urine samples have been delivered to the hospital lab, and my dad picked up IV versions of the good drugs, so I'm not feeling nearly so much pain and nausea as I was about three hours ago. My dad keeps telling me to go to sleep. The drugs help, but not that much, so sleep is not in the stars for me right now. I wish I could go to sleep, because then maybe everyone else in the house would go to sleep. They've even got my Uncle Steve, my primary care physician, who lives 30 miles away, here to monitor things. One would think the logical thing to do once specimens are being delivered to the hospital and I'm receiving IV meds, would be to admit me to the hospital, but my dad and Uncle Steve, though they spend a good portion of their workdays in hospitals, are afraid of hospitals when it comes to their own kids, and won't let us in one unless it's absolutely necessary and only for the length of time it's absolutely necessary. If you ask me, my dad has something of a fetish when it comes to MRSA,
My dad or my uncle could give me drugs that would knock me out, but won't because pain is a diagnostic tool. Drugs that dull pain when necessary are OK, apparently, but something that could allow me to sleep through virtually any level of pain when the cause of the pain is unknown is not OK. I'm going to the hospital at the crack of dawn for an ultrasound. It seems to me that the sensible thing would be to get it done now while we're all awake anyway, but my uncle Steve says the lady who's on duty for ultrsounds right now is bat-shit crazy and a bitch as well. He could read the ultrasound himself -- she's just the tech, not the radiologist -- but she's apparently enough of a psycho that he'd rather risk my life than deal with her. He says I'm being melodramatic.
At least my illness didn't interrupt anyone's 4th of July festivities, as I didn't begin to experience symptoms until just after 10:30 p.m., which was after the party had wrapped itself up. One thing I know is that I didn't get anything from eating anyone's potato or macaroni salad, as both are on my Donner Party List, which is my list of foods that no level of starvation would induce me to eat. Actually, I ate one browine and a couple of crackers. I wasn't all that hungry; the illness was probably already on its way. My dad says it's not food-poisoning, anyway, because the output isn't enough, if you know what I mean. There's been a little of both types, but not enough for food poisoning. The major symptom is pain, and the nausea, my dad says, is mainly from the pain itself.
Jared was at the festivities. We were not rude, but did a good job of ignoring each other. I assume from his presence that he and his father must be back on at leat semi-speaking terms. My brother told me Jared texted him to inquire about my well-being when he learned that I was ill. My parents had to call everyone at the party to rule out any obvious food-related issues, although my having eaten only two saltines and a brownie (a plain one -- not one of those dressed up things with cream cheese that shouldn't even be called brownies) should have pretty much ruled out food-borne illness.
By tomorrow morning we should know if adhesions are the source of my pain. I almost hope they are even though such could necessitate another surgery, because if the cause of my symptoms cannot be pinpointed, my mother is going to go crazy thinking it's something created in the lab for which there is neither a readily available diagnosis nor a cure. She has been worried about my immunity ever since they took my bone marrow to give to her without her knowledge and against her express wishes. She needs to get over it. It was over twelve years ago. Any major consequence suffered as a result should have come and gone a long time ago. It's akin to donating blood in a perfectly sterile environment, then claiming eight years later than light-headednesss or some other symptom is from the blood donation.
My mother is an intelligent woman, but she sometimes appears to be from another planet, or even from another galaxy. My father shows some of the same characteristics, although at the moment, my mom is out-weirding even him, which is not an easy feat to accomplish. It's a miracle that my brother and I function as well in society as we do.
This is as good a place as any to reinsert a video from one of my favorite songs.
wnat I did not see in my first two days of my lab internship
Regarding my lab internship, I expected to do a great deal of filling people's coffee orders and general gopher work. I didn't expect to spend my entire day putting on rubber gloves and a mask covering my mouth and nose, sealing and disposing of wastetbasket liners of biohazardous materials all over the building, and then removing the gloves and scrubbing my hands for a full five minutes, then removing the facial mask. My next job was to clean the restrooms on Floor #1. Following the restroom-cleaning procedure, I repeated the biohazardous wasted disposal procedure, followed again by the cleaning of restrooms on Floor #2.
My father is not happy with this situation. He sayys that despite the fact that I am his daughter and have been looking through microscopes since I was two, he didn't expect that the lab would have me imnediately counting white blood cells to determine the presence of appendicitis or lack thereof, but he did not think I would be relegated to full-scale custodial duties and that, furthermore, no one who is unpaid who isn't at least a second-year medical school student and hasn't signed tons of waivers should be handling biohazardous waste. He also said the facility is negligent in not also requiring eye covering, as the pathogens with which I was likely dealing can also become airborne and enter the body through the eyes.
I told him I'd buy my own pair of goggles, but he said they need to be disposable, and a fresh pair needs to be put on each time after I've scrubbed up.
My dad is calling the professor who arranged this internship to find out how many students he has sent there and how many have reported anything back to him. He also plans to drop in on me at work next Tuesday. I told him that if he really wants to find me working under the conditions I was working under yesterday and the day before, it would be wise to wait until he has visited the lab while I'm there before calling the professor.
My surname isn't common and my father should be known to the more important people at the lab, but it's possible that those low enough in the chain of command to supervise interns would have no idea of my father's eminence in his field. It's also possible that they do, and they're taking it out on me, though I highly doubt it. In any event, I suspect my final day of interning at that particular facility will be Tuesday. I told my dad what my schedule was for last Tuesday and Wednesday. He plans to walk in on me while I'm handling biohazardous wastes. He doesn't usually throw his weight around, but he may if he sees what he would have seen yesterday or the day before.
It's actually not the nepotistic aspect of this that bothers me as much as the idea that those who have no connections have had little or no choice but to tolerate what is essentially workplace abuse in an unpaid setting.
Right now I'm killing time serving as a rehearsal accompanist for some university-affiliated group's production of Grease. I'm not doing it out of the goodness of my heart. I'm getting much-needed performance credits that I need as a music major. This and the two separate senior recitals will push me just just barely above the minimum. I'm considering doing the a capella group just for the fun of it, but it will be nice to do it because I want to and not because I must. That way, if I become too stressed, I can tell them I have to miss a rehearsal and that they're free to take it or leave it.
Grease really needs a performance pianist, but playing for the entire run of the show is too much of my summer to give up. The girl playing the lead was supposed to play for rehearsals and performances, but no one remotely qualified auditioned for the role of "Sandy," so she ended up taking the role, leaving both the rehearsal and performance pianist positions vacant. If the producer could line up one or two others who could each take a few nights, I'd be willing to do up to five performances, but that's my maximum. It even pays a little, but not enough to make it worth my time. I'm willing to help out a bit, but fifteen performances takes up too big a portion of my summer. I'm also doing my three-days-a-week lab internship.
My friend Alyssa is here from Utah. She flew out with her aunt, who was traveling with twin six-month-olds and a sixteen-month-old. (The aunt also has three other girls eight and under. It's crazy in my opinion, but no one asked for my opinion.) Alyssa comes with me to Grease rehearsals. She turns pages with me or goes into another room with a piano to plunk out parts for people who need help, as she plays piano reasonably well. She said she's going to the beach when I go to the lab. I hope she uses tons of sunblock, as she's very Nordic in coloring, and I've seen a two new students who underestimated the power of the sun and ended up with third-degree burns.
My lab internship begins tomorrow. I predict that I will spend a whole lot of time mopping up spills and getting coffee for the employees and won't come within a foot of the lens of a microscope for at least three weeks. Sometimes nepotism works in one's favor, though, so I may get to look into a microscope in two weeks instead of in three.
I have my TV on, which I often do in times of insomnia. I tend to turn it on, then log onto my laptop and not switch channels. Right now a healer I haven't seen before is shaking people's heads and telling them that Dr. Jesus has healed them. It's all fine, well, and wonderful, but if any of these people Dr. Jesus has healed have bona fide illnesses, I suspect even Dr. Jesus himself would agree with me that they should be seeking the care of living, breathing, licensed physicians as well. God often works His greatest miracles through modern medicine.
