5-24-06
Good Morning Beloved –
Tried to go to PT. They told me I had no appointment. I did, but…my approved visits expired on 5-16, and they haven’t heard back about more. So, since they weren’t guaranteed to be paid by HCHP, they cancelled the appointment. Only problem is, they didn’t say boo to me until I got there! Unprofessional.
Wasn’t real upset, though. Yesterday and Monday were physically taxing days at work, handling stock and some hefty special orders, and I ached in various places. And I didn’t mind hanging on to the copay.
Today and tomorrow, though, the copays go bye-bye: Tony the T tonight, my first appointment with the osteo surgeon tomorrow. And $200 for a new wiper motor; $150+ for two new tires so I can pass inspection for another $40. And don’t forget $40 a pop to gas up. Even if I get a $5K raise I figure, with Janet, to get only $82 extra a week. Still not enough, though a prolonged hiatus from ebay buying would help.
Ain’t makin’ it in Mass., kid. Miss that PCA money, but miss you more. At least, when I work extra, it’s not at the expense of being with you. Thanks again and as ever for loving me.
Submitted the BU Bookstore application.
Did I mention I miss you? Well, I do. One of the things I miss most is setting you up for some ghastly shaggy dog story/pun, and springing it on you. You almost always fell for it — you really were a wonderful woman! — and it was my delight to run the joke and have us both enjoy it. (By the way, I suspect that you weren’t quite as dim as you let on….)
Baby, so often it was just wonderful to be with you! We laughed a lot, didn’t we?
5-25-06
Good Afternoon My Best Baby –
Having another GI tract day. Don’t know if it’s those wonderful Trader Joe’s triple ginger snaps that I unwisely bought Tuesday and can’t resist, or some frozen tropical fruit I got at the same time and tried last night. Will try more fruit over the weekend, when I can afford to ride out the shits.
My PT sessions have run out and HCHP won’t authorize any more. I could appeal, but I won’t. I’ll go there Tues. and see if my therapist there has any farewell suggestions. After that I’m on my own, which is OK with me. Up to me anyway, in the long run.
Nice session with Tony the T. yesterday. He and Mrs. the T. are going to China in July to adopt a girl! Asked him more questions re: hip replacement, about which — for some reason — he’s very knowledgeable. I’ll likely have the ball of the joint replaced with a metal one, which will be screwed into the hip bone. Should be in the hospital up to a week, and walking within a day or two of the surgery. Likely to spend a week or two in rehab, which should cover the period where I’d need help if I were home (still can’t say “home” without feeling that my real home is anywhere you are. Dumb, huh? Damn — ), and perhaps can return to work shortly thereafter. I should walk better, have less discomfort — except on cold days, when the metal ball gets cold and aches. And Tony reiterated that the longer I wait the more problematic things can be, so he’s pleased with my decision. Will see him again in a month, more often in September.
I was supposed to see the ortho surgeon today, but got a call to come in earlier, which always pisses me off (my time and job unimportant, his very important. Screw you, doc!) and have rescheduled for June 2 at 4 p.m.
Ginger had a colonoscopy. It shows she likely has Crohn’s Disease or ulcerative colitis. Told Lisa about our anti-colitis lean-protein diet, and strongly advised her to get her own colonscopy, since Jane, Ginger and I have/had GI problems, and Lisa’s got ‘em too. Suggested she apply the same intelligence that recognized the need to deal with her weight, to dealing with this problem, which is likely to worsen as she ages.
I don’t love Ginger, but I respect her as someone who tries to do right (and occasionally succeeds). I’m so sick of watching such folk suffer. You, Freddie, Janje and Curly and others. And I can’t do anything. Just watch.
They’ve also told her that lizard claw she has for a hand is arthritic psoriasis. Seems to me they’d figured out the psoriasis part many years ago, yet nothing much has been done. Why?
I think my reactions to all this have more to do with you and Freddie than Ginger.
Lisa’s dizzying array of potential swains is beginning to dwindle a bit as one by one the candidates reveal themselves shallow, uninterested and/or duplicitous. Do still think there may be a winner out there…somewhere….
Hey, baby, are there tv’s in heaven? I kind of doubt it, considering what’s on and how long the extention cord would have to be. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if, somehow, some way, you’re watching your soaps right now.
Would you believe they’re putting a Home Depot in that dinky defunct mall in Chelsea? Glad they waited till you were gone, otherwise we’d be there every day — and the thought of that giveth me the willies!
5-26-05
Good Morning My Love –
Feeling better.
One good thing may result from Ginger’s diagnosis: Lisa says she’ll get her own colonoscopy. Her grandmother, father and mother have GI problems and she already has hers. She needs to start monitoring the area.
Craig’s last day. The tensions between him and C.S. have surfaced this week, so the air in the Rental Dept. has been a tad chilly. So unnecessary. Both have sinned but their sins were minor; both are oversensitive and hold a grudge, making minor matters major. Just unfortunate, since they actually made a pretty good team for about a decade.
Assuming my buying on ebay is largely a thing of the past — dunno if it is, but assuming so — to that I add taking myself out to lunch (about 6 times a year), taking myself out to dinner, and spending $5.50 for a chocolate double-malted frappe at J.P.Licks, all little self-indulgences I used to give myself, now six months plus in the past. And I can go further in that direction, as previously noted: no more laundry service, no more Brueggers. Can cut down on the take out. And of course there’s my $50 a week pot habit. If the T fares go up, and they soon will, I see little point in a leave-the-car-at-home day, as I save nothing and actually lose, per day, though that doesn’t factor in the wear and tear on the car.
Is a life without any indulgences worth living?
Finally got through to my ebay guy, who just got his power back on Tues. Two weeks without power. Hope he can survive. I’ll go there after Janet on Saturday.
5-29-06
Good Evening My Love –
Skipped yesterday, thought about you all day and wanted to write you at length today. But after my walk I went to D. & M.’s, and just got back — it’s 11:25 p.m. — won’t write now. But tomorrow I’ll tell you again how much I love you and why. Old stuff, but I don’t mind saying it. I love you, Donna. We’ll talk tomorrow.
5-29-06
Good Morning Beloved –
So a year ago today, you were in the OR with your skull cut open, with Dr. Liu trying to hack off as much of that obscene tumor as she could, much less successfully, it turned out, than she thought, as the tumor had had eight months to work its way in and around your brain, and embraced it like a cruel, possessive, homocidal lover.
You were so scared, so brave. As usual, there was trouble getting and keeping a line in you; remember that patient oriental anesthesiologist? Nobody around — holiday — stillness like a held breath as they wheeled you away — god.
15 months with the operation.
6 to 9 month without.
You lived four months after the operation. Hard for me to get over that.
The other night I recalled how funny you were. A natural zany. Wonderful malapropisms (the Pinocchio Mountains in PA), a wacky way of seeing things. We knew how to surprise and delight each other with language, though I think you just did what came naturally.
It’s amazing really: when you look at it one way we were totally incompatible. Intellectually, culturally. I’m bookish, intellectual, NYC-cultured. You weren’t. Your interests were Elvis, soap operas, and any movie where a woman prevails over tormentors. We found enough common ground to decorate our places to mutual satisfaction, agreeing some, compromising some. And we simply respected and tolerated our differences.
Because we recognized and honored the strength and decency in the other — abetted it, I think — and realized we were soulmates inside because we were both victimizzed as children yet each retained our capacities for love and caring. And we built for each other a refuge of love that allowed each of us to heal, to keep pain and bitterness from souring our goodness, and from that shelter we could be strong, individually and as a couple. It’s as if our styles, culturally and intellectually, were just clothes that looked defining but were in fact shells that covered our inner life. Each of us penetrated those shells and supported that inner life.
I thought, and said aloud to you, that you’re a hard act to follow. I fantasize about sex all the time — have for decades (thank heaven that most remain secret and never act on them). So I can imagine having sex with another woman. But I doubt I will, at least for the foreseeable future, because I can’t imagine developing another relationship far enough for it to become sexual. I tailored so much of my life to you, your needs and preferences, and I so enjoyed giving you pleasure, and you rewarded me so much with delight and love. How can I approach the kind of melding we achieved? And that melding occured through years of conflict and work, as we exposed more to each other and dealt with the fears and pain such exposure inevitably induced. I don’t know if I can make such an investment again. Doubt it. And who would make any kind of emotional investmen t in me? Who’d want to, when all I bring to any relationship is my personality? No money, no future. No interest.
But even if one did, would I want to subject her to comparisons with you? She’d need to be someone very special to fill the huge space in my heart you occupied. Someone small would disappear. Someone large would resist. I’d need someone of great stature, spiritually, a great soul.
Tough to find. I’ve only found one in my life: you.
By the way, D. told me that Je. has had long-term relationships, first with the head of the college she worked at, whom she almost married, and with the black sportscaster Jimmy Myers, who comes in and out of her life and is currently in. Funny it should be Jimmy Myers, though. Myers was a sportscaster who was more interested in stirring up controversy over Boston racism than reporting sports news. He saw racism everywhere and most of the time he was right. His reward was to be driven off the air. So of course he focusses his personal life on a white woman. Hey, why not? She’s pretty (and probably taller than him). But if Whitey is so evil….OK, if he rejected her just because she was white, wouldn’t he be racist too?
I wrote Lisa about writing you. I wrote:
“Wrote Donna — a year ago she was just coming out of surgery, but I wanted to tell her again that I love her and to explore again the whys of it. Still amazes me that two people so dissimilar in those aspects that supposedly determine ‘compatability.’ No computer dating service would ever have matched us up. But in our hearts we recognized the pain and hope the other felt, and responded to them, and then spent the first ten yeas or so duelling with each other until we’d figured out how to live together. It really is a wonderful story, and to my mind one small aspect of it is that it’s nothing like the typical American boy-meet-girl/love-at-first-sight mythic bullshit. Instead it was real, hard, gritty, grown-up and so much better as a result. Good things rarely come easily; in fact they rarely come at all. I feel all the prouder about Donna and me because we earned our specialness, worked at it, fought for it, even (I can’t resist saying it) unto death.”
My Memorial Day message.
You can see, baby, that I try to find the positive and stress it. The problem is that the positive is all “ago”, in the past, and it’s my bad luck to live in the present and face the future, and there don’t seem to be many positives in those directions. I never want to forget what we had and did together — even though I do forget, insidiously, on a daily basis, bit by bit — but I still have to deal with my day-to-day. At least my regret, my guilt are minimal.
But baby, not having you, missing you, hurts every damn day. Just wanted you to know. And I’m sure that, in between heavenly frolics and unlimited Twinkies and Haagen-Dasz coffee ice cream, you miss me too.
5-30-06
Rough Day, My Love –
Had some fried Chinese food last night and woke up feeling terrible. Took two immodium, avoided coffee, decided to postpone bringing the car to Patrick’s, finally threw on clothes and got in to work feeling a bit better but still pretty crummy.
Then I started remembering you in SICU at Mt. A, all bandaged up, IV lines coming out of you, monitors all over you, with that awful fishhook-shaped incision on the right side of your head, a legion of metal staples as precise as baseball stitches holding the incision together. You were still pretty blotto, but were delighted to see me. Still in a lot of pain, poor thing, that awful headache that never really got much better. But you were happy to be alive.
That was it about you, my beloved: no matter what you were suffering, you were happy to be alive, happy to be with me. And remembering all this, hey baby, I’m just a mess right now. Crying as much as I have for quite a while.
Two days from now, a year ago, you hit your high point. Your right leg had much more mobility, and your left was better too. You were still on massive steroids, but systematically you stablized. At that point the promise of improved functioning seemed about to come true. We’d have a short time of real hope….
…And then the clots started and your life began to end. God, Donna, I’m so sorry. It was so cruel to you, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about any of it, though we both tried everything we could think of. Those evil, wicked clots.
Ah yes. The Time of False Hope.
