#153 / 2010 Winter: San Destin: Sacred Heart Hospital

NOVEMBER 23, 2010

#153

Tuesday

I am drowning in air. I can’t take in enough oxygen to feed my brain cells as I try to wrap my head around this new reality. It feels planetary, galactic – these two worlds I travel between as I walk into the hospital and out of the hospital.

Only good thoughts and energy with Joe, but alone I am struggling. My thoughts run so far out, crazy thoughts racing to the future and what that will be without Joe, then I rein them back in, stay here now – focus, focus.

Are we in that state of grace? I can’t decide.

The biopsies got put off until today, now it seems there will just be the one biopsy on the liver. I’m not quite sure why. Apparently New Mexico insurance is on board to a certain degree, but we have to go back there for treatments. They have to ship medicine to the hospital from NM instead of letting us get it here. 

Joe must be on blood thinners indefinitely, shots twice a day to the stomach. We will have to travel with  boxes of syringes everywhere we go. Who knows what awaits with the cancer treatments. No biopsy but still the Doctor Johnson throws around terms like pancreatic cancer.

I stick to my rituals – walking circles around the hospital – I try to take in all the beauty that is here and can’t wait to at least get Joe out of the hospital so he can see the beach and the palm trees. We will go to wZ’s house for a short while as we wait on the report from the biopsy. Plus his blood will have to be monitored every day or two.

I can do nothing but stay upbeat. It’s Joe’s fight and I am here to support him in every way. Calls and emails, prayers, are flooding in.

To Dana:

Going Primal

I am drawing down deep inside of me – going primal. When I circle the hospital I do these yoga deep breathing techniques, something low and guttural comes out of me. The clouds were dark and swirling one evening at sunset. I am walking along this busy highway and bellowing but no one can hear me.

I recall the epiphany I had on the coast of Oregon the year my life got saved by emergency surgery in John Day, Oregon, the Blue Mountain Hospital. My parents were reunited in Seattle after World War II. My mother rode a train all the way from Nashville, Tennessee. The trip took four days.

And without giving us specifics mother always told us it was another man she met in Seattle, not the simple farm boy from Tennessee that she had sent off to war. He was violent, cruel, drunken. When I walked along the Oregon coastline and saw the violent dark clouds swirling and roiling, saw the restless waves clawing toward shore, I realized that here in this part of the world is where I came from. My soul was called from this tumultuous atmosphere, swirling and disturbed, endlessly restless. I believe my mother’s soul called out to me in her horror, shock and fear. I entered her womb there in Seattle called from the dark clouds.

And those dark clouds face me know in the heavens here in Sandestin. It’s a gloomy day. But I pull every resource I have in my body to the forefront to not fall into this gloom. All the tests have been done on Joe, we can leave tonight and I will drive him all along the beach, show him the sights.

We’ll go to wZ’s house for a few days as we are waiting to get all the medications Joe will need for the trip back. He has to have two shots of Lovenox every day to address the blood clots as we travel. He will need them indefinitely.