When I woke up for good this morning at twenty after seven, I had two ideas: I could go to the 8am astanga class in Towson, or I could quickly make some waffles and veggie sausage for Scott before he left to meet his Mom at York Hospital, where his father has been since falling on Thursday. I chose waffles. While I was assembling the waffles, Scott’s mom called to report that she had been throwing up all night, and could Scott please come take her to the doctor before going to the hospital? I immediately wished that I gone to yoga.
Scott was concerned, of course, because of her history, but I knew that between the stress of hanging out in the hospital for two days and actually hanging out in the hospital for two days, she had picked up a virus. I tried hard not to have a little neurotic meltdown; yesterday I went from my own medical appointment to spending the whole day with her in the hospital, to dinner with her, then home. My barfgermphobia, was suddenly, radically activated.
My appointment yesterday was fine: the short version is that absolutely all of my levels of everything are normal, I don’t have any ulcer bacteria, and my doctor is convinced that my “mysteriously” appearing gastritis will disappear with a few more weeks of Prilosec, possibly never to return. I was fairly nervous going into the appointment. In fact, I was prepared to hear absolutely everything except what I heard. I had mentally prepared myself for: needing invasive tests, evidence of an ulcer, pregnancy, a whacked out thyroid, a whacked out anything else, evidence of malnutrition from surviving on bagels and brownies for a few weeks – pretty much anything other than, “just keep doing what you’re doing and that will probably take care of it.”
So from there, I drove up to York, where I had my heart broken all day. Scott’s father had been sedated the evening before after becoming combative, and was in and out of consciousness. He was also at his worst physically because his pharmaceutical regimen had been disrupted. He was confused, and when he was awake he was pissed off and in pain. I spent much of the day sitting in a chair, watching him sitting in a chair, and thinking about what it would be like to be him. I considered what it would feel like to be in and out of it, half understanding what is going on around me, out of control of my own body, unable to articulate, with people talking all around me. He may have considerable cognitive impairment at this point -from the meds and the disease- but he’s still in there somewhere. He told Scott’s sister she was stupid, and told Scott’s mom he wanted a divorce after she fed him. Sometimes she tried to reason with him, but other times she just ran her fingers through his hair and told him that she loved him.
The situation got fairly ugly when he wanted to stand up. Mostly, the nurses were able to handle it, but during one particularly rough incident shortly before we left, he got sort of tangled in the reclining part of the chair. While two nursing assistants held him as he yelled, he started to fall back on the footrest of the chair. He was brittle physically, and angry. I held onto the footrest to keep it from collapsing under his weight until a third person could come in and help get him repositioned and get the chair moved. I haven’t been there in a while, but something kicked in from a long time ago where nothing else mattered -not the smell or the body or the sounds – nothing mattered but keeping him from falling. I realized later that even a few months ago I probably would have hurt my back holding that much weight in such an awkward position. I have learned new things about how to bear weight.
The time that I wasn’t spending putting myself in his chair or making phone calls was spent slathering my hands in antibacterial goo. Shake hands with a doctor, goo. Get some fritos from the vending machine, goo. Elevator, goo. Open the fritos, goo, eat the fritos, goo. Touch a chair, goo. And so on. Between the hospital environment, listening to someone wretch violently two rooms over, the boil water order in York county right now because of sludge released into the water supply, and the fucking norvovirus that just won’t die this year (which is most likely what has gotten Scott’s mom), it’s just efuckingnough already.
Ok? Seriously, universe, I GET IT. My neuroses and fear can get in the way of things. I HEAR YOU. Yes, my neuroses are wildly inflamed right now, and I probably made myself sick. Really, almost two months of nausea plus the viruses lasting way longer than usual around here, plus the touching people all the time in teacher training where we eat communally with our hands, plus the hospital visits and people around me getting food poisoning, and the sludge in the water, I fucking get it already. It’s ENOUGH. Jebus. And you know what? I may have slathered a gallon of hand sanitizer on myself last night, but it didn’t stop me when things got tough and I was on my knees holding up a very sick man whose bare behind was inches from my face. I may not have been the nicest this morning when I was literally throwing hand sanitizer at Scott and when I demanded that he change his clothes and was his hands with non-sludge water when he got home, but I was there when it mattered, I held Pop’s hand and shoulder when he was agitated and no one else was in the room and I held Scott when he fell apart, regardless of lingering hospital cooties.
So, fuck it. Fuck it, universe. I may have worked myself into being sick and a little crazy, but when it matters, I’m here. I’m going to go right ahead and wash my hands seven times an hour and get nauseated every time some one even mentions not feeling well, and I’m going to go right on being my neurotic self at the studios, at the hospital, and at the nursing home when Pop lands* there in the next couple of days. I’ll try not to be so ridiculous that I inflame my stomach lining and esophogeal sphincter (that’s right, sphincter. Scott’s finds my inflamed sphincter hilarious.), so could you please just lay off with all the barfing around here and get me out of this season, and while we’re at it, just get me out of barfing forever because I really hate the idea, and I will carry on with being a healer or whatever I’m becoming. And really, universe, people generally want their healers to practice good hygeine anyway.
So, what ended up happening today was that instead of either yoga or waffles, followed by some work-work, maybe a little classwork, or cleaning, or a trip to Target, or reading for the teacher training or grocery shopping, I spent, like, eight hours sitting on my ass reading a complete stranger’s blog.
*I initially typed this as “Popland.” I think that’s where he goes when the hallucinations are good ones.
