John Swinburn

Last night or early this morning, several times when I was halfway between sleep and waking, I thought I heard the rumble of distant thunder. But the sky remains too dark to see storm clouds—if, in fact, they are present—even though pink and orange hues creep up into the southeastern horizon, shedding a little light on the edge of the morning.

If I wait a minute or two, the speed of the sunrise will provide an answer to my questions about the state of the sky; I’m impatient, though, so I write my thoughts without bothering to turn to look. Some days—today is one of them—I am too wrapped up in thought to simply observe the world around me. I make assumptions based on flimsy evidence, failing to use my powers of observation to verify or negate my theories. It occurs to me that almost all of us do that. We confuse opinions with facts, beliefs with unverified conclusions; when confronted with reality opposed to our positions, we bend and stretch our sensibilities to mirror our desired evidence. We create alternate environments; the sort of dimensions in which the properties of gravity and light obey our rules, not the laws of nature.

I would like to control reality. I want to bend steel with my mind. Restore strengths with my wishes. Cure illness with a sweep of my hand. Cleanse the air and water of pollutants with a nod of my head. Restore civility to public discourse with a glance. Eliminate poverty by willing it gone. Reality is laden with pain, both physical and mental. Pain cannot be extracted from reality because it is part of it. Like salt dissolved in water, pain becomes impossible to remove without a total transformation; only when the water evaporates can the salt be recaptured, but by then, the water is gone.

The shades on the windows raised, I now see a clear blue sky. No sign of clouds. No remnants of storms that might have produced thunder. So, maybe I was dreaming. Or maybe my thoughts ricocheted inside the emptiness in my skull, their echoes creating the illusion of the sound of thunder, sounds that rattled me partially awake.

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I visited my wife again yesterday in ICU. Yesterday was much like the day before. The doctors and nurses still were attempting to get her blood pressure to stay within normal limits without IV medications. Some success, but not enough to warrant moving her to a regular floor of the hospital; she needs more attention and closer monitoring than can be done on the regular floors. I learned that, in addition to hypotension, septic shock, and a urinary tract infection, her heart rhythm was not normal. In addition, I learned that she had Clostridium difficile infection or C.Diff, an intestinal infection she first had while she was in the rehabilitation facility; there is a question as to whether it is not a recurrence, but a continuation, of the infection she had before.  My wife should not have to face all of these health challenges; no one should, though. The nurse told me that infection does not require hospitalization, though, so when the other problems are under control, I should be able to bring her home; I will just have to administer to her even more pills than she takes now (the number I have been giving her each day is approximately twenty).  Ach! I asked her primary care doctor whether the number could be reduced; she said all of the pills are needed to address various issues.

I will go back to the ICU this afternoon at the beginning of visiting hours (unless I learn that she had been moved to a regular floor beforehand, in which case I will go earlier). Assuming I go the ICU, the probability is that I will spend most of my time watching my wife sleep, interrupted only by a short time trying to coax her to eat a fraction of the lunch left on her overbed table. But maybe, like yesterday, I can get her to watch a little television; yesterday, she watched portions of a couple of episodes of Bones. I don’t think I’ve ever watched that show; I found it more entertaining than waiting for my phone to alert me to incoming email.

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As usual, my evening last night was spent watching another couple of episodes of Bordertown. My immersion in the Finnish crime drama has prompted me toward a shallow exploration of the city in which the series is set: Lapeenranta (called Villmanstrand, in Swedish), Finland. Lapeenranta, located on the shores of Lake Saimaa (Europe’s fourth largest lake), is less than twenty miles from the Russian border and about 120 miles from St. Petersburg, Russia. The city’s population is roughly 72,000. According to Wikipedia, Lapeenranta is the second most-visited Finnish city, after Helsinki, by Russian tourists. Again according to Wikipedia, the city is the site of Lappeenranta University of Technology and Saimaa University of Applied Sciences which, together have approximately 13,000 students from 68 countries.  I wish I could upload an image of the city’s coat of arms, but WordPress is being uncooperative.

Watching television series and films set in other countries, especially in countries and cities generally unfamiliar to American audiences (at least to me), is an illuminating experience. I think Americans often think of other countries as being less advanced than the U.S.A. when, in fact, many of them are far more advanced in many respects than we are. A relatively small city (compared to most “major” American cities) like Lapeenranta is quite sophisticated and is a hub of commerce and tourism. I gather many shops include signs written in Cyrillic letters to encourage and welcome Russian tourists. The city actually is closer to St. Petersburg than to the capital, Helsinki, by a few miles. I’ve written before (I think) about our one-day excursion into Helsinki, following a conference in Stockholm. We took an overnight cruise ship from Stockholm to Helsinki, spent the day walking around the city, and then took the cruise ship back to Stockholm that night. Another one of our too-quick explorations of distant destinations.

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It’s nearing 7:30 and I haven’t even finished my first cup of coffee, now cold as ice. Still unshowered and unshaven, I define slovenly. Eventually, I’ll get around to looking and feeling more presentable. But I wonder whether I will feel it. Yesterday, as I was nearing home from my hospital visit, I noticed how brightly colored many of the trees were. And it struck me that even though I noticed their brilliance, they still seemed somewhat dull, as if their brightness and color was not enough. That’s how I feel this morning; even after I shower and shave, I won’t feel clean and fresh and ready for the day. But maybe I can change that dismal attitude if I force myself to think about all the things for which I must be grateful. Yes, I’ll attempt to force the issue and make today worth experiencing.

Visiting hours in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) are 1 to 7 p.m. I was there just before visiting hours began, so I had to wait a few minutes before I was allowed to go upstairs to visit my wife’s bedside. I stayed until around 4:30, when I decided to leave so I could avoid driving into bright headlights after nightfall; it’s not that I can’t drive at night, I just prefer not to and it’s safer.

While I was there, I spoke with my wife a little and coaxed her to eat about three or four bites of the lunch that was sitting on her overbed table, untouched. A few bites of whipped potatoes, one bite of roast beef, and a bite of the apple crisp dessert was all she was willing to eat. The nurse said she had left her breakfast untouched, as well. Most of the time I was at her bedside, my wife’s eyes were closed and I suppose she was asleep most of my visit. She was awake when the nurses changed the dressing on the line in the vein on  her neck and when the two nurses suggested I leave while they bathed her and changed the sheets on her bed while she was in it.

The multiple diagnoses on admission, the nurse told me, were hypotension (extremely low blood pressure) and septic shock, which was brought on by a third issue, urinary tract infection (UTI). Dehydration, too, played into her discomfort and weakness. The UTI is, I think, her third experience with the malady since she was admitted to the hospital in mid-July. Septic shock can be deadly, so calling 911 to get her to the hospital was, in  hindsight, a very good thing. I take no credit for that; her doctor’s nurse sent me an email, telling me the doctor recommended my wife be taken to the ER for evaluation.

During the time I visited my wife yesterday, her voice was so weak I could barely hear her. Most of her words were requests that I give her water or iced tea; I held the glass up close to her and slipped a straw into her mouth so she could suck up some cool regenerative liquids. After her bath, she asked for more tea and some dessert (she chose angel food cake topped with fruit); she took only  a sip or two of the iced tea and a bite of the cake before refusing more and falling asleep again.

The nurse told me she would spend another night in ICU while she was being “weaned” of the IV medications that were keeping her blood pressure within healthy limits. Once her blood pressure stabilizes, he said, she could be moved to a regular floor. When she will be transferred there and how long she will be there remains to be seen. I took her cell phone to her, but she seems so weak it is unlikely she can pick it up to dial it; and it’s not within reach, thanks to a short charging cord, but she can ask for it to be handed to her, if she chooses.

Around 7:15 this morning, I’ll try to reach the ICU nurse responsible for my wife’s care to get an update on her condition. The nurses probably do not relish phone calls from relatives, but short visiting hours and incommunicado overnights are almost too much to bear without some form of feedback. I wish there were a less intrusive (to the nurses) way to get updates on condition.

I will return to the hospital, either the ICU or the regular floors, after I get word on when and where to go. In the interim, I will shower, shave, and make myself more presentable to the outside world.

I did not sleep well last night. The fact that my wife is in ICU kept invading my thoughts, interrupting my sleep. And, oddly enough, I was troubled all night, too, by the dilemma of how I will get her home when she is released. I need to have a sling under her, whether she is in a wheelchair or on a stretcher, so I can use the Hoyer lift to transfer her into bed. That may be a silly worry, but it was much on my mind last night and remains. This must be a common problem that hospital staff deals with all the time, right? Surely they will be able to tell me how to do that. It will not present a problem, right? Still, I worry.

And I worry even more about what the medical team learned overnight. I am relatively sure my wife must have been dehydrated; trying to get her to drink water has been a constant battle and I’m certain I did not do enough, especially given how quickly she went through fluids and so forth. And what caused her extremely low blood pressure? And what has caused her periodic hallucinations? A thousand questions and no definitive answers; not even educated guesses, at this point.

The appointment with my cardiologist, scheduled for tomorrow morning, will have to be postponed or cancelled. Tomorrow is the one day this month he will be in the Village, so I’ll have to reschedule for at least a month hence; that, or drive to Little Rock. I doubt I’ll want to do that; I do not want to spend a day away from my wife. It’s just an annual checkup, so nothing urgent. But it would have been nice to get it out of the way. And I have an appointment with my primary care doctor next week to have some skin growths burned off. I may delay that, too. I made the appointment under a set of assumptions about circumstances that are no longer valid.

These minor inconveniences should not even enter my mind, but they do. Perhaps I allow them to fill the empty spaces in my brain that otherwise would fill with much more unpleasant thoughts. I psychoanalyze myself with some regularity; I doubt my diagnoses are even remotely correct. Sometimes, I wish they were. Other times, I hope they aren’t.

Today begins the aftermath of an enormous flood of negativity and an ongoing tsunami of egotistical self-serving actions and lies. I will not let it worry me. Not today.

I hope my wife slept comfortably and soundly last night. I suspect, though, she was awakened regularly for routine medical matters. Perhaps she will be successfully treated for maladies that have caused her so much misery these last ten days. I fervently hope so.

For ten days and then some, my wife has been trying to recover her strength at home, after having been discharged from a rehab facility in which her strength ebbed during her two-month-plus stay. That struggle has not been easy. Today, there was a setback when her blood pressure fell to the point that visiting occupational and physical therapists could not get a reading. After I contacted my wife’s primary care doctor (her nurse, actually), I was advised to take my wife to the ER for evaluation. I called 911 and an ambulance took her to the hospital ER (because my wife is bedridden, I had no way to transport her). At the ER, they were able to measure her blood pressure. The upper number was 80 and below on every reading; the lower number was extremely low, as well. After a short while, a doctor told me she would probably be admitted. Later, another doctor told me she would be admitted into the ICU because her blood pressure was so low and, it appears, was not responding to normal interventions. So, I came home. I did not want to come home without my wife tonight. Although I do not know how I would have gotten her home if she had not been admitted; she needs transport in a wheelchair (I could have gone home and gotten it), which I cannot do in either of our vehicles. I guess I better figure that out before she is released. Dammit. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Today, November 2, is my late sister’s birthday. She died on February 19, 2010. On one hand, it seems like a lifetime ago; on the other, like yesterday. On the day of her death, and a few times since, I posted the following words:

She fed people she didn’t know, she gave up her bed for people who needed to sleep, she battled the IRS and Social Security Administration for people who couldn’t do so on their own, but desperately needed an advocate. And they had that advocate in my sister. She was, in many ways, the Molly Ivins of our family; she gave people hell if they deserved it, especially when they had mistreated someone else…the underdog was her pet!

I will always miss her and remember her. She was a role model all human beings could learn from.

Sometimes, when things spring without warning from one’s long-buried subconscious, inexplicable biases become instantly transparent. So it was this morning as I glanced at a vase on the kitchen island. Almost all the flowers in the vase, full of carnations, remain attractive and alive after more than a week. The stem of one carnation, though, had given up. The flower, still pretty, hung upside down from the point at which the bent stem had failed to carry the load.

I should mention that, until many years into my adulthood, I had considered carnations rather unattractive. They struck me as weeds, dressed up in a failed attempt to look attractive. I never quite understood why I found the flowers visually offensive; for some reason I just thought they looked artificial and cheap.

Back to the vase full of attractive carnations, with the one flower dangling upside down in defeat. That vanquished flower triggered a memory from deep, deep in my childhood. It was a memory of leche quemada, a Mexican treat that (in my experience) uses Carnation Sweetened Condensed Milk. I loved the stuff, but I think I remember cans of the sweet milk looking worn and tired after being heated in boiling water during the process of making leche quemada. The woman who made the stuff was Petra, a Mexican housekeeper my parents engaged to look after me and clean house while my folks were away at work.

This took place in Brownsville, Texas, so I would have been five years old or younger (we moved away before I turned six). My mother was a schoolteacher and my father was lumber wholesaler, so they had to have someone look after me while they were away at work. Petra lived in Matamoros, I think, a city just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville. She crossed the border every day, I believe, to come care for me. And she made leche quemada as a sweet treat. I loved the stuff. For years afterword, I longed for Petra to come back and make it for me. But, as I mentioned, the cans of Carnation Sweetened Condensed Milk looked ragged and pretty shabby after Petra finished with them. I am relatively sure the image of the ragged carnation flower on the can is how I came to view the real flowers as unattractive, artificial imitations of “real” flowers. And that bias, I believe, is what made me find carnations unappealing for years and years afterward. In fact, I think it was when we lived in Dallas (during or after 1997, it would have been), that my wife’s purchase of vases full of carnations that I finally overcame my bias against them. Since then, I’ve come to appreciate their beauty and their tenacity; they last far longer than many other flowers one finds in the typical floral arrangement.

All of these recollections poured from my subconscious this morning before I put away the dishes from the dishwasher and before I made coffee. The speed of memory, often slow and torturous, can be blazingly fast on occasion. And now, I must remember to go to Walmart to buy trash bags and fruits and, if I can find it, low sugar butterscotch pudding. The pudding is for my wife, to aid in swallowing too damn many pills and to make that unpleasant process a little sweeter, a little more tolerable. While I’m there, I’ll try to buy a watermelon (very late for them, but my wife loves the flavor and I think Walmart must have a source for off-season watermelons), some blueberries and strawberries, and maybe a 3-way bulb for a lamp that is, for the moment, dark.

Off I go.

Time compresses into an invisible blur. Hours become single-digit minutes. Minutes become seconds. Seconds become fractional measures of experience; they are so brief one hundred thousand units equates to the measure of moments required for a single beat of a hummingbird’s wing. All of these hyper-compressed experiences exceed the ability of my brain to process them. A week has gone by in half the blink of an eye. Yet recollections of those hyper-condensed seven days are excruciatingly long; they take form at the speed of ice-cold molasses flowing down a one-degree slope.

In my mind, the realities and the recollections behave like atmospheric barometric pressure disturbances, one very high and one very low. Thick clouds emerge and crooked fingers of lightning form a web around my brain as the highs and lows dance together, spinning and swirling into tornadic chaos. Pandemonium washes over me like a tidal surge. Then, suddenly, calm envelopes me like a blanket, urging me to relax.  I feel the words, rather than hear them: “You do not have control of this. Your emotions contribute nothing, so release them.”

For a moment, the world is tranquil and I am, strangely, at peace. Suddenly, though, I feel as though an enormous hand has reached through my body and wrapped its fingers around my spine, pulling me backward. It yanks me back into the cyclone and unleashes wave upon wave of turbulent bedlam.

These cyclic experiences take place at velocities exceeding the speed of light, yet their memories replay in ultra slow motion. One week jammed with experiences more numerous than a lifetime of all the moments that preceded them. One week remembered as if every breath took a day and every heartbeat took an hour.

This diatribe does not constitute a complaint in any way. I mean it simply to capture what is happening in my brain. I count on the fingers of one hand, with one left over, how many times my wife has eaten dinner in the past week. I count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she has eaten lunch or breakfast. And she sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. I am at a loss as to how to get her to eat more. She complains of gut pains and has signs of illness. Tomorrow, when the nurse comes again, I will ask her many questions; she will give me answers without sugar-coating them.

I have more help now. A helper checked her every three hours last night and did what had to be done when necessary. I slept in the same twin bed I’ve slept in for a week, but move away from the side of the hospital bed so the helper could get to my wife without disturbing me; except for turning on the light, which woke me up each time. I opted to spend the money for 24/7 help for two weeks while I explore options available to us.

I wonder whether the upcoming two week stretch will feel both compressed and extended? Weekends get in the way of exploration; people I want to talk to tend not to work on weekends. I can’t change that. My frustration does not good and has no external effect; it only throws a log onto an internal flame, which will turn me to ash if I let it. I will not. I will relax.

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I received a long, thoughtful, reply to an email I sent to new follower of my blog. I was curious about how she stumbled upon this blog. She explained and gave me a bit of her background, by way of explanation (I believe) for why she found some of my posts interesting. In her reply, I learned that we both have lived in or around Chicago and Houston, the latter perhaps overlapping a bit. Reading about her experiences allowed me to escape, for a time, and to imagine engaging in long conversations with her about philosophies and experiences and how embracing them molds us as we mature. Escape. I keep talking about escape. It’s not escape; it’s respite. There is a vast difference between the two.

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Last night’s all-night care worker gave me the luxury of watching two more episodes of Bordertown. I am utterly enamored with the series. I can imagine binge-watching the remainder of the series in an all-day and all-night Netflix marathon. I won’t do that, though. But I will continue to watch it, as I can, until I can return to Deadwind. I have not checked to see whether Netflix has fixed the problem that made it impossible for me to watch a subsequent episode, but even if not, I think I can watch on my computer. One way or the other, I will.

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My neck and shoulders are complaining bitterly about the abuse they are taking as I life turn my wife to get the Hoyer lift sling under her or to turn her from one side to the other. I may engage a masseuse, if I can find one practicing sufficient care to come to my home, but I doubt it. I just need to let the helpers do the bulk of the work; they are used to lifting and stretching, while I am not.

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I am amazed that it’s already almost 11:30. I thought when I got up this morning that I could write and enjoy a little solitude. The blur of time compression erased that thought without even acknowledging it. Tasks and duties and responsibilities began the moment I awakened. If I had not taken a shower and shaved I could have had another 30-40 minutes, but that’s not enough. Scrambling to find shards of free time for solitude and serenity is a useless, self-defeating exercise. I’ve written enough now, even though it’s much later than “usual.” What does “usual” mean, now?

Sources of energy and  inspiration—shafts of bright light piercing absolute darkness—emerge from unexpected places.  They may arise from comments uttered by a close friend who expresses his care or from words sent by someone known only by name and her written words. Darkness amplifies the experience of light. A thin beam of light in an utterly dark world is far brighter than a floodlight on a densely overcast afternoon. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

I wish I could see the future, if only to know whether I want to be there when it arrives. I might as well wish I could have lived during the Holocaust to know whether I would have survived it. The present should command the majority of our attention; not the future, nor the past. We must pay heed to lessons from the past, of course, and we must attempt to create circumstances conducive to a future we can enthusiastically embrace; but the bulk of our energy should be for and in the here and now. Regardless of the dimness of the past or the hazy image of the future we imagine, we should seek that pinpoint of light amid the unknown darkness in every instant.

I wonder whether—a month or a year or a decade from now—I will remember the message I was sending to myself when I wrote those two preceding paragraphs? I sometimes write messages to myself in cryptic codes that, later, make no sense. Usually, though, I can decipher what I meant. Others reading my words, thought, even freshly written words, often cannot. I would not expect them to read my thoughts, especially the ones I opt to keep locked in my head.

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Just one more episode of Bordertown last night; I went to bed early after checking on my wife at 8:30, knowing I would need to check on her again at 11:30, 2:30, and 5:30. I wanted to watch another episode, but I thought better of it. If I had stayed up later, I would have been approximately worthless throughout the night. The positive aspect of watching just one episode is the fact that I have more left to watch in the coming days and weeks. Too much television, even good television, probably is not good for one’s mental health. The tension and violence of Finnish police dramas might meld with the tension and unease of real life, producing a dangerous mix of tense self-injurious moodiness. Probably not. But possible. So, best to keep television viewing to a minimum. I do my best to justify decisions for which I have no real justifications.

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Yesterday’s telemedicine appointment with my wife’s primary care physician got off to a rocky start when the doctor attempted to connect on my wife’s cell phone, instead of mine. The previous afternoon, I told her nurse to have the doctor call my cell; the message did not get through. Despite the glitch, we connected an hour after the original appointment time. The doctor told us my wife’s congestive heart failure (a condition she has had since she was in her early twenties, if not before) is progressing, which the doctor believes is the cause of my wife’s weakness. There is no going back, the doctor said; it will not get better. The doctor said some of my wife’s other symptoms could be related to an intestinal infection; we may find out more with lab work early in the week. In the meantime, my wife’s diet should be relatively bland and relatively soft food. My wife is not eating much (not enough); I will have no trouble with the doctor’s orders. The planned meals from the “meal train” that friends have begun all should be fine, I think; unless my wife’s appetite improves, she won’t be eating much of what is delivered, but she will appreciate and enjoy what little she eats.

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When the sky began to brighten this morning, the southeastern horizon behind our house glowed with such beautiful red-orange hues that I had to stop for a moment and stare. The distinction between the sky and the earth was so crystal clear; glowing embers above a wrinkled purple and black terrestrial blanket, the hills in sharp contrast against the sky. Sometimes I catch myself holding my breath when I view such scenes, as if breathing will cause them to dissolve into a more mundane daylight vision.

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It is well past daylight now and time for me to prepare my wife’s morning pills. A helper will arrive in a quarter of an hour; I want to be ready to start my wife’s day properly.

The global chaos surrounding COVID-19, presidential elections, climate catastrophe, mass hysteria and psychoses, and all manner of other horrors fade when I am so focused on what is going on in my own house. The world around me becomes less distracting when every waking moment is focused on the events inside the walls of my house. The intensity of focus can be draining, but in some ways it is its own source of energy. At a certain point, though, I’ve discovered that I need to extract myself from the present. Yesterday, the day continued from overnight with the arrival of two people from the home care agency; the supervisor and the worker who was assigned to us for yesterday and today. After introductions, the supervisor left and the worker helped continue the work I had continued from the day before and that night. Then, my wife’s sister arrived with watermelon she has prepared for us as a treat. Later, a nurse came to take vitals, change wound dressing, and offer advice; she was superb and I hope she continues to return to care for my wife. Later, a speech therapist came to evaluate my wife’s speech, swallowing, and various other aspects within her professional purview; she, too, was exceptional (and I learned that she lives just up the street from us). Finally, a home care worker from the same company arrived to give my wife a sponge bath, change linens, and otherwise refresh my wife’s environment. Later still, after several attempts to entice my wife to eat more and drink more water, the home care agency worker and I put my wife to bed and the worker left. That’s when I extracted myself from the present.

I turned on Netflix and watched a couple of episodes of a Finnish crime drama called Bordertown. Watching it took me away from the present and enabled me to get wrapped up in the drama and action of an extraordinarily well-conceived (if given to stretch believability a bit) and flawlessly-executed television series. It’s another one of those series I am certain I will be sorry to see end. Fortunately, though, it is 31 episodes long, so I have plenty more to watch. Unfortunately, I cannot binge-watch it the way I’ve been watching so many other series of late. There’s just too much need for my attention to the real world inside the walls of my house. But at least Bordertown is there for me when I need to and have time for escape.

I haven’t gotten back to Deadwind, another Finnish crime drama series that Netflix mysteriously refused to allow me to continue watching after I watched ten episodes of the first season (there are two seasons); I’ll have to try again soon so I don’t lose memory of what I’ve watched so far.

My television-watching habits run in waves. First, I was enamored of Norwegian series. Then, Danish. Now, Finnish. (There were several others interspersed between them, but I’m talking generalities, here.) It’s odd how I seem to have abandoned most American-made series. But it’s not really odd; American series just don’t have that noir quality that is so attractive to me. The fact that I’m attracted to noir series may be the oddity.

Last night was not as taxing as previous nights, in that all I had to do was check on my wife every three hours. She rebuffed my efforts to turn her. I should have insisted, but she seemed to be so perfectly comfortable, I did not want to disturb her. Yet I should have; the intent is to turn her to avoid bed sores. I am exploring a mattress pad, an alternate pressure mattress pad, that supposedly reduces pressure points and thus reduces the need for frequent turnings. That will ease my burden and help her ensure a more restful sleep, I hope. We shall see.

It’s time for me so shower so I can face the day more refreshed and ready than I am at the moment. My motley beard needs to be shaved, my hair needs combing, and my teeth need brushing. But, first, I finish the coffee in my cup. Then, back to the real world.

Only four and a half days have passed since my wife returned home from her very long stint in the hospital (two stays) and rehabilitation facilities (two facilities). While I do not doubt for a minute the value of her time in the hospital, I think the rehabilitation facilities were worse than wastes of time. Perhaps they help many people; they did not help my wife. They greatly exacerbated her condition. Instead of seeking ways of counteracting the effects of long-term COVID-19-forced solitude, they simply isolated her and said, in effect, “we’re just following the rules; we have no responsibility for addressing the impact of what amounts to solitary confinement.” Am I bitter? You bet I am. I am more than bitter. I am enraged that facilities ostensibly dedicated to the health and well-being of people, particularly elderly people, simply shrug their shoulders and say “there’s nothing we can do.” What they lack in creativity is made up for in their abundance of incompetence, in my view.

Despite my best intentions and my belief that I can do what needs to be done, I am getting tired. It’s physical tiredness, brought on by rising every three hours during the night (a nurse told me it should be every two hours, but I just cannot do it) to monitor her and rotate her position, causing strained neck and shoulder muscles. I have no complaints about doing it, yet I know I can’t keep it up for a long time because I will become useless to my wife if I do. So, I have decided to engage a company to provide 24/7 care for at least two weeks; the company does not yet know when it can start on that schedule, but when the schedule starts, I will devote my full time to exploring options. In the interim, I will find ways to improve my wife’s comfort and to lighten my load so I can, perhaps, continue caring for her for a much longer time. Ideally, I can help her with her physical therapy exercises to the extent that she can become at least modestly independent. Though I am hopeful, I am not confident that can happen. But I will do everything I can to bring it about.

Fortunately, many people have stepped forward to offer help in the way of shopping, meal preparation, handling errands, and the like. I am extremely grateful for those people; with their assistance, my hope may well be fulfilled.

Thus far, my wife has been eating very, very little. She refuses much food, saying she gets full very quickly or that her stomach is upset. That worries me. That worry, among others, will be the subject of a conversation I will have with a nurse who will come to the house at noon today. She also has been reluctant to do her physical therapy exercises; she says she is too tired and simply wants to sleep. That, too, worries me. I wonder whether her enormous number of prescription medications might contribute to both her lack of appetite and her lethargy.

It occurs to me that my words here may seem like I am wallowing in self-pity. I am not. I simply recognize my limitations in filling my wife’s caregiving needs. That is not self-pity; it is self-knowledge. The fact that I do not have more to give bothers me, but that’s simply a fact of life. I will do everything I can, and then some, for as long as I can. I hope the respite provided by 24/7 care will enable me to develop a strategy that will lead to a positive long-term result.

Time to prepare the morning medicines.

A new visitor (I think the visitor is new, anyway) left a very helpful comment for me yesterday. Unfortunately, WordPress has, for the last week or more, steadfastly refused to reveal anything about comments except the number left on a given post. That is a shame, because comments can be far more insightful and valuable than the posts about which they are made. Comments from people who, for one reason or another, stumble on my blog can open up the possibility of communicating with others with whom we may have almost nothing in common (or with whom we share so much we might be clones). I like the idea of establishing connections with people whose backgrounds and lifestyles and philosophies are completely unknown to me. Relationships with people about whom we know almost nothing can grow like newly planted seeds. Tiny rhizomes spread just beneath the surface, establishing a mat of connecting ideas; by the time the shoot breaks ground, connections have been made with a network of roots. Only after the relationship has begun to take shape do the commonalities and differences begin to show clearly. And when differences that once might have prevented even a nod between individuals become apparent, the connections may have become strong enough to survive provincial differences.

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Yesterday was a better day for my wife. She spent time watching a movie, then watching an entertainment reality show (dancing, singing, and the like). Though she ate very little, she ate something, which is a good sign. However, when the home care aid was moving her into my wife’s reclining loveseat, the Hoyer lift tilted and almost hit my wife in the head; that scare the devil out of me and caused me to lose considerable confidence in the home care aid. She will be back today, though, as she was among the only ones available for the schedule. I have to decide early today whether I will opt to have help tomorrow and the next several days. I think I have no other choice; I know, now, I cannot do it by myself. Even with the help of my sister-in-law, until we are more comfortable with transferring my wife from the bed to her wheelchair, etc., I cannot risk it.

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I am in the mood to write, but I cannot afford to focus my attention on this, so I’m off to tend to my wife.

Yesterday gave me an education. I had half expected my wife to come home in a jubilant mood, finally home after three-plus months. That was an unrealistic expectation. Why would I expect that when her return home was so different from the last time she left? The last time she left, she was able to use a walker and ride in our car; she returned in a wheelchair, unable to stand and weaker than I’ve ever seen her. Her time in the hospital and rehab facilities—time essentially in isolation like solitary confinement—took an enormous toll on her, both physically and mentally. She is depressed, though it perhaps is not as severe as it has been, thanks to a mood-elevating medication. But she is most assuredly not jubilant.

She slept the vast majority of the day, waking long enough to drink some water and to nibble on some crackers and sample some Mexican food I ordered for take-out. And she was awake through the process, every three hours, of the home aid turning her in bed. The home aid was here from 11 in the morning until about 7:30 last night; during that time, she did the hard work of turning my wife in bed (to prevent bed sores and ensure better circulation). After she left, though, those tasks and changes were up to her sister and me. So, every three hours—at 9, midnight, 3, and 6—I attempted to do what I was ostensibly trained to do; I was inept, though. I think I succeeded in about half my responsibilities.

The admonition that my wife needs 24/7 care finally hit me. It will be impossible for me to do it myself. And I cannot expect any friends, no matter how generous or close, to do it with me, not even for short periods. The money I am paying for twenty-four hours of home health assistance over the weekend is astronomical; I cannot possibly afford 24/7 care; I cannot even afford a few hours every day. And I know I cannot long do even the basics by myself; especially given the need for repositioning my wife every three hours she is in bed.

I do not know what I will do. I will manage somehow, but how that will be is beyond me at the moment. My wife deserves to be at home, but she deserves far better care than I can give her at home. And she does not deserve to be in an institution, being “cared” for by people who are paid minimum wage and who resent it. Reality is a monstrous beast. Suddenly, life seems horribly, impossibly, unacceptably unfair; my wife deserves so much better than reality is willing to give.

I awoke about 2:30 this morning. I got up for a while, then went back to bed to try to sleep. Eventually, after what seemed like an hour, I drifted off. But I awoke again just before five with an ache in my upper back, just below my neck. It’s reminiscent of the pain I had a few years ago, when I learned I have bone spurs and stenosis of some vertebrae; that causes nerves to be snagged or pinched, resulting in pain in my back, shoulders, and right arm. Fortunately, I feel no pain in my shoulders and arm. I may have spoken too soon; my shoulders are beginning to ache, too. This pain may be completely unrelated to my earlier bout. In fact, I suspect it may be caused by stress. This is not a good time to have physical maladies, in that my wife is returning home today from the rehab center. She needs me to be in top form so I can help her convalesce. The answer is: Chill. Relax. Unflinch.

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Against my better judgment, I watched last night’s presidential debate. While it did not replicate the chaos of the first one (of which I watched only a few minutes before turning off the television as an act of self-preservation), it was a pointless exercise. People have made up their minds by now. Either they remain locked in blind allegiance to an incompetent con artist and liar or they reject him and opt to take their chances with the other guy. That’s not a particularly glowing endorsement, but at least the other guy recognizes the need to give credence to advice from people with expertise in many, many disciplines (rather than claim absolute, “perfect” knowledge of areas utterly out of his depth). I hope against hope for a landslide victory for the other guy.

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There was a time not so long ago that I would have said I would jump at the chance to move to a Scandinavian country. Lately, though, after watching several political and crime dramas set in Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, I have begun to question that concept. If the dramas present realistic experiences that take place in those countries, those places are not as “pure” as I’ve wanted to believe. The series I’ve watched have shown violent drug culture, murders, political backstabbing, and various other forms of human deviance. Maybe, though, television and film from those countries is like our own: exaggerated portrayals of relatively rare occurrences. Moving to Scandinavia would involve language problems, too. That’s a downside. But, then, is there anyplace in the world today I could consider a true haven? With COVID-19 spreading like wildfire, is it possible to find safety and serenity anywhere? I am afraid not. So, the question becomes: where is the least treacherous place, the place where serenity might visit on occasion? I am still looking.

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Speaking of Scandinavian dramas, I was several episodes into the series Deadwind (a Finnish crime drama) when Netflix went wonky. When I try to watch Deadwind, the system freezes.  This has been going on for several days. After a few tries, I gave up and switched to something else. My first switch, last Monday, landed me on a film I recommend highly: The Trial of the Chicago 7. It brought back the emotions I felt during the 1968 demonstrations and subsequent police rage. Before Deadwind and The Trial of the Chicago 7, I watched Borderliner (also known as Grenseland), categorized as a Nordic noir crime drama. I enjoyed it very much, too. I recommend it. Before that, I tried to watch Schitt’s Creek; I managed to watch four episodes of the first season. I wanted to like it, because it has received such glowing critical reviews. But I could not; I found it slapstick silly; a waste of time. I might return to it one day, but for now I’ll stick to stuff that I find more appealing.

I also watched the pilot for the series Ratched.  I think I will enjoy it, but I will have to be in the right frame of mind. I’m not there at the moment.

As I think of all the Nordic dramas I want to watch, I wonder whether I will be able to do it. My wife’s return home will certainly change my routines; I may have to devote considerable time to her, as opposed to whiling away hours watching television. We’ll see, we will.

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I have not had breakfast yet and I think I might forego it this morning. I am not hungry in the least. I know what I’ll  have for lunch; tuna salad. When I got up this morning, I made tuna salad even before I made a cup of coffee. I hope my wife will be hungry for lunch when she gets home and I know she enjoys a simple tuna salad. Dinner tonight is up in the air. While I’m willing to cook, I think my time this afternoon will be better spent getting used to the wheelchair, hospital bed, Hoyer lift, etc. And talking with my wife. My wife’s sister will be here and I think she is willing to pick up dinner for us from El Jimador; my wife loves Mexican food and I am certain she has had none for the last three months, so I hope either  Ranchero Jalisco or chile verde will please her taste buds. But she gets to choose, not me.

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The Democratic Club of Hot Springs Village is having a shindig today, including free brats and beer. I had planned on attending, but will miss it. It’s really rather heart-warming to see a fairly large contingent of progressives in Hot Springs Village. We’re far outnumbered by conservatives and their mutant brethren, Tea Partiers. But that does not dissuade us from announcing that we are proud liberals. While I do not necessarily buy into all aspects of the Democratic Party platform, my philosophies tend to mirror those that launch Democratic positions. So, it’s as close as I come to having an organization that represents my point of view.

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I’ve been writing here, off and on, for too long. Time to face the day.

Finally, I found a caregiver agency that could commit to having someone here when my wife comes home. They will stay until around 8 pm and will return the next two days for twelve hour shifts. I hope, during that time, I can learn what I need to know so I can do most of the caregiving myself. I simply cannot afford ongoing care without doing something drastic like selling my house; and the proceeds from the sale would be gone in a year at the rate things are going.

In a short while, I will take the wheelchair I borrowed from the Village Loan Closet to Good Sam so my wife can be discharged in that chair. That way, she won’t have to undergo a chair-to-chair transfer when she gets home. The caregiver agency representative I met yesterday said I should arrange a nightgown for my wife that buttons down the full length of the back. I made a trip to Walmart this morning, where I learned they do not carry such a thing. I was advised, too, to get a special kind of sling for use with a Hoyer lift; no luck on that front yet, either.

To make things just a touch more difficult, I have been unable to get my wife on the phone since yesterday morning. I called her early yesterday; she picked up but did not continue the conversation. I then saw her briefly at the wound center, but our interaction was brief and superficial. Since then, she has not called me and she has not answered my calls. I am afraid she may be in the midst of another bout of deep depression. Tomorrow can’t come soon enough.

Many people have admonished me to avoid burnout by taking respites from my caregiver duties from time to time. The caregiving has not even started and I already feel the mental wear and tear and the sense of physical strain. The answer to that is to deliberately “chill.” That’s the answer.

Yesterday, two people from my church delivered a twin bed to my house, along with some birthday goodies. I cannot say enough good things about those two women; they epitomize goodwill and compassion. And they are among a legion of other people who have offered help in a stressful time. Their generosity their insistence that I call whenever I need assistance are what will enable me to cope with the challenges of being a caregiver.

It’s time for me to go deliver the wheelchair. I hope the medical supply company does not call while I am in the midst of that task. If so, I’ll cope.

The first thing I did this morning after getting up, even before making coffee, was to put sheets in the washer. Yesterday, I stripped our bed and, with some much-needed help from the guy who painted my deck (and his wife), disassembled the four-poster bed. The deflated mattress and box springs are leaning against the wall and the components of the heavy wooden frame are in the garage, sitting where the Camry normally sits. The Camry is in the driveway. When the sheets are clean and dry, I will fold them and put them away. In the bedroom, in place of the disassembled queen bed, we’ll have a twin bed for me, lent by a friend, and a hospital bed for my wife, provided by the local Health Mart.

Only after I made coffee and checked my email this morning and discovered a Jacquie Lawson ecard did it register with me that today is my birthday. I’m sure it would have occurred to me at some point, even without the card, but I was oblivious to the fact until I saw the card in my inbox. I suppose birthdays become less occasions to celebrate, as we age; instead, they become reminders of our mortality. At twenty, thirty, even forty, we can imagine being twice our age. The possibility disappears about forty; maybe forty-five.

My wife has an appointment with the wound clinic in Hot Springs this morning, so I will drive into town and will wait until the end of her appointment to learn the doctor’s assessment; will she finally be able to put weight on the front of her foot? If so, that may accelerate the process of recovering her strength. If not, her strength will continue to ebb, requiring that much more effort and time to rebuild it. Either way, her experience will be different after she comes home. She will have less access to therapy to help rebuild her strength, courtesy of Medicare’s idiotic rules. I am confident many of Medicare’s rules and regulations were created by people who have never experienced, nor known anyone who has experienced, the challenges brought on by age. The Medicare system (indeed, the entire health care system in this country) should be taken over by people over sixty-five years of age. The wisdom of experience should inform policies and procedures that impact people; not the arrogance of youthful inexperience.

My neighbors and friends, the ones who sent the Jacquie Lawson card, had planned to have me over for a birthday dinner tonight, but I cancelled because my mind is racing and I am afraid I would seem distracted and unappreciative. I would be distracted; I would be appreciative, but unable to show it. It’s best that I cancelled. I would have appeared an ungrateful guest.

Yesterday, I thought I had secured assistance in the form of two “helpers” from a senior services company to help with my wife’s return home. But, after I was ready to hand over a “retainer” check and authorize ACH withdrawals from my checking account, I was informed the price I was given was half the amount I would actually have to pay. The actual price was impossible, so I began looking again. I have spoken to five or six companies, all but one of which said they did not have sufficient staffing to be able to help. I have an appointment today with another company; if it cannot provide one or two people to assist me, I am not sure what I will do. I can ask people from my church, but that might be asking too much…spending hours and hours in my house, helping my wife into and out of bed and into and out of a wheelchair.  I promised myself, and my wife, I would not put her in a nursing home. One way or another, I will keep that promise.

Even before her return home, I am feeling the pressure of caring for her. The reality of helping her recover her strength, if it is recoverable, is settling over me like a blanket. Or a shroud. I am not certain I have the wherewithal to do what I promised I would do. My physical strength has declined over the years and I have done little to counterbalance that decay. I suppose now, though it’s late, is the time to rebuild that strength. I better have some protein for breakfast if I hope to build my strength.

I received a surprise phone call yesterday morning. Good Sam is discharging my wife on Friday because her progress does not meet Medicare standards for improvement, they say. Medicare will not continue to pay, so she is coming home. While I planned for that, the timing surprised me. I am scrambling to prepare for her and trying to figure out just how I will care for her. Fortunately, several people have stepped forward to offer support and assistance. At this stage, though, I don’t quite know what assistance I (and she) will need. This morning, I’ll disassemble our four-poster bed so we can put a rented hospital bed and a twin bed in the master bedroom. Sometime between now and Friday, a hospital bed, a Hoyer lift, and various other “stuff” will be delivered (I hope). In between, I need to go shopping for things she’ll need.

I hope her return home will set in motion the recovery of her happiness. Being locked away in an isolated medical setting with no visitors for three months is, I think, akin to torture. I wish I had brought her home from the hospital instead of relying on Good Sam to help her; in my view, Good Sam did just the opposite. Now it’s my chance to make things right.

I’ve been binging on Deadwind, described by Forbes as “Nordic noir,” for the last few evenings. Like so many other Scandinavian films and television series I’ve watched during the past few years, it is—to me—absolutely gripping. I cannot quite put my finger on why I find these Scandinavian crime dramas so much more appealing than the domestic versions; probably has something to do with the fact that they seem more realistic, as if I’m actually engaged in the action, rather than simply following it. So, although the plot is nothing new (murder, duh), it is executed quite well.  The first season of Deadwind has twelve episodes; the second, only 8. At the rate I’m going, I suspect I’ll wrap it up within the next few days. Then, I’ll move on to something else; more than likely, another ScandiDrama.

But maybe not. I’m interested in another noir series, this one (Hinterland) a Welsh noir series originally titled Y Gwyll (Welsh for “The Dusk”).  It, too, is a police drama. I love the IMDB description: A noir crime drama set in Aberystwyth, Wales, where troubled DCI Tom Mathias solves murders while searching for redemption. Something about that simple description appeals to me. The series’ languages are Welsh and English; I suspect I’ll rely on subtitles for both, given my ears’ not-infrequent difficulty with accents.

Though most of the films and series I’ve watched lately have been at least modestly stimulating, intellectually, if I am honest about them I have to admit they all are simply escapist. I watch them and allow myself to get absorbed by them so my mind is freed from worry for a while. The reason I know they are purely escapist is this: after watching an entire series, I cannot recall much about it. It’s as if my mind was on autopilot during my viewing. I enjoy the hell out of them, but I have to coax details about them from my memory (if I want to remember them). I suppose this could be a symptom of an underlying physical or mental problem, but I don’t think so. I think it’s evidence that I’m escaping into the television screen. I used to escape by getting into my car and taking long, aimless daytrips. Not these days. These days I read subtitles and vicariously experience foreign countries and their all-too-familiar problems with crime triggered by greed, jealousy, fear, and other caustic emotions.

While trying to attach a title to this short post, I learned I had already entitled two posts, “Escape,” and had included the word “escape” in two more titles. The psychoanalyst in me believes there is meaning in the repetitive return to the term. The psychoanalyst in me sees evidence that I have a history of psychological imprisonment; a sense of being caged or chained to situations from which I feel a need to flee. Fortunately, I am ill-equipped to be a psychoanalyst; my license to practice would be revoked before I started. So I’ll have to be satisfied that my proclivity toward using “escape” is simply coincidental. And this post shall be entitled, “Escapist.”

Something is awry when, at just a bit after two in the afternoon, one feels a sudden desire for a shot of good whiskey. The onset of such a craving should wait until after dinner; that’s the natural time for it. But my thirst for something to slap me in the face with its aroma and sting on the tongue refuses to pay attention to the clock. No matter, though; I do not possess good whiskey at the moment. The closest I come is Seagram’s Seven Crown, blended American whiskey best suited for mixed drinks, not for downing from a shot glass. Would that I still had some Maker’s Mark or some Jack Daniels black label. Oh, well. Or, I could go for a very nice añejo tequila, instead. I am equipped for that; indeed, I have good tequila, lime, and salt, the ideal triumvirate. But, still, it’s not even 2:30 p.m.

The question arises in my mind, of course; why do I feel like a stiff drink at this unwholesome hour? It is a rarity, indeed, which is a good thing. A frequent longing for afternoon whiskey or tequila could be problematic.

I blame my youngest brother for this sudden urge to indulge myself. He wrote an email earlier today expressing a desire to try a sidecar, a mixed drink he has never had. I hadn’t ever thought about it, but I don’t think I’ve ever had one, either. Though I’d like to try one, I am not ready for one today. But the thought of brandy turned my mind to other good stuff; I’m sure that’s how bourbon found its way into my brain. From there, it was just a matter of time before my mind turned to shots of good liquor, zeroing in on good whiskey and then substituting tequila for whiskey. If I lived in a civilized state, I could go buy some good whiskey today; I live in Arkansas, though, a state that prohibits the sale of liquor on Sunday because…fanaticism, AKA religion on steroids.

It’s now 2:43 p.m. and I have successfully avoided shots of anything, so I may be out of the woods. Or I may slip into the kitchen and pretend I am sitting at a waterside bar on Lake Chapala, washing my cares away. Time will tell.

Thus far, I have resisted the temptation to turn on the heat, opting instead to cope with the moderate discomfort of too cool temperatures by wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt in the house. This morning, the indoors temperature is 66 degrees, a couple of degrees cooler than yesterday, despite the fact that the outdoors temperature is considerably warmer than yesterday. I suspect houses retain heat for quite a while, regardless of cooling outside temperatures, but over time the retained heat escapes. That’s my explanation, anyway, for the cooler inside air in the face of warmer outside air. If today were to be sunny, I suspect the indoors temperature would rise considerably, and quickly; but the forecast is for clouds. So, my question to myself: should I turn on the heat, or should I continue to cope? At the moment, my answer is that I will continue to cope. No point in wasting energy when I can be reasonably comfortable in lounging attire. Of course, when I take a shower, my attitude may change; I will wish for a bathroom heater for a while, I imagine.

A few degrees one way or the other should not command so much of my attention. Before the age of HVAC systems, people dealt with the vagaries of weather without pushing buttons or turning dials. Their options in relatively recent times might have included decisions about opening or closing windows or vents, turning fans on or off, putting a log on the fire (or not), and adding or discarding layers of clothes. I think it pays to remember that modern conveniences are not necessities. Overreliance on conveniences tends to rob us of our ability to deal creatively with our environment. And that reliance tends to involve using vast amounts of nonrenewable energy. I wonder how much energy might be saved if every household in the USA took a one-week sabbatical from using energy sources with which we have become so comfortable and on which we rely: no driving, no electricity, no HVAC systems…okay, I’ll allow refrigeration for food…and so forth? Unfortunately, we will never know with certainty because most of us would be unwilling to put up with the inconvenience. Unless forced to by natural disaster or some other such calamity.

But IF we were to go for a week without using power, what would it reveal about us? That we are soft, demanding whiners? That we have the capacity to understand that convenience and necessity are different? That we can adjust to trying circumstances with grace? That we are not suited for an earlier era of self-reliance or collective support? Who knows? I don’t. I would be interested to find out, though. I have been through lengthy periods without electricity, though it has been many years ago. I coped, then. Would I cope just as well today?

When the air conditioner is in use, we set the thermostat to 78 degrees. We set it at 68 degrees when we turn on the heat. So today’s 66 degrees is only two degrees cooler than “normal.” I should recall, though, that even at 68 degrees we often wear layers or comfortable lounging clothes around the house. And we occasionally turn up the thermostat a degree or two for a short while for the sake of comfort. And we sometimes rely on the fireplace for radiant heat. Obviously the ability to control the temperature in one’s home simply by adjusting a thermostat is a luxury. We should contemplate that more often than we do. We should recognize how incredibly fortunate we are to live in a time and place that such luxuries exist for us.

I think my decision to keep my hands off the thermostat, in spite of wishing I felt warmer, is responsible for this post. I’ve forced myself to acknowledge my reliance on modern technology for comfort. Perhaps I rely on modern technology to define what constitutes a comfortable temperature; would comfort be defined differently if I did not have access to the thermostat? I don’t know. But it’s worth thinking about.

The southeastern sky is a remarkable vision this morning. Purple and pink and grey and deep blue peek through spaces between leaves and branches as yet unlit by the morning sun. Where the sky is not partially hidden by the forest, white and violet and grey compete for prominence.  The absence of clouds to soak up and refract the light lets the sunlight dissolve the darkness without interruption.

It is quite cool this morning—37 degrees outside and 67 degrees inside, according to my thermometer. I have yet to turn on the heat, knowing it would fill only a temporary need. Today’s forecast high of 70 degrees and clear skies will allow the windows in the house to amplify the sun’s heat, making artificial warmth unnecessary.

My first task of the day, aside from the regular routine of showering, shaving, and coffee, will be to join a group of church members and friends as we collectively clean a roadway of trash and litter.  That should take no more than an hour or so, given the number of us working separately and the relatively short length of roadway we have been assigned to clean. Next, I will travel to the Garland County Fairgrounds, where a hazardous household waste collection event will take place. After almost seven years in our house, I am finally getting rid of all the gallon and quart buckets (many almost full) of paint the former owner of the house left here: seventeen gallons and 7 quarts. I have more that I should take, but I have no more room in the trunk. I can take the remainder the next time such an event is held.

After I take care of that task, I will do some odds and ends around the house, make shopping lists for groceries, hardware, and related needs, and have lunch. Sometime after lunch, I will go visit my wife. She has been moved to  a room with a window facing the parking lot, just off a sidewalk. I can go stand at the window and we can talk on the phone while physically seeing one another. It’s not the same as being in the same room, but it has to do for now. Her sister and I went to see her yesterday; she seemed to be in good spirits; we talked for almost an hour. Then, last night around 9:30 I was pleasantly surprised to get a call from her; we talked for almost half an hour.

A couple of nights ago, after another very pleasant afternoon visit that last about 45 minutes, I got a call telling me her blood pressure was extremely low and that her nurses were going to give her intravenous fluids and they had been directed to stop several medications that can cause blood pressure to drop. I called her immediately and she said they had already started the IV. Of course I worried about it all night. The next morning, her blood pressure had rallied to low normal levels.  I find myself constantly on edge about her state of health, wondering whether she is getting sufficient fluids, proper nutrition, adequate therapy and stretching exercises, etc. I have to be available whenever she might need me, though I don’t know just why that would be, given that she is under the care of medical and healthcare professionals.

On edge. Edging into the day. Always tense, as if the day could spring an unwelcome surprise on me at any moment. Coffee probably doesn’t help much in that regard, but it tastes wonderful and holding a warm mug in my hand feels right. I suppose I could try caffeine-free hot tea for awhile (that’s what my wife drinks); I like it quite a lot, but I still prefer coffee. But sometimes, when I deviate from the norm and have a cup of hot tea, I feel a sense of comfort that coffee does not give me. I wonder why that is?  Hot tea and an orange-cranberry scone might do the trick for me this morning. The hot tea is easily accessible; the orange-cranberry scone, not so much. I used to buy orange-cranberry scones at a Starbucks in Dallas when I took my long morning walks. I bought one for myself and one for my wife, which I took back home to her. She likes them, too, but I think she might prefer blueberry scones. Why I’m reminiscing about scones is a mystery to me. So many things are mysterious. Shoes, for instance. Why do humans were shoes? Why did we not evolve like the rest of the animal kingdom, our feet protected by thick skin or protective pads or whatever? I wonder when the first shoes, or shoe-prototypes, were worn? Where were the people who wore them and what caused them to make them? We’ll never know, so the best we can do is to speculate. That’s a worthy thing to do on a moderately lazy Saturday morning: speculate about the first shoe-wearers.

It’s almost time for me to head to church, where we’ll gather, be given our assigned routes, and equipped with gloves and bags and vests and “pickers” to grab refuse from the roadside. One more sip of coffee should finish the cup. Then, I will step in the day, wearing comfortable (more or less) shoes.

You wake up one morning, still a little sleepy but ready to tackle the day before you. After a cup of coffee, you choose the clothes you will wear. You get dressed and prepare to leave the house on your first errand of the day, a trip to the hardware store to buy a replacement for a worn exterior door knob. The knob works, but you want a lockset with a lever instead of a knob. Just before you get to the door into the garage, you decide to take one last look at the worn knob; not because you need to, but because you have an odd feeling about it. You suddenly feel guilty about planning to discard the knob for a lever. Ach! You brush away the feeling, go to your car, and make the trip to the hardware store.

The door hardware aisle is densely packed with options of all kind. You study all the options long and hard and select a brushed nickel set with levers on both sides; no round knobs. But when you set your choice of lockset on the counter, an image of the old worn doorknob pops up in your head.

[EDIT: POSTED UNINTENTIONALLY. I WILL COMPLETE THIS POST ONE DAY.]

Materialism creeps into our lives without our knowledge or consent. We see something interesting or hear about an item that appeals to a longing we think is within us. Or we watch an advertisement designed to trigger that longing, even though the longing may be a product of marketing minds whose job it is to create desire where none existed before. However, it happens, we acquire material things. Occasionally, we recognize the pointlessness of accumulation for the sake of accumulation, but only rarely do we react by taking control of our tendency toward instant—or only modestly delayed—gratification.

I cannot begin to recall all the conversations I have had with people who recognized, when they prepared for a household move, the enormous burden of over-accumulation. They were shocked at the sheer volume of “stuff” they had collected. Often, they vowed to discard all the excess, keeping only the necessities, and to never again allow materialism to control their lives. Many of them have expressed thoughts similar to these: “I realized that accumulating material goods had no appreciable impact on my happiness. In fact, when I discovered that I had collected enormous amounts of what amounted to useless garbage, I was stunned. I vow to never again permit myself to buy for the sake of short-term gratification.” Or words to that effect.  Most of those words, though, were hollow. As mine have been.

Recently, I have played with the idea of imagining a life without all the individual pieces of clutter in my life. I try to imagine how different my life might be if an item around the house were to simply disappear. Thus far, I have decided my life would be impacted to almost no extent if all the knickknacks on display on shelves were gone; the empty shelf would look slightly different. My clothes closet would be roomier if most of the clothes I seldom or never wear were to escape. The drawers in the kitchen would have fewer items in them if the kitchen tools I never use were to disappear. Of course, it’s easy to imagine life without the items that don’t really matter. But what of the ones that do?

I regularly glance at clocks throughout the house. When I imagine a life without them, I cannot foresee any insurmountable obstacles. And if the cordless phones in rooms around the house were to disappear, I would get by without undue hardship. I have discovered, in thought at least, that I could live comfortably without staplers, pots and pans of multiple sizes and shapes, most of the chairs in the house, all the tables (provided I could sit at the counter), and dozens upon dozens of other things.

I could live without the gadgets I have allowed to enter my life: the Echo Dot that serves as home to Alexa, whose weather forecasts and jokes both are unreliable; the electric kitchen timer that allows me to ignore time until reminded; the remotes for two televisions (and the two televisions); the ceiling fans; etc., etc, Of course, some of these items, and many more, seem to add convenience to my life, but they also rob me of presence. I do not seem to pay close attention to the really important things around me because my attention is diverted or made unnecessary by “things.”

This recent imaging life without is not new. For as far back as I can remember, I have occasional bouts of dissatisfaction with myself for what I consider superficiality. I regularly rediscover I either am too attached to material things or insufficiently appreciative of the material things that really matter. I have aspired to minimalism since I was in college; I have not yet succeeded. I’ve had fantasies of living in a single room cabin, far from civilization, outfitted with a bed, a single-burner stove, a plate, a knife, a fork, a skillet, a coffee pot, and a refrigerator (the cabin has electric power; my imagination is not prepared for full-on asceticism). In my cabin, I would write a manifesto for life on planet Earth. Yeah.

Of course these thoughts of excessive materialism lead to, or are accompanied by, questions of whether the same superficiality exists with regard to people. Do I take people for granted, failing to give sufficient dedicated thought to how important they are to me? Though I recognize their importance, I doubt I often allow myself (or require myself) to dedicate more than a few moments to allow my appreciation for them to fill me; to let it seep into every pore and to wash over me.  I think love requires that sort of dedicated attention. It requires a recognition that another person’s existence is key to your own and that without it you would be like an amputee forced to rebuild a life with a vital piece missing.

As usual, my mind wandered away from the road I was on. Minimalism. That’s what has been on my mind. I think life without the debris of materialistic urges might constitute a more pure existence. Without the detritus, I think we might experience more serenity, unencumbered by meaningless possessions. Maybe. But will I ever experience it? I doubt it. I still have too much “stuff,” even in my mind as I imagine life without it.

An brief excursion into Greek and Roman mythology this morning veered sharply into an interest in linguistic treatment of grammatical structures across languages. I have always abhorred explorations into the formalities of grammatical structures, perhaps because I found the explanations too complex and dry to be of any interest. Or, perhaps, I simply do not have sufficient intellectual firepower to understand them. In spite of my tendency to steer clear of grammar, when I encountered discussions of grammatical structure across languages (during an exploration of Greek god mythology), I was intrigued. (As for English grammar, I know what conforms to the “rules” of the language and what does not, I just cannot explain why.)

I doubt my interest this morning in the accusative case, the genitive, the dative, the vocative, etc. will be long-lasting. But I found it interesting to be exposed to concepts that illustrate, at least to some extent, the ways in which various languages are structured in similar ways or, at least, can be compared and contrasted.  My interest in linguistics is neither new nor encyclopedic. My oldest brother pursued graduate study in linguistics before ultimately stopping the process at ABD (all but dissertation). Partly because of my admiration for him, I explored the possibility of going for an undergraduate degree in linguistics, but got sidetracked by other interests. But my interest in linguistics never waned (nor did it ever blossom into a full-blown diversion). For some reason, I remember learning, in a linguistics class, about the term ‘glottal stop.’ My recollection relies more on the experience of duplicating the instructor’s pronunciation of the word bottle, as spoken in some versions of regional London English. In place of the sound of the “t,” there is a brief pause (which is produced by closing the space between the vocal folds).

At any rate, I found myself wandering through grammatical structures and down linguistic pathways unrelated to Greek mythology. I spent a good hour reading about the evolution of grammatical elements of spoken languages. I learned about (maybe re-learned?) the ways in which certain sounds of spoken language (like the glottal stop) are symbolized in written form (symbolized in the International Phonetic Alphabet as ⟨ʔ⟩). And I discovered that the language used to define certain terms is almost unintelligible without serious investigative research, like this from Wikipedia‘s definition of fusional languages:

Fusional languages or inflected languages are a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical, syntactic, or semantic features.

I need this kind of diversion at the moment. Something that will both take my mind off the fact that the world is collapsing around us and that will briefly deepen my shallow intellectual store of useless knowledge. I still need to return to Greek and Roman mythology, though, inasmuch as I was unsuccessful at learning much today. I cannot keep writing this, for now, because I have other obligations. Or other inquisitions. That’s it, I should re-read Jorge Luis Borges’ Other Inquisitions. I remember being enamored of the essays contained in the book, but it has been so long ago that I recall almost nothing else. I hope I still have a copy; I’m afraid I may have gotten rid of it, though, in the massive book purge before our move to Hot Springs Village.  Perhaps I should try something new; some more modern. But no, not until I re-acquaint myself with the brilliance of Borges.

Enough. I have obligations to fulfill this morning. And I haven’t even showered and shaved yet. Ach. So much to do.

My new primary care doctor spent an hour and fifteen minutes with me yesterday, the longest “in-office” visit I can recall. Surgeons have spent more time with me, but I’ve been unaware of their presence as they sliced into my flesh and removed pieces of me so the remainder might survive. Yesterday, though, the doctor actually spoke with me and asked me a lot of questions. He scheduled me for a return visit in a month, as well, when he will burn off some skin blemishes on my hands and excise a particularly bothersome growth on my right hand. He explored my state of mind, as well, recommending some tactics to improve it. I am grateful for his time, but I am afraid his words and even his time have not yet spurred me to emerge from this cloud of harsh, hot, suffocating dust. But I must give it time. I haven’t even begun the new regimen of consuming an ever-increasing assortment of pharmaceutical wizardry in pill form.  And I have not inquired, yet, of Walgreen’s as to whether I can get injected with doses of Shingrix two months apart.

I wonder how my body might react if I simply stopped taking all the damn pills that have been prescribed for me? Atorvastatin, metoprolol, gabapentin, tamsulosin, losartan…and on and on. Would I wither? Would I crash and burn? Would I weaken gradually until my muscles and bones could no longer hold me erect? Would my heart simply stop beating? I do not plan to find out by experience, though I think it would be fascinating to know. One day, science and medicine may be capable of duplicating patients (but eliminating sentience from the copies, thereby eliminating some of the concerns about the morality of human experiments) and testing the effects of drugs and the lack thereof and so forth. How would I react to seeing an exact replica of me react to having drug treatments withheld? Would it have bothered me, for example, to have watched my doppelgänger’s body respond to untreated lung cancer? I will never know the answer to my hypothetical query, but thinking about the question arouses my innate interest in the philosophies that give rise to morals and their foes.

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I tried to speak to my wife yesterday to no avail. Her phone was either switched off or the battery was in need of charging. And the room telephone in the facility where she temporarily resides was not answered; either it was out of reach or she chose not to answer it when I called. She does not seem to understand how much it bothers me to have the only tether of communication shut off. But, then, I cannot possibly understand how the experience of being confined to a single room for the better part of three months, with no visitors, is impacting her perspectives and her perception of the world. I want nothing more than to embrace her and protect her from the world.  Yet she may not want that at all; she may prefer the more reliable retreat into herself. My attempts to communicate frequently may be precisely what she does not need and, in fact, those attempts could be annoying to her in ways I cannot understand.  It’s maddening to me to realize that it is possible I am largely to blame for her withdrawal.

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Mornings no longer appeal to me. The quiet hours before sunrise no longer provide respite from the chaos of daily life. I’m losing my interest in watching sunrise unfold into a thousand muted shades of pink and orange and violet and blue, ultimately cascading into brilliant oranges and pinks. That majesty, recently so awe-inspiring that it almost brought tears, is now simply a matter-of-fact process. Sunrise and its companion, sunset, do not  hold the power over me they once did. It’s as if a sheet of grey gauze, intended to filter out color and light, has been placed over my eyes.

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Last night, I went to bed very early, around 9:30. I did not fall asleep right away and I woke up several times during the night. My SleepNumber app claims I was in bed for seven hours and fifty-nine minutes; six hours and fifty-seven minutes of which were “restful,” the app claims.  I do not believe the app. For one thing, being in bed for almost eight hours is radically out of the ordinary for me; I do not like to be in bed that long. For another, I recall getting up to pee at least four times; the app claims I was up only twice. The app claims my heart rate was forty-eight, considerably lower than the normal fifty-eight. And it claims my “sleep” was restless for only an hour or so. I have grown suspicious that the app is making stuff up. Alexa, perhaps, is communicating with it, recommending it tell me lies (in retaliation for my unreasonable hounding of and cursing at Alexa for her intrusive flaws). I simply must stop believing the app. Just stop looking at what it claims to report.

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WordPress continues to refuse to display comments. Later today, I will contact my web host (that also provides me with WordPress) to ask for assistance. If that does not work, I will contact a consultant who knows WordPress far better than I in an attempt to get help. I rarely get comments, so the problem is not especially troubling, but when those few people who leave comments see that the comments they left are not displayed, I suspect it is upsetting to them. I know it is upsetting to me. Is this just another example of how I am allowing technology to manipulate my emotions? Am I permitting software glitches to control centers in my brain that regulate my heart-rate? Am I allowing the human-machine interface to cause my serotonin levels to plummet, thereby sparking anger and, ultimately, rage? I think those are possibilities. I must attempt to gain control again; it’s my brain, after all, isn’t it? Or is it? Has technology already snatched my self-control from me, swallowing it and releasing it into the internet as the technological equivalent of marijuana? That’s a question of interest: might it be possible for software and hardware to be influenced by mood-altering interference? Is that what hackers are doing, in fact? So many questions, so few answers.

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I must be back at the medical clinic in less than an hour to have more lab work done: hemoglobin A1C, vitamin B12 level, and vitamin D25 hydroxy. So, I’d better finish my coffee, take a quick shower, and eat something. And, then, face the rest of the day.