Nerves are setting in

I couldn't sleep last night. I have the Hospital Terrors and was so hoping to avoid them. There are mountains of things that need to be done and my tendency to make lists has kicked into high gear.

Now it would be spiffy if I could just check a few things off.

I will be the last surgical case of the day. Apparently, orthopedic surgeons have this hangup about operating on infected joints when there is the most remote chance that a microbe will escape into the rarefied air of the surgical suite... and then jump into the open wound of another patient. My bacteria are very social.

The pain is kind of out of sight but I am not medicating for it. I am doing a modified Drug Holiday (yes, on my own; no, Shoulderman hasn't a clue). It will help me post-op. But the pain is starting to suck, so I may have to end the vacation.

Fred has gone off to... church. Here at Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé, his worshiping options are plentiful. He attends the First Existential Congregation of TdH, an interesting group of very strange people. I stopped attending over a dispute about the ordination of Transgendered Alien Republicans [TAR]. Nothing gets to me like the pointed exclusion of a group of people, even if they are TARs.

It occurs to me that these infections may be my end. Maybe their concern over the MRSA is not so puerile after all. Shoulderman has intoned that we may end up chasing these nasty bugs from joint to joint. I haven''t had the courage to tell him my left hip is hurting.

How much hardware do (well, at this point, *did*) I have?

1999-left hip fractured and pinned
2001-right hip replaced after collapse
2002-left shoulder replaced after collapse
2002-right ankle reconstructed after fall in ICU (the beginning of a Sentinel Event that ushered in the era of CRPS)
2005-right shoulder replaced after collapse
2007-right elbow reconstructed after a fall
2008-right shoulder prosthesis removed, replaced with cement spacer
2008-Monday, December 15... left shoulder prosthesis [probably, but pray not] removed, replaced with cement spacer impregnated with killer antibiotics...

We're going to chase infection in all of these possible incubation hot spots? In that same space of time, there have been four ressuscitations, three Addisonian crises, two pneumonias, many lupus inflammations of heart and kidneys, and *way* too much time spent hanging around on ventilators. My terrific luck cannot continue to hold.

Way to talk myself into a funk!

Solution? Scrub the golden toilets of the Manor! Change the bedding of the various Sleep Chambers! Clean the Moat! Mow the Wimbledon Miniature Courts! Dust the Rubens! Refinish the Velasquez! Go to town and snag more Gold Leaf for the 16th century dinette!

Ar! Temp? 101.2. Ar! Would that those First Existentialist Congregants prayed...

I have great faith in ShoulderMan. He is easily one of the top ten OS in the country, very humble, and tenacious as heck. He is also an unusually talented *doctor* -- and by that, I mean that he doesn't shrug, mutter, and disappear when my medical crapola surfaces after his surgeries. He listens, absorbs, and doesn't coddle -- the perfect combination for me and my increasingly woe-is-me attitude. He will do his part and I must do mine. What is my part, though? I have been living with pain that stays on the very high end of that stupid 10-point scale, running fevers daily, sweating, able to do less and less, not sleeping for all the pain, and... chest pain is becoming way too frequent an occurence. It is hard not to worry about that freaking "dilation" of the aortic arch.

When did I become so fearful, so tentative?

Where is La Belle et Bonne Bianca Castafiore? On those rare days where I need that Diva-Witch, she is nowhere to be found!