It was a heck of a day. Shades of Calling Dr. Hackenbush!
Part of the problem is that these days run together without any elegance, without any redemptive quality, without remorse.
I do something that might be called "sleep hygiene" beginning at 11 pm. This entails basic stuff: turning off the television and any other noise machines, including mp3 players, finishing the last e mails, the taking-of-the-meds, and the always important book selection. Next, I evict any living thing that does not have, as raison d'être, encouraging my goal of sleep. Fred? He guffaws, tries to dig in and watch the local news -- maybe even a few minutes of a late night show. The poor boy, he never wins.
Of the felines, Sam-I-Am is Master of Nuggling. He thoroughly gets the need, ably knows the terrain, has the most experience, and -- were I to actually sleep for any real period of time -- might hold the title of Sleepmeister of Marlinspike Hall.
Unfortunately, while I get good and sleepy from the drugs and whatever novel I'm reading, I wake again in 45 to 90 minutes.
For some reason, at that point, I am awake until about 3:30 am. And whatever happens, I am always definitively up at 5 am.
Why am I writing about this -- again? I dunno. I guess that as I dealt with the preop madness at the hospital this afternoon, I really was feeling the lack of reserves that results from that much pain and that little sleep.
I was Stupid.
The nurse doing all the work persisted in her cheerfulness, though it turned out she had a penchant for melodrama. From one moment to the next, my surgery risked cancelation, my blood type and crossmatch required stat calls to the blood bank, the chest x-ray and EKG needed repeating because -- DANGER! DANGER! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! -- they were abnormal in April... on and on.
However, blessed be her name, because she was a fantastic phlebotomist. One stick, and she got it all, using the smallest of butterflies, barely inserted, and milking every yummy ruby drop.
I tried to lie to her several times and she caught me in every fib.
What, for example? Well, there was the pneumonia falsehood. It seems that if you have had pneumonia within the previous 8 weeks, you have to truck on up to Radiology for a chest film. We had just gone over the lackluster events of April, when it occured to her that respiratory arrest and being on the vent might have also been a reflection of some infectious process of the lungs, commonly named a pneumonia.
"Huh?" I said, in my best Stoopid.
"Let's look it up on the computer," she countered, in her finest Chirp.
My way? No problems, no additional testing required.
Her way? "Oops, it looks like some pneumonia *and* some pulmonary edema... Heart failure!"
More pecking at the keyboard, more Inquisition, more testing required.
Other lies included smoking history, and the fortuitous elimination of a few disease processes -- why not omit in the hopes of getting out of the hospital and into downtown rush-and-happy hour traffic by 6 pm?
As it was, we got there around 1 pm and left at 5:45. Fred is a trooper.
It is Magic Time again, so easily. Implementing Sleep Hygiene Protocol.
But tonight, my eyes won't work for reading, and are, in fact, crossing as I type. This isn't uncommon, and so I turn to my Brother Units for assistance.
Since Grader Boob is working out the kinks in his first summer school session in a long while, and is therefore in crisis mode (his favorite mode) and since I had not paid TW's blogs a visit in an obscene period of time -- well, TW it is.
Below are three photos he recently posted over at American Idyll. What I saw in them tonight was a wonderful flattening of the field. Color and texture harmonize (at the expense of the usually sought after sense of depth, that which is a canyon) to create a beautiful and complex flatness. I felt like I was looking straight into possibility of seeing both the forest and the tree.
They have been lifted from his entry for Tuesday, June 23, called An Infinite Storm of Beauty, in which he offsets them with this quote from John Muir:
"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty."
Part of the problem is that these days run together without any elegance, without any redemptive quality, without remorse.
I do something that might be called "sleep hygiene" beginning at 11 pm. This entails basic stuff: turning off the television and any other noise machines, including mp3 players, finishing the last e mails, the taking-of-the-meds, and the always important book selection. Next, I evict any living thing that does not have, as raison d'être, encouraging my goal of sleep. Fred? He guffaws, tries to dig in and watch the local news -- maybe even a few minutes of a late night show. The poor boy, he never wins.
Of the felines, Sam-I-Am is Master of Nuggling. He thoroughly gets the need, ably knows the terrain, has the most experience, and -- were I to actually sleep for any real period of time -- might hold the title of Sleepmeister of Marlinspike Hall.
Unfortunately, while I get good and sleepy from the drugs and whatever novel I'm reading, I wake again in 45 to 90 minutes.
For some reason, at that point, I am awake until about 3:30 am. And whatever happens, I am always definitively up at 5 am.
Why am I writing about this -- again? I dunno. I guess that as I dealt with the preop madness at the hospital this afternoon, I really was feeling the lack of reserves that results from that much pain and that little sleep.
I was Stupid.
The nurse doing all the work persisted in her cheerfulness, though it turned out she had a penchant for melodrama. From one moment to the next, my surgery risked cancelation, my blood type and crossmatch required stat calls to the blood bank, the chest x-ray and EKG needed repeating because -- DANGER! DANGER! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! -- they were abnormal in April... on and on.
However, blessed be her name, because she was a fantastic phlebotomist. One stick, and she got it all, using the smallest of butterflies, barely inserted, and milking every yummy ruby drop.
I tried to lie to her several times and she caught me in every fib.
What, for example? Well, there was the pneumonia falsehood. It seems that if you have had pneumonia within the previous 8 weeks, you have to truck on up to Radiology for a chest film. We had just gone over the lackluster events of April, when it occured to her that respiratory arrest and being on the vent might have also been a reflection of some infectious process of the lungs, commonly named a pneumonia.
"Huh?" I said, in my best Stoopid.
"Let's look it up on the computer," she countered, in her finest Chirp.
My way? No problems, no additional testing required.
Her way? "Oops, it looks like some pneumonia *and* some pulmonary edema... Heart failure!"
More pecking at the keyboard, more Inquisition, more testing required.
Other lies included smoking history, and the fortuitous elimination of a few disease processes -- why not omit in the hopes of getting out of the hospital and into downtown rush-and-happy hour traffic by 6 pm?
As it was, we got there around 1 pm and left at 5:45. Fred is a trooper.
It is Magic Time again, so easily. Implementing Sleep Hygiene Protocol.
But tonight, my eyes won't work for reading, and are, in fact, crossing as I type. This isn't uncommon, and so I turn to my Brother Units for assistance.
Since Grader Boob is working out the kinks in his first summer school session in a long while, and is therefore in crisis mode (his favorite mode) and since I had not paid TW's blogs a visit in an obscene period of time -- well, TW it is.
Below are three photos he recently posted over at American Idyll. What I saw in them tonight was a wonderful flattening of the field. Color and texture harmonize (at the expense of the usually sought after sense of depth, that which is a canyon) to create a beautiful and complex flatness. I felt like I was looking straight into possibility of seeing both the forest and the tree.
They have been lifted from his entry for Tuesday, June 23, called An Infinite Storm of Beauty, in which he offsets them with this quote from John Muir:
"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty."
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