Monday and it's November Already

If there is a way this stress is manifesting itself, it is through exhaustion and a lingering cold. This second cold I've had is just dragging on and on. I was in a half-day meeting today and two of the four other people had brand-new raging colds. I was very careful to avoid them all morning. What I don't need is another stress illness. When I went to visit at the hospital today, I was tired. The hospital makes me tired. You looked and me and said, "You look like you want to crawl in this bed with me." I said, "I do." So I did. We turned out the light, closed the door, and two minutes later your IV monitor started beeping incessantly. "Let me look at that monitor. Oh, geez, zero minutes left on your IV drip. They have to come in and change the bag, and this thing is going to keep beeping until they do." End of nap. It was a good thing, though, because the pastor walked in five minutes later. I'm so glad he didn't catch us in bed together.

Laura and boyfriend had scoured the city looking for TicTacs and sweatpants for you. And, oddly enough, they didn't find any cinnamon TicTacs until they got to the hospital gift shop. It had never been open when I had come to visit you. Laura cleaned them out of cinnamon TicTacs. But when you ate them, they turned your NG sludge bright red. That was much too alarming for any of us, so you had me pack up the cinnamons until after your surgery and the removal of the tube.

Another day in the hospital, still don't know where your tumor is. I hear they took a biopsy of your duodenum but they don't have the results yet. When I asked you whether or not the doctor was going to take a tissue sample for a biopsy on Wednesday you said no. When I asked why, you said they were waiting for the biopsy of the duodenum to come back. I still wanted to know why they weren't going to pursue getting the biopsy of the tumor and you said you didn't want to talk about it. You were tired and you wanted to go to sleep. You had had a lot of visitors today, you had walked twice for a half hour each time. That had worn you out. So we hung up.