Brunch On The Go

My wife was unable to visit my leprosarium last weekend as doctors worked to bring my MRSA infection under control so she stayed home and went out to lunch with friends as some women do. I was not at all jealous (of course) but I did ask for pictures and commentary which she kindly supplied as she always does willingly and without reservation. First up she had cinnamon rolls for appetizer or amuse bouche as the continentals might prefer to describe it.  Call me rustic but I’m not used to pastries for starters. Anyway...

The ladies were brunching at a new place which has landed in Stock Island after a brief career as a pop up eatery. According to the website the owner of this enterprise also caters but as far as I can gather it is now established at Safe Harbor near Hogfish with irregular hours and themed meals. The program looks excellent. 

The drinks are bottomless and as far as I can gather the kinds of people who pay fifty bucks for brunch are not the kinds of folks likely to drink themselves senseless on tequila or milk punch. But that may just have been my wife covering her backside. She said it was delicious. 

Layne doesn’t much like beets despite her Ashkenazy roots but there they are, large as life on the salad. It must have been better than excellent as it scored no negative comments from Herself. 

One delicate plate after another. 

She said the next  dish was going to be sausage and polenta. And by gum so it was. I’ve never seen it served like this: 

Eggs en cocotte ( more continental nonsense),

and finally what the English call “afters.”  In this case berries and pancakes. I’ve heard snotty judges on the Food Network describe pancakes as breakfast not dessert but they looked great and I am reliably informed tasted perfect. 

All I had to say after I received this fine timely  telegraphic report was: Is it wheelchair accessible?  This has become part of my thinking in my new state though I expect to be on a walker if not a cane by the time I rejoin the world.  Layne said she too is getting used to that kind of thinking and yes it is. Those of you who live with wheelchairs are permitted to laugh out loud at my naïveté. Trust me I won’t look at accessibility the same ever again.

Nightmares And Dreams

Have you ever had a dream where you imagine yourself peeing and you wake up bursting to go so you leap out of bed...Yeah well that’s where the dream turns to a nightmare when you’re a lump in bed and you fumble for the piss bottle and it drops to the floor and as you reach for the spare that delightful feeling of warm wet invades the bed.  Oh joy. A sixty year old man wet himself. So you call for help which is not forthcoming and distract yourself with Facebook trying to lie in the drier parts of the mushy bed. 

I found a cheerful message from Giovanna which I shall have to translate for you. It could have been taken the wrong way for my situation this morning but as always she made me feel good out of nowhere. “I needed a smile so I thought of you.”  Between my wife and all my other cheerleaders what more could I want in life? 

Reno June 1981 shortly after we met in the California desert...I threw her stuff on the Vespa and off we went looking for adventure. We found it all right and we still laugh about those years. So as I lay in bed feeling sorry for myself those memories kept me smiling, thanks to Giovanna after all these years. Luckily I married a sensible adventurer, one who complements me rather than piling on the madness. She keeps my dreams as dreams never allowing them to become nightmares. And she’s coming to see me tonight so my cup overfloweth as it were. 

And at this point the wound is dry and well covered so the moon suit can be left aside. Earlier in the week Michael drove up from Key West just to chat and he is excellent company. His partner was hospitalized a while back so he understands the stresses of what we are going through, that and his sense of humor make him an ideal sick room companion.  

And yesterday Denise came down from Palm Beach on her way to spend Goombay in Key West. I met Denise at Long Key State Beach in 1981 a month before I met Giovanna. I stayed with her in Delray Beach before the Vespa and I took off for Guadalajara. It was my introduction to sunny sandy Florida, living in a group of young counter culture rebels. Fantastic. Gave me a taste for it I never quite lost even after 20 years in California. 

Why Guadalajara next?  I met a Mexican woman in Paris that Spring and after we had breakfast and took pictures at the Sacre Coeur (as you do) she invited me to her place in Central Mexico. Showing up travel worn on a scooter was a shock to their middle class system and it didn’t go so well. So often travel and home are such different realities. But with Denise it has been different; she has authentic curiosity and a true love of people and travel. So here she was brimming with life in my stuffy hospital room. Plus she brought a friend, Thelma a Cuban doctor in exile. 

It turns out Thelma’s son worked in the same hospital in Havana where Jorge worked before he emigrated. Jorge is the sweetest guy you would ever want to meet. Thus when he gives me my daily stomach shot, an anti coagulant, I feel nothing at all as his hands are as light as a butterfly’s wings. A really nice guy, a former anesthesiologist now working as a nurse. One of many such demoted Cuban doctors in our facility. The American dream has its struggles as Ariel a former surgeon said to me as he wiped my butt.

PT & OT

Physical and Occupational therapy is killing me.  I have plenty to say as always. I just need to sleep...When I have the energy I will fill in the words.  Just know I am not dead but working hard to restore myself. 

Elias loves sitting me on the loo:

It’s quarter to nine and Loren will be coming for me soon. 

Eddy pushed hard for me to walk and keep my left foot off the ground.  NO WEIGHT BEARING. 

I can dress myself. Much to Michael Robinson’s amusement. He came from Key West just to chat. Love him of course. 

Check out this slick tool Elias gave me to slide on socks: 

Voilà. Ready for more damned therapy. 

Managing My Stuff

Now that my infected wound is healing I can look back on last week and like rolling your tongue in the gap created by a recently missing tooth, I can think back over my feelings about learning I was infectious. I can think about it over and over, rolling my tongue and feeling the jagged gums and the edges of the hole formerly filled with ivory. It doesn’t do much good but it makes me understand, by force, how anxious I suddenly became. It was thanks to Johann my anxiety fell away. 

Johann is a physician assistant and wound care specialist and he speaks perfect English with a slight German accent. He grew up in Mexico. Intrigued? Me too. He combines elements of human warmth and decency with elements of science and learning to produce the perfect bedside manner. I am on call twenty four hours for you he says but once he has inspected your wound or looked over your chart you don’t need to be bothering him. He arranged my wound care treatment and I am on the path to healing. He monitors the nurses, goes over treatment, smiles shakes my hand and magically I am well. I rest easy. 

I was scared rigid when they said I had MRSA. The medical professionals shrugged it off but I knew the bacterium could do terrible things. And then Ketty, my superb nurse’s aide asked me if I was scared as I lay dying in the road? She knew I wasn’t. So why you scared now she asked with perfect Creole logic flashing her brown eyes at me like a Valkyrie...Because I said.  Because I have time to think? Because I don’t want to be eaten alive by flesh eating bacteria? Because I don’t know why.  You silly she said as she fluffed up my fresh sheets and I wanted to bury my face in her bosom for reassurance. I said nothing as she counseled fortitude. Behave she said smiling and ending the counseling session. 

Time proved Ketty -and Johann- correct. My expectation of a trouble free linear recovery got back on track. And Johann and I have a background in common it turns out weirdly enough. It turns out his Dad was a German engineer who got offered a job with a German company in Mexico. He married a Mexican in the decade he lived in Mexico, but as Johann put it with a wry smile the Mexican way of doing things got to him and he went back to Germany eventually, to the land of on time orderliness.  Johann split his time in two cultures in the same way I grew up with an apparently well ordered British father and an expressive Italian mother. And I suppose in the same way I couldn’t find comfort in one or the other neither could he so we ended up in the land of immigrants, each contributing in our way to mixing up our cultural histories. 

Physical therapy continues apace. I struggle to deal with ten percent weight bearing on my left leg which is attached to the most broken side of my pelvis. My broken right leg remains paradoxically the leg I have to put all my weight on. It’s hard heaving myself upright into the walker, holding my left leg light and flopping on hands and right leg. The more tired I get the less successful I am! But you have to persevere and I’m getting better. 

So much so I sat on a toilet in a test run yesterday, for the first time in six weeks I was on the throne. Felt awesome. And I kept practicing pivoting. Standing on my right leg, taking weight on my hands and swiveling to face a new direction.  Give me time and I will have it down. Just give me time and practice. And give me Johann’s  calm reassurance.

Toilet Training

I got a new wheelchair today which is the equivalent in here to getting a new car out there. Or a new pair of shoes if permabulation is the way you get around. A new wheelchair is a thing of wonder. It’s comfortable light and narrow so it fits everywhere, I can roll it and I can deal with the footrests relatively easily. I love it. 

Here I am smiling because Eddy and Elias are going to show me how to pivot and sit on the toilet. At this stage it’s practice runs but give me a few days and I’ll have it mastered I hope. I am still struggling to walk in the walker without putting weight on my left leg; if I had use of both legs I’d be laughing. 

I got a care package from Sheila in Key West who baked her backside off and made pounds of delicious sweet crumbly cookies. It was a hell of a gift and she made so many I have plenty to use, as she suggested, as bribes. It is a great morale booster. That and the cards and letters.  Glen in Colorado sent me a hand written note on paper and I enjoyed it as much as he anticipated I would. Fran sent me a follow up card and note for display! 

Having to be in isolation is a drag but I am still doing therapy. I put clean clothes on, wash my hands and make sure the dressing on the wound is sealed and I am good to go. And I do. In my new narrow chair I can use the rickshaw with both hands at once. That’s a first: 

You roll up between the handles and push them down while controlling their return. Over and over again. Which gives me strength to hold on to the walker frame as I practice walking on one leg. I sleep at night I exercise by day. I am tired. It feels like a job and I feel lucky to have it. Every day it gets a little easier to imagine a normal life again. Thank God for that. Thank you all for your encouragement, it means the world to me.

A Street Encounter

I met Candace as she meandered past my room on the main drag through the rehab. Because she’s a patient I’ve changed her name and I couldn’t photograph her but our conversation went as written. The main drag, our street:

I was in my room with the door open. Staff comes by and stops by my open doorway, for to come in requires suiting up, and they check up on me. Nurses and aides assigned to other units like to check on my progress and ask after my buddy Mersa, and they know I cheer up when a bright smile and sparkling eyes stops by.  But my net caught an entirely different fish as I sat in isolation lamenting my dearth of visitors. Ketty reluctantly modeling the MRSA protective togs:

A wheelchair came by and she paused outside my door so I said hello and we fell to talking. People like talking about themselves but in here it’s a good tactic too because you never know what agony they have been through unless they tell you. And spilling your fate first can leave you with egg on your face if you ignore protocol and go first and brash. Candace is such a diminutive figure in her outsize colorful bed jacket and tiny stick limbs all surmounted by the usual fluff of curly white lambs wool. Her story is one of iron will. 

The conversation began with an exchange of lamentations, difficulty sleeping, annoyances with the wheelchair, stuff that is the staple of people inside. I can’t walk I tell her with a laugh but it’s coming back. Her feet are in bright yellow physical therapy type socks with rubber strips. She was in an induced coma for two days. Ooh I ask how was it? Did you bypass heaven? No she says sadly I can’t remember a thing. I slept. She has dialysis because her kidneys don’t work so well. But then she has to control how much insulin her nurses give her as they have a tendency to overdo it and that would knock her out.

But it doesn’t end there. Pieces of her foot have had to be amputated. I’ve heard it’s hard to balance with toes missing? She agrees heartily. Very difficult. So she takes her constitutional in a wheelchair. Her husband went home to catch the evening service. I mumble something about Jesus promising not to overload us with burdens we cannot bear. She fired back the full chapter and verse and with an angelic smile and a promise to talk again she rolls slowly, steadily away. Leaving me wondering why the fuss about my pelvis.