A dislocated shoulder is more than that. A whole upper quadrant of torn tissue, blood vessels, lymph movement, so bruised that I was navy blue from wrist to ear. That was 2/2. This is 2/19.
We've had a foot of snow.
Low temps set a record waaaay below zero.
I'm not going anywhere.
The youngest cat had 5 kittens that are mottled and look like baby birds.
Their eyes are opening.
The two older cats stopped sleeping with me because I move and moan too much. I don't moan so much now. The two half-pints in the garage are not fluffy and fat anymore -- they're 3/4 cats. The ugly elusive lumpy old feral still turns up in secluded warm places inside and then runs for the cat flap.
I can't sleep on my left side, so I prop a pillow there to keep me from doing it because that's how I normally sleep.
They made me unconscious with intravenous fentanyl and told me to take Advil for pain. They said to expect to be constipated. They didn't say what to do about it. Metamucil. Crackling Bran. Stuff called "stool softener." (Half a bottle.) 6 vids on You Tube. Fresh apple. Today was the first success. This stuff only works in the middle of the night. It was okay because I was up every 2 hours to take more Advil.
Friend brought me my mail which included a heavy package and a half-dozen books I'm still a little too blurry to read. She's a special high-energy woman. Her dad lives on the next block.
I've been doing the dishes one dish at a time at fifteen minute intervals.
Though I'm probably the only senior citizen in town who doesn't have a recliner, so I push a chair and a hassock together and it works. This was my mother's chair bought when she married. 1938. In my infancy (1939) she fed me there. I just hate to throw things away.
A friend in Calgary helped me think through the sequence of this. First, an ear infection that left me so dizzy I couldn't get to the bathroom. There is a one-day town clinic two blocks away. I called to see if they were really there and if they had time. Because I said I might have a stroke, they told me not to come there -- to go to the big hospital thirty miles away instead. The road was closed. I went back to bed for days. Sudafed seemed to fix my ears.
Then I fell and cracked my knee hard. Just toughed it out. Took weeks.
This was a very bad fall. I hadn't fallen before this sequence for years.
It scares me so much because Bob Scriver's second wife tripped on the shallow step between kitchen and garage and broke her pelvis. She was older than I am. She said a very big black man came and took her in his arms so she was safe.
The nursing home wanted money, more than the insurance so she authorized her rep to hold an auction of her belongings. She expected to die. The auction was a big success and someone got away with a noble bust of Maurice, her brother, done by Bob Scriver. They probably have no idea what it is.
When, against all odds, she recovered and came home, she had only a bed and kitchen built-in breakfast alcove. She bought a computer, learned it, and we talked while I wrote the bio of Bob. Finally she got sick again, crawled to the bathroom leaving a trail of slime, and I ratted her out to her nephew who came and got her, sold the house to afford more nursing, and -- when she died -- scattered her ashes in the Pacific. That's where the fourth wife ended up as well, but considerably farther north. I'm number three. Number one is buried in her grown daughter's grave. Bob is in Cut Bank, where the cemetary entrance is embellished with glass crowns that used to be insignia for service stations. Was it Imperial gas?
By now I don't scream when I make a wrong move -- just squawk.
Today I made it to the post office. There's bright sun and the temp is high enough for the pickup to start.
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