caveat: photo from orbit 20

this is the head nurse for the ward. like all head nurses, shes a hardass despite her diminutive stature – she lurks and rules with an iron fist. but she has a remarkable bedside manner – she interacts personally with every patient in the ward at least twice a day, she knows all their stories and she has clearly reviewed everyones file.

further, when i was prepping for surgery last thursday, and andrew and curt were running late coming back from having gone to lunch, as i lay there nervous and scared as one is before going into surgery, she held my hand and pattered trivially for almost 20 minutes before the orderly wheeled my guerney into the elevator for the trip to the fourth floor.

later, i tried to tell her that she was a very kind person. she was adamant: i am NOT a kind person. but she kept that tight enigmatic smile on her face.

picture

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

caveat: we will put the cancer back!

andrew and i were talking about some financial aspects of my upcoming discharge. at some point, i will be presented with a bill. i really am not certain what it will look like. curt told me that he saw a running total sometime during the first week in the neighborhood of 40 million won ($40000), which could mean a current total of double that or more – but, caveat: that number is meaningless, because its pre-insurance. insuance will be paying different aspects of the bill at different rates, ranging from 95 percent for surgery to zero percent for hospital food and bed space. so the final bill remains a mystery.

but andrew had a good point, too: theres only so much they can do to collect. jokingly, he imitated a supercilious hospital administrator: "pay your bill right now. . . or we will put the cancer back!"

this made me laugh.

caveat: photo from orbit 19

this is a low quality picture – you can barely make out at least 4 sleeping figures in the darkness. the 10th floor lobby at 5 am is full of caregivers (family or paid, but not patients and not part of hospital staff) catching some sleep in classic korean style: wherever and whenever they can.

picture

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

caveat: so many private battles

with the night shift came a new batch of medicine to be administered, and the increasingly routine perforation party. its a vicious cycle. . . as more and more of my veins get "used," those remaining are less and less optimal. in a given persons arm there are a limited number of "good" iv insertion points. the problem is generalized too much to all staff who try for it to be a competence problem. . . its just a loss of suitable real estate.

and it becomes impossible to stay upset about it for long. this is a cancer hospital, and my problems are minor. as i stand at the counter complaining of my perforation-induced headache, my neighbor two beds over, undergoing chemo and suffering a permanent case of hiccups, shambles out managing to vomit and bleed at the same time. now, theres a guy needing attention. i humbly withdraw and remember to thank the stressed nurse with a smile and a 수고하셨습니다 [you worked hard, a standard korean thank you].

all around me are men and women fighting their private battles, many much worse than mine. for each case of jealousy-arousing snip-snap-its-done-now-go-home colon cancer surgeries like mr parks last week, there are nausea-inducing cases that leave patients curled in knots of pain and fear on the corridor floors for hours, and render others into many-bandaged zombies, groping for their morphine buttons with only grimmaces of shame to offer to their helpless relatives.

i can only retreat into my own affirmation to move past this, in my own case.

pacing my orbit, i affirm: i am strong. i am healthy. i am fearless. i am resiliant. i feel no pain. i am strong. i am healthy. . . .

caveat: legs running off with happiness

i was trying to explain to my evening shift nurse just now that im not experiencing pain so much as anxiety or nervousness. this was hard. . . i lack the vocabulary. i managed to get it across with some pantomime and a dictionary.

at one point i noticed i was shaking my leg in that nearly universal body language of nervousness, so i gestured to it, "there, see? nervous."

she understood but then she wanted to explain some saying to me. its pretty rare for a nurse to stick around to make conversation, especially with such insurmountable linguistic barriers. . . so i was surprised. i was even more surprised when over the next 5 minutes she successfully explained the saying to me: when we shake our legs nervously like that our happiness will run away on them.

hmm.

caveat: strong enough

i had a long consult downstairs during midmorning. dr ryu was pretty firm about discharge thursday afternoon, after my "practice run" radiation that is planned for thursday morning (low radiation, calibrating their gadgets to the shape of my head, etc.). im excited by the prospect of discharge.

they removed the last of the stitches in my forearm. that was a rather painful and drawn out process – there were originally hundreds of stitches that have been removed in stages. andrew said it looked like a sharkbite scar. i could see that. the only stitches left, of the five surgical sites on my body, are a couple stitches that are helping to close my tracheal opening that was made for the oxygen tube.

the happiest news, for me, in the present moment, is that after recounting to dr ryu my tale of hol(e)y woe and the multiperforations from yesterday, he asked some questions about my eating situation and imperiously ordered the nursing staff to remove my iv. well. . . the externals were removed – but thats the worst part – ill still have a spigot in my arm for medicine delivery. but thats ok. im free of the trundly five-wheeled too-skinny demon!

at one point, talking about the radiation, dr ryu said something to the effect of, "its important for patients to have recovered their strength."

i said soneting like, "well ill work hard on getting stronger," having interpreted his statement as a kind of indirect advice or caution.

a strange expression crossed his face, more serious and reflective than before. "oh. . . youre strong enough. . . . strong enough." perhaps it was in part a reference to my notable strong-willed attitude, which has been sufficient to create some small conflict between us on a few occasions. i have very much come to like dr ryus subtle humor.

caveat: life art

only four weeks ago this morning, i heard the words "you have cancer."

things have moved incredibly fast – because of the size and location of the tumor, within a week i was in the hospital and two days after that i was in an operating room undergoing very major surgery. i have attemped to record the subsequent blur of recovery, the moments of elation ("im still alive!") and despair and neverending frustration.

when i started this blog in 2004 i never dreamed of putting it to such a purpose as this. but through this month this blog has provided me with a kind of anchor – to my friends and family, to my pre-cancer self, and to my intended future, too.

my mother commented this morning, in an email: she described my blog as "life art of very beautiful delineation." though its from my own mother, it still strikes me as high praise – i have indeed felt happily humbled by some of the effusive feedback received.

caveat: trauma and anxiety

i have never thought of myself as a particularly high strung or anxious person, but these weeks of trauma have certainly brought to my awareness tendencies toward anxiety that i have at times found difficult to manage.

having andrew here has helped, as he can sometimes be very calming – in those moments when hes not having his own anxieties.

what im listening to right now.

[link to track to be posted later when im not posting from my phone.]

Trauma Pet, "You Cannot Feel This."

caveat: korean cancer language camp

one of the positive highlights of yesterdays generally not-so-positive day was that i think i had the longest sustained conversation in korean that i have ever had. it lasted nearly 4 minutes, with a nurse who speaks fairly crystaline korean and who has the rare but encouraging habit of changing her vocabulary when she sees i dont understand, rather than just repeating the same words more loudly or slowly. i gave at least 8 sentences, and she gave quite a bit more than that.

what could possibly be the downside? the conversation was entirely about my urinary and bowel moving habits.

sigh. whodda thunk? this korean cancer language camp sure is strange. . . why did i enroll here, again?

caveat: hol(e)y hol(e)y hol(e)y

three more failed iv perforations this afternoon. were on number eight. my arm has many holes. . . i am become hol(e)y.

depressing difficult day because of that.

i did thirty half orbits today – thats 3 km. goodnight.

caveat: ecos

im basically giving up on my precept not to post music ive posted before – im not in a position these days to always dig up novel things to listen to, and often im feeling the desire to listen to things that are nostalgic or comforting.

what im listening to right now.

[Here is where I posted this before.]

Hocico, “Ecos.”

perhaps it is disturbing that i find this music comforting?
picture

caveat: 15 minutes of freedom and 4 perforations and a talk with a doc

this morning they decided it was time to relocate my iv to a different vein. this is just something thats done periodically. so preliminary to that they yanked out the old one, and for about 15 minutes i had freedom from that terrible bondage. i literally jogged two orbits with the sort of shuffle-foot move necessitated by wearing flipflop sandals – 200 meters. i was grinning stupidly at people, and saying "freedom!" with a simpsonsesque irony familiar to younger koreans. i walked another 7 orbits (thus totalling almost a kilometer) before i was called to heel and sat for the new iv.

as sometimes occurs, they had trouble placing the new iv – recalcitrant veins and all that. so it took four attempts before a new one "took." the new placemenent is particularly uncomfortable, being right at the inside left elbow, which limits movement on my left arm. as a consequence, i have graduated from one good hand and one useless hand to having two half-useful hands instead.

i have begun to feel that this system of iv-stands has evolved as a weird kind of unintentional social control for healthcare environments. it prevents the patients from moving around too much or too fast by having them hooked up to these cumbersome carts.

after lunch i was rushed downstairs for a consult with dr ryu. he said there are imperfections in the "flap" (as he refers to the reconstruction, i think from the surgical technique involved), but my otherwise notable resiliancy seems to be compensating more than adequately. reading between the lines: the procedures outcome has been disappointing but the patients stubbornness is making that fact utterly moot and as a result the patient will be just fine.

dr ryu also told me to talk as much as i want – "i know you like to do that." and he said stop tilting my head to the left or i might get stuck that way. he remarked too, "i think you would like to go home." i said, "definitely." so he said that if things stay on track with the infection clearing, i might get discharge before next weekend.

caveat: things untrue of such sublime beauty

sitting in my bed, propped just so on my pillows, headphones on, eyes closed, i can imagine im on a train. but scenery never changes, and there seems to be very little interest in the destination. . . its just a ride, without an objective.

after my 5 am pre breakfast of fruit and yogurt, i brush my teeth, clean up a little, walk an orbit or two, put on some music and soon drift to sleep. i had a transparently symbolic dream.

in the dream, i wake up to see a child, maybe five or six years old, standing at the foot of my bed. she has a shy smile, she beckons. i follow her, dragging my iv-stand like a ball and chain. in the hallway there is a half-open door. she races through it, glancing back to make sure i am following.

beyond the door, narnia like, the is a tall stand of creaking redwood trees, and a bumpy, sun-drenched clearing with a scattering of picnic tables. i quickly realize it is nearly impossible to follow the girl, with the cumbersome iv-stand and its tiny, squeaky wheels.

she beckons, but i shake my head and sit down, heart heavy. she quickly becomes distracted chasing a remarkable blue butterfly over, under and around the tables. she laughs, and comes close to me, shyly.

"do you like that butterfly?" i ask.

she nods, makes a fluttering gesture. 

who is this girl? i think to myself but do not say aloud.

she comes close and leans against me, whispering in my ear. the simple korean of a child, easy for me to understand. "네 딸" [your daughter] she giggles. in spanish, then, "no sabias?" [you didnt know?]. in a whisper, "물론." [of course]

i awake, then, choked with tears.

things untrue, of such sublime beauty.

caveat: photo from orbit 17

something of the desolation of the wards corridors at 440 am, the reek of high humid summer outside detectable despite air conditioners (the bizarre korean institutional habit of opening windows while running air conditioners obviously contributing), i began experiencing strong memories of middle-of-the-night cleaning or “guard” duties during basic training at fort jackson, south carolina, in july of 1990.

picture

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

caveat: baked patato party (of one)

this morning i kind of got a little bit angry with the nurse, not at her but over all the frustration with the hospitals failed attmpts to understand my dietary situation. their latest boneheaded idea appeared yesterday, when all my meals began showing up finely chopped into dangerously ironic rice-sized pieces.

i know theyre just trying to help. so after finishing that bowl of rice as a sheer self-torture execise, i told the nurse “just give me the regular food. take away all the special flags.”

lunch was regular and fine. i ate the good parts, skipped the bad, supplemented with some fruit and yogurt, and called it easy. and now at 3pm, for the first time since here, they offered me an afternoon snack. ive seen other patients receiving these. im not sure if its a sunday special or part of the “regular” menu i demanded this morning.

what was my snack?

a baked potato. koreans eat these plain as finger food. so, per my friend dougs request, i had a baked potato party. unfortunately, he wasnt here. maybe next time.

picture

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

caveat: 30 years on

this weekend im missing my 30th high school reunion. i wasnt intending to attend – the trip from seoul to humboldt isnt exactly convenient – but through the wonders of the facebook i can watch the reunion unfold anyway.. i had some close friends in high school, but i wasnt particularly social, and in watching my class facebook group im shocked by how many names i simply dont even recognize.

high school, looking back, isnt as painful to remember as the experience seemed at the moment of experiencing it. unlike many people, ive never been one to say “id never do high school again,” but likewise im not the sort to yearn to do it again either. i suppose like many, ive occasionally indulged a fantasy based on the premise “if only i knew then what i know now, why THEN id have a good time in high school.” but i suspect its a bit of a false premise.

ive done a great deal in my life but im still a deeply shy, nerdy guy at heart and im not even interested in changing that at this point. i was proud to be a nerd, even then, and so mostly now im more at peace with my shyness – not to mention my many coping strategies that mean many people dont even realize just how socially awkward i am on the inside.

likely if i went back with todays brain the only big difference would be in my feeling about it rather than big changes in behavior. i really made very few big mistakes in high school – i saved those for college, where with todays brain i can be certain id behave quite differently.

mostly what i feel right now is OLD. i know relative to many im not, but there is nothing quite like sitting in a cancer ward to foreground ones mortality.

i stole this picture below (if it comes through) from the arcata high school facebook group. . . . good old arcata. ive lived so many places. now my home is northwest seoul but ill be back sometime to tromp that eccentric town, stirring up ghosts and making new traces.

picture

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

caveat: ten half orbits equals one kilometer

when i walk around the ward pushing my little IV-stand, i refer to it as orbiting. its part boredom relief, part exercise, but in itself its pretty monotonous, too.

ive realized the hospital has posted little signs that calibrate on the elevator lobby, showing distances. a single triangle-shaped "orbit" of the tenth floor is 155 meters. but before noticing this id already worked out my own calibration. i prefer to do a "half-orbit" which cuts off most of the west ward where all the most depressing chemo patients seem to be, and by counting paces id concluded that a half-orbit was almost exactly 100 meters (so on the floor plan its more like a two-thirds-orbit).

thats a very convenient number, because i can know that ten half-orbits make a kilometer, etc. so i just walked a kilometer. im going to shoot for two or three each day (20~30 half-orbits), thus equaling my daily walking commute to work.

caveat: the fundamental goodness of people

im not sure if this kind of thing is really about fundamental goodness or rather the goodness of specific people but either way i found it confirmational.

almost a decade ago i had a coworker at aramark corp named tracy. she was an accounts rep of some kind, while i was in my eccentric role of data analyst / programmer / billing troubleshooter. we didnt work together particularly closely, and i even recall a run-in or two over some passionately held opposing ideas about what might be right for a customer. we never interacted socially outside of work. you could say we were colleagues but not truly friends.

and yet despite this social and temporal distance, yesterday at facebookland tracy took the time to write the following.

>Waking up today I clicked on a link my friend posted. He shares links all the time but in the daily hussle and bussle of life, I've never read them. Today I clicked on the link about "fruit" of all things…only to learn that this is his blog and he has cancer! To say I'm sad and upset right now is an understatement! This is a person that I think highly of…he's smart, very funny, kind and one of the many blessings you hope to come across in your life!! Today I'm sending prayers for a speedy recovery and trying to pull myself together! If anyone can turn this around and be cancer free it's him! Sending you lots of love, hugs and positive thoughts Jared!!!!!

i am flattered beyond belief. to imagine that after a decade there are coworkers who remember me on these terms and will take the time all these years later to express them to me truly warms my heart.

kindness repays kindness repays kindness. . . ad infinitum. humanity aint such a bad thing as long as we do the right thing.

caveat: fruit

ever since my major surgery i have been craving fruit: apples, peaches, blueberries, apricots, even fruit i dont normally prefer, like plums and grapes. andrew and my friends have been accommodating, too, so ive been eating a lot of fruit.

this evening my friend seungbae stopped by and brought even more. i consumed a peach and some watermelon.

what i wonder is what this craving represents. ive always believed that strong food cravings generally mean the body knows about something it needs. what does the fruit represent?

what im listening to right now.

[link to track to be added later.]

Foster the People, "Helena Beat."

caveat: just kinda lyin here. . .

. . . and thats okay.

andrew went off with peter. i insisted.

so now i have the semi pseudo solitude of my bed enclosed in its curtain, with something appropriately loud on headphones to drown out ambient noise.

what im listening to right now.

[link to track to be added later.]

Depeche Mode, "Useless."

caveat: 조용행 선생님 잘 가세요

mr cho, my best friend by far that ive made in the cancer ward, checked out today.

i never imagined i would feel jealousy for people with colon cancer, but its by far the most common cancer being treated on the 10th floor (i cant speak for the other floors), and they have a veritable assembly line set up. even with complications, mr cho only stayed 10 days, and mr park was through in 7 days flat. meanwhile i languish here, watching the comings and goings of roommates and caregivers.

i will miss mr cho but feel confident that i will stay in touch with him. he and his wife were among the kindest and most inquisitive people i have met here. i wish them and their family the best. here is a picture of his wife, him (already in civvies) and me.

picture

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

caveat: your little taste of heaven, sir

while i was slogging through my breakfast juk, andrew went down to the cafe in the lobby and got his own breakfast. when he returned, as has been our evolving custom, he gave me a few tablespoons of coffee "just for the taste."

"your little taste of heaven, sir," he said like a deferential butler.
"oh thank you, good brother," i replied. i pushed my tray of half-finished hospital cuisine toward him. "and here is your little taste of hell."
we had a laugh, and then when my coffee was done i said, "my heaven is concluded."
andrew riffed on this into a joke. "a man dies and goes to the gates of saint peter only to find them closed and dilapidated. the guard at the gate is surprised to see someone. he says, 'this place closed years ago. that experiment is definitively concluded.'"

for some reason this caused me to laugh longer and harder than i have in a long time. we went on to discuss the novelistic potential of running with the idea of an "outsourced" or "privatized" heaven.

caveat: the great hospital escape dream (animated version)

i only retain some snapshots of a convoluted dream i was dreaming an hour ago.
i and some other patients decided to escape from the hospital, because we wanted pizza. in reality, escape from the hospital would be trivial – take an elevator to the lobby and walk out. anyone in a position to wonder would assume a purposeful movement of patients was authorized by someone else, because as ive noted, patients have wide autonomy here.
in the dream, escaping was harder. we had to bribe some nurses. mostly it was me, mr cho, mr park (who checked out the other day) and a few other nameless but friendly people with whom im on a nodding-in-the-hall basis. we had to sneak onto an elevator.
having gotten out through the main lobby amid a slapstick chase of screaming nurses and IV-stand acrobatics we met my entire HSTEPS class in some bushes in front of the hospital. jaehwan had a car, and yeonju and seosumin had disguises for us.
“oh, now pizza!” mr cho declaimed with his gentle, laconic voice.
but instead, we ended up meeting a russian submarine at the imjin river. i had other friends meeting me on board, including people from my gradeschool years, like jeannine and tammy.
oddly, professor lopez from the university of pennsylvania was there in russian uniform. “no sabia que eras capitan de la marina rusa,” i said to him.
“veras muchas cosas insolitas de mi,” he observed in his precise castillian accent. his eyes sparkled and he straightened his glasses. jeannine became obsessed with making us escapees comfortable, while professor lopez gave a tour of the submarine to our 9th grade accomplices. somehow jaehwan turned out to have learned spanish (something hes always saying he wants to do). that was good since lopez was refusing to speak english.
jeannine became frustrated with the condition of the blankets she found. she opened a hatch onto a wall of water, tossed the blankets through nonchalantly, and slammed the hatch shut again – it was like a cartoon, with a frozen, lingering image of a surprised fish getting slapped by a discarded blanket.
“lets forget that and watch tv.” the tv offered only a selection of korean historical dramas. mr park was pleased.
i woke up and got myself my now standard “pre-breakfast” of fruit and yogurt without andrews help – he seemed too happy to be sleeping through the sunrise.

caveat: quicksilver

What im listening to right now.

[update 2013-07-26: link to track added.]

Townes Van Zandt, "Quicksilver Daydreams."

Lyrics:

Well, a diamond fades quickly when matched to the face of Maria
All the harps they sound empty when she lifts her lips to the sky
The brown of her skin makes her hair seem a soft golden rainfall
That spills from the mountains to the bottomless depths of her eyes

Well, she stands all around me her hands slowly sifting the sunshine
All the laughter that linger down deep 'neath her smilin' is free
Well, it spins and it twirls like a hummingbird lost in the morning
Then caresses the south wind and silently sails to the sea

Ah, the sculptor stands stricken and the artist he throws away his brushes
When her image comes dancin' the sun she turns sullen with shame
And the birds they go silent the wind stops his sad mournful singing
When the trees of the forest start gently to whispering her name

So as softly she wanders I'll desperately follow her footsteps
And I'll chase after shadows that offer a trace of her sigh
Ah, they promise eternally that she lies hidden within them
But I find they've deceived me and sadly I bid them goodbye

So the serpent slide softly away with his moments of laughter
And the the old washer-woman has finished her cleanin' and gone
But the bamboo hang heavy in the bondage of quicksilver daydreams
And a lonely child longingly looks for a place to belong

caveat: 會者定離. 去者必反.

My roommate and now close friend Mr Cho taught me the following Buddhist proverb, today – despite himself being a catholic deacon or something like that. Thats the sort of openmindedness that warms my heart.
會者定離.                     去者必反.
회자정리.                     거자필반.
hoe·ja·jeong·ri.            geo·ja·pil·ban.
meet-people-intention-part. go-people-again-come.
This pair of sinisms refer to the great wheel: we all are cycling through the rebirths and deaths. “We meet and then we part again. People go and people come again.”
Incidentally, the vow of silence has been relaxed somewhat, with doctors’ permission. 

caveat: granularity

i just thought of a conceptual connection between two of my struggles right now. the two are utterly unrelated, but i see some thematic tie in the concept of granularity.

the first struggle is rice. yes – quite simple: RICE. almost every meal has rice. i have nothing against rice – i habitually comsume at home not much less than im served here daily. i like rice. but by some twist of fate it turns out that a blob of sticky korean rice is almost ideally designed to confound my new, untrained tongue. upon putting the rice in my mouth the individual grains separate and go rogue. i cant chew them all. . . some escape and lodge in places my tongue cant find or reach. maybe half a dozen grains end up in my lungs with every meal.

unfortunately, it being rice, this creates a social disaster. eating everything on my tray except the rice is perceived as if im refusing to eat. im accused of having a lost appetite (obviously a bad sign), im accused of being a picky westerner, im accused of having a poor understanding of nutrition.

ive taken to calling my neighbors over and showing them the rice grains i cough up after a meal, to prove my point. i can eat things that are creamy, no problem. and larger granularities – chunks of fish or meat or fruit are fine too. "hardness" vs "softness" is not the axis of my problem, but people have so much trouble conceptualizing what im talking about. andrew bought me some apple and a woman complained i couldnt possibly eat it given my other food troubles, but i savored it easily.

the second struggle is with a lack of solitude. i have a social job and those social interactions are important to my psychological well-being, but i also not only enjoy but NEED solitude – preferably on the order of at least 8 hours per day. in the hospital, there is never solitude – nurses, fellow patients, anyone can interrupt into my space at any moment. im like a single grain of rice, where to be isolated from the collective implies a certain risk. the social granularity of cancer ward life isnt per se a bad thing, but for me its proving to be a sort of subtle poison no different from the grains of rice, sapping my strength in a way others are incapable of understanding.

the social space here isnt all bad of course – that is far from my meaning. most people show immense kindness and generosity. but i need my reparative solitude.

caveat: infection

i had consult with dr jung just now. he tends to be more communicative than dr ryu, but i dont see him as often since hes only a superstar guest reconstructive surgeon and not a resident surgeon like dr ryu.

dr jung helped me understand some of the urgency of yesterdays surgery, which id picked up on but hadnt been clear on details. although the tongue reconstruction was solid and healthy, the infection in my neck had spread to part of the vulnerable transplanted flesh. so the neck infection, while not life-threatening, was at the least suddenly tongue-threatening.

hopefully they can control the neck infection. dr ryu added a second antibiotic this morning, and dr jung said my immune system was "way above average" whatever that means. they installed a fluid shunt during the surgery yesterday and in the last 24 hours since ive had much less problem with the liquid (pus&blood) ending up in my lungs and mouth.

dr jung was his usual very blunt self. "at first your surgery was an amazing success. now because of the infection its just a so-so result but i think youll be fine."

caveat: the unbearable slowness

with yesterdays surgery, expectations of a miraculous two week recovery from the major surgery on july 4th have faded. now dr ryu has suggested that we move the radiation back a week or two from the intended first-week-of-august start. the concern is achieving full healing on the neck site, which is proving challenging. a persistent but non-life-threatening infection is slowing things, and so my hospital stay is stretching out to at least three weeks and probably more at this point.

im grateful that andrew is here as caregiver, and for my other friends for their continued support.

the monotony of the hospital stay grates. i cant write much – each blog post such as this is a painstaking hunt-and-peck on my smartphone that takes ten times longer than i feel it should. i read but my attention wanders. many of my roommates are kind and courteous but a minority make it their constant business to second guess my doctors, my diet, my beliefs. i wish them a speedy recovery to full health so they can take their negativity elsewhere.

sometimes my own positivity falters. i begin to feel i have reached a new "normal best" – that this now is the best i can do. i walk my orbits and say my affirmations inside my head, but a side voice expresses a cynicism: these affirmations arent working blah blah blah. its just the frustration of each moment, piling along. sleep comes more easily but still in never more than one hour chunks – marked out by my IV-driven bladder, a glowing red digital clock, and diffuse nightmares of vampire roommates and liquid-filled lungs.

Back to Top