Tag: home

february

It has been a whole month. So much has been left undone and much of that has fallen aside. Right now, there are no projects needing completion and no tasks that I’ve scheduled. So many naps, staring at ceilings and walls, much too much junky tv, a bit of reading, some writing, and last week the beginning of walking outside.  Yesterday, I logged a bit more than 5,000 steps.  Not that impressive, I know, but if you saw my numbers for the last month, it looks like I climbed mountains yesterday.  

I went to chuch services last week and will again yesterday. I still have very little voice—a month of coughing can wreak havoc on the vocal cords—so no choir yet.  Maybe this week.  I miss choir practice. 

I’m still not feeling up to driving but again, perhaps this week. It has been a focus issue and then also exhaustion. As I began to feel more like myself last week, writing was not easy.  Not the physical act but the focus needed.  I have it for short amounts of time, but not for what I needed to produce anything. However, what I wanted to do almost as soon as I was able to sit up for long periods of time was to indulge in some mindless beauty and do something with my hands.  

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new year’s day

I lay on my red couch in the sun.  I imagine that the sun, as well as the gallon of water and coconut juice, not to mention my kale salad lunch is healing me. 

It is another quiet day right that began right after Julia left for her program and Ed for his daily round. A few texts, a Facebook message, a phone call—that’s all that break the quiet. I am reading Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark, for a new HILR class that begins at the beginning of next month. The book—memoir or fiction—is beautiful.  I  read slowly to savor the metaphors and adjectives. The sentences, every single one, is rich dessert. Or perhaps it is the protien rich mind meal that I need to pick up where I have left off of on the callendar’s new year’s day.

Today is my new year’s day and a strange one it is at that.  Never before have I needed so much to recover and heal, never before have I so much needed to nap—well, that is probably not true but this nap need has probably laid dormant for three score and ten years.  

I have great gratitude today for today and yesterday and tomorrow and for those who people my life when it is very small and when it grow again bigger.  

It is all very good.

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 2

off oxygen

This morning I woke up ready to take off the oxygen. Just ready.

Healing was looking good on Sunday. The nurses and techs were encouraging me to move about the house, to do a few things, nothing extravagent but easy chores.  Christmas still needed to be put away. Ed and Julia had brought up my 4 christmas boxes and I had taken down a little bit a few days before.  I needed to straighten the boxes, put away garland and some of the lights, and then tackle the tree.

And I felt ready.

These sick days have found a rhythm of nurse and PT visits and meals and phone calls and email.  After lunch and a nap, I was ready to tackle christmas. I was puttering when a pain crept up in my chest. It bloomed on the right side of my chest and radiated into my jaw. It was not intense but present and different from anything I had felt before.  I debated whether to call the nursing line, remembering vividly the mistakes of not calling that David made.

And I called.

I relayed my information but the nurse was not too concerned.  She said she would push up my afternoon visit but to otherwise just continue as I was.  Then, 20 minutes or so (my time awareness of the next few hours fractured. It was 20 minutes, it was 2 hours.  I wasn’t 2 hours but it might have been much longer than 30 minutes). Then, the pain happened again. More intense this time, longer, and did not immediately fade.  It retreated very gradually, especially in my jaw.

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healing

Eleven days into the new year and I have been sick each and every day.  What a way to begin something new no matter how artificial the construct of time and new years are. 

So, first off, I am home and have been since late Tuesday, arriving by ambulance because I was attached to oxygen. I am participating in a Home Hospital program. I am still technically a patient of Newton Wellsley Hospital—my wrist band and IV port prove that—but I am getting my care and monitoring at home. I needed to meet some health criteria—after lots of tests to rule out other causes for my condition, I was found to be relatively stable and treatable —as well as home condiitons like a supportive carer.  I wear a very sensitive arm band which is constantly monitored, two nursing visits each day, PT and PA visits and daily deliveries of meds. It felt like too much activity the first day to keep track of everything. Meds are delivered by the nurses when they visit but I must coordinate for myself the early morning and late night meds including five times using the nebulizer during the day.  It felt like too much to take in and actually do on Wednesday and I was quite grumpy about it all.  It didn’t help that my cough was still wicked then and answering either in person or on the phone was tortuous for everyone. 

For me; however, this is a great program. I am home.  Julia, who had a hard time when I was in the hospital, is doing much better with me home. Other than the visits and care that I am getting, there is nothing more that a hospital stay could offer me.  And I have my best carer, Ed, seeing to what I need.  I feel a bit guilty for all the cooking and shopping and cleaning up and caring for Julia and just making me as comfortable as possible that he has done.  But it is lovely having his support.  He is much more than taking-up-the-slack these days. 

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consequences

New Year’s Eve has always been a veguely uncomfortable holiday for me. I’ve never been to Times Square to watch the ball fall, I don’t favor loud parties, rarely have I gone out for diner and dancing. We never built any traditions for the evening which didn’t bother me at all until I was alone.

I think I was happiest when I was working in restaurants or when David and I (and one or the other of the girls) went to movies and maybe somewhat of a quick dinner out. The turning of the century was a good NYE—a bunch of friends gathered at David’s father’s house in Jersey. We were living in Indy then and we still had NYC friends, some with small children. We cooked a nice dinner—I don’t remember what. Wine and maybe champagne. We sat in the kind of dining room that I knew growing up and ate on Dad’s good china, lifting his best wine glasses. One friend didn’t accompany his family because he was a computer guy and needed to guard his hard and soft ware if the worst case of Y2K predictions came to pass. Another friend announced that she was adopting a baby from Vietnam—the baby who now has one year old twins of her own. 

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babka and ambition

Another grey, wet and cold day.  Am I ever going to put my winter coat away in the hall closet?  I’ve put it away and taken it out again twice.

This morning supervising Julia at the library during her volunteer time. Observing what she can do and do well, and how much she gets in her own way. She has so much more ability than she uses. Mood and lack of regulation ability dampen potential. Trauma masks the possibility of ambition, and without ambition, goals are hard to come by. It’s the goals that have helped me push through bad days. I’ve lived through many a hard time murmuring “eyes on the prize.” When you can see no prize, where do you ever put your eyes.  

This morning, my friend wrote, “you’re not supposed to ace this.” I sigh. I guess I’ve always wanted to ace all my “this.” Time and age and especially Julia have smoothed out so many of my edges. I accept a good deal more and haven’t thought much about acing for awhile.

Living up to potential is not always what I imagined it to be. These days, acing my this is more about support and patience than it is about getting anywhere, accomplishing anything.

Trauma and distraction crowd out aiming for a prize, staying on task and target. And acceptance and flexibility become the goals.

Should I have realized this years ago? I am not a quick learner.

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transformation

At church in small group ministry, we are talking about transformation this month. And to a person, everyone  in my group had a bit of trouble with this topic. We all wanted that Disney Cinderella transformation, the magic wand that turns a pumpkin into a coach and rags into ball gowns. And we could not think of any or many transformative moments in our lives that was quite like that.

Someone suggested that it is more evolution than magic wand, and this morning, I think that so much is in the eye of the beholder. The heart of the dreamer. What and when is that magic wand moment?  And how?  Therein lies a mystery.

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of roman gods, the year lived & what may come

Janus. The Roman god of beginnings, transitions, and endings. Often depicted as having two faces, one on either side of his head of usually flowing hair. He, giving him that pronoun because in my head I see depictions of Janus with beards on both faces, one looking to the future and the other to the past.  

That is a good enough god for me this morning!

It is my birthday. I “should” sit down and write something. I have been having trouble doing that.  Too many tasks get in the way.  Too many distracting thoughts.  I am monkey-mind personified.  

I need to gently lead that monkey away from the myriad of distractions both within and without, the list of ways that I am not living up to my ideal, plus the list of how I can fix that former list.

And return again to that bust of Janus lodged in my head that I think I saw at the Vatican Museum forty years ago. 

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coming home

Coming home: Get on a bunch of planes. Watch a bunch of movies and eat the weird combination of what is airplane food—My favorite food during our longest flight today from Tokyo to San Francisco was two saltine crackers with a pat of cream cheese. Exactly like something I’d eat when there was nothing else to eat in the house. Try to sleep mostly unsuccessfully and ultimately stumble from plane to plane to immigration/customs to plane and to a lovely friend who drove us home.

After thirty hours traveling, those beds in Newton were incredibly comfortable!

But to back up —

On our last night in Hanoi, we had a hot pot supper—various kinds of meat and vegetables that are brought to the table raw along with a pot of boiling broth on a heater.  It’s good and I’ve liked the idea both back home and in Hanoi.  We’ve eaten it a number of times in Vietnam, but truthfully, when I go out to eat, I’d much rather have the cook do the cooking instead of one of us at the table. Still, it seems like a favorite with the people of Hanoi, including our friend, Tra My. 

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Ha Noi

After the pristine guest house and ways in general of Tokyo, we plunge into Ha Noi’s old quarter.  I was here 20 years ago with Jennifer who was adopting Mai how was a mere 6 months old at the time.  Ha Noi is both insanely busy and chaotic and daring and completely unknown, and then, it is like coming home.  I recognize the chaos, the grittiness of a place build over and over upon itself.  The layers of history, of living, of what is decaying underneath what is thriving.

And we’ve been here since 2 a.m.

We are staying in a very funky place—the absolute opposite of Guest House Wagokoro in Arakawa.  

Autumn House is down a very deep and dark and narrow alley.  A house of three narrow floors—one room per floor—the only “window” in each room is a floor to ceiling french door that opens to a tiny balcony and another back alley.  Right now it feels a bit unnerving, but give me a few days to see how I feel.  

20 years ago, I stepped out of our hotel and a shot of terror ran through me at the idea that if I was not careful I would could make an unthinking turn and never find my way back to the hotel.  This morning I am not as fearful, but I do carefully take a picture of the entrance to our alley and note the building across the street.

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