February 9, 2022

I felt better this day than I did the day before, and definitely better than the day before that. I still didn’t feel GREAT, mind you… I was tired, I was hopeless, I was overwhelmed, I didn’t feel like I could do anything but continue to go forward. But I felt better than I had.

Lisa likes brandy and the way it hits her lips
She’s a rock ‘n’ roll survivor with pendulum hips
She’s got deep brown eyes
That’ve seen it all

Working at a nightclub that was called The Avenue
The bar men used to call her “Little Lisa, Looney Tunes”
She went down on almost anyone

I feel 100% better having taken the day off yesterday than I did deciding to take the day off. Plus, when I got in this morning, Tim was alert and awake and waving and watching TV and having some time off the vent, just as if nothing had gone wrong on Monday and everything was fine! He’s been off the vent for about ninety minutes now (they have been aiming for two hours at a time), and he’s been raising and lowering his arms, doing his own PT. Mostly he’s ignoring me for the TV, but he did hold my hand when I came in, until I came to sit down and start writing. Now he’s alternately napping and watching TV/moving his arms.

I tracked down today’s nurse (who I will be calling Nurse DudeBro) who says he didn’t come find me because there’s just not really anything going on. Tim is still having some intestinal issues, but his CDiff test from the other day came back negative. Nurse DudeBro says that it’s most likely just that he’s on liquid food, which duh, that was actually my first guess about a week ago, but they had to rule out a bunch of random things rather than assume it was the most obvious thing, I guess.

Was this the first CDiff test? I feel like it was. The first, I mean. There wound up being… I don’t know, ten or twelve, over the next month. I think it was about this point that the intestinal issues started to get worse (they got a lot worse in a few days, but more on that then) and he continued with the on and off fever and the unusually high white blood cell count. I wish… I don’t know. I wish that I had known what to say, what to ask, so that… something could have been done. The fever and the intestinal issues turned into a big thing, Maybe a thing that … pushed him closer to the end. And while yes, I feel like I did everything I could have done for him, I stood up for him and asked the questions he couldn’t and made sure nurses and doctors were aware of things and told me about things… what if I didn’t? What if there was something I didn’t see? What if there were clues and I just couldn’t put them together? “What if” is a terrible, spirally rabbit hole to be trapped in. “I know I did enough but what if I didn’t” is a shitty, unbalanced fence to be trying to straddle.

He’s still on two antibiotics, the Vanc for the Endocarditis and … something else that starts with an “M”… metronidazole? that they put him on last week when they took him off the ampicillin that was causing him to have those hives on his back. The M-antibiotic is a broad spectrum one that they’re just giving him becasue his white blood cell count is still high, although they still can’t find any reason for that – nothing that they’ve tried to grow cultures in, any of the various samples, has grown anything. But his fever is gone, so that’s good! I’m kind of less concerned about the white blood cell count than I am about the fever. Nurse DudeBro said he talked with ID for about twenty minutes yesterday and that they still haven’t been able to find any new infections, so… maybe he just has a high white blood cell count because of everything he’s going through, or something. Sigh. I guess “nothing wrong here” is better than “I’ve got some terrible news”, even though not knowing is frustrating.

From the hard time living ’til the Chelsea days
From when her hair was sweet blonde ’til the day it turned gray
She said…

L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.
You’ve got more than money and sense, my friend
You’ve got heart, and you’re going your own way
L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.
What you don’t have now will come back again
You’ve got heart, and you’re going your own way

Nurse DudeBro didn’t mention if PT/OT was coming by later today, but I do see that the chair has been set up as if waiting for them, so perhaps they’ll be in later today. Now I’m just sort of watching Tim nap while he watches TV. Oh, except for the about fifteen minute conversation I just had with Nurse DudeBro about the wild turkeys on our property — turns out his dad, for about forty years, was president of their county’s wild turkey conservation association, and he is suuuuuuper into turkeys. I showed him some of the pictures I took yesterday because he was sounding so excited about the turkeys I was afraid he was going to ask if he could come over, lol!

Let’s see… in other news? I tried to have specialized time yesterday with all six of the cats…. I was gifted some delicious bread that I’ve already eaten most of (seriously, is there anything better than a thick cut of warm bread with melting butter on it?!)… I got time in the studio and got some serious glazing done … I even had the energy to talk to a couple of people on the phone! And I snacked/ate/grazed pretty much all day long. It wasn’t a great day off – I felt guilty for taking it, and I was anxious most of the day, but today I feel better for having done it.

xoxo, y’all

Six cats? Five cats. Moya, Tulip, Newt, Troublesome, Goblin. Five. Oh! Socks! I forgot about Socks! How could I forget about that turdball already? He disappeared some time early this summer, after looking really, super rough for a bit. How funny, I’ve already blocked The Destroyer of Worlds out of my mind.

I feel like Socks is probably the grandfather, or maybe great-grandfather, of the Feral Shittens. I wonder if he’s Chonkasaurus’s father? Man, if so, the mother must be a BEAST.

Some people wear their history like a map on their face
And Joey was an artist just living out a case
But his best work was his letters home
Extended works of fiction about imaginary success

The girls in neon were his closest things to friends
But to a writer, the truth is no big deal
And from the hard time living to the sleepless nights
And the black and blue body from the weekend fights
He’d say…

I also made a non-relevant post on Facebook, but I’m going to include it here because I had talked about the Catio previously. That and that’s pretty much all the pictures I took for this day, haha.

Remember back in Dec/Jan when Tim’s awesome family was here, and they installed the Catio for me? I had chosen the bedroom because Tulip, the cat I thought would use it the most, doesn’t like other cats, so I thought if shit got bad with the cats, I could close my bedroom door and isolate her.

Well, three things have been bothering me, but I didn’t want to make a fuss about asking for help with them, yet also didn’t have time/brain capacity to fix it myself.
1. Tulip never leaves the Catio, so I had to put food and water out there for her.
2. Tulip spends all night yowling in the Catio, defending her food and water from raccoons and random stray cats. This wakes me up at all hours because I didn’t have a cat door yet so the window was wide open.
3. The Heat/AC unit is close to the bedroom window, and it’s loud, and it wakes me up every time it comes on, which, with the cold we’ve been having, is multiple times a night. This wakes me up every time because, see above re open window.
3b. It’s freezing in my bedroom, because see above re open window.

Well! The Benevolent Santa Aunties (what can I call my amazing group of friends who have been taking such good care of me???) came out today and (a) relocated the entire Catio and (b) put in a cat door. Even Moya had to come out and investigate!

Edited to add: I forgot to say that one thing I’m no longer worried about is Tulip needing to be shut into a room AND the Catio; she rarely even comes inside from the Catio. There’s no worry she’s going to be in the house arguing with the other cats. Also, we’ve lost one cat since then, and our other oldest cat probably doesn’t have that much time left — that’ll leave just Tulip and Newt in the house, and Tulip has been tolerating Newt in the Catio provided Newt stays on her own shelf and leaves Tulip the heck alone.

And that was it for the day. What number day was this…? Around 60 or so? And there are about thirty days left. Going forward, the story is going to get hopeful, and then less hopeful but guess this is just the way it’s going to be, and then a few days of what the absolute fuck is happening, and then it’s going to get … super bad. Like, spiraling out of control, I can do nothing but ride this horrible wave.

L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.
You’ve got more than money and sense, my friend
You’ve got heart, and you’re going your own way
L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.
What you don’t have now will come back again
You’ve got heart, and you’re going your own way

On my last night on earth, I won’t look to the sky
Just breathe in the air and blink in the light
On my last night on earth, I’ll pay a high price
To have no regrets and be done with my life

Lyrics by Charles Fink
L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.