I sit listening to the timbre of my father-in-law’s voice. His voice is low and the cadence is nearly monotone. He is telling me the story of how he and Rick’s Mom met, fell in love, and got married. He is nearly 81 years of age, but as he weaves his story, the years slip from his face and I see the younger man he was at one time. It’s a great story, and one that should really be written down or at the very least, recorded. He won’t be writing it down as he has macular degeneration and is slowly going blind. He sees enough right now to get by with a little help with the details of daily life. He won’t be reading this blog entry unless his wife reads it to him.

This man and I have not always seen eye to eye. I have been known on occasion to argue and bicker with him, making for fractious relations. Over the years he has mellowed, and so have I. In the past my eyes use to glaze over whenever he started on one of his stories. Okay, yeah, whatever. That was my attitude. Maybe I’ve gained maturity. Maybe more tolerance. Or maybe I’ve just come to appreciate the stories more and how they are told. Whatever it is I found a new appreciation for him tonight.

I caught glimpses of the man he was before I knew him. I liked what I saw. Maybe I never took the time to see it before. Maybe he didn’t allow me to see it. Regardless of the reason, it’s a good thing. 

Note: I wrote this when Rick’s parents were visiting us back in October.  I was ready for bed that night, but I felt so strongly the need to write my feelings down that I went downstairs, brought up Rick’s laptop and wrote these words. It was meant to be a private post, almost a diary entry if you will, just for me. When Rick read it he thought I should share it.  I was not sure I was going to share it with the blog, but I have now decided I should. Tonight on my father-in-law’s 81st birthday, I offer you this private entry in honor of Vaughn’s 81st.

I finally finished my set of Gracious Parcels for firefly’s Habitat for Humanity project. I’m pretty pleased with how they came out considering I had never tried these stitch patterns before. I made each one with a different stitch pattern, and made homemade tags to explain what they are supposed to represent.

I did Grass in a basketweave stitch; Autumn Leaves in a broken rib stitch [the easiest of them all]; and Bountiful Harvest is a combination of broken rib and rib-and-ridge stitches. I made this one up with the broken rib representing wheat fields in a taupey-brown yarn and rows of yellow “corn” for the rib-and-ridge stitch. It’s really fun how the “corn” rows stick up and form a rolling ridge.

I’m packing them off in today’s mail to their new destination. I hope they conform to what she wanted for her squares. I had to rip out and recalculate my stitches several times to get a 7 inch square, or as close as I could come to one. So, it was a learning experience for me all the way around.

Okay. Mondays are just not my best days. Last week I spent the day at the vet and the ER vet. Today I spent the latter part of the day at the ER people “vet.” Geez. Go figure. I’m not having much luck here. Late morning I started to feel a bit strange. I was dizzy, food didn’t taste right and my chest felt constricted. Kind of an out of body experience. I am normally a well person with no signs of hypochondria, so I studied myself from afar and asked myself if it was strange enough to act on. I dug the warnings attached to my medication for the cat bite infection out of the trash. Yep, sure enough, it stated I was having a severe reaction. Wonderful. Just great. I knew Rick was picking up his computer at the mall in Rockaway, not that far away, so I called my poor husband. Can you come and take me to the ER? I didn’t ask this lightly, I was feeling very strange.

By the time he came to pick me up, which was about an hour from my first symptoms, I was feeling a bit better and wondered about even going in. I knew my infection was pretty severe and I really didn’t want any surprises if I chose NOT to go. We went to the closest hospital ER to us which was Chilton Memorial. It’s not the easiest place to find.

The doctor there was not as thrilled with what the urgent care clinic had done for me. So, I had to undergo a series of things that were not very pleasant. He wanted x-rays of my hand to make sure the cat bite didn’t chip a bone because he didn’t like the look of my hand, which by the way was about half the size of swolleness that it was yesterday. Hey, doc, if you don’t like it now you should have seen it yesterday! He wasn’t convinced. He told me that most people that come in with cat bites to the hand are admitted overnight with an IV drip of antibiotics. I was beginning to think that I had the constitution or at least the blood of an ox here!

He told me he wanted to do x-rays of my hand, bloodwork and possibly and IV antibiotic drip. Oh, and a tetanus shot; my favorite thing.

They were pretty busy so I didn’t have the luxury of a room or even a private cubicle. My place was a gurney in the hallway. Sweet. I saw most of what was going on, and most of it not very pleasant. One poor older man had suffered a stroke and wasn’t doing well. His daughter, who didn’t speak much English and her husband were struggling. Another man was obviously very sick and waiting on a CAT scan. He did not look good. Then there was the psycho woman who would not stay in her room. She wandered around the hallways, and was flirting with the male nurse that was trying to take blood from me for a CBC test. She sauntered over flirtatiously chatting him up as he kept telling her to please go back and wait in her room. She wanted to stay. I was thinking SLASHER here and just wanted her gone, so I told her I would rather that she didn’t stay and watch my blood draw as I felt strange about her being there. She retreated to her room. For two minutes that is. She kept disturbing everything around her and I was getting nervous sitting out there for all the world to slash. My nurse told me she’d been in many times before. Most of the staff just laughed her off.

My doc flew by on his way to another patient and told me my x-rays were clean. Good. Great. In the meantime I’d been poked with needles three different times. Once for a tetanus shot. Once for the blood draw in my left arm which turned out to not be a good vein. On to the right arm for another stab [did I mention needles are not my favorite thing?], this time a successful one. After five vials of my precious blood, the IV needle was left in my arm just in case they needed to give me an antibiotic via IV. I could not bend my arm without it pricking me. Fun times on a gurney in a ER hallway. At this point I am feeling pretty much okay, the dizziness has left me and I’m wondering what in the heck I am doing here. There is no escape. I am a prisoner in the ER.

While I wait for the bloodwork to come back I saunter down the hall to find a magazine to keep me occupied. Poor Rick. At least I told him before they took me back to go on back to work and get as much done as he could.  At least he could use the time to be productive even if I could not.

I was thumbing through magazines when the psycho patient got mad at her counselor and ran past me down the hall and pushed her way through the automatic doors, thereby taking the door off its hinge. My male nurse and two security guards took off after her through the parking lot. She could run pretty fast. They caught her after a good chase and brought her back to her room. Now she had two armed security guards at her door and she wasn’t likely to come out again. WHEW. I could at least relax now. Well, as much as I could sitting up on a gurney.

My bloodwork came back with normal values but they wanted me to have an EKG before I left. That having cleared I was good to go.

Just another fun day in my life.

Can you tell by looking at my hands that one is swollen? I’m hurting this weekend, ever since Sam bit me on Thursday night. I now have a very infected hand and ended up at the Urgent Care Center today. The doctor basically told me I was an idiot not to come in as soon as the bite happened. Well, I didn’t know, and Friday it wasn’t bad, just aching and a bit swollen which I thought was just from the puncture wound. Yesterday it was really swollen and red. When I did a search online about cat bites it got me a bit scared. I took two of Bart’s amoxicillin tablets to tide me over. At the doctor’s I got a huge lecture and a scrip for antibiotics. It feels just like I sprained my hand so I’m a bit impaired. At least I can type without too much pain.

I don’t know exactly what got into Sam, but Rick was trying to catch him to clean him up after a trip to the litter box left some things, er, shall we say hanging. He was kind of playing a game with him and I grabbed him for behind, thinking I was going to hold him while Rick got the clingy bits. He bit me hard, it didn’t bleed much and left three nice puncture wounds. He had some catnip earlier, so maybe that contributed to his wild ways. I don’t know. All I know was that it hurt like hell; still does. 

So, if you get bitten by a cat, yours or someone else’s, don’t wait. Get to a doctor for some antibiotics right away! At least that way you’ll be spared the lecture about how dumb you are. You can read about cat bites here.

Here is Bode the day before yesterday eating acorns. Yummy, lip-smacking good! We hate to knock on wood, but right now you would never know by looking at this dog either by his behavior or his demeanor that anything was wrong with him. He is acting like his old self.  We take one day at a time. That’s all we can do.