Friday poetry challenge: Counting on you

In the early-morning quiet of the sleeping household, my grandson sat on the sofa working on a Sudoku puzzle while I granted myself a silent round of applause. I may be incapable of accomplishing much in my current weakened state, but by golly I can teach a ten-year-old to solve Sudoku.

They arrived yesterday, my son-in-law and the two youngest grandkids, to pay a visit and work on some projects, and they jumped right in to help make the house habitable. My son-in-law hit the ground vacuuming and then addressed a plumbing problem, and later today he'll assist with a little wiring project. The kids helped Grampa gather eggs from the hens, set the table, and chop okra for Limping Susan. Most of all, they provided a needed break in a mostly blah week. 

I feel okay, but little tasks wear me out--taking a shower this morning felt like a major endeavor. Yesterday I took my car to the dealership for scheduled maintenance just to get out of the house, assuming that loafing in the waiting room would require no more effort than loafing at home, but a television blaring Weather Panic interspersed with Screaming Political Rhetoric felt like a ball-peen hammer pounding against my head. All right, I get it, there's a storm coming, but can we all take a chill pill?

My son got through the bone marrow transplant without any immediate side effects other than drowsiness, which didn't deter him from watching the Cleveland Guardians win last night's Division Series game and force a fifth game tomorrow. Our Guardians seem to be pulling together all their strength just when it's most needed.

Which is exactly what I need to do. On Monday I'll be heading back to campus to teach and lead meetings and move toward my big retirement event next Friday, so it's time to pull up my socks and get serious about class preps, agendas, and PowerPoint slides. First, though, I've got grandkids in the house. Time to pull out the crayons and do some therapeutic coloring. 

A Sudoku-inspired poem:

To tell you why I'm feeling fine,
I'll write the reasons one to nine:
One, fresh pawpaw ice cream--sweet!
Two, my grandkids like to eat
fresh pawpaws and fresh okra too.
Three days until I'm finally through
recuperating. Four small hands

to gather eggs and help the Grands.

Five hours til my pain pills are gone. 

Six days until I see my son.

Seven crayons, colors bright.

Final exams in eight weeks--right!

Nine's the limit we can use

to fill the grid with numbers. Choose

the digits well and win the prize:

a chance to solve another. (Sigh!)

Anyone want to throw some numbers back at me? Put them in the comments.

Grampa's little helpers

Who knew I needed a mantis model?

Tucked away within the bounty of the giant gift basket my colleagues gave me last week was a kit for constructing a praying mantis, which I put together yesterday morning just to amuse myself. My fat fingers struggled to fit together the tiny wooden bits, and the instructions didn't help much. The print was so tiny that I had to take a pic with my phone and blow them up, and then they said things like "please avoid sharp, do not eat" and "fireproof, waterproof, moisture-proof, sunscreen."

But the result is an adorable little praying mantis, more fragile and less fierce than the mantis I admired not long ago in this post. Back in August I set myself up as the protector of the praying mantis, but now I'm relying on this mantis model to protect me from boredom and cheer me on in my recovery. Maybe I ought to give her a name. Suggestions?

Am I blue?

Psychologically speaking, the answer is yes, sometimes I get a little blue, and why shouldn't I? I'm recovering from surgery after a scary diagnosis, and I'm restricted to home during my fall break while the leaves are turning beautiful colors, my adorable grandkids are constantly growing taller and more delightful many miles away, and my son is undergoing unpleasant treatments in Columbus. He won't be entirely alone--my husband will be with him on Thursday for the bone marrow transplant--but I get blue when I think of my helplessness in the face of his huge challenges. But undergoing the stress of travel is inadvisable so soon after my surgery, so I stay home.

And I get blue when I think about my classes. I am completely confident that my wonderful colleagues will do a fantastic job teaching my classes for the rest of the week, but I won't be there to see how my Nature students react to Sylvia, the woodsy girl in Sara Orne Jewett's "The White Heron," and I won't get to observe my African American Lit students struggling to figure out whether they're allowed to laugh at the Battle Royal scene from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. And Gwendolyn Brooks! I know my students will enjoy discussing Gwendolyn Brooks with a bona fide published poet, but I want to hear their responses to "the mother" and "kitchenette building" and, especially, "The Lovers of the Poor":

Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor--passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is--something less than derelict or dull.

I love to see the lovely ladies of the Ladies Betterment League leaving the tenement at the end of the long poem, 

Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what they manage of a canter,
And, resuming all the clues of what they were,
Try to avoid inhaling the leaden air.

Fun fact: when I googled to find this text, the AI preview referred to "The Lovers of the Poor" as free verse. Really? Look again, AI. You can do better. 

But I won't be able to share any fun facts with my students this week, which makes me a little blue. Metaphorically.

But am I also literally blue? Yes I am. I didn't realize how blue I was until I was washing up the other day and noticed that the blue dye that helped the surgeon to locate the lymph nodes for biopsy had not only turned my urine blue but had spread its effects all over my body. Blue arms, blue legs, blue hips and thighs and ankles, blue belly, blue back, blue blue blue. I look like a space alien or mythical monster or a sideshow freak, the Blue Hag of Borneo. I'm not allowed to shower or use deodorant for a few days and I have to wear a post-surgical bra 24 hours a day, which is less sexy than you might imagine. The post-surgery instructions tell me I'm allowed to resume sexual activities as soon as I'm comfortable, but as a scarred stinky blue woman trussed up in a surgical bra, I wonder: Did the Blue Hag of Borneo ever manage to reproduce? And how would anyone know since I just made her up?

So yes, I am a little blue, metaphorically, sometimes, and a little blue, literally, all the time. But this too shall pass. And meanwhile, look at all the free time I have for writing blog posts! That's bound to help with one kind of blues if not the other.

Greetings from the Altered States of Euphoria

The lumpectomy went well yesterday, thanks for asking, and now I have to wait a week and a half for the pathology report, which will determine "next steps," as the medical folks like to say because it sounds less threatening than the possibility of radiation and chemotherapy. My surgeon thinks it unlikely that I'll need further treatment, but it all depends on what shows up in the lymph node biopsy.

We'd driven up to Columbus Sunday afternoon so we could spend some time with my son before he entered the grueling regimen of whole-body radiation that will destroy his bone marrow this week, and we spent the night at a hotel where we'd stayed before, close enough to the fairgrounds that we could smell the horse barns while hearing trucks whizzing past on the interstate. The room was a bit tricksy: getting the door to shut and lock properly was a challenge, and someone had rigged the TV to come blaring on right in the middle of SpongeBob. But I slept well, avoided eating or drinking after midnight, and arrived at the hospital ready to get chopped.

Which was fine. I mean, I was sedated the whole time, so what do I know? I'm in no pain at all today, thanks to lots of Tylenol and Ibuprofen. They prescribed some Tramadol just in case, but so far it's been unnecessary. After previous surgeries I often tried to do too much too soon and suffered the consequences, so today I'm loafing around in my jammies and leaving more comments on blogs than I generally have time for. 

There were, however, side effects, some of which were a complete surprise. For instance, thanks to all those pain-killers, my knee doesn't hurt! And my daughter beat me at Spelling Bee! We have a friendly rivalry over several of the New York Times daily games, where we're pretty evenly matched. She's more likely to beat me at Connections and Wordle, but I almost always come out ahead on the Spelling Bee. Until yesterday, when my brain was apparently in a different place.

What shall we call that place? La-la Land, Spaced-Out Sector, The Altered States of Euphoria? I paid a lengthy and unpleasant visit to Nausea Nation, which is not uncommon after anesthesia--in fact, I'd warned everyone who would listen, including the anesthesiologist, that I often get vertigo and I'd once suffered a severe bout of vertigo after being sedated with Propofol. He gave me a little lecture (between sneezes that he blamed on asthma) about how Propofol is really the best option in this situation, and he promised to give me something to counteract the vertigo, a little Scopalomine patch on my neck.

It didn't help. In fact, the patch was so unhelpful that the recovery nurse tore it off when my vertigo kept me tied to the bed holding my head completely still to try to make the room stop spinning. They gave me a barf bag and I had some dry heaves but nothing came up, which is not surprising since by that point I hadn't eaten for more than twelve hours.

In fact all I ended up ingesting the whole day were a few dry crackers, two little bags of pretzels, and a can of ginger ale. They sent another can of ginger ale with me to get me through the drive home. We'd hoped to leave by 5 p.m. so we could listen to the Cleveland Guardians game on the radio, but I spent so much time in the Extended Recovery Unit that we watched most of the game on television. Well, I saw bits and pieces as I swung in and out of a drug-induced doze. It was close to 10 before we finally made it home, which I wish the Guardians had managed to do a few more times.

But I'm back and I feel pretty okayish, considering. Among the things I'm not allowed to do today are showering, vacuuming, lifting a laundry basket, or mowing, to which I can only say Hurrah. The discharge instructions warn me not to make any important life decisions or sign any contracts for some time after anesthesia, which is a good thing because if a hit-man had been hanging around the recovery room while I was fighting vertigo and nausea, I definitely would have put out a contract on myself just to make the room stop spinning. 

My only goal for today is to write a blog post, which I can now cross off my list. Next I'm planning to dig into the massive care package my wonderful colleagues gave me, dig out some chocolates and Sudoku puzzles, and wrap myself up in the warmth of the love I've been feeling from all my friends and readers. I appreciate every one of you, even if I'm sometimes too spaced out to say so.

Care package with everything I need, including chocolates, Goldfish crackers, and Jane Austen.

Here I am in recovery, rocking that hospital gown while the Guardians lose their game.

Friday poetry challenge: Passing the test

The whisper of pages being turned and papers shuffled, the gentle scratch of pencil on blue book--as my students write their midterm essays, the room is so hushed that the clickety clack of the computer keyboard up front sounds like a series of gunshots. So I turn off the computer and start typing on my phone, a challenge in the best of times, which this isn't.

Typing on the phone slows me down. My fingers are too fat and awkward to fly accurately across that tiny keyboard, and if I don't proofread, I end up with ridiculous spellings. Just a minute ago I typed sliws, and the other day I nearly hit Send on a text message that said I hope it all hoed well. Hoed? Goes!

But today I am even slower and less accurate than usual because I'm a little overslept. Overslept? No! I typed verklempt but autocorrect didn't like my sowlling. Spelling. Whatever.

This morning some wonderful colleagues came into my office carrying a huge gift basket, a care package to get me through my surgery and my son's bone marrow transplant next week. It's full of things I live--er, love. Like chocolates and hand lotion and puzzles and a whole stack of cards that I will enjoy reading when my eyes get a little less teary. It is good to be loved and supported by such terrific people.

But it's hard to write about it on this tiny screen. 

My nature students are writing midterm essays about the costs and benefits of being tested in the wilderness, so I think I will attempt a little test of my own: can I write a Friday poem in the time it takes them to write an essay, using only my phone? Well it's worth a try:

The pencils fly across the page

As students reach that trying stage

When midterm in-class essays test

Their progress through the wilderness

Of education. Meanwhile, I

Attempt to make my fingers fly

On tiny keyboard, mangling words

Until my message is absurd.

To pass the test, my students pay

A price: more study means less play.

I pay a toll in awkward rhymes

Composed in very trying times.

(The benefit, of course, is clear:

I get to post my poem here.)

 

A sonnet! I wasn't expecting that. Did I pass the test?

And how about you? Write a testament to your trials and leave it in the comments.

That's one way to increase cancer awareness

So I'm sitting in the waiting room in an ill-fitting beige robe, surrounded by women wearing identical ill-fitting beige robes, each carrying the same accessory--a clear plastic bag containing bra and shirt--and I'm pulling my beige robe a little tighter where it gapes open in front while trying not to notice the traffic whizzing past just outside the wall of windows, when I receive a campus email announcing an upcoming Breast Cancer Awareness Lunch. I want to send off a snarky reply pointing out that I've recently reached my lifetime quota of breast cancer awareness, that in fact I'm sitting in the freaking Stefanie Spielman Comprehensive Breast Center being comprehensively inundated with breast cancer awareness, but I decide against it. A simple no will suffice.

And so I won't have an excuse to show off my handy-dandy little card announcing that I'm radioactive. I've never before been required to carry a card explaining my radioactive state to anyone whose Geiger counter goes off in my presence, and it would be a shame to possess such a card without ever having the opportunity to use it. I'm especially fond of explaining how the doctor announced that the radioactive seed had been successfully inserted in the tumor in my breast: "Okay, she's hot!"

Come to think of it, if I do happen to set off any Geiger counters, I could forego flashing the explanatory card and just announce, "Don't worry--I'm hot!"

The tiny radioactive seed marks the tumor so that my surgeon can find it easily when she goes to yank it out next Monday. Today I spent the day in Columbus being prepared for surgery: pre-operative education, lab tests, EKG, chest x-ray, radioactive seed placement aided by ultrasound, mammogram to make sure the seed was placed properly, meeting with the radiation oncologist, and I don't remember what else. I was comprehensively cared for by a horde of medical professionals whose names I could not recall if my life depended on it. My life may depend upon their competence, but if it takes me two weeks to learn the names of a classroom full of students, I can't be expected to instantly remember the names of all the medical professionals crowding around the ultrasound room and remarking upon my hotness.

Everyone--nurses, doctors, lab techs, schedulers--keeps saying perfect, an odd word to bandy about while wrangling with the imperfections of ailing bodies. Have I stopped taking ibuprofen? Perfect. No family history of breast cancer? Perfect. Blood pressure lower than last time? Perfect. 

But I can read and I know my blood pressure wasn't perfect. I'd drive through horrible city traffic and was comprehensively stressed out, so my blood pressure was no more perfect than anything else I've experienced since radically increasing my breast cancer awareness, but if the nurse wants to apply the word perfect to the fact that I've successfully managed to don the ill-fitting beige robe, then I guess I'll accept it. 

Today's gold star goes to the phlebotomist who drew four vials of my blood before I even knew she'd stuck the needle in my arm. I generally walk away from lab work with multiple band-aids and bruises on both arms, so getting a good blood vessel in one painless stick is just short of miraculous. 

But four vials is nothing--nothing!--compared to what my son and daughter have been experiencing in a different building at the same hospital. My son will be admitted to The James Friday to begin the long process of preparing for his bone marrow transplant, and my daughter spent seven hours this morning having bone marrow harvested, though I reject the use of the word harvest to refer to my child's blood products. The advance testing process had required her to give up fifteen vials of blood at the same time, and for the past week she's had to inject herself with a drug that increased her body's production of white blood cells--and made her feel tired and achy like someone coming down with the flu. But this morning's seven-hour harvest festival produced a precious gift that will help her brother get healthy.

But first he has to get less healthy. Over the next week or so, his diseased bone marrow will be destroyed to eradicate the cancer and make room for his sister's donation. That's not a pleasant process, and for a while he'll have no functioning immune system. But then that perfect gift of healthy marrow should start making him better over the course of the next couple of months.

So right now our whole family is more aware of cancer than we've ever been, and we're trusting in the comprehensive care of a horde of medical professionals to get us through the coming challenges. If one day we get so far removed from all this pain and anguish that we can allow our comprehensive cancer awareness to lapse--well, that would be just about perfect.  

 

Brother and sister.

 

Debris, decay, deliciousness

After neverending rain and repeated flooding, our lower meadow is finally drying out--which is good news because the new chicken coop is arriving next week and I wouldn't want the truck that hauls it to be mired in the mud.

So we took a walk around this morning, poking around the edges to see what the floods left behind. The garden was flattened, of course, but the okra patch survived the inundation and continues to feed us. We eat fried okra several times a week, and yesterday I arrived home hungry to find that the resident gardener had followed online instructions to fix a massive bubbling pot of gumbo that warmed me right down to my toes.

Fig trees that were under four feet of water have sent forth a tiny crop--two little green figs--while banana trees loom overhead looking lovely but producing no crop at all. (Hardy banana trees can weather our winters, but the growing season is too short to allow them to fruit.) 

Flooding left debris hanging from trees all around the meadow, mostly bits of straw from the neighbors' fields. Some debris is stuck on limbs higher than I can reach and some higher than my husband can reach. I asked him how high the highest deposit was and he said, "Taller than a basketball hoop." Our creek can dunk!

The floods deposited patches and bars of thick silt on garden and meadow, wore away high banks along one part of the creek and left a layer of gravel over another. A rock the size of a bathtub got plopped down right in the middle of the creek, a visitor from Elsewhere.

I crave stability but stand in awe of a landscape in motion, the borders of my world shifting as the water comes and goes. The flooding couldn't stop the fig and okra from growing and it won't stop us from enjoying the beauty in a changing world.

The okra patch stands tall in the flattened garden

Fig

Banana tree looming above the figs

The gardener under his fig and bananas

The pad for the new chicken coop, uphill from the meadow

Chickens came within a few feet of being washed away

Debris in trees all over the place

Tree left behind by flood

Where did that rock come from? Elsewhere...

A chunk of barrel?

Sand bar left behind by Lake Hogue