2 August 2024 pleasantly warm Friday

[KathyB]

In reality it's really hot, but by calling it "pleasantly warm," maybe it won't feel so hot.   

I was having a good time watching the Olympic swimming and track heats, and then they changed to beach volleyball, then indoor volleyball. They had show jumping earlier today, which I really enjoyed, for the 30 minutes they showed of it. 

What's annoying is that it's hot even after the sun goes down. Yesterday it was 90° when I decided to take B for a walk at about 8 pm. The low temperature for the day is typically around 5 am, when it's in the high 60s or low 70s. But that is at 5 am. 

I'm just grumpy today.

[scenicdesign71]

This bonkers year.

I'm calling it "bonkers" in a sense similar to "pleasantly warm" -- in reality, "relentlessly traumatizing" might be a more accurate description, but by thinking of it as just one zanily unexpected event after another, maybe it won't feel so pulverizing.  Also, I don't want to be too much of a drama queen.  The loss of my old apartment (but thankfully not of my belongings) to fire last fall; and, more recently, of my father to a bout of pneumonia (which apparently took him relatively quickly and peacefully and, at 90, not too unexpectedly in the grand scheme of things) in his nursing home about six weeks ago -- these aren't minor mishaps.  But if they have been walloping me to a pulp, it's been happening so stealthily that I've only very recently begun to even sense it.

It has been comforting, but also disorienting, to contend with these developments alongside some much happier ones. There's the new TV job, which has been fascinating as well as lucrative, and should help me get back on my feet financially after last year's strikes, from which my industry still hasn't fully recovered, and might not in the foreseeable future.  There's this play reading in September, which, with some luck (and a serendipitously topical-yet-delightful subject), could plausibly develop into an honest-to-god Off B'way production as soon as this winter.  And there is -- or was -- this miraculously affordable dream apartment, for which I've been waiting on tenterhooks since June.

But then, just as I was preparing to sign the lease, an unholy confluence of fresh cosmic fuckery and lamentable stupidity (my own) decisively snatched said apartment from my grasp at the very last moment.  After enduring unexplained sharp abdominal pains for all of last weekend, I took myself to Urgent Care, and thence to the hospital for what ended up being four days — and whatever remained of my brain after all the recent ups and downs promptly deserted me, turning a minor miscommunication with the landlord into a disastrous comedy of errors from which he could only reasonably conclude that I was no longer interested in the place, and move on to the next applicant, who snapped it up immediately.

So I'll continue living with my mom for the foreseeable future; the one upside is that I can save the money I won't be paying in rent on a new apartment anytime soon, as I'll have neither the time, anytime before October, to search for a(nother) new place; nor, frankly, with my head still spinning from this latest reversal, any inclination whatsoever to do so.  I'm profoundly doubtful that the universe, having served up that previous golden opportunity on a platter (only to then fumble it with breathtaking comic timing), could possibly come up with a consolation option that would look anything but grossly insulting by comparison.  (Living with my mom isn't ideal, but it's satisfactory-ish enough, for both of us, that I'm not going to move somewhere that doesn't genuinely grab me.  And for better or more likely worse, that last "find" has spoiled me rotten in terms of what "genuinely grabs me").  What's unnerving is that this disappointment — over an apartment-hunt setback, unexpected and certainly unfortunate, but surely not in the same emotional universe as losing a parent? — seems to be where I'm focusing all my grief from the others.  Losing my old place made me feel a bit anxious and disoriented.  Losing my dad evoked brief panic, some guilt, and ongoing numbness.  Losing this new lease — after seven weeks of nervous waiting for a response and then, after the eventual all-but-unexpected yes, a week of joyful anticipation — has me unequivocally devastated.

Then there are my two best friends and my family — well, at this point, my mother — all of whose support and affection throughout the ongoing shitshow has been astonishing.  Not to mention my boss, also a very dear friend who, with her unerring instinct for problem-solving, never stops seeking — and usually finding — ways to help manage each new curveball.

My time in hospital this week included 60 hours of near-starvation on a clear-liquid diet; a whimsical but productive Zoom conference to London from my hospital bed (about the play); and a nice visit from my mother and one of the aforementioned saintly friends (who drove 140 blocks out of her way in Manhattan traffic to give my mom a ride both ways).  The doctors and nurses were unfailingly wonderful, and as hospital stays go, it was as un-horrible as can reasonably be imagined.  (The upshot: diverticulitis, a painful but not-especially-threatening intestinal inflammation, which they were able to knock out with antibiotics).  But my mind still can't readily believe that its overall duration (which, though covered by my insurance, still cost me about five thousand pre-tax dollars in lost work) totaled less than four weeks, it felt that surreal.

My brain feels like Swiss cheese and my head is spinning, and I'm realizing that this is not a development solely of this past week, but has in fact been building up for the past ten crazy months, if not the past four absurd years.

All the wolves, all the lies, the false hopes, the goodbyes, the reverses...
Yep, bonkers.

[KathyB]

I completely understand "hospital brain" now. (I was also in for four days, in April.) I had two nights of complete starvation because they first thought the surgery was going to be on one day, and then another. But I ate a lot in between those two nights, so I sot-of prepared for the actual pre-surgery starvation. I was on a clear-liquid diet afterwards, and fortunately Pepsi is considered a clear liquid.

My brain was totally fogged for the separately-scheduled, completely unrelated neurology exam I had the day after I got out of the hospital--one that I thought about cancelling, but it took me six months to get on their schedule, so I ended up taking a Lyft to the appointment with my arm in a sling and a ton of bruises from bring in the hospital on my other arm.  I'm sure that my baseline score was affected. Not to mention the parts of that exam that I physically could not do, like touching my thumb to each of my fingers and walking a straight line with one foot in front of another, like a DUI test. I remember being asked to draw a clock face as part of that exam, and feeling like I couldn't remember all parts of that clock.

Boy, does that suck about the apartment, though. And the lost income (to which I also can relate).

[scenicdesign71]

Thank you so much, Kathy!  

And specific thanks for reintroducing me to the term "hospital brain," which I too completely understand now, and will never again relegate to the category of "self-explanatory phrases that I've heard before but never pondered vey deeply".  Even as close a vicarious association as my mother's two hospital experiences in recent years couldn't fully convey the weirdness of it, but the phrase is lodged in my lexicon now, permanently and with vivid accompanying illustration.

I too was pleasantly surprised that they considered Pepsi a clear liquid!  God knows I shouldn't drink so much soda, but in that context it was an unexpected treat.

My sympathy, now empathy, for your medical odyssey this year only grows.  How is your badass bionic shoulder treating you lately?  It's been a few weeks since your last update.

[KathyB]

The rehab is a long, slow process--I think I've got about 50% of my previous range of motion. I can now lift my arm up to my eyes, but not the top of my head, so I still can't use it to shampoo with. I have occupational therapy twice a week, although this week I had it only once because my normal OT was on vacation, so I had a substitute. I am out of the sling now, and able to type with one-and-a-half hands (I still don't have fine motor control over the fingers of my left hand). I am tired of relying on ride services and delivery, but I don't have the range of motion to be able to drive yet.  I see the surgeon again on August 20.

Today is another pleasantly warm day. Tomorrow is expected to get into triple digits, but not as hot as it seems to be all over the rest of the country. Just the low 100s.

[scenicdesign71]

That sounds arduous.  How much motion/motor control are you ultimately expected to regain — will it reach 100%, given enough time?  And how much time is enough time?

I'm sorry you're having to go through this, Kathy.

I have a follow-up with my colorectal surgeon a week from Tuesday, which will mean losing another thousand-dollar workday.  (I tried just now to figure out a way of paraphrasing Joanne in "Ladies Who Lunch" — "another long exhausting day," etc. — but the tone and context are so inapposite that it didn't quite seem to work, even ironically.  This job ends in late September, and even if I wanted to continue forfeiting my entire life, sixteen hours a day including commute, to camera-scenic-ing until retirement, I'm not sure the new-normal in this industry would supply enough work to do so.  If the apartment snafu last week weren't already depressing enough, it has occurred to me that in October, when I'll have the time and maybe even the heart to resume apartment hunting, I'll no longer have the job, or likely any job, with which to assure potential landlords that I'd be able to pay the rent every month.  This last time, I was able to explain that last year's strikes were responsible for the yearlong gap in my employment, and that I was on the verge of resuming my former income level, as indeed I was — for these few months.  [They didn't need to know that this job has a predetermined end-date only two months into what would have been the one-year lease period, and I certainly didn't volunteer that information.  In any case, the rent they were asking was low enough that my current job would, over these next two months and even with these few missed days, have paid for the entire yearlong lease].  But if spotty work really is the new normal, with no long-term M.Sec.-type gig on the horizon, it's going to make rental applications — among other things, like survival — a much bigger challenge).

Sorry, this was supposed to be sympathy/commiseration, not one-sided whining.
Your surgeon-followup appointment is exactly a week after mine.  We should compare notes.