Claudia and I are almost through two weeks of convalescence. My part is nursemaid. I fleetingly thought of taking a picture of my sweetie in her week of hospitalization but it was a fleeting thought. So many tubes, bruises, medical monitors, rumpled bedding and flimsy hospital gowns. So instead I present a sketch of mine from our patio circa about 2000. The chief difference today is that the book she is reading is on her cellphone.
The surgery to replace her aortic heart valve was a success however there were two disappointments. First, Claudia is an old…..ish, Iowa girl who’s uncle raised pigs on a farm. We were hoping she would get a “pig” valve to celebrate her family’s history. She still shares the farm with her siblings. Sadly, it is a bovine valve. Secondly, the original valve was so cluttered with calcium that in removing it nature’s electrical wiring had to be replaqced with the insertion of a pacemaker.
We will both have to return to the year 2000 when we first became empty-nesters and took up oenology. (the study of wine) Her beta blocker will make further consumption of this noble spirit rare indeed. I will visit the considerable wine cave in the basement only rarely no longer get regular reminders of my former school board colleagues whose picture stares up from the 4×8 election plywood billboard I designed for one of her campaigns. I needed it to rest wine racks on.
I’ve done little writing for the last month with this preoccupying my thoughts. The medical treatment NOT the dearth of alcohol to follow. But I have done a lot of reading and thinking. I’m not alone. NPR had a story today about geriatrics on their last legs pining to see the Mueller Report released before they visit St. Peter.
Today I might try to crank out a column for the Reader. I almost feel like weekly columns are pent up inside my head clamoring for escape instead of the mere every-other-week column I’ve been producing to date. I’m thinking about shifting more of my words to print than to the blog. I’m still undecided about this. I have to fuss a lot harder when something is going to print.
But. I am about to write a blog entry with a subject that has long been on my mind. It will have a little ruder title than I generally attach to my Reader columns. I think my eight loyalists will be able to handle it, civility be damned.
