Sitting here again in the wee hours, feels like seeing an old friend.
The homecoming is all the sweeter after the trials of the last few days. Tuesday was spent in hurried preparations for the overnight trip to the VA hospital in Seattle. Wednesday, Kevin had to put in a full day at work before we could leave. He had just picked the truck back up after a tune-up, and although he did his best to get away it was still late afternoon before he was free. My brother arrived to watch over Mom, and once Kevin got home we threw everything in the truck and took off for whatever adventures the city could supply, considering. The consideration was that I was going to be stuck in a hotel room doing prep for the colonoscopy, and since we got to the hotel so late-around seven thirty-I was pretty much sleepless, sore, and vacant by the next morning. Trying to hurry the process along only made me vomit, and it was midnight before the entire gallon of prep finally went down, followed of course by hours of running to the bathroom. The hotel they put us up in was south of Seattle in Renton, requiring a trip down I-5. We knew that could be trouble with rush hour traffic in the morning, and Kevin spent some time mapping an alternate route, just in case.
The room was overly warm, considering how cool and lovely the day had been. We tried to cool it down-if we could have thrown the windows open it would have been fine. But we were on the ground floor and the windows would only open a crack. The air conditioner was almost useless, although it did get a bit cooler after Kevin unplugged the refrigerator in the kitchenette. By morning, the room was only fractionally cooler than when we started. And to add to the fun, we discovered that the newly tuned truck was leaking fluid. We awoke to the sound of rain and the news of a major accident on I-5…and the advice on the news was to avoid it at all costs. I had given myself only twenty-five minutes to throw clothes on and get to the hospital, but Kevin slept through his alarm and had to take a shower and bolt down some breakfast. We were a half hour late just getting out of the hotel. Siri was not cooperating with the alternate route that Kevin had programmed, and kept trying to send us back onto the freeway-and we probably should have listened to her. Much of our travel ran parallel to the freeway, and as we sat stuck in that disaster we could see that although traffic on I-5 was heavy, it was at least moving. Apparently everyone had taken the traffic reports to heart, and were now with us, on the alternate route. All in all, our twenty-three minute travel plan got us to the VA hospital an hour later. I had called while we were cursing our way there, just to make sure they saved me a table. No way did I want to have to do this again.
Luck is sometimes how you look at it, and as luck would have it, everyone seemed to have hit snags getting to the hospital-and it wasn’t just the traffic jam. One nurse sleepily took the wrong freeway, some of the staff were with us or on the FUBAR freeway, and the physician got stuck in a fire drill. So, luckily, we were all pretty much on the same page by the time things got going. I greeted the bottle of Propofol hanging on the IV pole in the surgical suite like a savior. Take me away, Milk of Amnesia! Unfortunately, just as you are really starting to get some good sleep, they start waking you up again. As they wheeled my bed into the recovery room, I could hear one of the nurses singing an old Joni Mitchell tune-one of my favorites.
My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head.
The way he described it
He said I’d be better dead than live
I didn’t listen to his jive
I knew all along that he was all wrong
And I knew that he thought
I was crazy but I’m not, oh no…
“I bet you don’t remember that one!” she said to her patient. I just had to jump in, surprising everyone.
My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head
He said I’d need treatment
But I’m not that easily led, he said
I was the type that was most inclined
When out of his sight to be out of my mind
And he thought I was nuts-
No more ifs or ands or buts.
With a grin and a high five, we sang it together-
Now they say as a child I appeared a little bit wild
With all my crazy ideas- but I knew what was happenin’
I knew I was a genius
What’s so strange when you know that you’re a wizard at three
I knew this was meant to be.
Now they say little children we’re supposed to sleep tight
That’s why I got into the vodka one night
My parents got frantic didn’t know what to do
But I saw some crazy things before I came to, now
Do you think I was crazy?
I may have been only three, but I was swingin’
They all laughed at angry young men
They all laughed at Edison, and also at Einstein
So why should I feel sorry if they just couldn’t understand
The idiomatic logic that went on in my head
I had a brain it was insane
Oh they used to laugh at me when
I’d refuse to ride
On all those double decker buses
All because there was no driver on the top
~spoken, with feeling~
No driver on the top? This chick is crazy, man-Boop Shooby, I mean, split city!
And brought it home to applause-
My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head
But I said dear doctor
I think that its you, instead, I said
I’ve got a thing that’s unique and new
To prove that I’ll have the
Last laugh on you
Cause instead of one head
I’ve got two.
And you know two heads are better than one…
And thus we changed the mood, and left behind a more cheerful staff. I will leave the end result of the day for another chapter.
Della's Days 