WHAT A WEEKEND
While the guppies gupped on Saturday I was actually productive. I vacuumed, I cleaned, I laundered, I went to the dump with TWO bags of garbage, recyclables and newspapers (saving enough to do what I've been planning to do for 2 years: cover with newspaper the part of the garden that's full of that horrible wild oregano/marjoram/whatever that Jamie's mother so generously shared with us more than 10 years ago that has now taken over my lawn, my garden, my world). Then I burned trash and picked up my yard a bit. It was a beautiful, unbelievably beautiful day. Warm and sunny, t-shirt weather. No jacket, short sleeves. Who would believe. After being productive, by 2:00 I just couldn't produce any more so I hauled out my chair and sat in the sun on the lawn (tough to find a spot that's not in the middle of a minefield of dog poop, but I did it) and read a magazine. More than miraculous was the fact that all three dogs were outside and did NOT wander, even though there were bogwalkers next door. Jackson dozed in the sun peacefully. The girls checked out the neighborhood, going down to Ken's camp and returning, going off into the woods and returning, all short trips. Good for them. It was a good day, a cheerful day, a productive day, a day to be proud of.

But then came the middle of the night, when I woke at 3:30 in great pain. Chest pain, back pain, excruciating pain. I got up, tried everything I could think of to relieve the pain. At 7:30 I called Bill to tell him I wouldn't be at Sunday dinner and I drove myself to the emergency room in Plattsburgh. Although I didn't really think I was having a heart attack, in America they keep telling us that the number one cause of death in women is heart disease. So I walked into the ER and said I was having chest pains. I love the way they respond to that. Hook you right up, give you baby aspirin to eat. They did an EKG, determined I was NOT having a heart attack. Spent hours figuring out what I was having. Did a sonogram of my gallbladder and found gallstones. Swell. So the final diagnosis was gastritis and gallstones. They tried a number of things to cure the pain, but only my best friend morphine would do it. I lovelovelove morphine. I spent 10 hours in the ER, lying on a bed hooked up to a heart monitor, separated from the next bed over by a mere curtain. 4 other patients came and went while I was there. The first was a man who also drove himself to the hospital from Constable (where we have a bookmobile stop, so proudly I knew where it was, but not a single other person there did). He was having a heart attack and was ultimately wheeled to the cardiac unit, after he got morphine, which I coveted.

Second patient was a man who proudly passed a kidney stone, which he kept in a pill bottle. It was a big one, and all the nurses admired it.

Third patient, and this was the one who nearly provoked me geriatric homicide, was a 75-year old woman from AuSable Forks, whose 4 adult (I use the term loosely) children came with her. Seems she has one artificial leg and was trying to get into her son's truck (now mind you I heard this story at LEAST 10 times) by stepping onto a milk carton (you know, one of the plastic ones). The milk carton slipped, she fell and gashed her leg on the running board ("The running board weren't even metal, it was fiberglass, and it ain't even sharp"). The gash apparently was huge ("When I do somethin' I do it right"), 4" by 6" and she is diabetic and has circulatory problems (she lost her other leg to gangrene because she didn't take care of a wound). I had to listen to them say "Him and I" ALL AFTERNOON. They were going to Pbg to buy a gas grill. I know so many details of their lives it's really pathetic. They didn't all fit inside the curtain, there were too many of them. They had a cell phone that rang really loud rock music. They kept talking about food and I felt like puking already. They all got really quiet when the doctor or nurse came to talk to me. They complained that she didn't get good enough care ("We shoulda gone to Saranac Lake, they didn't even ask if we wanted to come here"). She had to pee and asked for a catheter because it would be easier than using a bedpan. God I don't want to get obese and old. Finally, 4 doctors looked at her (which meant I had to hear the story 4 more times--this after the change in shift meant all the nurses had to be filled in on the case anew) and they whisked her off to surgery to deal with her leg.

Patient number 4 was the most pathetic. Having a heart attack. Half senile, living in a nursing home. Pretty deaf. Colostomy. Wearing a diaper. Accompanied by her daughter. So here's what I heard constantly "I can't hear you. What? I can't hear you. I'm peeing. My bowels are moving. What? I can't hear you." Jenica, if I get like that and someone has assigned me to your care (I won't), put a pillow over my face. It was awful listening to it. The daughter had incredible kindness and patience.

So I finally got discharged, at 6 p.m. with a prescription for Vicodin (by now the morphine had worn off). Well guess what, there's no pharmacy open in Plattsburgh on Sunday evening. So I had to wait until yesterday, when I took Ken to Saranac Lake for his eye appointment, where I had the prescription filled at the creepiest, strangest pharmacy I've ever been in. But I got the pills, I take the pills and the pain is better. I have an appointment with a surgeon next week. I didn't have a heart attack. My heart is fine. My liver and pancreas are fine.

This is a long boring post but my day was long and boring. Yesterday wasn't a bad day. I took the day off to take Ken to the doctor. We really do have a nice time together. His appointment took an hour, then he insisted on taking me to lunch (as if I felt like eating). We ate at the Hotel Saranac, the only restaurant I could think of in that town. We came back on the Franklin Falls Road, which winds along two bodies of water, Franklin Falls and Union Falls, both created by damming up the Saranac River. There were a bunch of kayakers getting ready to do the rapids on the river at one spot. Ken said "Does that look like fun to you?" YOU BET! It looked like a whole lot of fun to me, I envied them. Anyway, the ice was partly out of both lakes, as opposed to Silver Lake, where there's just the tiniest bit of open water along the shore. The water was deep, deep blue. The woods were brown, the sky was blue. It could have been November or April, but you knew it was April, full of optimism.