Think pink

The C-word. Cancer. It seems to be everywhere lately.

Someone very dear to me had surgery this week for breast cancer and I'm all out of sorts over it. If it's messing with my head this much, I can't even imagine how see is dealing with the stress and mental anguish of being the patient, let along coping with the physical assault on her body in the name of trying to get well.

I also recently learned that another dear friend has been undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. And another friend's spouse has been dealing with the same disease.

This seems like a time when I should have something profound and meaningful to say. But I'm just numb. I don't know anything appropriate to say to them or those close to them. I want them to be better. To feel better. And selfishly I want to know that they will be around for a long, long time for myself and those I care about who care about them.

My thoughts are also inevitably drawn to the cancers survivors -- and those who lost their fights -- among friends, family, former colleagues. I am reminded of their strength and spirit and appreciation for life.

Get better my friends. Some great people have blazed the trail you now tread.

Nurse, what a hairy face you have

I am beginning to feel like I'm finally on the mend. The cold or flu or whatever it was seems to finally be in retreat. I'm no longer living from dose to dose of cold medication. After days of getting by on the nourishment of one meal and glass after glass of orange juice and water, I am finally getting my appetite back.

I didn't exactly have a traditional Thanksgiving, but after days of not eating, the decadent bowl of chicken soup I consumed, and mounds of crackers, hit the spot quite well.

I also finally got some nursing care, so to speak. Actually, I ended up playing nurse for family pets. Because I was not up to traveling to a family gathering for the holiday, I got some company from my daughter's pets -- two dogs and three cats.

One of the cats, a rather elderly male, is suffering from diabetes and now requires insulin shots. So, after days of medicating myself, I also got to medicate a cat.

I hate needles, and even though the needle wasn't going into me, I felt ill-prepared, and a bit squeamish about sticking a needle in another living creature. But overall, the cat probably handled the whole ordeal with less stress and discomfort than I felt.

I wasn't too thrilled with playing nurse, but in reality I think I got more care than I gave. After spending the better part of several days wrapped up alone in bed, it was nice to have the company. With so many critters, they all took turns cuddling up to make me feel needed and loved and warm. And they are all pretty much lazy as hell, wanted to do not much more than nap all the time, so we got along famously.

They were a little hairier than the nurses I had envisioned, but I appreciated the cuddly pampering none the less.

I didn't mean to clean

Perhaps I managed to sleep through it for a while, but immediately upon waking this morning I noticed a high-pitched, mechanical "chirp" outside my bedroom door. The intermittent sound was the annoying call of a dead battery in the smoke detector.

OK, I admit I didn't do the whole safety thing that fire departments advise when you set your clocks for the time change, where you also change your smoke detector battery. Not this fall. Not earlier this spring. Not ever in this apartment. That battery has been in there since virtually my first day in this apartment more than two years ago. But I'll come back to that.

So, in my groggy first-awakening state, I made the most rational decision I could deduce at the time. I crawled back in bed and pulled the covers up over my ears. That definitely didn't solve the problem. The blanket did not block the sound. If anything it seemed as if the chirping was happening inside my scull. I thought briefly that if I had a thin stick, maybe I could go in through my ear and make that sound stop. Something prevented me from trying that, but it sure wasn't any form of rational, cognitive thought process.

So I got back up.

Maybe I should stop the sound at the source, rather than inside my head.

I decided to scavenge a battery out of my answering machine. I knew that battery was fresh because I just put it in there a few weeks ago after canceling voice mail service on my phone and dragging my old answering machine out of mothballs.

So, using a kitchen chair, I fumble around with the smoke detector and unfasten it from the ceiling mount. So far so good. But I can't get a very good look at it because the electrical wires running to it are still connected and keep me from pulling it down to eye level. I twist the thing around, scanning it from side to side, front to back, apparently looking for some big arrow or something or bold directions on how to open the thing. In my groggy state -- attributed to just waking up, cold medication hangover and the lingering effects of the bug that's been kicking my butt -- I see nothing. There is no way to open the damn thing. None.

So I put it back, climb down and wonder what to do next. So, I decide to call the apartment manager's office and see if they can send a maintenance person to either fix it or show me how to fix it. But of course when I call the office wasn't yet open, so I left a message on their answering machine/voice mail.

Then I look around the living room and kitchen and see evidence of my poor housekeeping skills strewn all about the room, spilling off the coffee table, overflowing the garbage can and collecting in the sink.

If company is coming, I need to tidy up, I thought, and set about doing just that. Obviously, I was still not fully awake, because when thoughts of house cleaning occur to my conscious mind, I sit down on the coach, put my feet up and wait until those thoughts pass. It usually only takes a few moments. Particularly if the TV is on and the remote is handy. But the TV is still broken, so my procrastination device of choice was not available.

So after an hour or so of tidying, I was content that the place no longer looked like a rat's next. Just a bachelor's apartment which hadn't been cleaned in a few weeks. The perfect look I was going for.

All that physical exertion, besides bringing on a coughing fit, also severed to wake my up and get my brain functioning. I remembered that when I first started moving stuff into the apartment the smoke detector was chirping. I told the office about it, since I figured it was their problem and something not working in my new apartment. But a day or two later, when I was moving in and planning to spend the night in the place for the first time, the detector was still chirping. I didn't remember how I figured out how to open the thing, but I knew I replaced the battery in there, because I remember the office staff telling me they still needed to send someone to check it out even though I told them they took to long and didn't need to send someone anymore.

So I knew it could be done. I knew I could do it, because I had done it before. So, being more fully awake, I took another crack and the annoying safety device in the hall. And this time, I could clearly see the battery cover door. But the door was blocked by the plastic housing the electric wires from the ceiling went into. Well, obviously, that housing must detach I thought. Where was that logic and reasoning skill an hour earlier, when I really needed it, before I was forced to clean! So, I squeezed the plastic housing on each side, and sure enough, the sized retracted and pulled free from the device. Then I was able to easily access the battery.

In a few minuted I had swapped out the battery and put the device back up on the ceiling.

This adventure proved a few of my long-held theories.

1. I am not a morning person.
2. My brain doesn't function correctly when I'm sick. In technical terms, it's know as feeling ooogie and blah, or having a brain cloud.
3. Housework really can be avoided if you are willing to work hard enough at it.

Well, I'm hoping the worse of the brain clouds, nasal congestion, coughing fits and other assorted ickiness, which need not be divulged here, are soon to be behind me (especially the undivulged ickiness).

Here's to hoping you are suffering no brain clouds or other ickiness for the holidays. Happy Thanksgiving all.

Sick of being sick

I thought I would be feeling better by now, but no such luck. There are points in the day where I feel almost human under the full bliss of the cold medication, and then soon after I start hacking and coughing so much that I end up pulling bronchial matter off my teeth.

I'm so tired of this.

I'm sure I've prolonged things by trying to work this week, which I should not have done. I know that now. If I'm not feeling better in the morning I won't make that mistake again. I spent part of my evening getting a stern lecture about how poor of a job I am doing taking care of myself from the nurse in the family. Maybe my post on Friday seeking a nurse is backfiring on me. Be careful what you wish for, indeed. That wasn't in the script.

Thanksgiving dinner is beginning to look like it will consist of a bowl of soup and a glass of orange juice with a side order of DayQuil.

Oh crap, I just re-read my Friday post and I used the side order of cold medication line there. God, I'm repeating myself. I blame fever.

Kid, can't you see I'm trying to be pissed off here?

I strongly suspect this cold I'm suffering through may be more than a cold. I fully expected to be getting better by today, which didn't happen. If anything, it may be getting worse. The hacking cough and raw throat are an added joy compounding the overall misery.

I have very little patience when I'm sick. I can be a very patient man, but times like these take it out of me. On my way home from work I swung by a bank to hit an ATM to get some cash for things like cold medication and food. When I pulled up to the drive-through ATM there was already a car sitting in front of the machine. I didn't think much about it, until I realized the attention of the chick in the car (yes, I said chick, get over it). was directed more toward her passenger seat than out the window.

So I started paying more attention to what was going on in front of me. After several moments I realized that she had not once had her hand out the window and in contact with the machine. As I caught a glimpse of her in her rear-view mirror, it looked like she had a cell phone cradled under her chin. Several more minutes passed before I could see her licking the sticky flap of a deposit envelop. Apparently whatever banking transaction she was conducting was exceedingly complex and took telephone instructions. Of course, my reaction was, "That's what the teller windows inside the bank are for BITCH!"

About that time, the cutest little girl pops her head up over the back seat and looks at me out the rear window of the car and smiles the most disarming smile.

I smiled back.

Cute kids do it to me every time.

I was tired, cranky, feeling awful and impatient. I wanted to be pissed at the person keeping me from getting potent cold medication. I was enjoying been angry! Then the cute kid smiled at me.

I really should not be allowed out among the public when I'm ill.

Wrapped in a comforter and still uncomfortable

Spending the weekend home alone and sick, without even a television for company makes me realize how much I rely on the television as a surrogate for socialization.

I didn't get to hang out with my regular Sunday friends like Terry, Howie and Jimmy and Bob, Cris, Al and John, not to mention Faith. And the day has not been complete since I didn't get to cap it by spending quality time with my Brothers & Sisters.

Today, my closest companions have been a glass of orange juice, a box of cold medicine and the comforter on my bed.

Cold comfort, that.

Is there life without television?

As my friend Gene pointed out in his comment on my previous post, being down with a cold is a great time for feeling sorry for yourself. I am doing my best to elevate that to a high art today -- in between naps.

I didn't have the most restful sleep last night, as my coughing and stuffy nose woke me up several times through the night, but I did manage to spend about 12 straight hours in bed. When I did finally get out of bed, I still wasn't feeling hungry even though I had skipped dinner last night. So I settled in on the couch for a long day curled up under a blanket and watching college football. But when I hit the button on the remote to fire up the boob tube, I was only greeted by a mocking silence. The TV is dead.

It's the second TV to die on me in the last year. The little second-hand TV I had in the bedroom died some month back. Now the one in the living room gave up the ghost too. As if being sick was not enough reason to feel sorry for myself, the prospect of enduring days of illness at home with no television left me completely depressed. With a congested head, I can't think clearly, but I'm not sure what to do about this latest development. Buying a new TV is decidedly not in the budget right now. So rather than spending money I don't have on a new television I may just cancel my cable service and try living without any TV at all for a while. I could certainly do with one less bill a month. But I am afraid that with no TV at home I will end up spending more money outside the house.

So I'm not sure what to do. I am hoping that once this fog that's enveloped my head lifts, a course will become clearer. But in the meantime, I spent the day today listening to about 8 hours of radio including the pre- and post-game shows from my beloved Oregon State Beavers football game. I would have much rather watched the game, but as it was, it gave me the opportunity to stay up on the game and sleep off and on throughout the afternoon. Fortunately, the Beavers won in spectacular fashion, or the day would have been pretty much a complete loss.

If anyone has an extra television they are willing to sell cheap, let me know. Otherwise, I may be getting quite well acquainted with staring out the window for the next several months.

Nurse wanted: Inquire within

I'm coming down with a cold. I started the day feeling fine, but this one came on fast. And it's already feeling like it's going to be a nasty one. Hopefully, it's not the deadly one.

OK, maybe that's a bit melodramatic. But I get that way when I'm sick.

Most of the time I'm fairly well adapted to being single. Not that it's always great and not that I always like it, but I'm used to it. But there are times when I realize that as social creatures, people just aren't built to be alone. Sometimes we need someone to look after us, pamper us. Protect us. Reassure us. Reassure me that I will get better, served up on a silver try with a glass of juice to wash it down and a side of cold medication to clear the head. Oh, and tissues -- lots of them.

Tickle, tickle, tickle

I went in to work today and found out that several people in the office called in sick on Friday. I was off playing hooky myself, taking some time off after working the previous weekend.

I'd been home for hours when I felt a little tickle in my nose, and a sneeze snuck up on me. That tickle is the feeling I often experience when a cold is coming on.

I hope that tickle was a false alarm. I don't want to be sick. I hate being sick.

Of course if I were smart, I'd be in bed right now, making sure I am getting plenty of rest.

There has never been sufficient proof that I'm overly bright. My last post should prove that. That and the fact that I'm still typing this post straight into Blogger rather then in another text editing program.

But it's just a short post.

And it was just a little tickle. And a little sneeze.

Cold and flu season
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