210801 This summer just keeps getting weirder...

 August 1

Well, not the camp road, the apple sisters and the mosaics, just the health challenges have been weird, and maddening!

*****

I like this camp road more each day. Now, in the middle of summer, it is calm, with filtered sunlight and a soft-colour palette of last year's brown leaves underfoot and this year's summer green above. It must be only in spring, when there is enough sun coming through, that flowers can bloom here. 

*****

This Thursday began the same way last Thursday began. I spent Wednesday night awake with unmanageable pain. Once again K drove me to Cowansville Hospital, once again we were escorted to the head of the line, although even then we were more than an hour waiting. All the while I was almost beside myself with pain. [At the time, I said my pain was a ten on the pain scale, but I have since learned that you have to BE beside yourself, delirious, to count the pain as a ten. So, a nine: thrashing and wailing.]

I was given pain meds even before I saw the doctor, then he came in with, "What's all this wailing and thrashing! Relax!" Of course I was hyperventilating - that's what pain does best! But he was very attentive and kind and said, "We'll make a plan." After some scrambling he managed to find last week's file. Having said that arthritis doesn't hurt this much, the doctor arranged for a CT scan. By then his shift was almost over, and soon after, his replacement turned up at my bedside and said, "You're back!" It was my nice doctor from last Thursday. I said, "I've been trying to track you down! I needed more meds." He and the day doctor had discussed my case and decided it was not cancer nor an infection, but muscular. [I presume that means damage to the muscle, a strain, something to mend.] "I will give you more pain meds and a scrip to see a physiotherapist." While I was there I was given proper pain meds on schedule, which was the kindest thing they did. I was getting some sleep at last. It was nice to have K by my side. And again, we left the hospital, caught the open-late pharmacy and drove the 45 minutes back home. 

*****

Friday was good. I watched the complicated skies.

I walked over to see the apple sisters - I sometimes have called them the guardian witches because they stand by the driveway - they are beautiful now, heavy with apples already turning red. It is a pair of trees, growing together into one canopy.

Saturday was not a good day at all - I yelled a lot. But last night went well and today I am more myself. I am able to do stuff, like breathe and eat. I am making comfort food for dinner: corn pancakes, also eggs, avocado and fruit. It is a relief to be back on my feet. New mosaic projects are gathering materials around the window sills. I can't work on anything today, but ideas keep coming. 

     

Be well, be kind. Thank you for visiting.

Mumma Yaga