JANUARY 19, 2022 – Blogger’s note with respect to the (< 10%) breach of my 500-word limit: forgiveness asked instead of permission sought.
Monday night, I met a new friend named “Lorazapem,” my ticket to a road-side oasis along the insanity route I’d described in Monday’s post.
Hardly cured of my disease by Tuesday morning, at least I felt calmer in troubled waters.
Starting at 11:00 and concluding at 3:30, Tuesday’s clinic session was driven by mounds of empirical data processed through hard-core scientific analyses, artfully explained by my doctor, who then refined my treatment accordingly.
Along the way, I lost count of the needle pricks. What memory did secure was the doctor’s assurance that my case is treatable; that I needn’t “freak out” over unknowns yet to be analyzed and addressed.
Also locked in memory are the names of additional caregivers: “Joy,” a lab technician; “Angela,” a “shot nurse” in the infusion center; “Janiwan” at the specialty pharmacy call-in center.
“Joy!” I said. “What a delightful name for me to encounter!” As if hearing this for the first time, she gave me a lift with her joyous laugh.
Next was Angela. “I’ve been calling every healthcare worker ‘an angel,’” I said, “and now I meet someone whose name is ‘Angel’!”
Angela laughed. Pre-pandemic, she’d been a “travel nurse,” working across the country, including a small, impoverished town of West Virginia. I learned about the despair that fills forgotten corners—of our very own country.
After Janiwan handled my call, I complimented her competence and good cheer. She revealed it was her first day solo.
“You had me fooled,” I said. “You seem highly experience!” My supreme reward was hearing the relief in her response.
Furloughed until Friday, I stepped outside to await my ride. Bright, warm sunshine greeted me, just as a medical chopper flew low overhead—a reminder that with my own release arrived a soul in need.
Despite low hemoglobin, I walked as vigorously as I could, up and down well-salted walkways. No majestic mountains surrounded me; no primeval forest asleep under a quilt of snow; just urban noise and concrete. Yet, in each breath of fresh, sun-filled air, I found the inexpressible joy of being alive and in the moment.
Awaiting me at home was a gift dropped off by a friend—Neil de Grasse Tyson’s gem, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, and two jars of medicinal “Quesy Drops.”
After a late lunch, I put another gift—hiking poles—through inaugural paces along our block, a response to my doctor’s advice about conditioning.
Mail brought a card from a sister. On the outside—a hand-drawn image of a bow and violin. Inside: words of support and a fragile carbon copy of an 11/13/1978 letter from . . . me:
Dear Abby,
Since written correspondence is your “stock in trade,”perhaps you could explain to your non-writing readers, the operation of America’s postal system . . . The problem is not illiteracy.
MALE WITHOUT MAIL
Cc: [list of friends—including, ironically, the sister who’d sent yesterday’s card—from whom I’d written much but received no replies]
In further irony, my sister had jotted upon her card, “P.S. I have no idea who ‘Abby’ is.” After I revealed, “Abigail Van Buren,” the famous advice-columnist, my sister laughed—she herself had been a regular follower of “Dear Abby.”
As the sun set, the Bard’s famous line rang true for the day.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
