Dirty

And I suppose a clean heart is a happy heart. My heart feels a little grimy today. I lost perspective last night. It took hours to get my brother released from the hospital yesterday. The ineptitude made me suspicious and grumpy. If they can't do paperwork and are so bad at administrative stuff, maybe they didn't do a good job with the surgery either. And what the heck--should a guy who's just had some of his thigh bone sawed off and some artificial parts put into his body really be going home on day three post-op?. The hospital had no on-site pharmacy, and it was 6:00 on a Saturday night when we began the process of easing him and his new hip into his truck. By the time we got him home and realized he needed his meds, we remembered oh yeah, the prescriptions we couldn't fill at the hospital needed filling.
So dinner was late, really late, and that was my job. My mother had her two martinis on an empty stomach, and by the time the cheese sandwhiches and the chicken soup were on the table, it was as if the alcohol had performed some kind of reverse lobotomy, and agitation became the name of the game. I felt as if we were all on a boat as I watched my mom listing to one side. I wanted to be the man overboard then. I went to sleep clutching my cell phone to my chest thinking of all the things I wanted to tell the man who loves me--how I was feeling awful, and that I just wasn't up to this whole scene.
Only it really wasn't all about me. I guess I finally remembered that this morning.

What I know about total hip replacement surgery:

1) Ouch

2) The doctor said it's like an "internal amputation."

3 If putting weight on one of your legs is impossible, upper body strength is key for doing just about anything.

4) My brother is really pretty amazing.

Looking Behind Me

I whittled away the day at Baltimore Washington Medical Center where my brother had a total hip replacement on Wednesday. Today my mother joined him there as an outpatient for a pulmonary function test. I spent a couple hours shuttling between the two of them, remembering two years ago when I wore a path down the hallways while my mother was a patient there after a lung re-section that excised a cancerous tumor. BWMC was my mother's second hospital that July. By the time she was admitted she could barely swallow; she had trouble keeping food down and was in constant pain.

Today I recognized the hallway where I once stood at the window looking out across the parking lot at the trees while I talked on the phone with some cubicle-ite at Aetna Insurance. I was begging for confirmation that my new insurance policy would be activated before I was dropped from my ex-husband's policy. I had already had my chiropractor and dermatologist provide the minutiae Aetna had requested. "You already know everything about me," I explained. "I've been covered by Aetna for the last twenty years.  All I'm trying to do is change from my husband's Aetna policy to my own Aetna policy." The new policy department could not access the records department, they told me. The conversation didn't end successfully , but before I made it to the elevator to go back up to my mom, my phone rang again. It was my friend Suzanne.

I sobbed into the phone. "Go back to your mom," she said. Then she told me she'd call my ex- husband and ask him to keep me on his insurance policy for a few more weeks--which she did, and he agreed.

Now two summers later, I'm amazed and grateful that I still have my mother--and as I think back on the four years since my marriage ended, I'm so thankful for all the things that my friends have done to help me.