Les Portes de Bordeaux and Wild Night in Margaritaville

It's old news by now. But let me tell you how wild it was.

Last Thursday my mom had more work done on her root canal. Which meant that on Friday she tried out a new pain pill since the Vicodin did not work out the last time. Tramadol. Who names these things, and how can I get a job like that?-- because I love to name things. Tramadol is not a fabulous name for a pain pill, in my opinion. Trauma Dolls, however, might be a great name for a band. If you want great names for meds, read George Saunders's short story, "Escape from Spiderhead." It is a mind-blowingly great story. The names he invented for the medications induced in me serious naming envy. After reading that story, I damn near had to take some Nocovette, I was so sick with jealousy.

But back to the wild night. On Friday evening, we had dinner on a boat. Except that we were in our dining room. So not really on a boat.

Stay with me.

As my mom gingerly chewed her way through her dinner of soft foods, her head nodding, her eyes closing from time to time, M and I took turns waking her. I'm not sleeping, she'd say. Which is what she always says on these narcoleptic journeys. This, however, was a narcoleptic journey on Tramadol, and there was some serious tilting. More serious than usual. Starboard. Port. Starboard. Port. M and I shuffled our chairs closer and closer, at the ready to keep her from going overboard.

Which reminds me of a hysterical story one of my kids told me ages ago about a class of middle-schoolers who freaked out their teacher by quietly inching their desks forward every time the teacher turned to write on the blackboard.

So every time my mom opened her eyes, M and I were closer. Finally, we were all in a row. "All right," she said to M., "you do the dishes. I'm going to bed." And she did. And the next day, she was much better.

And somewhere during one our wild Margaritaville nights this past weekend, we tried cheap wine #2, Les Portes de Bordeaux 2009. Nice. Very nice. Did you know that portes in French means door. I love beautiful doors. The doors pictured in this post are on the Greek island of Naxos, not Bordeaux. But for some reason, I've been thinking of these doors.

And just to sail onwards on this random sea, if there were, as daughter C. would like, an entire channel devoted to footage from Russian dash cams, here is my list of show names:

Anna Kamerina

Brothers Kameras On or Off

Idiots

Crime and Punishment: Live!

Cheap Wine # 1

"So......"I said to M. "On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most fabulous bottle of wine you've ever had for 4.99, what do you think of this?" We were drinking Chiusa Grande Tommolo Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. It sounds fucking fabulous, doesn't it? Like you could whisper "Tommolo montepulciano" in a lover's ear, and things would just get more and more grande as the night went along. But, sadly, no. That is not what we thought of cheap wine #1.

There's always tomorrow. Right?

And since, in the Province of Pillville, things are a bit rocky at the moment after a visit to the endodontist, I have no business being lost in oenophilean bliss. I will sleep with one ear and one eye open, hoping my mom gets some relief from the pain pills she needs to weather the aftermath of her root canal.

There's always tomorrow. Right?
photo credit: lerevdr.wordpress.com

Report from Pillville: the vascular surgeon, the pulmonologist, the cardiologist, the endodontist

Chill. It's pretty much good news.

 I might have busted out a bottle of champagne tonight after the crown fell off of my mom's tooth that has the root canal in progress. No pain is always a reason for celebration, right? I did call the dentist (the regular dentist and not the endodontist) and explain to him that we'd just finished dinner --which meant that I'd polished off two glasses of wine and  could not drive the 20 miles to the endodontist--even if he would see us. No worries, the regular dentist said. She's not in pain because the nerve on the root canal tooth is out of commission so, call us at 8:00 a.m. and we'll work her in tomorrow and cement the crown back on.

Earlier today we had a post-carotid artery, post-echocardiogram follow-up with the cardiologist. Yes, there's a slight amount of plaque in the carotid. Yes, there's a bit of leakage in two heart valves. Blood pressure and heart rate are fab. All over condition is summed up as stable. Hooray for not smoking.

At some point this week (geez, is it only Wednesday?) we also had a follow-up with the vascular surgeon. He's happy with the outcome of the procedure my mom had on Nov. 1. Her feet and legs look better and feel better. She's walking better. The ultrasound shows increased circulation.  Hooray for not smoking.

I have no fucking idea when, exactly, but sometime very recently we also went to the pulmonologist--who, himself, is 80 years old. A charming man. The office is housed in a quirky cottage with office staff so nice that I feel like I should show up with donuts or a fruit basket or a tray of Starbucks peppermint mochas with extra whipped cream. Her lungs sound fine. Better even. Hooray for not smoking.

Cardiologist and pulmonologist follow-ups are in four months. We don't see the vascular surgeon until June. Holy shit. I'm going to have to start writing again. I mean like really writing and sending work out because now I'm actually going to have time to read those rejection letters. I've decided that henceforth all of my mom's appointments are going to be scheduled for Mondays and Wednesdays. Preferably these will also be the days when teeth fall out, and hearing aids get lost, and we run out of gin. Because I'm going to try to remember how to write--and I'll need Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays to figure that shit out.

photo credit: Sam Kunz

Scream. Laugh. Scream. Laugh.

Life in Margaritaville had a few days where it felt like we were on a tightrope affixed to a seesaw on a pitching ship.

The trip to the endodontist seemed like a good thing last Thursday since the tooth had been wanting some attention for a while. My mom was full of novocain Thursday evening. It was after 6:00 when we arrived back home. She had a little leftover homemade cream of celery soup and a martini and called it dinner. Her mouth was so numb that chewing anything at all seemed like asking for trouble. She went to bed. I slept with my door open, fearing that moment when the anesthetic finally wears off.

She looked rather peaked in the morning, her jaw on the affected side a purple golf ball, but she had already mushed through a donut soaked in coffee by the time I got downstairs. Her tooth was definitely hurting, she said, but she'd taken her arthritis acetaminophen. She wasn't great, she said, but she was okay. I went to T'ai Chi Chih.

I thought the howling might be the neighbor's dog. I could hear it from the garage as soon as I opened my car door. My mom was in her room hovering around her pill boxes, hands to face like Edvard Munch's screamer. "I can't take it, Millie," she said. "I can't take the pain, Millie." I am not Millie. Millie is her twin sister who lives in a nursing home in Maryland. I  called the dentist immediately. Got a prescription for vicodin. Gave my mom an ice pack. Ascertained that she was in her right mind despite the ache in her jaw. Checked to see if she had a fever. And proceeded to suddenly feel my own weird array of aches and pains swirling with a large dose of anxiety as I headed for that state of omygodwhaddoido.

The doorbell rang then. M was here earlier than usual for the weekend. When I told her what was going on, she threw open her arms and said, "Well, I'm glad I'm here then!" In the surreal movie version of this story, the camera would pan back to her and there she'd be in tall boots and a super-hero cape.

M and I went to the pharmacy and got the pain meds. Vicodin. Which my mom can't take. But forgot-- until the next morning when she woke up with the dry heaves. "I know I can't be pregnant," she said. "But I sure feel like it." But by noon on Saturday, she was almost feeling like herself. We got dressed up Saturday night and went out to the yacht club buffet and watched the boats float by festooned with Christmas lights. Shortly after we got back the man who loves me arrived. He and I sat at the kitchen island drinking wine while my mom stood across from us with her martini (so much better than the one she had at the club) and we laughed and talked about I don't know what. But we were laughing, which is the best pain killer ever.  Oh--and we were feasting on the cookies my mom had made off with from the dessert platter. She swiped a big linen napkin and tied them up like a present. Feeling like herself again. There are still a couple of those cookies left. I'm going to go have one.