1. What did you do in 2022 that you’d never done before? I scored an alarming quantity of Percocet from an emergency room in Kentucky and learned about auditory hallucinations. Talked with a detective about a bullet hole in the library window. Had surgery. Wore booty leggings.
2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions? I ticked off all my art goals (sales, shows, competitions) and you know what? I'm just going to get fit this year. It's a classic, and there are no deadlines and gallery fees.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? My cousin, who is my age, is having her SECOND grandchild.
4. Did anyone die? Both of Mike's grandparents died this year. My college friend died of MS. One of my high school classmates was murdered, another died of natural causes. My friend's little sister, who I knew growing up on Molokai and had Thanksgiving with every year, killed herself. One of my college professors died last week. My old fat cat died in my arms. The body count has been getting out of control in recent years, I DO NOT LIKE IT.
5. What places did you visit? I went to a library conference in Chattanooga and made it a whole day before ending up in the ER with my organs rupturing. Went to a concert in Waikiki. Scared myself in a cave. Ran from a woman screaming about the devil on a ghost tour. Took the kids on a spooky nighttime ride on the historic Ewa train.
6. What would you like to have in 2023 that you lacked in 2022? Another year gone, and I am still not wearing metallic pants.
30. Who did you miss? If dream appearances count for anything, I was missing my high school boyfriend a bit this year (the good one, not the one who's in jail for getting high and stealing a door). We kept bumping into each other, saying hi, and then moving on with the regular dream. Another guy also showed up a few times, usually in a crowd and avoiding eye contact, so I'd keep walking, pretending not to have noticed, and then fall down a flight of stairs or something. I am missing being friends, I guess.
31. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2022. It's not vitamins, you need to see a doctor.
Having an impaired short term memory might be more fun if it didn't come with the risk of burning the house down. And being pantsless when the fire department shows up because you started organizing wrapping paper halfway through getting dressed, and then went to put laundry in the washer and got distracted looking for chicken eggs. I wonder if now would be a good time to angle for a service dog.
I’m still recovering from general anesthesia, which turns out to be a longer process than you feel like it should be. I’m mostly fine, so I tried to go back to work today, and it took me about 10 minutes to realize that a) being vertical is no good, because my legs are wobbly in a kind of unpredictable and exciting way where they just GIVE OUT, and b) my short term memory is in the toilet, which means my reading comprehension is also in the toilet, which is no good for a librarian. I can read words, I just can’t connect them to anything for longer than a minute. Writing this is an adventure.
So I’m back home, winding a ball of yarn and watching cozy British murder mysteries that I can’t follow at all because I’ve forgotten who got killed halfway through.
Surgery was fine. They dressed me in a plastic gown that made we sweat like a rotisserie chicken, and I told my doctor I would not apologize, because he was the one who decided that this was what he wanted to do with his life. After he left, my nurses all started talking about how handsome he was, and I said, “yeah, well, he came recommended anyway.”
In the recovery room, after I had come around and had a glass of water, the nurses talked freely with one another, banking on their patients having the memories of gold fish. But SURPRISE, terrible work stories are my special interest, and I just jettisoned all my other memories to make room for it.
What one of them said was this:
“I have to work another late shift. Last week I worked one of these shifts, and I got off in the middle of the night. I was driving home on the Pali, and the roads were empty, and I drove RIGHT ONTO the scene of a motorcycle crash. There was a MAN laid out in the middle of the road, and here I was, the first person to come along. And I was like… should I stop? YES, I stopped, don’t worry, I stopped. His friends were all just standing around, talking and looking at him. I didn’t really want to move him, but he was in the road, and he was moving, so I started assessing him. And this guy was MEAN. I said, “do you have a head injury?” And he was like ‘HOW WOULD I KNOW?’ I said, ‘Were you wearing a helmet?’ His friends looked around and found his helmet, which had a crack down the middle and had flown off him, so yeah, he had a head injury. I rolled him over, and he complained, and I was like, ‘I’m just checking you for road rash, settle down.’ And this guy, he had road rash from his lower back aaaall the way down his butt, his pants were pushed down, and pieces of his underwear were, like, embedded in the road rash. I asked his friends if they had called an ambulance and they said no, they had called a guy with a truck. A GUY WITH A TRUCK. I said I could call 911, and the guy was yelling, ‘nooo, hospitals are so expensive, I’m fine.’ His friends were more worried about how they’d get his bike home, like it was this big inconvenience that he’d crashed his motorcycle and now they didn’t know what to do with it. I’m sure alcohol was involved here, and that’s why they didn’t want to involve the police or paramedics. ‘WE CALLED A GUY WITH A TRUCK.’ Ridiculous.”
I didn’t get to find out whether she called an ambulance anyway or let the dummies roll their buddy into a truck and take off, because the nurses had to wheel someone out of the room.
Everything is ok for now. Going to pop a pain pill and take a nap. Thanks for thinking of me, folks.
Listening to a surgeon talk to your husband is wild.
To me: “It’s a relatively quick procedure, we’ll remove the bad stuff, then wake you up, and you can go home after a few hours in recovery, with pain meds that you can take if you feel like you need to. You can go back to work in a couple days, if you have a job where you can sit and not move much.”
To Mike: “I’m going to use a cold blade, rather than a heated blade that sears the flesh as you cut, because we want those raw margins for testing. I’m going to cut in at an angle to remove a large cone of tissue, going as deep as possible without hitting a major blood vessel and causing uncontrollable bleeding, because that would be emergent, and we’d have to do a hysterectomy to save her life.”
Alright, I’m going in.
Edit: I’m alive. Now I get to find out if my paintings are better on oxycodone.
Pre-op appointments and ultrasound results today.
High grade pre-cancer, surgery on Wednesday the 7th, general anesthesia. If it goes further than he expects, or if the deeper tissue shows cancer, then there will be more surgery.
I feel like throwing up, but at least it’s speedy action.
But it was also the year I sold some paintings and bought an oven. The year I climbed around underground in a crystal cave like a goblin, drank whiskey that was so foul an entire line of librarians spit it out, got a very tight hug from a very old friend, rescued a whole bag of kittens, and helped two homeless library patrons achieve food and housing. Zenny's kidneys are now working like they're supposed to, the type of cancer we're looking at is highly survivable, weight is losable, and everything is okay.
xoxo,
h
(I'll add more pictures later.)
the foods
