Somebody Told My Story

A very sweet girl from work procured me a copy of Third, the brand new Portishead CD and their first release in almost a decade of silence. A return to form. Beth Gibbons' voice is perfect for such a darkly alien-looking morning of heavy rain, where the grass outside my window bears the same color as the album cover, and the veins under my white skin look like blue cheese under its light. Good morning, everyone.

My father was in considerably improve spirits last night after waiting all day for word on his release from the hospital. Seems that most of yesterday morning he was left in bed with no one offering to help him out of it in order to walk around, and when the next nurse came on duty at 3pm she was outraged that he had been left in bed moaning in agony ever since his surgery so she helped him get up and taught him how to walk around and shift his weight, and with the help of some oxygen he was able to do more than shuffle two steps and collapse like his last feeble attempt by himself with no assistance. Once he did that he felt a thousand times better, and my mom (who by that point was becoming frustrated and stepped outside the hospital for a cigarette and cool off a bit) returned to my dad's room to find him sitting up without his CPAP mask, smiling and cheerful and, as he told me over the phone last night, "filled with hope again." Amazing what a little exercise will do for the body, no matter how much the body may resist it (once again, a lesson I should have embedded in my forehead by now).

I remember when I had my gall bladder out, Thanksgiving 1993. The day after Thanksgiving, actually, but I was in the hospital Thanksgiving Day watching The Planet Of The Apes marathon and eating Jell-O, with my grandmother one floor down from me who was in for her "dropped foot". The day after surgery the nurse was hounding me to get up and walk down the corridors and I was insistent that this would be an impossibility with the pain I was in on that side of me (which is hard to describe for anyone who has never had surgery but best imagined as someone sticking a long stick into your guts and going swishwishwishwishwissssss -- which is pretty much what they did to me anyway since my gall bladder was discovered somehow wrapped around my liver, so they had to move a lot of junk around to get to it). But the nurse was like, "Oh no, missy. You're getting up right now and marching right down that hallway and back, so up-up-up!" and there I was grumpily shuffling up and down the corridor in my half-opened hospital gown and dragging my little IV stand with me for about 10 minutes before I trotted back to bed pouting the whole way. But I have to admit, the more I did this, the better I felt. The tight soreness in my side loosened over time, and by the time I got home I would get out of bed and wander around the house until Mother would turn me around and march me back to bed again. I remember lying precariously on the edge of my bed reading Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas and MTV was premeiring the Weezer video to "Buddy Holly", which at the time made me laugh so hard I actually rolled off the bed and plopped down onto the floor, which left me howling through most of the song until my mother rushed into the room to help pick me back up again.

Just called the hospital. Still no word on being discharged, and he still hasn't been seen by a cardiologist yet. Man, so little communication at that place. I've so often heard not good things about all the Sentaras in town. I was there once in 1994, when I had the Death Cough and I hacked so hard driving around the parking lot over at Military Circle I pulled the cartilage off my rib and Joe rushed me to the nearest hospital -- Sentara Leigh. They were all very nice and competent people, just like it seems they are now. Though I may be wrong but they may have just been Leigh Memorial then (locals, how long has Sentara owned Leigh?). All I remember was being grouchy that I had to miss seeing Alice Donut at the Kings Head Inn that night.