Joe sends a few lines

[Gay Haldeman]

From Gay:  Joe wrote a bit about his experience, below.  He’s actually feeling better and the doc thinks he’ll be even better tomorrow.  We’ll see.  Still no food or water, ugh.

From Joe: I had Gay bring this  computer to the hospital, so I could write a couple of lines.

Not so much pain, as such, but new vistas in discomfort and inconvenience.  Having your life completely defined and delimited by bladder and bowels – without even the compensation of food and drink.  I can sometimes suck on an ice cube, but not to excess (seriously!) and get all my water intravenously.  All at the sufferance of long-suffering nurses.  

The problem is an ileus.   It’s a digestive Catch-22.  I’m not taking in any solid food, but the problem won’t be resolved until there is some solid waste.  The stomach keeps producing secretions, which are sucked up through my nose tube.  The suction has to stop periodically so medicine can be taken orally, and when it stops I bloat up like a tick.  (Never thought I’d come to prefer injections over pills!)   Ultimately enough solid waste will appear as a byproduct of this activity, so we can move on to Step n-1, which is a diet of clear liquids and gels.. Step n is Food, after which I Step out.

Tree pollen season has started, so the situation is made more interesting by the nose tube being a pollen nexus, so my head is a mass of unreachable itches.

It just don’t get much better than this.

No actual writing and no high-octane reading, either.  Brain is too drug –fuzzy.  Short-term memory shot and reasoning pretty basic.  Like, I can follow Sopranos but find Gorky Park a real challenge.  Gay brings me watercolor and astronomy magazines, so I can pretend to have a life in those directions. 

Shouldn’t complain.  But I can  whine.

Joe
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