Beds

The prompt was to describe all of the beds I've slept in, and so -- 

My childhood bed faced my sister’s, and was positioned underneath a huge wall-hung wooden bookshelf. I worried about earthquakes in that bed, and laughed after my father left the room the night he spanked me through a thick pink woolen blanket with satin trim. When I had a bad chest cold my parents would dose me with neosinephrine drops, which they’d administer by laying me on the bed in their room, draping my head backward over the edge, nostrils to the ceiling. They’d take me back to my room and lift my bed into an angle by propping it onto a typewriter case. I loved the cozy well in the center of the bed that I carved out over the years, roughly circular, then oval as I grew taller.

I visited my sister once at her apartment when I was 4 and she was 18. She shared an apartment with a stewardess, and they lined the walls of their living room with white butcher paper so that they could draw on the walls. Her bed must have been slept in by hundreds of people. At night we needed to perch on the sides of the bed or face rolling into a hole in the center. To this day sleeping in other peoples’ beds creeps me out.

My mom would not let me take my bedding to college with me, but I did get new sheets. When I moved out of the dorm, I saved my money and bought a queen sized futon. Mom said that I was to buy an extra long twin (unspoken: harder to negotiate “the deed” in). I let her know that since I was paying for it, it would be my choice.

I wanted a different bed eventually. My sister had a cast iron bed, a double, that came in 4 pieces that fit like a jigsaw puzzle on the corners. She wrapped it in cardboard and twine and sent it to me via Greyhound bus. I bought my first real mattress, and I slept in that bed for the next 20 years, until we realized that we wanted more real estate and the mattress was kaput. It felt like sleeping on a lightly padded chain link fence, and wires were shredding our pillows. Guess it wasn't high priority!

We had a different, puffy bed for a while, graduating to a queen size.

Then a friend told us about her bed, advertised on our local NPR station. “It’s like sleeping on angel butts,” she said. So we bought one. Horrific. We felt old and our bodies hurt. After several adjustments and many restful nights sleep on our Ikea sofabed, we kept the frame and bought a new mattress at Ikea. It’s still in use.

For various reasons, including keeping cats separated, I sleep on the cast iron bed with one cat and my husband sleeps on the un angel-butted bed with the other two cats.

So ends the story of the beds.

Intriguing Medical Updates (Now With Update)

As readers of mrsguy may recall, I did my endoscopy on Thursday while M&R took mrguy on the long trek to the eye institute and MRI center. Results are not in yet.

But mrguy's are. The most recent vision field test was bad. However his brain MRI revealed some reduction in size of the blood clots. That is heading in the right direction, which is awesome. 

This morning bright and early we got a call from the eye institute inviting us to a consultation with the surgeon tomorrow morning. Our existing appointment was for July 18th, 3 weeks from now, which the head of neurology said two weeks ago that he was not cool with. "In Neurology we move quickly," he said. He indicated that if the next vision field test showed any further deterioration he was going to make things happen -- either eye surgery or the stent.

So we get up at 5am tomorrow because we will be driving in full weekday morning traffic to get to our 8am consultation tomorrow. 

We do not care. 

This is fantastic.

---UPDATE---

The surgeon was great. She wants to move quickly because his peripheral vision is worsening and once it gets closer to the center it progresses swiftly.

Mrguy's chemo is postponed depending on surgery scheduling. 

They're moving him back to the bogus blood thinner until after the surgery, we assume.

He had his labs done yesterday and his cancer marker numbers continue to decrease, which is great.

And the cat is having his abdominal ultrasound today. His lungs were clear last week and they are redoing the pathology just in case.

A Few Good Days

As I mentioned earlier, our friends are visiting from NY and we have been doing a few things while mrguy rests. He's lost weight and I am bummed about that and I have only a few days to get more poundage on him. 

Sad face. Good to have friends here to help shift the focus.

The other day we went on a walk in search of birds. We saw an osprey and a eucalyptus tree festooned with egrets.

There was also a pretty graveyard:

And views galore

And yesterday we went to the big old Asian grocery and looked at many things. I came back with snacks galore, and things to look up (what exactly do you do with jujubes?). We observed but did not purchase an item labeled "Brands Essence of Chicken".

Today we went to the shredding place. Somehow it keeps getting cheaper. $5!! And to get there we had to navigate the side streets filled with encampments. I take my friends to the best places. And then to the tile and stone store where they have a warehouse full of groovy slabs.

After a little lunch we went to the giant warehouse full of weird crap. 

Buried water line!

M was looking for a cool looking metal box to make a guitar pedal out of. Then thought better of it. 

There was also a bunch of weird old gear that had asset tags from the local university and one of the broadcast tv stations.

And when we got home there was a huge package of homemade chocolate chip cookies from the hammer. Much appreciated!

My Endoscopy!

Today it was time for my own endoscopy. I'm wearing my "His Fight is My Fight" t-shirt (available here). And I brought along -- wait for it -- celebrity chef David Chang! More on that later.

It was as I recalled from my colonoscopy. Propofol has a distinctive smell. While they were injecting me, someone said something to the effect of "This is the good stuff," and I managed to quip "That's what Michael Jackson said" right before passing out.

The doctor knows how worried I am about the results. First, I'm hoping that I don't have esophageal cancer. I was crying earlier today because what if I have it and I can't take care of mrguy, but then I realized that whatever it is will be, and we'd figure it out. The doctor reminded me of how the statistics are in my favor (women are less likely to have EC).

On exit he did not say that everything was great. I can't recall much of what he did say, other than we'll have the results of the biopsies early next week, he's going to prescribe stronger drugs, and we'll redo the test in 3 months. There were polyps in my stomach, as I can see in the paperwork he sent me home with. He biopsied some. I read on the internet that these polyps often come about in people who are on various of the drugs for reflux.

That's what I got.

And now back to the David Chang program previously in progress.

Last week a friend was reading the mrsguy updates and reminded me that her family is friends with him. And I felt bad about saying stuff about him. And it made me want to read the book that I'd returned to the free table at work.

So last week as I was headed to get some lunch, my teammates and I noticed that the free table was overflowing. Lots of layoffs means lots of stuff on the free table. 

And there it was. Eat A Peach. The same copy, with two tell-tale dots of ink on the cover, now slightly smeared. And as I needed something to entertain me today while I was suited up for the endoscopy, I brought it with me. Answered questions about it, told people how much I enjoyed his Netflix show, explained that the beef about Momofuku Chili Crunch had been settled. And out of the crenelations of my brain I was reminded of the song: "Me. And. David! David Chang (DavidChangDavidChangDavidChang). We got a thing. Go-in on...."