Pretending to Farm

The Lord of the Vertebrae Part Three- The Return of the Patient

Our “As the Spine Surgery Turns” saga now resumes with David just returning from the hospital and settling into Robert’s shocking landfill of a room. Anticipating both David’s return and his father’s visit, I had asked Robert to clean his bedroom, successfully checked it for cleanliness the morning before and, in my haste, asked Robert to change the sheets as a favor to me and his dad. Even knowing my a-month-from-teenaged son as I do, what we found surprised me. Pulling back the quilt to tuck David in bed, I found both the top and bottom sheets “on” somewhere between diagonal and sideways with the fitted corners of the bottom sheet floating in between mattress corners. The bed, floor, and dressers were covered with “Dungeons and Dragons” books and papers and any articles of clothing Robert had worn within the last 24 hours were strewn throughout the room. Embarrassed falls short of describing how I felt. Even though my father-in-law is a very accepting and easy-going guy, as a daughter-in-law, I wanted to make a good impression. I failed miserably.

Despite my shortcomings as a housekeeper, Grandpa was nonjudgmental and was a superb help, particularly with David and with the pint-sized. Although he tried to be a farmer, Daisy, the Boer goat, prevented him from doing so with her a-man's-groin-height sharp horns at every turn. Whether she had a great crush on him and, like young grade school boys everywhere, decided to butt him instead of revealing her true feelings for him, or she had a true and totally unfounded dislike for him, I do not know but Daisy would not let him be. When at last she drew blood, I decided Grandpa’s short farming career had ended. As that afforded him more time with Pint, typically a less dangerous and more entertaining task, I don’t think he minded much.

I could bore you with every detail of the next few days of sleep-deprived nights and pain-filled days, but even if you could bear to hear it, I don’t care to relive it. David is getting better and I think (hope) the worse is over. To prepare you, gentle readers, for a similar situation, I offer these observations and suggestions:

• Because they lack a uterus, men do not handle post-trauma pain well. They might be tough about the day to day stuff but surgery is a whole different ball of ouch. The two main types of men either (a.) revert to their infancy or (b.) become grumpy enough to make short insensitive comments that make their caregivers cry. Guess which man I have. Hint: he’s no baby.

• Doctors should prescribe just as many good drugs to the caregiver as they do to the patient just for nursing (putting up with) said patient.

• Men do not do what they are told to do or not to do, particularly if the person doing the telling is their spouse. You tell them not to overdo, then they disappear on a take-Dad-sightseeing-trip for four hours and hobble home. And the valium is for whom?

• Despite careful lessons from my parents in my toddler years, I do not know how to tie shoes properly. Ask my husband who cannot tie his own sneakers right now but finds fault in the way in which I tighten his laces and perform the tricky double knot maneuver. If you are ever in the same situation, make a pre-emptive strike: Hide the sneakers; offer slip-ons.

• Narcotics shut down the bowels, understandably adding to any pre-existing grumpiness. A man who has spent a good part of his life inexplicably finding all things rectum-related, pardon the pun, a gas, poop or the lack thereof is no longer a laughing matter. Make your life easier and do everything you possibly can to get that colon moving again. You’ll be glad you did. You might even be rewarded by a smile and a clean colon shuffle.

• A well-planned future wine (whine) and cheese night with dear friends is a good thing, Martha, and its anticipation will help you retain what little bit of sanity is hanging on for dear life.

• Finally, the love of a good man and your love for him is a gift not to be taken lightly, and it will pull you through all challenges. Remember that when you are ready to hit the love of your life over his head with an iron skillet.

Of Slack-Jawed Mongrels and Aloof Nurses

When last we met, I had joined David post-surgery in the recovery room and all seemed well considering the man had just had his back cut open, his vertebrae man-handled, and enough titanium placed in and around his spine to set off the most arcane metal detector. I was relieved he was doing better than expected. He could wiggle all the extremities that needed wiggling at the time and he could see (the anesthesiologist mentioned something at the last moment about a 1% risk of blindness when surgery is done stomach down. Nice of him to drop that on us at the last minute, huh?) I sat there and let David sleep, knitting by the dim light coming from the hallway. Then I was joined by creepy staring guy.

Creepy staring guy was in the Cath Waiting Room with me. In my efforts to escape the huddling masses in the regular waiting room, and upon the suggestion of the nice volunteers behind the help desk, I ventured down the hallway to this quieter alternative. He sat across from me, not reading, not watching television, not even talking on his cell phone, unabashedly staring at me. I stuck in my iPod earbuds, put my head down, and knit, occasionally glancing up to check if… yup, the slack-jawed mongrel was still oogling in my direction. You can’t imagine the relief I felt when the orderly came and got me. But then, not ten minutes later as I was standing at David’s bedside stroking his hair, there he was again, escorted into our tiny two bed recovery room to join his girlfriend/wife/Heidi-at-a-much-older-heavier-and-unfortunate-point-in-her-life look-alike (?) Even though the nurse drew the curtain between the two beds, if I sat back down in my chair to resume my knitting, I could see him and he could definitely and did definitely see me. Did I mention the hospital was full and we waited in the room for over 2 ½ hours until a room was ready? Needless to say, I stood the entire time.

I left David to go home later that evening, him sleepy, sore, and hooked up to numerous tubes and sensors, me envious of and grateful for the morphine pump at his side. However, the next morning when Anthony and I came to visit, he looked awful, alternatively flushed and pale, hot and clammy to the touch and virtually ignored by the nurses. The care in hospitals these days is truly inconsistent and sometimes atrocious, even in North Scottsdale. A few minutes before my arrival, an aloof nurse had roughly removed his catheter, brought him a selection of toiletries, stood him by the sink, and left the room. Dizzy and alone, he almost blacked out and barely made it back to bed. This is how I found him. Hell hath no fury like a wife whose husband has been neglected in the hospital.

David’s fever crept up throughout the day until it reached 102.9, prompting a vampire’s meal of tests and a change of antibiotics. It did break sometime in the night, forcing four changes of bedding and gown but producing a healthier and reasonably ready to go home patient. After almost three full days, Grandpa, Anthony and I brought the prodigal son home and settled him into Robert’s bed at the not-as-ridiculously-loud side of the house to let him rest.

Tomorrow, the drugs make him alternatively loopy, chatty, grumpy, and unable to drop the kids off at the pool. And apparently I have been tying tennis shoes incorrectly all these years.

People Watching Cola and Whist Anyone?

Yes, despite the long writing absence, we are still amongst the land of the living. After a 2 ½ hour surgery, a painful awakening, bouts of high fever, and three days in hospital, David finally returned home in need of really good drugs and round the clock care. The best father-in-law ever made the journey east to provide much-needed help and found a pint-sized farmer wholly enamored of him. All the kids love Grandpa, or Pa-Pa-Unh, as Anthony calls him. Good judge of character, these children.

As I awaited news of David’s surgery, I was able to drink in a generous amount of People Watching Cola, full of the flavors of good, bad, and a lot of ugly. It is amazing to observe the lack of manners and boundaries in this they-call-this-modern world. Noisy, uncomfortably personal fact-revealing cell phone talkers abounded, despite the instructions from the greeters to turn the phones off and, if their use was mandatory, to please walk down the hall in consideration of your waiting roommates. A thirty-something girl in full pajamas, slippers, and blanket from home slept on a chair for two and occasionally lifted her mussed head to yell across the room to ask if the volunteers had heard anything about “Mark.” Also taking up at least a third of the large room was an immense group of one patient’s extended family who brought coolers and at least two large bags each and hooted and hollered to each other as if this was a family reunion or barbeque rather than a serious surgical event.

All this was the essence of etiquette compared to the thing in the corner. A large woman in checkered stretch pants and a stretched-beyond-munchkin-recognition Wizard of Oz t-shirt set up digs in one corner and three chairs of a screaming-for-space waiting room. In addition to the three duffle bags she carried, she had a folding Shiatsu massage chair cushion, a u-shaped neck pillow, and a very big mouth. Having appointed herself waiting room ambassador, she greeted any victim who got within ten feet of her to over-share her life, tell why she was there, and point out the finer landmarks at Scottsdale North Hospital. If no one would speak with her, an event which occurred rapidly after each new person’s arrival, she utilized the courtesy telephone to call each and every person she had ever passed on the street in her life and tell them about some poor patient in ICU on a respirator, which is really (voice lowers to a dull roar) life support, you know.

Add to all this a blaring television, the always-announcing hospital intercom, and a nervous wife.

Thank goodness for my iPod and my knitting. Without these two things, I would have gone all Michael Richards (without using the n-word) on them. People these days. Perhaps we should go back to wearing corsets and stays and play whist into the night for fun. It would be a lot more polite.

Finally, I was able to leave the din of the masses and join David in recovery. I was relieved to see him doing better than he had after his last two thyroid surgeries. Heavily medicated, he was happy and looked well enough considering. I love that man. He is a stubborn pain in the butt at times but I love him. Thank God he came out of this all right.

Tomorrow, a bit of a setback as infection sets in plus the joys of transporting a spinal fusion patient down a long and bumpy dirt road. Also, Daisy does not like Pa-Pa-Unh and butts him until he bleeds.

Not self but country?

2 am: The pint-sized stirs and whines, bringing me out of my already restless slumber.

“Do you think he’s cold?” I say to myself.

Get up, bring him into bed with David, Marshall, Molly, and I. Apollo the cat decides now is a good time to join us in the already very crowded bed and walk on top of me before drinking the water beside my bed.

What in the Hell did I do to my shoulder?

I can barely put weight on my left side which is now mandatory to glean any lying awake in bed space.

Was it turning the compost pile? Carrying the now 30-pound pint who if-he-keeps-growing-I-will-have-to-call-him-a-quart around? Ouch!

I am such a wimp; David is having major back issues and I melodramatically whine about a pulled shoulder muscle.

It’s going to be one of those insomniac nights. I can tell. As if I wasn’t already worried enough about upcoming spinal fusion surgery and its aftermath, Jessica had to go and join the Navy. My daughter, my liberal-minded, can’t-get-out-of-bed-in-the-morning, can’t-clean-her-pigsty-of-a-room daughter, up and joined the damned military while we are in the middle of one of the most error-prone, mistakenly executed wars in history.

It’s not all bad. She took their aptitude test, scored over the moon, and was told she could go into any area she chose and she picked linguistics. Thank God we sent her to Spanish immersion school.

“Korean,” the recruiter said, “they’ll teach you Korean first.”

What is our nude and deaf emperor planning now? Can’t we leave any of these crazy, corrupt despots alone to self-destruct? North Korea doesn’t have oil, does it? Wasn’t the Republican Party opposed to nation building? Is Mr. Incompetence going to try to re-fail any incompletely fought conflict of the past century?

She’ll go to Monterey, to the Defense Language Institute for two years and learn multiple languages.

I really hope we’ll be out of Iraq by then and not on to any place else. 27 soldiers died last weekend, lives ended before the promise of the future was realized. Those poor families, I don’t want to be among those poor families.

Don’t go there. It’s a good opportunity for her.

She’ll get a degree at the institute and have further college benefits if and when she gets her discharge. She’ll be able to buy a home without a down payment and have her medical care covered for at least the time she is in the Navy.

The Navy. Lord, give me strength.

Hours since awakening and after a great deal of knitting therapy, I rouse the boys for school and say a special prayer, wishing for a safe future for all my children, for everyone’s children.

I will stop worrying about this now. In 24 hours, they will be prepping my husband for surgery. My concern has to rest there for now.

Could I have a little more strength if it’s handy? Would you mind terribly? I’m sure I’ll use every last bit of it. Thanks a bunch.

Ossos Magnificos

How about my Bears?! If the can’t-find-their-natural-talent Chargers won’t be in the Super Bowl, at least da Bears will. Why am I suddenly a Chicago Bears fan? Well, because on one of our football watching days, which have suddenly become a fixture around here if only because they are a good excuse for drinking beer and eating snacks, I picked them to win and have stuck with them ever since. Any team with a coach named Lovie can’t be all bad, right? They marched the used-to-playing-under-a-dome-and-not-in-real-football-weather Saints right out of contention and themselves into the big game.

Do I have time to knit blue and orange team Bear sweaters for us all before the Super Bowl even though I have not completed anything I have promised up to date? No, I better not try. The knitting gods can only tolerate so much from an in denial about her stitch speed and free time knitter.

The Patriots, my second choice, were not so lucky. David was rooting for the Colts but I could and can not, not since Bob Irsay snuck them out of my native Baltimore in the middle of that snowy night in 1984. Traitors and reprobates, that’s what they are. To this day, I still cannot comfortably call them the Indianapolis Colts. What must Johnny Unitas, may he rest in peace, have thought? Well, I understand that he was angry, very angry and he refused to acknowledge the franchise for the rest of his life. For shame, Mr. Irsay, for shame.

Deep-seated anger at events past notwithstanding, it was a lovely day for watching hours of football, cold and rainy with the occasional snow flurries mixed in for effect. This morning the mountains are covered in the white stuff, framing our valley beautifully. I view this as a reminder from the powers that be.

Look around you, Lauren. Appreciate where you are and the natural beauty that surrounds you. And stop property surfing on the internet, damn it.

Too busy for that nonsense, and not yet a Powerball jackpot winner, I will work the next two days to catch up before I get behind again. David’s surgery is in two days time and I cannot dawdle, something I am very good at doing. David’s father is graciously coming out post-surgery to help with the patient and perhaps a few things farmy or pint-sized, for which I am very thankful.

Now, you knitters out there who have more time, fewer patients and more patience than I, get out your pointy sticks and cast on that blue and orange sweater. You have two weeks. If nothing else, do it for poor Johnny Unitas.

Once again, go Bears!

There's a Good Mood on the Rise

The fog of funk is lifting, slowly but surely. Despite my efforts to the contrary, I experienced my usual shutdown that happens during these times, filled only with pint-sized care, knitting (yet no finishing), and audiobooks, but it must have helped because today I am lighter of spirit and capable of weathering the future, at least for now. Two full days of rain have helped as well. Everything is rinsed clean and the desert smells of its unique mixture of creosote and sage, a scent that cannot be experienced elsewhere. It is renewing.

David came in from the big yard this morning singing of “Farming in the rain,” spurring the rest of us to join in the chorus, thereby embracing our innate dorkiness. At Robert’s last school conference, the teacher and counselor both remarked at Robert’s habit/ability to burst into song and dance at any and sometimes inappropriate times. Could I tell them we do this at home fairly constantly and it really wasn’t his fault? That we raised him like a member of the damned von Trapp family? That we even film the occasional skit together? No, I, still being in the midst of funk, wasn’t that brave and only muttered something about watching too many musicals, which is true as well.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, our landscaper neighbors recently gave us the gift of leftover sod, about 200 square feet, which we laid just outside the duck pen where the baby pool water runs off when rinsed and refilled. It was lovely, though incongruous, and looked as if we could set up a putting green without trouble if we were so inclined. The next morning, however, it was discovered by ruminant, fowl, and canine alike, who all marveled at its carpet of edible green blades. None of them, other than the bloodhounds, had ever seen grass before and couldn’t get enough of it. Now it looks like someone played a very vigorous game of polo on it and neglected to replace the divots. David and I agreed we were glad we did not purchase it or bother to plant the entire yard. The three and four stomached among us would not leave it alone long enough to let it take hold and all would be for naught.

Well, ready to tackle the day at least, I think we are headed to one of two great headache makers, Peter Piper Pizza or Chuck E, Cheese, to let the pint vent some of his ever-present, stuck-in-the-house-too-long energy. I despise these places; they don’t even bother to sell good beer to help someone like me who is intolerant of flashing bright lights and omnipresent noise. Apparently, they don’t think parents should get liquored up. Imagine! Despite this, we will go, as this is what good grandparents/ parents do and, eccentricities notwithstanding, I think we fall in that category very nicely.

Go Bears!

Doing the Funkadelic

So I’ve been in a bit of a funk, hence the fewer than typical and unfilled with hilarity blog posts. When feeling overwhelmed by life, and even knowing that the thinking of it is usually worse than the doing, I tend to annoyingly shut down and not do anything. Trying hard to fight this, the laundry is as done as it has been in a while and the house, while not super clean, is reasonably tidy by my standards. Yet, I am still filled with that restless need to run somewhere, get far from it all that take-me-away- Calgon alone cannot manage. My mother says I always run away from my problems and she’s somewhat right. I do initially but then come back to them anywhere from a few days to a few weeks later. Being attached to things around the source of these problems, I feel I must.

As David goes into surgery a week from today, I have neither the time nor the means to run to my usual refuge of Taos. With David trying to get ahead of his work before he takes the needed time off and with the pint-sized farmer needing my constant attention, even dinner and a movie seem close to impossible. What do I do? Resort to spending my “free time,” which in reality is only time taken away from something that needs doing, perusing the farms and acreage in the areas of Boulder, Colorado, Boonville, California, and even County Cork, Ireland. As this drives my why-can’t-you-be-happy-where-you-are husband mad, I do this on the down low, switching to a news website or the like when he enters the room. I do love it here in the Sonoran Desert, but not in the summer, and when I see 54 acres in the lovely Anderson Valley in Mendocino County, CA, planted with lavender and native grasses, for sale, I salivate. Of course, it’s all a pipe dream, and totally without a plan on how such a thing could be accomplished so I foolishly buy a Powerball ticket (it’s $180 million) and fantasize. Tonight, some elderly couple from Podunk County USA will win and pay for all their children’s and grandchildren’s college before donating the rest to their church and shame me for my selfish dreams.

I’ll work out of this funk soon; I always do but not usually before driving my family a little crazy and having either a good cry or a better drunk. Things aren’t really bad, just worrisome, and all things pass with time or at least I hope so. Have patience with me, dear readers, I’ll have something funny to say soon enough. The people watching and general hospital irony should provide me with suitable fodder.

The Mid-Sized Gramma That Could

We awoke to the second frigid morning in a row with temperatures in the lower twenties, and were confronted by frozen pipes making the pumping of water to the house impossible and solid blocks of ice in place of the animal water we left the day before. It did not snow after all but did at Jessica’s high school 16 miles northwest of here. The garden, I am afraid, is a do-over despite its covering; it was just too darned cold for plants newly planted in the ground. Weesourceful wascally wabbits and busy bothersome birds were already wreaking havoc before the frost, favoring baby spinach most of all but taking a destructive sampling of the rest. Gardening in the desert is a challenging pursuit in more ways than one but with hard work and a generous amount of blaspheming we shall prevail, I hope.

When this will all get accomplished, however, I do not know. David goes in for back surgery January 24 and has a long recovery ahead of him as fusion of two vertebrae is no stroll in the desert. This will demand a great deal of pitching in from the quart to half-gallon-sized farmers and perhaps even a little hired help on school days when the children board the bus in the pre-dawn dimness and it is too cold outside for the pint-sized to join in farm chores. David helps out immensely around here by cooking dinner most nights and handling the bulk of all things farmy since Anthony arrived for good. I have to admit I am a little overwhelmed at the thought of what is to come but I will take it one day, hour, or, if need be, minute at a time and endeavor to squash any upwelling of nervous breakdown-like behavior. I will be the veritable little engine that could.

The cold weather is due to lessen in its severity as the week progresses but it should still be pretty frickin’ freezin’, particularly for here. The sheep and their ruminant relatives seem more than pleased with this but the chickens, being sensitive fowl, are not. The roosters’ crows are less boisterous than usual, as instead of announcing their cocky presence, they are registering complaint.

Cock a doodle doo. It’s freezing out here!

The ducks and turkeys, tougher both, seem unfazed though they take a little longer to get moving on the coldest days. The dogs do as well, and because of it, the bed gets made later and later each day. That’s all right with me, though, as it lengthens my mornings knitting by the fire, which gives me perspective for the challenging times ahead, at least that is what I am hoping.

Spitting into the Wind

Inevitably, after planting a vegetable garden, a few things happen. For one, said planter of garden will spend an inordinate amount of time staring at the soil waiting for the tiniest green promise of the plant to come emerge from the soil. Despite donning reading glasses and practically getting on my belly to get close to the ground, like Sergeant Schultz, I see nothing, nothing! I know it has only been since Sunday that the seeds were sown but I have been watering diligently and saying nice things in that general direction. Besides, lettuce sprouts almost immediately. Please everyone, I know you all have power in numbers, will some germination my way, won’t you?

The second thing that will happen is this:

Friday Night

Snow showers likely and chance of rain. Much cooler. Snow level lowering to around 3500 feet overnight. Lows in the upper teens to lower 30s. Chance of precipitation 60 percent.

Get out your burlap, ladies and germs, it’s gonna be a cold one. We are, admittedly, only at around 2300 feet of elevation but you never know. It did snow last March, after all. I do know it will freeze here in the desert southwest and although the brassicas, the cabbage family plants, can handle a touch of frost, I don’t know if that applies when they are the wee bairns that they are. I think not.

Now you might say, “Lauren, what were you thinking planting in January anyway?”

Valid point, yes, but my Maricopa County extension planting calendar says now is the time and I believed them. It’s all about growing as much as one can before Hell comes this way again. Did I mention 2007 is forecasted to be the hottest on record? Brace yourselves, my readers. If you were with me last summer, you know what’s coming.

Perhaps Mother Nature and the big box store home improvement centers are conspiring, telling each other that Lauren does not have enough challenges right now. Let’s throw some more at her. Well, I will not say ‘bring it on’ as we as Americans should know by now what kind of trouble that gets us into. Instead, I will hold my chin up and stiffen that thinning upper lip as I purchase enough burlap to bag two tons of potatoes. Then, I will lovingly and determinedly without complaint cover the sproutlets with care. Adversity, I will smile in your omnipresent face until you determine me unappealing and move on. Anytime (as in now) is okay with me.

Behold the Pint-Sized Garden

Well, it’s been a busy weekend of cementing our reputation as the wild ones in the neighborhood followed by reinforcing another side of our personas, i.e., the vegetable farmer.

First, we said a spirited goodbye to our neighbors Kevin and Suzanne who are moving to Spokane, Washington. We are sad to see them go but perks were involved in their departure. Anthony got a “rad” train table for all his Thomas engines and wooden tracks as a hand-me-down and we all benefited from a looks-like-new trampoline and a large slide. The pint-sized calls these the “jump” and the “wee.”

Early Sunday morning, we headed to your favorite home improvement centers and spent far too much money on bloodhound and rabbit-proof fencing, seedlings, and other various grow-your-own-food supplies. Upon hearing our total at the register, we both agreed we could purchase the vegetables more inexpensively but they would not be full of fresh from the garden, organically grown goodness.

Behold the Pint-Sized Garden:

Complete with very baby spinach,

And very purple red cabbage (plus a few violas.) It has to be pretty, of course.

An inventory of the new digs (ha, ha, I amuse myself so) includes Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, shell peas, beets, lettuce, and soon, potatoes. (I’m waiting for the bag I bought to begin sprouting.) Also, we planted a perennial herb garden with sage, rosemary, thyme, and oregano. (Are you going to Scarborough Fair?) As the weather warms, various squashes, eggplant, and watermelon will replace the cool weather crops. No tomatoes though, it is too hot here in the summer for them to pollinate. Hopefully we will have a successful yield, that is if we can keep out the birds and chipmunks and the aforementioned dogs and wascally wabbits.