"Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're going to get."
True enough, but you can reasonably expect, with a box of chocolates, you're not going to bite into one and have it filled with. . . well. . . with what the last month has entailed.
Yeah, I had a bad day. Zoey's fine. I'm just exasperated.
Zoey had to have an alternative line run up through her femoral artery and into her heart last night. It's one of those procedures that's practically hum-drum routine when conducted in adults, but with preemie babies it's like trying to thread a needle with barn rope.
The alternative line was necessary because the lines through her navel increasingly become infection hazards the longer they're left in, so it was one of those procedures we knew was inevitable.
And it was also one of those procedures I just could not bring myself to watch. It's the damndest thing. I can stuff gauze into my wife's gaping c-section wound. I can ram a sewing needle into my own ear cartilage to relieve cauliflower ear. I can peel dead skin off my foot and slap it against my own face, as per "The Phantom of the Opera." But, I can't watch professional doctors make an incision in my preemie daughter and thread a line up her leg. It's a mental roadblock I just can't get past.
For her part, Zoey didn't care for the procedure, so the doctor kept upping her sedation medications to calm her down. Try as he might, however, Zoey just kept fidgeting and fighting, until the doctor had to resort to some serious knock out juice.
As he said later, after a successful procedure: "All that medicine could have put a bear to sleep."
I learned tonight that redheads make for tricky anesthesia. Although Zoey currently has no discernible hair color, my wife is a redhead, so Zoey may have tipped her hand, so to speak.
Zoey's doing well tonight, although she's back to fidgeting, and her fidgets always make me uncomfortable, because her fidgets make her look very uncomfortable.
This girl is going to have me so wrapped around her littlest finger.
Even though I've only graced this planet for 35 years, I have nevertheless, in that short time, experienced a perpetual onslaught of news and other reports calling attention to the impending doom of our world and its inhabitants.
Unfortunately, I only caught the tail end of the nuclear arms race, which I've always regretted somewhat. I mean, that world-ending scenario must have at least felt real and tangible. The idea of stepping outside one morning to grab the newspaper and seeing a mushroom cloud in the distance has always struck me as something I really missed out on. I mean, can you imagine? Grabbing a "newspaper?"
In comparison to a nuclear holocaust, the world-ending predictions I've been exposed to over my lifetime seem almost tame by comparison. Whereas a nuclear holocaust must have had an air of immediacy to it, most planet changing events I've been told to worry about all seem to have time lines that extend out 20, 50 or even 100 years or more. Who has time to worry about things like that?
Of course, the hot button planet-changing phenomenon that's had everyone taking to the fainting couch over the past decade or so has been "global warming," which of course has morphed into "global climate change," which is a far more encompassing term that better takes into account cold snaps and record-setting snowfalls, which scientists just got plain old tired of trying to explain because it involved imaginary numbers and long division.
The primary culprit driving global climate change, according to scientists, is carbon. In the scientific community, carbon is considered such an evil pollutant, they refer to it as "Satan's Feces." Supposedly, the science says, burning carbon creates a noxious and dangerous layer of airborne pollution that has all sorts of harmful effects for planet earth. In response to this dire calamity, scientists, politicians and activists worldwide have been attempting to curb humanity's insatiable thirst for all things carbon.
However, I saw a television commercial the other day that made me seriously doubt carbon's perceived detrimental planetary effect. The commercial was advertising a new type of cat litter, so I took special interest, because I've always held to a strong philosophical belief that "as goes cat litter, so goes humanity."
Anyway, the cat litter being advertised was "Fresh Step Scoopable Litter with Odor-Eliminating Carbon." That's right, folks. . . ODOR-ELIMINATING CARBON. Here scientists have been beating people over the heads, insisting carbon is to blame for all our global climate change woes, and yet they failed to mention even once that burning carbon is the equivalent of spraying Glade to combat bathroom odor.
So, after all the "carbon is evil" propaganda of the last dozen or more years, we discover cat litter manufacturers have been using the supposedly evil element to develop feline odor elimination litter granules.
Now, as we all know, if there are animals on the planet that take environmental causes seriously, it's cats. Therefore, if cats are perfectly okay using carbon to mask their more sour feline odors, then maybe human beings shouldn't feel quite so guilty about using carbon to better our every day lives.
If you doubt my logic, try a little experiment. The next time a climate change scientist claims burning carbon could lead to higher global temperatures and rising sea levels over the next 50 years, you should stand up and shout "Oh yeah?! What about the cat litter, smart guy?!!!
I can practically guarantee he won't have an answer for you.
Today, in addition to trying to slog through a 1,500 word freelance article--due tomorrow afternoon--I also put the finishing touches on my newspaper humor column and sent it for publication next week.
Writing a humor column can be a challenge in the best of mental states; writing my most recent column with the haze of all the current drama playing out in my mind required flipping a mental switch I didn't realize I even had. Granted, it wasn't the funniest thing I've ever written, but considering everything, it wasn't that bad.
Freelance writing and editing is another beast entirely. Toggling between home responsibilities and then trying to focus on technical material is downright painful; it's like having the worst case of writer's block imaginable while simultaneously being slapped in the face by invisible hands. It has to be done, though, because it pays the bills.
Or, at least it pays the bills as I've known them up to this point. Eventually the medical bills will start flowing in, ushering in a new financial reality that will have me sustaining myself on ramen noodles and government cheese. I'm not sure what my wife plans on eating. Maybe we can get our 16-month-old son interested in breast milk again. It's all about keeping options open.
Gradually, it's starting to feel as though I live in hospitals and, as clean and orderly as they are, I can't help but get incredibly tired of the hallways and wheelchairs and omnipresent beeps, dings and other ambient noises.
Today, my wife went in to the O.R. to have her c-section incision sewn back together.
Finally.
A less exasperated writer could no doubt ascribe some great metaphorical importance to this development; perhaps noting the closure of the wound from which all this drama emerged denotes a possible end to the constant string of unfortunate events of the past month.
Whatever. I'm just glad I no longer have to stuff that damned wound with gauze every morning and evening. If my wife will be able to pick up our 16-month-old son and drive a car in the next few days, well that's all the better.
Our little daughter continues to defy the ridiculous odds set against her, although her lungs remain very sick and fragile, requiring a delicate balance of steroids, O2 and respirator pressure to carry her from day to day. Other than that, her numbers are strong and she regularly opens her eyes when she feels someone touch her hand or shoulder.
As much as I like seeing her open her eyes, I can't help but notice how exhausted she seems when she looks around her incubator environment. It's hard to explain exactly what I see, but it's almost as if she's thinking "Oh, not this shit again."
And really, if that is what she's thinking, I can't say I blame her, because it looks like a pretty monotonous existence with Herculean hopes and expectations being placed on her miniscule body and mind.
When we eventually bring her home, she's going to totally rule her mother and me and get pretty much whatever she wants whenever she wants, because holy crap she'll have earned it.
