Observations

        By Thursday, the drains were ready to come out.     It’s a weird feeling, kind of a slithering sensation as they literally just yank them out.     A young social worker from my surgeon’s team stopped by to ask the usual pre-discharge questions.     “Do you live alone?” “do you have stairs?” etc.     I know my answers will make them nervous – I live alone and I have stairs – but I am careful to downplay both so they will let me go.     Being discharged earlier than expected has Misty frantic about finding someone to pick me up, but I really want to be home with my cats – and my correct meds.     She could see I was not in a great mood, so I explained about the Vilazodone, and the random swollen spots on my head, and the extent of the numbness and the issues with the brace.  A passing aide overheard the part about the brace slipping over my face while I am sleeping and says “I ...

        I woke up the day after surgery disoriented with the echoes of old memories still ricocheting around my mind.     I had an intense headache and as I tried to reconnect with my body and take stock of the situation, I discovered that my lips were swollen from the intubation, I had painful, swollen and scabbed over spots at various locations on my head, and instead of the small numb patch on the back of my neck I had been told to expect, the numbness included the left half of my lower skull and that ear.    The brace they had put on me was not the kind  I had with my last spine surgery and not only could I only consume things through a straw, it kept slipping over my face, making it hard to breathe when I slept    Although they had told me not to bring my usual meds, it quickly became a mess, with nurses bringing me morning meds at night and vice versa.  One nurse brought me Amlodipine, and would n...

  June 19 th   2026       When I woke up, groggy and disoriented, I found myself in the post surgery recovery area.  My neck was immobilized by a large brace, oxygen was flowing into my nose, blood was pooling in two dangling plastic drains, I had two IV lines and an intense bruise where an arterial line had been.  Despite all that, I was neither paralyzed or dead, the two main risks of the surgery.     Time passed as I drifted in and out of a hazy, medicated sleep.  When I was awake, I sipped the juice I was given through a straw since the brace was preventing me from really opening my mouth.  Each time I opened my eyes, there were fewer and fewer patients in the other beds, and it finally dawned on me that quite a long time had passed.  “We’re waiting for a bed upstairs,” said the young nurse apologetically.  “They’re waiting for a nursing home to pick her up and it’s tak...

    It was 4:45am and I had been up all night anxiously completing last minute tasks when I arrived at the hospital. Told to wait in a chair, I looked around. At that hour everything seems alien, but the front entranceway is an especially odd combination. The floor itself is burnished and elegant with a reception desk that has a light glowing softly from under the edge. Then from about 8 feet up it gives the impression of something hastily assembled and not quite finished.     There are vertical support beams all over with their tops branching out into Ys studded with rivets holding up the ceiling. The ceiling itself looks unfinished, just sheets of plain corrugated metal not even painted. There is also a strange double check in system where the person at the lit desk sends you to someone at a more improvised looking desk further back who checks your ID and then sends you on to the elevator.      The area leading to the elevator is very nondescript and...

May 16th 2026   I really wanted to be at the protest about the government’s attempt to get their hands on trans youth medical records but today is one of my last days is to get things done before the surgery so I had to stay in Brooklyn and deal with a slew of tedious tasks .  I headed out to run errands and when I got to the Arabic section of Bay Ridge, I started noticing large groups of police on every corner at each intersection.  Then as I got closer, I saw more and more Palestinian flags, and then a group of Haredi men standing in a circle. It was 75° today and I was hot in my long pants, but these guys were wearing their fur shtriemels and overcoats. They are the Neturei Karta, a group that believes the creation of a Jewish state violates divine decree and always comes out for pro Palestinian protests.  People were gathering with their friends in groups on the side streets,  getting ready to come to the main event on 5th Ave. and it dawned on me that today...

     Yesterday my "day off" was a marathon of appointments. It started with the radical queer foot doc who barely stifled a curse as she looked at the new swelling in my left ankle. "That’s compensation," she said, "you’re making up for the right ankle." There wasn’t much she could do about it. I can’t even use topical anti-inflammatories right now because they add to the bleeding risk during surgery.  "You're going to have to take it easy for a couple of weeks because of the surgery," she said.  "Maybe that will give your ankles a chance to heal."      From there I had to dash to an appointment near Grand Central and then I had a gap of a couple hours before the MRIs so I got on the crosstown bus to my office.  There’s construction on 42nd St. and the bus was packed and crawling in heavy traffic.   A woman with a cane and wild hair got on so the younger woman in nurses' aid uniform next to me got up to give her the seat. Sittin...

5/12/26      N ow and then I have a stretch of time where every night I wake up around three and I’m up until about five.   The cats like it when this happens because they use it as a chance to sneak in an extra meal, but it’s not great for me, especially on a week like this one where I’ve had places to be before work every day and I’ve been working late trying to get everything in shape for my time off. I could try to reset my sleep pattern by taking Ambien but since we were just informed that I have to be at the hospital at 5 AM for my surgery on Tuesday, I might just stick with the current pattern.      Having a time for the surgery makes it feel more real. I’m not that anxious about the surgery, but I am anxious about leaving the cats.  My cat sitter won’t be able to give Connor his medicine because Connor will hide from him. He also won’t be able to do what I do to keep up Connor’s weight - give him freeze dried chicken several times a day. I...

  Yesterday was Mother’s Day and as I walked among the people hurrying places with bouquets and crowding the sidewalk cafés, I remembered the day Dad and I forgot completely that it was Mother’s Day and wandered into a neighborhood restaurant.  We were startled to find it decked out in pink flowers in full of families. Feeling awkward   in our motherless state, we made a hasty report. Decades later, when Dad’s memory was fading, he asked for my mother over and over. At first, I would carefully tell him, breaking the story into pieces, like a bar of chocolate so that he could understand- but then I realized that was just creating pain for both of us as he found out about her death again and again. So I started just telling him “she isn’t here,” which he was completely satisfied with.   But even when she was physically alive, she wasn’t here.  I don’t know when she began to disappear but by the time I was old enough to really know her, she was fading rapidly. ...

        I’m trying not to count down to the surgery. I don’t see how that could possibly be helpful, but my brain seems to do it automatically and every now and then when I notice the date or write it on something, my brain says 10 days.     This is exacerbated by an app-like thing I have never seen before called “Care Plan” which sends you messages about what you are supposed to do to prepare for the surgery.     So far I’ve only gotten one, a list of medications to discontinue - none of which I take anyway.     I’m also starting to gather items I will need for the hospital, tossing them in my duffel bag as they occur to me.     Like a mother about to have her third child, I have enough hospital experience to know what will and won’t be useful.     I had to do an errand that sent me into the 80s, the busy shopping area of Bay Ridge.  On my way I passed the building that held the mental health...

          I really need to at least start on dad’s apartment before my surgery so I got up early today and headed over there hoping to get the key. This time when I rang the office buzzer someone answered and let me in.  She came out into the hall with the keys in her hand, not just the front door but the apartment door, too, which I was worried they might not have.       “I don’t have the mailbox key,” she said apologetically. “All his mail has been forwarded anyway,” I told her. “But when you sell the apartment you will have to change the lock,” she reminded me.      “We’ll get started soon,” I said, assuring myself as much as her. “It’s been a long time,” she said. “Yes, we’ve been in court for a long time, all because I am not his blood daughter.” “I always tell people to write down exactly what you want,” she said. “He did,” I said, “he named me as beneficiary.” “Oh I thought he died...