Ah, what a day.

As I mentioned, Rebekah was sick. The vomiting and fever have since given way to explosive diarrhea (more on that later). Of note is the fact that our dryer kicked the bucket exactly one load into three days worth of vomiting. As you might imagine, there's lots of laundry to do with a sick child and having no dryer handy…well. I got a not-altogether-unpleasant flashback to hanging clothes out to dry as a kid. It was nice to reminisce. Only, when I was young, we were doing it in on a line in the backyard, not on a jerry-rigged system strung out across the kitchen and back. But this got us through about nine loads of clothes and Reed thought it was a lot of fun to run around underneath the clothes, towels and assorted linens.

Today, our replacement dryer showed up … with its partner, a new clothes washer. Our last duo had lasted ten years, so we figured we were about due. About five minutes after the delivery guys leave, I realize the new washer keeps cutting off after two minutes. Push start. Two minutes and it cuts off. Repeat. At this point, I'm getting fairly frustrated as the morning has consisted of waiting around to get all the vast quantities of household laundry started, removing all the fittings and associated crap from the old units, etc. Now the new one isn't even working! And I'd just let my still-working washer walk out the door! 

I figured out it was the old supply hoses that were causing a water flow restriction. But given some problems with faucet handles… well, long story short I ended up flooding the laundry room, which then flooded down into the basement. Not huge. Not water standing inches deep. But still a pain in the butt. Soaking wet, I manage to run downstairs and shut of the water main, get the spill cleaned up, pull the carpet up, fans running, new hoses hooked back up, new washer running with the first load and I'm just about to plop my tired ass down on the couch when the baby monitor crackles to life. 

Ah.

So, how do I end this day?

Rebekah has spent the vast majority of dinner out of her chair and sitting smugly in mommy's lap. Then she pops up suddenly, hustles over to me, clambers up into my arms, grabs me in a big hug (really sweet, right?) … and promptly explodes diarrhea out of her diaper. 

Yay!

I have a sick baby. She's sleeping on the floor right now, cuddled up underneath a blanket. This is the child that has begun refusing naps, though she's not quite two. This is the child that can wake alertly at midnight if you creep uber-silently into her room. And now she's sacked out under her blankie next to the couch, bathed in the dull light of an overcast day.

Being sick stinks.

I mean, it's bad enough for us grown-ups. But we at least know what's going on. She doesn't understand why she can't have her big cup of milk, why she keeps throwing up the little bit of water she does have, why she feels so lousy. Last night, she just sat in the warm water of the tub–one of perhaps half a dozen little dips following visits by the vomit fairy–quietly poking floating bubbles with one extended finger.

Hopefully in a day or so, this will just be a bad memory. Or perhaps not even that. It's amazing how quickly kids move on.

okay, i need to get over the hump of not having posted in several weeks so that i can start posting regularly again. the following items must be covered.

1) my sister, father, and i got caught in a real-life blizzard when we were in michigan for my grandmother's funeral. i have never experienced white-out conditions before and hope to never again. i definitely flashed back to the feelings i got behind the wheel during the flood and count us very lucky to only have to get towed out of a snowbank.

michigan received 16 inches of snow in 24 hours and in the height of the storm, pulled over on the interstate, i could not see my sister a foot and a half away from me as we worked desperately to clear ice and snow from the defroster at a rate faster than it was falling. bottom line: it was some scary shit and i definitely thought we might die at a couple points.

2) i have pneumonia. perhaps surprisingly, this is entirely unrelated to item #1 above.

okay, regular posting can now commence. let's roll.

i don't really get the opportunity to talk about this stuff* anymore (thankfully), so i'm going to take advantage of it. so, yesterday, i had a flex sig. for those of you not in the know and too lazy to click a link to learn more: it's a camera on a little tube thing that goes up your ass.

it's awesome. if you're into that sort of thing.

me? i'm over it mostly and have been for years. i suppose i outgrew it at some point, like clubbing til 4am or smoking cloves.

but had one i did. because i hadn't had one since i was first diagnosed with colitis (6 years ago now), i didn't know what to expect. (that had been my only flex sig; however, i got the pleasure of no less than 4 colonoscopies in the interim.) a lot has changed down there for me and the absence of a large intestine certainly should impact the procedure. plus, there would be biopsies taken. the whole thing sounds pleasant; i'm sitting here now with a scrunched up face just thinking about how pleasant it is.

so i asked for sedation, which they usually don't do for flex sigs. but i have no desire to play hero anymore, to tough things out just because. plus: free drugs. also: i'm tired of cameras up my ass.

but i get in there, after fasting for almost 24 hours, after drinking a (small amount of) liquid to flush you out (10 oz! way better than the gallon needed for a colonscopy) and 2 enemas — clearly the highlight — i let the nurse talk e out of sedation. by the time i was there, i really didn't care. my request for sedation wasn't from worry or fear or even pain; the request was more to skip over the entire episode and just get it over with.

but no sedation. the nurse offered lidocaine gel to minimize the unpleasantness. (lidocaine is a numbing agent that appears everywhere. this, it seems, includes a gel for one's asshole.) the humor began when my doctor said, "this might be uncomfortable. it's my finger."

hm, yes. it was her finger. (and that, dear reader, is what i did yesterday. i had a woman's finger up my ass. what was your highlight?)

and then the finger was out and the camera was in. and then the nurse offered the gel. my doctor responded with, "it's too late for that."

right then. looking forward to it.

so for 10 or 15 minutes, they probed my intestine. about 5 minutes in, i get my glasses back. i'm facing the monitor with the video feed and want to watch. i can't begin to explain how odd it was to be on my side, on a bed, with people doing and saying things behind me — while watching my insides on a tv in front of me. it was some kind of out of body experience.

the really odd part came a couple of times when they would do something — shifting the camera, taking a biopsy — and i was watching it on tv at the same time i could feel it inside of myself. it is almost making me giggle to think about it now, surreal in a way i have never considered.

it turns out, i believe, that your intestines work in a way i'd never considered. they don't pulse, but they act almost like a worm. smooth and straight for a moment, then contracting like a worm, until the walls look like a brain, the skin all folded and wrinkled. and repeat, but not as a pulse, not in any clear rhythm. this is how my body seems to work. it was fascinating to watch my own insides — and that made not being knocked out worth it.

afterwards, i found out they went about 18 inches into me. way farther than i expected or would have guessed. i'm tough. clearly.

afterwards also, i flirted with one of the nurses. not one of the ones who had been in on the procedure, but still. i was mildly horrified with myself, but i figured it was one way of dealing with the entire thing. as i left, i made sure to thank everyone and say, "we'll have to do this again sometime." they laughed.

i went home, felt like crap (pun not intended) and feel asleep by 9.30. i think the lack of food for 20 hours screwed me up. in the end, skipping sedation didn't really buy me a better evening. but at least i'll get pictures in january. it wasn't painful either, which is good to note for the future.

also, everything looks fine — this was my 'once a year checkup.'

* i really ought to sit down and tag all these posts under 'colitis' instead of just a search for it.

things that have happened to me recently:

1. i just had a filling. it was a little one, so it wasn't bad. but the right side of my mouth is all wonky now. i can see it being a little sore as the novocaine wears off. such is life.

2. i just read a 'made in 24 hours' comic about crohns disease. it's really good and sums up a lot of the experiences i had prior to surgery. unfortunately, crohns doesn't have the 'cure' colitis does — namely, removing the offending organ (because crohns impacts both the large and the small intestines). the only exception to my experience in this story was the energy fro 'roids. i was so sick by the time they threw me on them that i didn't even notice — in fact, most of them seemed to almost make me feel worse.

the story about food ads on tv is especially true. i don't talk too much about being sick anymore with anyone but rachael really. if you're new to the game, the hospital saga seems to start around this post — but petunia and carter and roxy all posted stuff around then too from their experiences.

here is a morsel: i was hospitalized and my parents flew out to la. they basically lived in my apartment for the 40 days i was stuck in a hospital bed, making a few flights home to hold down the fort. one of the things they did in the mornings and evenings was clean the apartment. they had nothing else to do and no other outlet for the stress my illness was causing them.

and one day, cleaning, they found the list i had made before i got super-sick. it was titled "foods i will eat again when i am well". it was a solid sheet, though written in sharpie, of foods i missed eating. everything from pizza to biscuits n gravy (which i still haven't had — i'm unsure if this is due to my not really wanting it or just sheer laziness). anyway, the list is depressing and it made my parents cry. and i still have it; i found it in a box last week. maybe ill scan it. but it really is depressing.

so yeah, this comic is pretty much what life was like for me for a (short) while. and now it isn't. it's still not ideal but i have less than zero room for complaining or whining.

3. hima wrote me the other day about patrick. we all know i enjoy the 'the world is so small!' stories. well, this time, it turns out that hima has a friend. this friend is dating a boy. the boy is the brother of patrick's wife. so it seems i am connected to both sides of the family.

hima knew a few details i didn't, but we had to agree that nothing seemed to make sense. of course, we have little information and are sitting a continent away, but still.

that too, is what makes this so weird. i was attached through vcu peeps to all of this, because patrick taught there. and because i know meg. but hima, she is all the way out here with virtually no connection back. but yet, there is one. a fairly direct one. and the fact that she an i know each other just makes it all the more odd.

seriously, how many people do i know that are connected to other people i know, independently of me? the world is tiny.

* * *

seriously, i can't be the only one that freaks out over this article: Tests reveal high chemical levels in kids' bodies

But that fascination soon changed to fear, as tests revealed that their children — Rowan, then 18 months, and Mikaela, then 5 — had chemical exposure levels up to seven times those of their parents.

and then on npr this morning, i hear someone say that the earth has had 5 major extinctions. and we are about to be number 6.

sigh.
its enough to make me want panic in the streets.

I’ve got a new job. I’m now working in the marketing department at a hospital. After next week, I will have been there a month already. It’s exciting being in a hospital. I love my new job.

The director of surgery ran up to me one afternoon and asked, “what do you think of body parts?”

I told her I didn’t know, but that I was fond of my own.

She said not to worry, and to get the camera and some scrubs on right away. I would do fine. The proctor and the rest of the surgeons would be here soon, and needed me to take some photos of their new learning lab. The cadaver was thawing on the table and they would need to start soon.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be alright,” she said. “The body is decapitated. You won’t see its eyes. It doesn’t smell, either.” Relieved at the news, I scrubbed in.

Before the surgery started, I asked the guy who worked for the company that handled the cadavers about why it was decapitated. There’s a law in this state that you can’t transport an intact human body over the state line. So companies selling bodies that have been donated to science usually remove the head or the feet. Working with people’s bodies, there are lots of other crazy rules about how they need to be treated. You can’t really have any fun with them at all.

It’s a fact that most cadavers are sold in pieces. Like an old car, you can make more money on the parts than on the whole thing. So if you’re demonstrating a hand surgery, you would only want to buy an arm. Or for heart surgery, you would only need a torso. There are lots of other crazy rules about how bodies are handled. Our surgery was a hip resurfacing, and we needed as much body as we could get.

The surgery started, and I started snapping pictures. They unwrapped the unfrozen cadaver and lifted the sheet that covered it. When they opened it up, it looked like a big raw turkey. Since it was preserved, there was no blood. Everything was going fine, until the proctor announced that he was going to dislocate the hip.

The techs, nurses and observers in the room knew that this was my first time in a surgery. So they all looked at me as the doctor separated the bone from the wet socket.

It made a sucking sound, and then a moist *pop*. They laughed as I recoiled a little. I don’t think anyone noticed me when I heaved. I tried my best to hide it in a cough.

To tell the truth, watching Lisa’s Caesarian section was far worse. At least with the cadaver, there was no smell of cauterized flesh. There was no blood and I didn’t know the person it was happening to. Yesterday I was giving a tour in the operating room and saw a group of doctors working on a fat guy who was basically split open on the table. That was pretty gross.

My life is very different than it was a month ago. So many new things happening.

Betty is amazing. She is so interactive and interested in her new world. It’s frustrating because there never seems to be time for myself – to do most of the things I enjoyed before. Or for Lisa and I to have time to enjoy each other. But I wouldn't trade being a dad for the anything. There's something fulfilling about taking care of a whole living human person. This is true responsibility, and I feel so proud.

the other night in art class, someone was painting with oils. and i'm not sure what it was, but something, some combination of items created a smell that was instantly recognizable. and i wish i knew what it was — what caused it, what the smell was. because i instantly and positively knew it was a smell i associate with hospitals now. its something i smelled a lot of when i was hospitalized.

but i have no idea what it is. i imagine it is disinfectant of some sort, but i dont know. i do know that simply smelling it bubbled up all sorts of weird anxious feelings that come with any memory of being sick.

i didn't like it.

and now, as i sit outside at starbucks, writing documents for work, surrounded by an ipod, a coffee, a moleskine and the gang of four's 'design patterns' book, i am smelling cloves. someone out here is smoking clove cigarettes.

and suddenly, i'm on the back porch of psi-u on a friday night. there must be some coffeeshop kids hanging out, smoking them. i can almost see julie hill holding one. (she is a post for another day, most certainly.) but my ipod plays 'bittersweet symphony' and i know, i know, its 2.30am and we are sitting out back, waiting for the cops to show and kill the party, waiting for the lights to get thrown on and everyone to stumble home, dropping the half empty can as we move. i'm leaning on the wall, foisy is within earshot. no one is watching the back door and we ran out of beer an hour ago and i'm drinking one of the last brother beers (the secret stash of beer at any given party saved for the people who actually paid for the entire thing). and i blink.

and its 9 years later and i'm on the other side of the country, living in silicon valley and i am missing everyone i have ever known.

it's one of those moments where i want to climb up on top of a huge mountain, a mountain so tall that everyone can hear me and i scream the names of all the people i love, i call them all out, i make every one of you raise your heads and know that you are missed, that you are still loved and that i want to be near every single one of you. always.

i haven't found that mountain yet. this site is the best i've been able to manage.

and no one is smoking cloves now.