WEEKEND and MONDAY
I promised everyone a Friday night post, but couldn't deliver, alas. The basic story is the same: Dan's final task at NIH is to find a pain medication/anti-nausea formula that lets him stay on his feet for more than a day or two. Things were looking up Friday and Saturday morning -- Dan got to leave the hospital for a couple hours to eat with his family at the same Thai restaurant they visited on their way into town. I met up with them Friday night briefly and everything seemed to be on the mend. Dan was now in his normal clothes and downing unsafe portions of spicy foreign food just like before. But Saturday brought back fatigue, headaches, and more nausea, just as Dan's NYC housemate Mel was stopping by to visit.
Interesting trend. Beautiful lady friends keep popping in just as he's reaching for the barf bin. This would be funny in a some musical montage, but on the prose-bound blog scroll, it doesn't register.
Thought I'd sneak one more cartoon in there before I'm off this gig for good. No, Dan has not had any prosthetics attached during his stay. Although a real shady-looking doctor in the lobby said he could "hook us up" with one for $39.95. I guess that's a good price. I didn't find his pun funny, either, under the circumstances. But for now, Dan's sticking with his occupational therapy gadgets.
Dan's NIH roommate also arrived. He's majoring in econ and just got back from a semester in Spain. The Sig House wouldn't take him so ... no, wait. Dan's roommate is a theatre director, as luck would have it. So 7SW is the thespians wing, evidently. You need to separate them from the rest of the patients to preserve the research sample. Three street mimes down the hall are being treated for terminal ennui. Imagine if that spread! I met Dan's roomie last night with his wife (I presume) as they were just settling in. They seem nice and given his profession, the two of them will have lots to talk about.
So: why hasn't Dan returned to the blog just yet? Because despite recent strides towards independence, he's still susceptible to day-long pain/nausea attacks every once in a while. As he was explaining it to his nurse last night: headaches are the worst since he lives with chronic body pain every other day of the year. And when he IS free of headaches/pain/nausea, he wakes up to the prospect of returning to Manhattan where he's still trying to iron out his return to work.
With that in mind, I added a new little feature to the blog. You may have already noticed the Amazon.com click-to-give box in the sidebar. I put it there without telling Dan yet because I thought it'd be nice to petition the blogosphere for some digital headache relief dollars. NIH has paid for his surgery because his disease is still under research in a federally-funded protocal program. But because they're a research hospital (instead of a rehabilitiation hospital) they need to get him out and on his own as soon as possible. In short: they do the quick hard work and it's up to Dan to do the long-term readjustment after surgery. This is, of course, a blessing made possible by the US Government, but it leaves the New York rehabilitiation phase unsolved for now.
Before surgery, Dan was tutoring inner-city kids up in NYC and trying to write as much as possible on the side. Right now it's unclear how soon he'll be able to return to work, or if he will, or how often he'll be able to work when he does. Plus, he's got to pay off his Faberge Egg habit or Vinnie Casteluccio will have him whacked. But that aside, Dan's looking at a rocky holiday season, money-wise. So I figured I'd cyber-panhandle on his behalf. You can drop your couch change, your daily latte money, your ... gosh I sound like an NPR fundraiser now. You get the idea. The amazon.com link (bottom side-bar or here) lets you give however much you want, anonymously or not, into an online account that only Dan will be able to access. Provided, of course, he doesn't balk at the idea when I tell him about it. Still, I think it'd make a nice welcome back gesture.
I'm going to visit him again tonight if he's up for it. But hopefully my next post will be my last post and you can hear the whole tale from a gentleman who knows how to spell.
-->KM
Interesting trend. Beautiful lady friends keep popping in just as he's reaching for the barf bin. This would be funny in a some musical montage, but on the prose-bound blog scroll, it doesn't register.
Thought I'd sneak one more cartoon in there before I'm off this gig for good. No, Dan has not had any prosthetics attached during his stay. Although a real shady-looking doctor in the lobby said he could "hook us up" with one for $39.95. I guess that's a good price. I didn't find his pun funny, either, under the circumstances. But for now, Dan's sticking with his occupational therapy gadgets.
Dan's NIH roommate also arrived. He's majoring in econ and just got back from a semester in Spain. The Sig House wouldn't take him so ... no, wait. Dan's roommate is a theatre director, as luck would have it. So 7SW is the thespians wing, evidently. You need to separate them from the rest of the patients to preserve the research sample. Three street mimes down the hall are being treated for terminal ennui. Imagine if that spread! I met Dan's roomie last night with his wife (I presume) as they were just settling in. They seem nice and given his profession, the two of them will have lots to talk about.
So: why hasn't Dan returned to the blog just yet? Because despite recent strides towards independence, he's still susceptible to day-long pain/nausea attacks every once in a while. As he was explaining it to his nurse last night: headaches are the worst since he lives with chronic body pain every other day of the year. And when he IS free of headaches/pain/nausea, he wakes up to the prospect of returning to Manhattan where he's still trying to iron out his return to work.
With that in mind, I added a new little feature to the blog. You may have already noticed the Amazon.com click-to-give box in the sidebar. I put it there without telling Dan yet because I thought it'd be nice to petition the blogosphere for some digital headache relief dollars. NIH has paid for his surgery because his disease is still under research in a federally-funded protocal program. But because they're a research hospital (instead of a rehabilitiation hospital) they need to get him out and on his own as soon as possible. In short: they do the quick hard work and it's up to Dan to do the long-term readjustment after surgery. This is, of course, a blessing made possible by the US Government, but it leaves the New York rehabilitiation phase unsolved for now.
Before surgery, Dan was tutoring inner-city kids up in NYC and trying to write as much as possible on the side. Right now it's unclear how soon he'll be able to return to work, or if he will, or how often he'll be able to work when he does. Plus, he's got to pay off his Faberge Egg habit or Vinnie Casteluccio will have him whacked. But that aside, Dan's looking at a rocky holiday season, money-wise. So I figured I'd cyber-panhandle on his behalf. You can drop your couch change, your daily latte money, your ... gosh I sound like an NPR fundraiser now. You get the idea. The amazon.com link (bottom side-bar or here) lets you give however much you want, anonymously or not, into an online account that only Dan will be able to access. Provided, of course, he doesn't balk at the idea when I tell him about it. Still, I think it'd make a nice welcome back gesture.
I'm going to visit him again tonight if he's up for it. But hopefully my next post will be my last post and you can hear the whole tale from a gentleman who knows how to spell.
-->KM
posted by Dan at 3:27 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home