Thursday, November 19, 2009

Some of you will understand this.

As far as I'm concerned, there are few feelings more miserable than getting 2 minutes into your Vest treatment and realizing that you desperately need to pee.

The end.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Writing "The Thing I Cannot Write"

So, there is an interesting story about this poem. I thought I would share it before posting the actual poem itself.

During the first week of the semester, one assignment for my writing class was for each student to write their "writing credo"—what we believed about writing, what we wanted to gain from the class, how we planned to go about it. Two or three students mentioned in their credos that one of their semester goals was to learn to become more "honest" writers. In response to that, my writing teacher suggested that one way to become a more honest writer was to write on this prompt: Write the thing you cannot write.

I thought that was an interesting idea. For the next several days, I pondered it, and decided that I was pretty sure there that prompt wouldn't work for me. After all, I write about everything: health, life and death, marriage, sometimes (to the chagrin of at least one reader of this blog) even my menstrual cycle.

The next week in class my teacher closed the hour by reading a poem from the summer edition of Poetry magazine. One line in the poem hit me like an anvil, and suddenly I knew exactly what the "thing I cannot write" was. I managed to make it across the street to the semi-privacy of the gardens before letting loose my tears, and there I wrote this poem.

For several weeks I debated whether or not I should share it with my class on a workshop day. I wasn't sure I was okay with this particular poem being workshopped. I wasn't sure I could even read the poem out loud without crying in front of my entire class. A few weeks ago I uploaded it to our class forum, so that if I got brave enough at some point I would have the option of pulling it up and workshopping it.

I was pretty sure that day would never come.

Last Wednesday was a day I had signed up to workshop one of my poems in class. Since I obviously wasn't able to make it to class that day, I figured they would just skip me and pick someone else. To my surprise, that evening I got an email from one of my classmates with notes from that day's workshop . . . of one of my poems. To my even greater surprise, out of the three poems I had posted in the last few weeks to the online forum, they picked—you guessed it—the one I had never intended anyone in my class to actually see.

Since everyone in my writing class has now read and reviewed this poem, I thought I might as well post it on here, as well.

The Thing I Cannot Write
21 September 2009

I dreamed
this morning. A straw
between my teeth, I fought
for breath. I woke,
and it was true.
The pain was real, lodged
there where throat met chest.

This, then, is the thing
I cannot write. Some
questions, I am not
brave enough
to ask. Someday
when my child throws
her mortar board high
into the air, will I
be there? When she comes
hand sparkling in the sun, will I
be there to hold it?

All the time people tell me,
“your husband
is a courageous man.”
It's true: I only wish
they did not have
to say it.






Scroll down to enter the giveaway. Seriously, people, have blog giveaways lost their charm? If nobody else enters, I'll just have to settle it by playing eenie-meenie-minie-moe, since there are currently only two entrants!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Love Letter

This shirt was Mahon's belated birthday present, designed to match the shirt he gave me for our anniversary. There's a great story to go along with it too, all about my technological ineptitude and the niceness of Cafepress's customer service. I'll have to tell it sometime.

Dear Mahon,

I don't think I have the words to express just how wonderful you are. I am continually amazed by your charm, your faithfulness, your sense of humor, the way that you can make me laugh and see the bright side even on the hardest of days. I don't know how I would have made it through the last three weeks without you.

Thank you. Thank you for coming to see me each weekend in the hospital despite your incredible homework load; thank you for the telephone calls each night, talking long past both our bedtimes because I needed the support. Thank you for the "welcome home" gifts. Thank you for your willingness to do CPT on me every night even when I'm saying "do it harder!" and your arms are already hurting.

Thank you for waking up every morning at six a.m. to run my infusion so that I can get some more sleep. Thank you for letting me cry to you when I'm feeling overwhelmed and need to grieve a little. Thank you for always knowing what to say to make me giggle through my tears. Thank you for accepting my limitations. Thank you for worrying about me. Thank you for loving me.

Around this time two years ago, you told me you loved me for the first time. Then, I was worried: I wasn't sure yet if I loved you, wasn't sure if you were the one for me. Now, almost two years later, I can't imagine what I would do without you. You are my best friend, my support, my strong arm, the one who reminds me who I am and who I can be.

And you are the love of my life.

(And I gotta say, you're not bad-looking, either. Personally, I think you fall into the category of "really, really, ridiculously good-looking.")

I don't know many men who could handle the last year with as much grace, gentleness, and humor as you have. In fact, I don't know any. You are truly one-of-a-kind. Countless people over the last year have remarked to me on what an amazing man you are.

I couldn't agree more.

I love you, babe.

Love,
Cindy




The hairclips giveaway is still open! Scroll down to enter. They'd make great Christmas presents!

Monday, November 16, 2009

GIVEAWAY: A Set of Yo-Yo Clips





I am proud to say that these yo-yo hair clips are my brainchild. I'm not saying nobody's thought of them before me . . . just that if they have, I haven't seen them! I made the first one on a whim a few weeks ago, to match one my current favorite outfits. About four days after I made it, I told Mahon that if I put it in my hair again the next day he had to forcibly remove it. I had worn it every single day since its creation.

Therefore, it only seems fitting that these clips should be my first giveaway here and the inauguration of my little etsy shop. I plan to start listing items tomorrow, and will probably list one thing a day for the next few days. In honor of the shop opening, I will be giving away two of these darling hair clips to a randomly selected winner. To make the offer even more tempting, YOU get the choose your prize: I am offering any of the four clips shown above, or one in a color of your choosing (as long as I have that color in my fabric stash). The giveaway is for TWO yo-yo hair clips—they can be matching, or different, or even a mother-daughter set, which I did for one of the 2 East nurses last week! If you ask me, these clips are pretty versatile. Fun for little girls, but in case you couldn't tell, I am kind of crazy about them myself. One of my (male) respiratory therapists even walked around for ten minutes with a pink one in his beard last week. The options are endless!

I'm going to do the trendy blog thing and give you more than one chance to enter, too. Here is how to play:

1. For one entry: put a link to this post on your blog/Facebook/whatever, and leave a comment letting me know that you have linked to this post, and where. Also, in your comment, tell which clips you'd like if you win.

2. For a second entry: put a link to my etsy shop on your blog/Facebook/whatever, and leave a comment letting me know that you have done that, and where.

This giveaway will remain open for 1-2 weeks, depending on whether or not the comments have died by the end of this week or not. And stay tuned . . . there are more giveaways to come over the next few months!

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Seeing the Angels

This is what I am learning this year:

Things work out the way they are meant to.

I wrote earlier this year about a moment of clarity and inspiration when I realized, through the power of personal revelation, that in some strange way my struggle with fibromyalgia is a blessing: it keeps me aware of my body, keeps me taking better care of my body than I would otherwise. This month, there have been more such moments.

Since days after my last discharge, I've known that I had an infection growing. The shortness of breath, the pain, the coughing, the fatigue, the fevers: all the signs were there. Still, if it had not been for the sudden and debilitating chest pain that brought me down here to the ER, I probably would have tried to delay an admission until at least mid-January. If in three months my lung function had already gone down eleven percent, who knows how far it would have dipped if I'd left it for almost as long again before going into the hospital.

The first day here, I had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic they put me on—even after the four-hour-long process of desensitization had been finished. For the third time, I've spent this hospitalization covered with huge hives. The usual protocol is to use benadryl as-needed; however, very quickly this time I realized that once I was on the benadryl, my lungs were getting so dry that I couldn't clear them out. After talking to the doctor she switched the benadryl for prednisone. Prednisone is standard treatment for ABPA, the fungal infection I've been fighting all year, but the doctor had thus far refused to prescribe prednisone for me because of its immunosuppressive effects. Well: now I've spent nearly two weeks on it, and not only are the hives fading fast, but I can tell it is helping the ABPA. I will be on prednisone for at least another week, and potentially several weeks longer.

Things work out the way they are meant to.

Over and over again this month, when I have been inwardly raging about the pain or the unexpected admission or the infuriating allergic reaction, I have felt the same quiet answer: Calm down. Your prayers are being answered.

For more than a year now I have been praying for a long life (as in, longer than 38), for the chance to have children, to see them grow up, to have decades to spend beside my wonderful husband.

And all year, the Lord has quietly pointed out to me every now and again that He is, in fact, working to answer those prayers. And that, sometimes, it takes an unpleasant situation to ensure that the end result will be good.

I just have to remember:

Things work out the way they are meant to.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Ah, cluelessness

Today is the big move here at the hospital. Everyone in my unit is being transferred to a different wing
. . . sometime today! We were supposed to already be over there but, of course, we're still waiting. In the meanwhile, I get to train the new nursing staff, who by and large have no idea what CF is. Here are some highlights from my fresh-out-of-nursing-school nurse today:

"Can you swallow more than one pill at a time? Are you sure? They are pretty big."
(I didn't tell him I can swallow 12+ pills at a time.)

"Have you talked to the doctors about your cough? Are they giving you medication for it?"
(What do you think I'm here for?!)

"Wow, you really know a lot about CF. You should be a nurse!"
(Well I've only been living with it for 21 years!)

"Make sure you take your enzymes when you eat or your food won't absorb."
(No, REALLY????)

In one breath he was asking me about the life expectancy for CFers, which is currently 38. He was horrified that it was so young (which is funny because for the CF community, 38 is AWESOME!). Then after assessing me, because I wasn't swollen in my feet or in pain or having abnormal heart rhythms he goes, "Wow, you are really healthy! Well except for CF." So . . . I'm really healthy, but going to die young. Right. Personally I think I'd rather have appendicitis and be over it next month!

Don't get me wrong, he's been a nice nurse and very willing to listen to my suggestions. But still . . . man, I'll miss the awesome CF-educated nursing staff here on 2 East.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Hospital-preneuer


In case you haven't noticed, I usually spend a large portion of my time
in the hospital making things. Every time I come in the staff are always trying to persuade me to sell my creations . . . so this time I took the plunge and did. I consider it the opening of my little business! I made a bunch of hair clips and set them up on a nice little IV pole display, complete with a sign saying "Sunshine by Cindy" and little price tags. Well, my friends, in the past two days I've sold nearly all of those hair clips! I also had a hat commission this morning from one of the housekeeping staff, who wanted a flower hat for her one-year-old.


I'm really happy with the way it turned out, since I was totally winging it (even the flower was pretty much my own pattern this time, though based loosely on the idea of the last flower I did). I've never done a hat for a baby—after a lot of internet research I felt I had a fairly okay idea of what a one-year-old head size was, and as I crocheted I kept imagining my 18-month-old niece and thinking "would this fit her? Would this fit her?" And hey—it worked!

Who knew that you could make money in the hospital?

Monday, November 9, 2009

Happy Birthday Mahon!


Two years and two days ago Mahon and I made the jump
from "just friends" to "in a relationship". That year I said for his birthday I would give him a girlfriend.

Today is Mahon's 26th birthday. After spending a wonderful weekend with him (the first hospital weekend in awhile where I haven't been sedated, and so we actually got to, like, carry on a rational conversation) I just can't tell you how incredible this man I married is. He really is the best ever! I don't know many men who would have had the patience, the faith, and the fortitude to put up with this whole wife-is-hospitalized-in-a-different-state-every-three-months-of-our-marriage thing. Though I know that this has got to be challenging for him (especially right now in the middle of an already difficult semester), he is unfailingly sweet and patient and always doing his best to take care of me.

I can't imagine a more interesting, wonderful, funny, handsome, sweet, thoughtful, loving husband. I could happily spend every moment of every day with this man and not get bored. (For now, I'll settle with just being back in the same state.) I really am the luckiest girl alive.

Happy birthday, Mahon!

Friday, November 6, 2009

the other winter hat


As I mentioned in my post yesterday, the slouchy hat was actually the second winter hat I've made myself this month. I stitched up the first two weeks ago, before I came, but I only finished it (aka made and attached the flower) last night. This was my first time ever crocheting a flower, and I must say, I am quite pleased with the results.

When I went today to show off the slouchy hat to all the nurses, one of the nurse aides commissioned me to make one for her daughter tomorrow. Awesome.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

My Ears Will Be Warm All Winter





Here is something you may not know about Rexburg:

It's seriously cold.

Okay, so, you probably did know that. Whether you did or not, it's true. And last winter I realized something: cold weather means a cold head. And last winter I also realized something else: I was desperately in need of a really cute winter hat—one that was comfortable, fun, didn't have any weird seams, in a good color, that I'd be happy to wear all winter. So this fall I've set about to make myself a cute winter hat or two, in preparation for cold ear season.

Yesterday I found to my surprise and delight that the recreational therapist has a store of great yarn in her closet. (How did I never know this before???) I resisted the temptation to haul her entire stash back with me to my bedroom, and instead picked out a skein of gorgeous ice-blue Caron Simply Soft. I actually had already made a passably cute winter hat a few weeks ago (which will be featured here once I make a flower accent for it, which I haven't done yet), but the other day I saw a picture of a cool slouchy hat and decided I wanted a cool slouchy hat of my own. And so for the past day I've been freehanding a slouchy ice-blue winter hat to keep my ears warm this winter.

I'll admit, for awhile I wasn't sure how it would turn out. In the making it looked really, really weird. And like I said, it was totally freehand—no pattern, no real idea of what I was doing, just a general sense that there should be a lot of increases. I'm pleased to say that, when I gathered the top this evening and put it on in front of the mirror, it was exactly what I'd hoped for. I love it. I seriously love it.

Take that, Rexburg winters.