Part 22

Part 22 Eggs and Ensure


I appreciate weekends even more now. Forget about a break from the office. Now it is a reprieve from the needles and the masks and the medical staff and the news on TV and the waiting in rooms filled with sad people. Today is also the first bright, sunny day in a while. All I can eat, though, are eggs, as the yoghurt and potatoes are stinging the sensors on the sides of my tongue and I am forced to give up on them. Despite what should be better conditions in general, I am frustrated and depressed. I question why this has happened to me. This is my third successive day to be seriously struggling with my condition. I have endured enough days with this that the reality is settling in like an uninvited guest. Becah and the kids have gone to the gym, then shopping for groceries, then off to a baby shower. I try to rest, attempting to position my g-tube so it won’t leak all over me. I walk outside in exasperation, tired of being an invalid and a complainer. That evening before bed, my youngest, Brooke, reads me a nursery rhyme. Becah tube feeds me because of my difficulty holding the tube and pouring in the Ensure, which along with Boost is becoming my new source of nourishment. Before I fall asleep I try to distract myself watching Steve McQueen in “Bullitt”, wishing I could race around the streets of San Francisco like an agent, with no tube dangling from my stomach.

Although I sleep fairly well, I awake with a dry and sore mouth. Before breakfast of two eggs, a waffle, and hot tea (no small accomplishment), I play Candyland with the kids. Everyone except me is soon off to church. A nurse calls me from Kingwood and informs me that Friday’s blood cultures showed infection. This and I am still upset about the tube. Tomorrow, though, I will meet with a gastro specialist that my physician feels can correct the problem. At night I watch the Who perform during the Super Bowl while the children perform their own halftime show for GG, who has come over that day to serve as combination nurse for me and housekeeper. Brooke is streaking naked round the house munching on pistachios while I am finding that neither the broccoli/rice combination or potatoes are working for me. Everyone else breaks into an impromptu chorus of “When the Saints Go Marching In” in encouragement of what will be New Orleans’ long awaited triumph over Indianapolis.