it could have been so much worse

Honestly, you just have to laugh at some days HA HA HA! Okay? Now can I complain?

I wasn’t going to. I was saving it for the day when I really had a bad run of it. Something awful and heart wrenching that had no silver lining, none whatsoever. But, I’m up for a bit of tension release. So bear with me. (There is no bad ending, in fact, there is no ending at all, so sit back and laugh with me.)

I had a procedure scheduled for this morning. Savvy people know what that’s all about. You get a test, the test reveals something. In my case, a suspected cancer. I can go on about the months where I struggled with the age old question – is it in my mind, or am I feeling a bit ... odd?

So when the test said suspected bla bla bla, I read the stats and thought – well now, either I’ll be cured or the gig is up. No more travel to Sorede. I mean, how piggish of you to want a third time.

I have to insert something here: I have had, in my life, at least three catastrophic life threatening diseases. So bracing for another isn’t so... well, strange for me.

I went in for the biopsy today. I thought to myself – if nothing good comes of it, I will have at least trained a new young doctor on how to do this well: guide that needle flawlessly, scoop the crap out and retreat. She tried, under the supervision of a senior presiding bla bla. Sometimes she did okay. Other times? Well, it was an education. I support our teaching institutions, including the UW Hospitals and Clinics. I give up my body for the pedagogical mission.

So now I need to wait for a great number of days. Fair enough. If I have a good outcome, I will surely let you know. If not – well then, maybe. Depends.

My daughter, the one who lives in Madison, had taken me to the hospital. I told her that she needn’t do that. That this is why older people date and eventually have traveling companions – to spare their children of visits to the doctor with their aging parent. But, she insisted and so we went. I think she got a lot of work done at the hospital as 1. They botched the paperwork and so it took forever to straighten out what procedure was to be done and 2. There is really nothing else that’s amusing in the hospital and so you do what you can – your work, if that’s all you have with you.

After, we went to the grocery store and then she went her way and I went mine. Meaning, I called my companion who came to the store and motorbike me home. Question: if I am too sedated to be released from the hospital to drive myself home, is it okay to release me to the back seat of a motorbike? I mean, arguably, I could swing right out of that seat, because the world seems so wobbly and uncomplicated when you’re on drugs.


I am at the farmhouse. I am unpacking the groceries. I am on the last item in the grocery bag when the phone rings. Strange number. I pick it up anyway.
Mommy... I got hit by a car while biking... please come.

The nightmare call. What, what the strange number? What happened? Is she bleeding? Is it that kind of message?

I take Ed’s car (because in crises, I am superb. I think straight and I do what needs to be done: take the car with the bike rack; you know that at the end of the day, you’ll have to take the wrecked bike home...). I speed. Or, I try. The cell phone rings again.
Mommy, they want to know if you’re coming... there’s an ambulance waiting.

Fucking shit. There. I can curse.

I speed, hoping for a police escort. No escort. Near the Capitol Square, I see the police, the commotion. I put my fist to the horn (mind you, it is a weak horn: we’re talking about Ed’s Geo ’93) and pull up to where she is.

She’s on her feet. That’s good. She had sent the ambulance away. Another good sing. She is bruised and shaking and there are bones that need to be xrayed and wounds that need cleaning and if we were super nice people we’d appease the guy who ran her down – he is terribly sad that this had happened and indeed he offers to buy us a drink to compensate. We say no thank you.


I had spent the morning at UW hospitals and the afternoon at Meriter ER room and all in all, I arrived back at the farmhouse this evening rather... depleted.

But, I look in on the purchased groceries and see that I have enough for a salad, a Sorede type salad of potatoes and eggs and tomatoes and beans and oh so many other wonderful summer things.





So I make that and Ed and I eat, as my daughter recoups at her home; and now we’re finishing cleaning the stained windows and soon we’ll watch the bat show and really, I can’t worry about anything else, because it’s just such a beautiful evening right now.