Old Man Ouchies

After weeks of feeling grotesquely privileged by April days of growing gardens, walks on the beach, leisurely prepared meals, low anxiety about getting stuff done, luxurious entertainment by TV, music and books, against a backdrop of news offering suspense and amusement, last night and early this morning provided a brief dose of the darker reality.

A phone conversation with Peter, my  younger brother stand-in, detailed his excruciating post-operative condition after successful surgery removing slow-growing tumors from his kidneys.  He’s had four botched catheterizations and is now sending urine to a bag, since his urethra is blocked.  This makes for continuing pain that the painkillers cant control and required an emergency trip to a urologist in Courtney from which he’d just returned after several days in a Vancouver hospital.  Prognosis uncertain.

My last night brought repeated awakenings with more pain than usual in hands, shoulders, back and knees.  I applied Jan’s cream, took more Tylenol, tried cannabis oil, and went back to bed exhausted after morning bath.  There I  half-dreamt that these were early symptoms of infection with the virus and visualized being set up in our guest room, wondering which exposure–Costco to get the Mac and Cheese for the Homeless Shelter or not wearing  a mask when seeing Claire and Greg–had led to it.  It was only after a third cup of coffee and two more Tylenols that I returned to a semblance of the new normal–readiness to go to the farm to carry out today’s ambitious plans for harvest and planting with Shane and Tree and meeting with Josh and Shea to measure the layout for her planned outdoor farm school.

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