My husband Don was released from the hospital on Feb 1, minus about a foot of small intestine and plus a shiny new ileostomy bag (temporary, thank goodness). After we got home I spent a lot of time unpacking and trying to get things in order.  Funny, the house was very neat until we got home, but within fifteen minutes it looked like a pharmaceutical explosion occurred in my living room. Don’s doing okay.  He’s still a bit unsteady on his pins.  His arms are so covered with bruises that he looks like he’s stuck them in a grinder, and he has a couple of scraped places that are kind of weepy (just water) and we have to keep changing dressings or his shirt gets all wet. His pain is infinitely improved, and his appetite is not too bad. Below is his first post-surgery meal of veggie broth.

He had ostomy training while we were still at the hospital – changed his own bag for the first time.  He did well, but it wasn’t all that enjoyable an experience as you might guess, Dear Reader. He’ll be seeing the surgeon in a week or ten days to have an assessment and to have the staples from the operative incision taken out.

Late Thursday night we got the lab report on the section of tissue they removed and it seems there was a touch of cancer, some Stage 2 cells.  The surgeon said they got it all – the intestine was clear above and below and there was no trace in 40 surrounding lymph nodes.  He said that the only slight concern was that there were some “micro-perforations” in the sore section through which a cancer cell might have escaped, so we did speak to an oncologist this morning before we left.  The oncologist told us that Don is basically cured. His chance of recurrence is low without any chemo, but if he wants to consider doing a course of preventative chemo, that is possible. The doctor gave us all the info on the regimen to check out before we make a decision, but nothing will happen until Don’s quite a bit more recovered.  This extra added thing to deal with shouldn’t interfere with having the ileostomy reversed, we were assured.  I learned long ago not to assume I can guess what Don is going to do, but history suggests that he won’t go for the chemo.  We shall see.

I didn’t know they’d find a malignancy, but it certainly was in the back of my mind, and neither one of us was overly surprised.  I’m very thankful that Don decided to go ahead and get the operation rather than do the three month course of meds for the Crohn’s, and I was surprised, too.  He has historically been quite anti-operation.  It just goes to show how bad he felt.

We will have home health nursing for a little while. The nurse came by for her initial assessment yesterday.  She’ll be back on Monday to assist in his second bag-changing.  He has a lot of post-op edema, especially in his feet. He has no stamina, and has a hard time getting up and down. He’s trying to eat as well as he can.  I expect the first week or so at home will be rather anxiety-making, at least until he gets to feeling better and we can better judge what’s normal and what to be concerned about.

While he was in the hospital, I did get quite a bit of rewriting done on The Wrong Hill to Die On, which is scheduled to be out in October.  I can tell things are going to have to calm down a bit here at home before I can get back to it, but I’m looking forward to the day.  Fiddling with that MS has been quite a comfort. 

Will Donis survive to tell the tale?  Stay tuned.

My friend Lois created this beautiful arrangement and brought it to the hospital. It still looks quite as lovely in my living room.

Tomorrow is the day – January 26. Don’s surgery is back on. They called us from the surgeon’s office on Tuesday to let us know, which only gave us two days’ notice. He’s to report to the hospital at 10 a.m. for hydration (lie around while they drip saline into him). The operation is at 2:00, and should last 3 to 5 hours, depending on what they find. He’ll be in the hospital 3 to 5 days, maybe as much as 7, also depending on what they find.

In the meantime, I’m running errands, getting bills paid, cleaning house, doing laundry, and trying to carve out time to do a little re-writing. I’ll take a copy of my manuscript with me tomorrow. I always have big plans to write while sitting in the hospital, waiting. Hasn’t happened yet, but there’s always a first time.

I’ll report when I can. Wish us luck.

The operation is off. Turns out my dear husband Don has an infection that showed up in his pre-op labs, so the surgeon’s assistant called us Thursday morning and cancelled the Friday surgery until further notice. Don started on a course of antibiotics this evening, and we should hear about the new surgery date pretty soon.

Don says it’s just as well he didn’t undergo all the prep and show up at the hospital at 4:30 am Friday morning just to be sent home, so I guess things could be worse. This afternoon I drove him to the surgeon’s office for his new prescriptions, then to the lab for more tests, then to the pharmacy to pick up said prescriptions. The course of antibiotics is for 10 days, but the doc told him that as long as the treatment is underway, he may not have to wait for the operation until the course is done. I hope it won’t be too much longer. He’s so skinny and anemic that he doesn’t need time to get even more skinny and anemic.

I don’t feel much of anything. I guess you get inured after a while and just deal with it as it comes along. I guess I’ll just work on my re-writes for the new book and wait for something to happen.

Don’s operation is still a go for Friday the 20th, and I guarantee that he is more than ready to get it over with. In fact, as I told a friend, he’s about ready to dig out his innards with a spoon. I’m sorry it’s come to this, but I’m also relieved that something definitive is being done at last.

This morning Don and I went to the hospital for his “Pre-op Training”. This is a consultation with an R.N who tells you everything you need to know about getting ready to have pieces of your innards removed, actually having your innards chopped, and what will happen post-chop. This is not our first rodeo, to say the least, but this is a different type of operation than he has had before (well, he had a bowel resection back in 1965, but they used stone instruments. They do it differently these days.) He has to do a liquid diet on Thursday, drink the Dreaded Golitely [sp] on Thursday afternoon, and fast after 11:30 p.m. rather than midnight, because the operation is at 7:00 a.m. and he has to be there at 5:30.

She told us that they will get him up out of bed the very day of the operation, and by day 3 he should be taking a walk every hour or so. Even since his operations in 2009, they do post-op a little differently.

My neck, which I complained bitterly about last week, is much better, thank you. We spent much of the week visiting doctors for pre-op testing. The appointment with Don’s surgeon went well, except that it was scheduled for 11:45 and we didn’t get in to see him until after 1:00. The doc was very soothing and comforting, then spent 15 minutes telling us all the hideous stuff that could go wrong. After which we had to go for more lab tests and fill another prescription. Didn’t get to eat until 2:00. The next day we saw his cardiologist for clearance, and that appointment went very well too (except we had to wait an hour AGAIN).  Somebody will come in to the OR and stick a magnet on Don’s defibrillator implant before they cut so that it doesn’t fire and electrocute the surgeon during the operation.

We’ve both been listening to healing tapes in order to get ready, and we have a Reiki master friend who is going to give Don a pre-op treatment on Wednesday.

We’ve been told that he’ll be in the hospital for 3-5 days, maybe as much as a week, depending on how much the surgeon has to do. I’m trying to get a few things taken care of before Don’s operation this Friday, such as stock up the larder, clean the house, do the wash. This includes sending the press my 250 word synopsis for the new book.

Earlier this week I was notified that my sixth Alafair Tucker mystery, The Wrong Hill to Die On*, has been scheduled for publication in October, 2012. I still have some rewriting to do, and a few weeks before I must have the perfected manuscript in. I have already received the multipage author questionnaire many presses ask their authors to fill out with detailed information about the book, the author, publicity plans and ideas, and lists of institutions, groups, and people who may be interested in receiving an advance copy of the book for review.

I have no idea what will happen with the operation so I’m waiting until after that happens and we find out if there’s anything hideous going on before I make promotional plans for the new book.  But, in my head, everything will go wonderfully and Don will be back to his charming self after they remove the sore spot, and I will do more traveling and promoting with this book than I have since the first two.  My new one is actually set here in Arizona in 1916, so I plan on doing most of my promoting out west.  I’d like to do some California this time, and Colorado too since I have relatives there.  But we’ll see.  If all goes well I’d love to go to Bouchercon, which is the premier mystery conference in the United States. This year It will be held in Cleveland in October. The timing is great.  But we’ll see.

Am I desperately frightened or nervous about Don’s surgery? Right at the moment, I don’t feel much of anything. Rather numb, I think. Experience tells me that I won’t feel quite so calm on the day. So many friends and relations are undergoing troubles right now, or have borne the unbearable, that I cannot by any stretch of the imagination feel that God is picking on us. John Donne knew whereof he spoke when he told us for whom the bell tolls. Every human being eventually comes to this place.

I have hope that all will be well. All will be well in the end, no matter what happens.

And I’ll do my best to let you know what that is as soon as I can, Dear Readers. Thanks for all your good wishes.
___________
*Thanks to Denisa Nickell Hanania for the great title.

Ever since Don’s latest health problem arose back in the summer, I have been careful to do whatever I can not to become sick myself. Because, really! That would be just what we need. We have many friends here in the Phoenix metro area, but no family whatsoever. And let’s face it, who better to impose yourself upon with a minimum of guilt than a blood relative? Milage-wise, the family member who is closest to us is a niece in Sierra Madre, CA, (373 miles) and she has an ill husband of her own. After that, it’s the nephew in Sacramento (763 miles), the sisters in Denver – one of mine, one of his – (853), and then we’re into Texas and Oklahoma.

So for day to day care, Don has me and I have him, and right now, he’s out of commission. When he’s on his feet again there are a couple of things need attending to but thus far I’ve done all right. Except that a few days ago I developed a pain in the neck, and I don’t mean a little crick. I mean I was unable to turn my head in the least degree to left or right, and if I tried the pain was excruciating. Hurts like crazy, which just adds to the fun going on around here.  I went Tuesday and had a massage, and I can tell that it’s better, though I still move like Primat Conehead* and can’t turn my head far enough to the right to be able to get out of my driveway without a spotter.

Primat

How this happened I do not know. I woke up one morning and there it was – like the comedian Jake Johannsen says, a sleep injury. The first day was agonizing. My neck and the back of my skull were on fire, and no amount of Ben Gay or arnica cream helped in the least. I could not put my head on a pillow and spent the first night propped upright in bed, trying to sleep and not succeeding.

The next day I had an emergency massage, which felt spectacular while occurring, and actually helped, though I still spent much of the next night propped up in bed. I’m much improved by this, the fourth day, though getting out of the driveway is still problematic. More than one friend has strongly suggested that stress is involved (“Gee, Donis, ya think?”) Carolyn in California recommended bourbon as a palliative. What a great idea!  Of course I’ve taken so much Tylenol lately that a shot of bourbon might make my liver fall out.  And yes, I think Dr. Freud might have a theory about my pain in the neck

Don’s latest lab reports were good enough that no transfusion is necessary right now, yay!  But he has had quite enough, and has decided to have the bit of diseased intestine removed.  The operation is scheduled for January 20. The surgeon told us that he will be in the hospital 3 to 5 days, maybe as many as 7, depending how things go.  Between now and then he’ll be getting all the requisite pre-op tests.  He has to report for duty on the 20th at 6 unbelievable o’clock in the morning, and his urologist will put stents in his ureters before the tummy cut.  We don’t yet know why that is necessary. Something to do with all his previous kidney and ureter problems, I’m sure. We’ll find out when we have the preliminary meet with the surgeon on the 12th. 

We’re doing fine right now – settled into our routine of me doing most of the daily chores and him doing very little.  He feels okay as long as he doesn’t have to move around, so I don’t have to be present every moment and can get out and do whatever needs doing.  Of course next week is going to be one doctor appointment after another as he prepares for surgery.  He has to see the primary care doc, the iron nurse, the cardiologist, and the surgeon.  Nothing on Tuesday as yet, except for the fact that I’ll be schlepping up to Poisoned Pen Bookstore that night to see my friend Larry Karp tout his new novel A Perilous Conception. And to get the notes from my editor on my new book, which I can only hope she finds acceptable. I’d love to be able to finish it up with relative ease while Don is recovering at home.

Usually when one is facing surgery, everyone has a horror story to tell you. But this time I’ve heard from all kinds of people who either knew someone or underwent a surgery themselves similar to Don’s, and it solved all their problems.  So I have great hopes.
_______________
*If you get this reference you are either into classics or you are officially old.

I shall quote my niece, Abby. “There’s only one thing I can say about 2011 – oy!” It’s been tough but we got out alive. Now I’m girding my loins for 2012.

Yesterday I finally finished reading Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening, which is written in the form of a day book, one spiritual reading for each day of the year. I thought the entry for December 29 was particularly to the point, especially since that day was my birthday. It’s entitled “Sing, Then”.

“…it has become very clear that giving voice to what is inner is essential to surviving what is outer,” he says. “When everything in life presses from outside of us, we have no choice but to sing like scared children relying on their song to stop the pain…This is the secret of all spirit, why it cannot stay inside, but must be brought from within us into the world.”

I thought that was a very good description of why I write.

I had a nice birthday. I bundled Don into the car and we went to see Sherlock Holmes. It was great fun to get out, go to a movie, buy a pretzel. It was a beautiful day. Don sat upright with minimal problem for two whole hours. I stopped by Coco’s on the way home and bought three pieces of pie – apple, cherry, and banana cream, which we both ate on that evening. Don even ate a fair amount of supper. He was either having a pretty good day or he was pretending to feel better than he did for my sake.

Last week I mentioned that Don is down to two alternatives – immune-suppressants or an operation. On December 27 and December 30, he had sessions with an acupuncturist. I chose this woman for her education and experience, and as a bonus, her office is pretty close to us. He actually enjoys the treatments. You lie there and listen to relaxing music for half and hour, which can’t be bad. However, he says there’s not much change in the pain so far. He’s going in for another session late next week.

If we make it that long. Don talked to the GI doctor on Thursday and said he thinks he’ll go for the operation rather than the immune suppressing medication. The doctor said he thought that was probably best, since it could take three months for the meds to work, and take it from me, I don’t think Don could last another three months.

So he has a call in to the surgeon, who is scheduled to call back on Jan. 4 to make arrangements. It may be a couple of weeks before anything happens – the holidays have delayed things. It may even be a little longer, if the surgeon wants to try and build him up before chopping on him. In the meantime, I’ll be happy and joyful if he doesn’t have to get another transfusion before then.

When New Years 2013 rolls around, my only wish is that we’ve all survived another one and enjoyed it a lot more than last year.

And if I may end with a bit of Blatant Self Promotion: Did you get an e-reader for Christmas? If yes, I have a suggestion for you. Poisoned Pen Press is featuring the first title in ten different series as e-books you can download on any e-reader for 99 cents, including my first Alafair Tucker mystery, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming. What a great way to introduce yourself to some great mystery series! You can read part of the first chapter of any or all of my books by clicking on “About this Book”, to the right under the thumbnail picture of the cover.

“I’m sorry I ruined your Christmas,” he said to me.

It was nearly midnight on Christmas Eve, and he had caught me just as I was preparing to go to bed. He was sprawled out on the couch, as usual, since he can’t sit up or move around for very long.

The statement shocked me. “You didn’t ruin Christmas. I don’t care about that. Don’t worry about it.”

“I heard you sniffling a lot today, and I was just wondering if you’re…”
When he didn’t finish the sentence I did it for him. “Depressed? Of course I’m a little depressed. But we’ll get through all right.”

He didn’t look convinced by my assurances, but to tell the truth I didn’t really want to talk about it. So I kissed him and went to bed, leaving him on the couch to finish his old movie.

Try dropping off to sleep after that, though. I tossed and turned for a few minutes before getting up and going back into the family room. He didn’t look surprised to see me.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” I said. “I don’t like it when you keep things from me so I won’t keep anything from you. I didn’t want to have this conversation because I’m on the verge of tears all the time and it embarrasses me to cry in front of you. It makes it seem that I’m much unhappier than I am and I don’t want to upset you. It’s just the stress of this whole situation gets me down sometimes. I miss you and get lonely. I don’t know what to do for you any more.”

He seemed relieved. He probably imagined that I was full of resentment. How must it be to feel bad for months on end and know you’re affecting your family?

“This has been going on too long, but I don’t expect it will go on much longer,” he told me. “I’ll make a decision on Tuesday and we’ll get this resolved one way or another.”

We had a preliminary visit with a surgeon last Thursday. He explained what surgery would entail for Don, and I was sorry to hear that it likely would not be a quick laparoscopic snip.

“I would start out with a laparoscopy,” the surgeon told us, “but you have a lot of scar tissue from the previous operation, and I expect I would have to do standard abdominal surgery to get out the diseased intestine and rejoin the sections. We’re looking at six weeks recovery time.” (He said it as if that’s an eternity. Don and I shot each other an ironic glance. Six measly weeks.)

I got the impression that he wasn’t eager to cut until Don has tried the alternatives. “We’ve had a lot of success with the immunosuppressants,” he said.

Aside from a course of immunosuppressants, Don has two irons left in the fire. On Tuesday morning, we have an appointment with an acupuncturist to see if she can help with the pain. I had a very good experience with acupuncture a few years ago, so I have hopes. However, I really expected Chinese traditional medicine to help him, but no such luck on that front.

The second iron is that on Tuesday afternoon Don will do a telephone consult with a doctor in Oklahoma who helped him so much the last time he had a flare-up that not only was an operation cancelled but the Crohn’s disappeared for nearly thirty years. We’ll see if he has any advice.

I have no idea what will happen, but I can tell that Don’s had just about all the fooling around he can take.

p.s. Christmas day turned out to be nice. He felt a little better, we drove around and got a little air, ate a bit of Christmas dinner, and had a lovely visit from our friend Nan.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas 2011, Dear Readers. Let us take a day off from our troubles and enjoy a beautiful holiday with lots of lovely eats and presents. In the spirit of the season, allow me to give you the gift of a Christmas story, Claire’s Mother, by my very own dear spouse Donald Koozer.

This short story first appeared in a literary magazine called Bellowing Ark back in 2009. I loved it from the first, because as you know, at Christmas time, a Mystery Story can easily become a Mystical Story. To read, click on the green title, Claire’s Mother, or on “Short Story”, above.

From our house to yours, peace and blessings.

One of my fellow Poisoned Pen Press authors, Dennis Palumbo, not only writes smashing thrillers, he’s also a psychologist working in Hollywood, CA. Many of his clients are in the entertainment industry, naturally, which is job security if I ever heard of it. On top of working as a full time therapist and knocking out novels in his spare time, Dennis also writes a blog entitled “Hollywood on the Couch; The inside scoop on Tinseltown, USA”, for the online edition of Psychology Today magazine. Today his entry is entitled “Envy”.

Isn’t it funny how things pop up in your life just when you need them? It wasn’t two days ago that I wrote these words to a friend of mine: “I read what other authors are doing with their careers and am overcome with bitter envy.”

Not necessarily because so many other writers are so much more successful than I — that doesn’t bother me as much as you’d think. Many years ago I had a friend who could not stand the success of others. Not schadenfreude, exactly. She didn’t wish them ill, but she didn’t want them to be richer/happier/more talented than she. Even in my callow youth I never thought that happiness was a finite commodity in the universe. I like to think that good fortune begets more good fortune in the world.

What I envy is other people’s ability to work in spite of obstacles in their lives. I envy their time to promote and travel, their discipline and work ethic. My perception is that other people are better able to cope with the difficulties of their lives than I. They seem to be able to concentrate after a traumatic day, to carve out time to work in spite of all the picayune things they have to deal with during the course of a day. Why can’t I? Quit whining, Donis, and power through.

Even as I write this I see how damaging such an attitude is. In his article, Dennis says, “only by investigating what envy means to us can we risk acknowledging it. The plain fact is, it’s just a feeling, like other feelings—which means it’s simply information, data about what’s going on inside of us.”

I’ve known for years that emotions good and bad come and go like the tide, and the best way to get through is to feel them and let them go if you can. They will, eventually, without effort on your part. Judging yourself for feeling bad, or nursing your hurts and fears, only makes the pain last longer.

I love to work the anagram in our local paper. Today’s anagram worked out to be by Sholem Asch: “To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.” Once more, just what I needed to hear.

Read Dennis Palumbo’s excellent article on surviving envy at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hollywood-the-couch/201112/envy

p.s. Don got a call from his GI doctor this afternoon with the results of his latest blood test. His hemoglobin is up quite a bit and seems to be holding steady.

My friend Sarah brought cookies by this morning. I didn’t go to sleep till nearly three this morning so I wasn’t up yet when she left them on the ledge by the front door. But I was grateful to get them. I love cookies.

I’m more grateful for small things these days than I used to be. I used to have big expectations and was disappointed when they didn’t materialize. I’m seldom disappointed by anything now, since I no longer have expectations. Is this a bad thing?

For forty years, a swami lived in a cave high in the Himalayas, seeking enlightenment. For forty years he sat meditating in complete isolation, naked except for a blanket, never seeing another living soul, eating only rice and drinking plain water.

When the forty years were over, the swami’s mind was as clear and still as a mountain lake, at peace at last. “I have achieved enlightenment,” he said to himself. He decided to come down off the mountain and attend the Maha Kumbh Mela, the great Hindu pilgrimage to the Ganges, which only occurs once every 144 years.

The crowd was so great that the swami was caught in the tide of humanity and swept along as though he had fallen in a river. The noise deafened him, the colors blinded him, the press of people took his breath away, but he was at peace. Until a beggar stepped on his foot and he yelled, “OW, get the #$%*& off my foot, you *%^@_!”

Richard Alpert, better known as Ram Dass, spiritual seeker, teacher, and author of Be Here Now, suffered a stroke in 1997 that nearly killed him and left him barely able to speak. He reports that when the stroke happened and he realized that he was probably dying, his entire lifetime of faith and understanding flew out the window and he became a whimpering coward. What courage it takes to be able to admit something like that.

I think of both those stories often, especially when someone tries to convince me of the rightness of his philosophy. Or when I think I have it all figured out myself.

I used to know stuff, but no more. In fact, in most ways I used to be a better person than I am now. I used to have prescient dreams. I meditated. I played music, painted, and believed things. I read everything and wrote what I wanted. I loved and had passion, and even when I was sad, and afraid, and grief stricken — and I often was — I was basically a cheerful little person.

Now I know nothing, nor do I understand anything. Yet I’m not pessimistic,or optimistic either. It’s more like I am whatever tide or emotion or event is happening in this moment.

And this moment I am very happy for cookies.