Saturday
El Milagro: The alarm rings at 5:15 this morning and I drag myself outa bed and pull on blue jeans and a t-shirt, fuzzily thinking to myself that a 2 year old's birthday party shouldn't do this to me. Today is little Emma Thuy's birthday party at 3 pm and the only option for dialyzing, according to Rosie the Tech in a call last night, is this morning at 5:30. "NO!" I yell back at her on the phone... "how about 8?" and she reluctantly negotiates it to 6, adding, "be here BEFORE 6" and I agree. I am sluggishly stumbling around and can't decide to make or not make coffee for about 10 minutes, at which time it is time to go. It is dark. Not only in the rooms of the house and outside... but also in hallways of my brain. I drive over to the center and park with all the other early risers, thinking that there's more cars here in this parking lot than I've seen all the way over here. I walk in... the door's open... and James the Nurse is standing there, offering me a smiling "Good morning!" I manage a smile and a grumble. My chair is on the back wall and they are ready for me. This older Hispanic woman who has been around some time and yet I don't know her name comes to poke me and I nod agreement to her questions and statements and she hooks me up and I slump into my chair, hoping I can return to dreamland. I pull my hat down over my eyes, pull my blanket up around my chin, and try to settle in for a doze... no happen. "The lights are too bright" I tell myself, ducking further inside the brim of the hat... "...too much noise..." I say, sticking in my earphones and tuning in to World Cafe and then Sound Opinions and... no sleep yet. James the Nurse comes over to do my nursing eval.
Sometimes I can come in early, get hooked up, and go right back to sleep... not today evidently... so I listen thru WC and SO and then turn off my radio and just lay there with my cap down over my eyes, trying to get back to sleep. I think about all the times I have sat with Shayna when she can't go to sleep, giving her ideas about how to sleep... "see if you can slow your thoughts down to a drone" --- "how Daddy?" --- "When you are talking to yourself, slow down that each word is 30 seconds long... thirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeconnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndsssssssss
loooooooooooongggggggggggggggggg..." I chuckle. She never got it... and now she can go to sleep on her own... somehow she figured out how herself. I wonder briefly about this human ability to teach ourselves things... and remember reading about Milton E. re-teaching himself to walk after polio... and so I try slowing my own self talk down. This, b-t-w, is an old NLP trick.
Maybe I sleep maybe I don't... can't tell. Every so often I crack my eyes open and it always seems to be the same time: 20 til 8! Seven forty! Twenty til Eight! 7:40! "I am looking too often" I tell myself, and then I say, "Hush! No talk! Sleep!" ....Peek. 20 til 8! "I am stuck in time!!! Must figure this out! NO! Sleep. Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep..."
"QUARTER til 8!" So this is how this morning is going. I finally turn the radio back on and listen to Morning Edition and decide to be happy about being awake and ready to input data so early. Then I think I musta dozed for awhile.
At ten I am getting unhooked and Cheryll the Tech is much gentler than the one who hooked me up. However, she won't let me leave just yet cause my BP is down around 97/62. I sit for five minutes and then it is 87/46! I sit for awhile, thinking jumpy thoughts: running and leaping. 92/55. Finally it comes up to 97/70 and James okay's me leaving below the 100 cut-off point and I shoot outa there to live the rest of the day.
Later: The reason I dialyzed early today is to attend Emma Thuy's second birthday at Freddies.* She isn't old enough yet to have her own friends so it is mostly adults ooing and ahhing little Emma, and with a few kids, aged 8 months, 8, 11, and 18 acting age-appropriately.
Notes: In at 76.5 and out at 74.3 kgs
* Freddies online @ www.freddiesplaceaustin.com/
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