I’m home.
I have 24/7 care.
I tire very easily, so please give me a little space before you ask to visit. I want to see you and I want to be with you and I won’t be able to say no or goodbye and it won’t be good for me.
I smoked my last cigaret the day before my grand-daughter’s birthday, May 22, so that her birthday would be my sobriety day for every year for the rest of my life. Today is 2 weeks. I feel badly about the relapse between my first night in the ER when I found out I had lung cancer, but it’s hard to call it quits with a lover you’ve had every day for 45 years. Ask Tipper and Al Gore.
Yes, I want a cigaret as I write this. Insane, I know, but I do. After my surgery … think about that, AFTER my surgery … I was finally allowed to get out of bed and do a little walking. I went by a little fountain and pond at NE 13th and Lincoln Blvd and spoke to a woman smoking. She was being treated for MRSA, a drug resistant disease you get in hospitals. It’s screwed up. I wanted a cigaret and moved on. I walked past a gazebo where people in wheelchairs with saline baggs were smoking. I wanted a cigaret and moved on. I was walking through the parking lot between cars, navigating my own bags hanging from a metal hat rack, when I saw a cigaret on the ground. It was like a Rena Parker cigaret, only one or two puffs smoked and then tossed aside. I wanted it. I WANTED IT. I had to stand there for a moment debating. It would hurt like the dickens to bend over and pick it up, but I wanted it. I could smell it. No one could know. Just one puff. I wanted it.
Finally, I walked on. What if it had been the throw away of a MRSA victim?
That’s what stopped me.
I want it right now, if was without the MRSA.
I’m being given pain meds.
Lots of drugs with names that scare the hell out of me. Names like Percoset and Oxycontin. In the hospital, I had other scary drugs like Morphine.
I don’t always think very briskly or in much of a linear fashion when I’m taking these drugs.
Just as I have to live in a world that contains people who can drink alcohol with less damage than I could, I’ll now have to live in a world with people who smoke cigarets. I don’t see the difference in the addictions except that right now, it seems easier to be sober than it does to be nicotine free.
And I’m scared one of these scary pain drugs will sneak up on me. The doctors and nurses and other care givers seem unconcerned and the ones who love me don’t want to see me hurting. I don’t know what to do about it, so I take the drugs when it hurts and I just have to.
I have other things to write to keep people updated, but I just wanted people to read this and know I’m home, I’m OK, and if I’m not in contact it’s not because I don’t love you, it’s because I’ve got a lot on my plate. It’s a big deal to be able to get out of bed and sit up long enough to write just this much.