August is here and I am not there and what is a willing, but unable, body to do?
Rant maybe, but that’s no fun alone. So I have taken to watching the Scandinavian mysteries with subtitles on MHZ, mostly for the coastal settings and photography So far, the west coast of Sweden is my favorite setting for series titled, I think, Unit One or Eagle. When I am less lonesome, I will try to pick up some new words, IF the actors don’t mutter and I don’t hear dreadful air conditioning — which I don’t have or need in ME and which makes too much noise when added to the city street noise– which I also don’t have in ME. But then I don’t have, need or want television in Maine either.
The good news from away, which is here, is that I have no cancer and, I trust, am finally or nearly infection free. I see the Infectious Disease Doctor tomorrow. She is my last best hope for figuring out what is going on in my whole body. I’ve had three surprise masses in liver, lung, and uterus, five biopsies, including one of the mystery rash, five antibiotics to manage different infections, and a big blood clot they are still fretting about. (Hillary has had three.) The bad news is that I still cannot walk. The better news is that, goodness knows and with a great physical therapist, I’m trying.
So the human body is a wondrous thing, especially for the flexibility its complexity allows. I believe that and have lived most of my adult life accordingly. But it is hard to find physicians who are equally broad minded. The ID doctor seems the best bet because my body, apparently has never met an infection it didn’t welcome and nurture. I am presently tryingt to come up with an array of the weird. Erysepalis? Had it. For the bookish, erysepalis figured in a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Tuberculosis? Have it already calcified in my lung, but never had it that I know.. B-flag, MRSA,or enterococcus? Just had and treated them. Lyme disease or your best guess? Worth a test.
But enough of the long, last four months. I know I am better when thoughts of morning coffee come before oatmeal, which they have, and the latest must-read book replaces whatever else I am reading, which will happen later today with C. J. Box’s Badlands. Even though the North Dakota of his Badlands is western country with it’s oil, ranches, and lunar landscapes, we of the eastern fertile Head-of-the-Red (River) country can get a little excited because Wyoming native Box writes so well of the spare beauty, rich life, and big spaces that we share. Besides, as I recall, Wyoming tried to say it’s state tree was the telephone pole, after North Dakota had already claimed it. Okay, I might have to add Paul Doiron’s The Precipice, even though it takes place on or near Maine’s part of the Appalachian Trail, across the state from, ahem, midcoastal country.
Let’s face it. No book or scenic look-alike can fill the hole in my heart. I miss so many things, like a better-working computer that would have made posting less cumbersome and the pictures to include with this post more possible, summer in and of MAINE, Tenants Harbor days, Roseledge Books bookishness and you all. Most of all, you all.