Essential Eccentricity

Dr. O'Malley removed parts of two (or three?? -- I haven't seen the newly remodeled foot yet) toes from his left foot yesterday in Anchorage.  The trip down the valley from here to pick up Greyfox, then from Wasilla to Anchorage, was uneventful, except for the fact that everything went smoothly and on time, a big event for me.  My personal inner clock doesn't go tic-toc.  Sometimes it buzzes along in a rush, sometimes it staggers and clunks, or vanishes altogether.  Punctuality is not one of my strengths or virtues, but yesterday we were there with ten minutes to spare.

My day became suddenly eventful right after we entered the hospital.  I let Greyfox out at the entrance, parked, went in, found him in admitting and let him know I was there, then returned to my car to unburden myself of coat and unneeded stuff.  That was when I had my closest moose encounter in over twenty years, right there in the hospital.  There's an arctic entry -- two sets of big double sliding glass doors that open automatically when someone approaches.  I stepped up to the inner set of doors, triggering them open at the same time a young cow moose approached the outer set and they opened for her.  On the sidewalk, walking parallel to the doors when they opened beside her, she paused, swung her head around, and looked at me.  For a moment, I thought she was going to come in, but then she continued on her way.  When I got to my car, she was browsing on some young trees in the landscaping.

I love/hate hospitals.  Those of you who know how empathetic I am will understand the hate part:  an atmosphere of pain, fear, anxiety, etc.  My love for these institutions of hurting and healing is compounded of long familiarity and a Virgoan appreciation of trained professionals doing competent jobs.  Alaska Regional appears to function like a well-oiled machine.

I've worked in hospitals that didn't run nearly so well, in Kansas and California in the 1960's, before computers lubricated the admissions, record-keeping, and communications aspects of the process.  I've been a patient in even more hospitals, both civilian and military, in several states and in Japan, including an emergency experience there at Alaska Regional twenty-some years ago after a car wreck.  Built during and after the Trans-Alaska Pipeline boom of the 1970's, it has always been a clean, well-lighted place staffed with competent people who tend to go overboard trying to put patients and families at ease.  The forced cheeriness is cloying and vaguely jarring in contrast to the undertones of time pressure, preoccupation, various personal issues, but I understand.  In sum, it's an interesting place to just sit and pay attention to what is going on around me.

Greyfox phoned just now as I was writing, and we've decided I'll go down there today and give him some nursing care.  We both were briefed by Joe, his recovery room nurse, before I took him home.  However, neither of us read the three-page detailed post-op instructions that said he should be attended for the first eighteen hours.  I helped him into his cabin, did a few things that needed to be done, saw him installed comfortably on his bed with foot elevated, and let him shoo me out and send me on my way.  I felt like staying and tending to him, but he insisted (quite reasonably, considering the signs of fatigue I was showing) that I should be on my way home while I still could function well enough to drive safely. 

I phoned him as usual to let him know I'd made it home, and the first thing he said, in an anxious tone, was, "Hon, I'm bleeding."  He had paged Dr. O'Malley and was waiting for his return call.  Instead of letting me prepare food for him, Greyfox had thought he was up to microwaving a frozen dinner himself.  He tried.  Then, when he noticed blood on the floor, he sat down, elevated the foot as ordered, and called the doc.  After O'Malley got back to him, we discussed whether I should go back down there last night to change his dressings.  As we spoke, he was on the bed with the foot elevated and both the dinner and the bandages were a few feet away, out of reach.  It's a small cabin, one room about 10' x 14', but not everything is accessible from his bed.

Last night, his machismo overruled my machisma and he changed his own dressing, but today he was strong enough to admit that he could use my help, so I'll be on my way down the valley as soon as I've had breakfast and a little time to gather my wits and some supplies.

 

This winter, my time and energy have largely been taken up with mundane matters of fire and water:  tending the wood stove and melting snow.  Doug (my adult son, for those who are not familiar) and I were snowed in here for several weeks by a series of snowfalls in November and early December.  Shoveling roofs and chopping wood took priority over the driveway, and the work went slowly.  He dug us out at last ten days before Christmas  and we loaded jugs and buckets in the Jeep's hatch for a trip to the spring, intending first to go to the grocery store.  By the time we were done at the store, it was dark.  We decided to put the water run off until the next day.

It started snowing before we got home.  That night, each time I looked out the window, I was amazed at how thick, fast and heavy the snow was coming down.  "Down" is generally the way snow falls, but occasionally this snow was coming "down" sideways.  It was a local phenomenon, right around here.  The rest of the area got between 8 inches and a foot or two that night; our neighborhood got an officially reported 39 inches.  It made statewide news.  We were snowed in again, and haven't been out since.  More snow has fallen in the meantime.  This Wednesday, two days ago, Doug had gotten almost done shoveling.  Yesterday morning the snowplow went by on the road and left a berm across our driveway.  Doug shoveled some of it yesterday.  Maybe we'll be able to get out the driveway in a day or two.

Metaphysical "fire" and "water", the classical elements of spirit and emotion, have been prominent parts of my winter experience, too.  Two weeks ago, my husband, Greyfox, who lives 50 miles or so from here on the edge of Wasilla, frostbit his hands and feet, the left foot rather severely.  At the time it happened, he was out of communication with me for more than a day.  That is a very rare occurrence with him.  He usually calls several times each day.  Not being able to get out of here to check on him, or to get through on his cell, knowing something was very wrong, was an emotional trial through which only Spirit has sustained me.  His emotional state since the experience, the inexplicable anger, vulgarity and profanity flowing from him (no other person, no impersonal force, did this to him - he did it himself) have not been easy to take without responding in kind, but I've managed.  He was up here this week, dropping off supplies on a trip to the clinic, getting around with difficulty on a crutch, looking gray and haggard.  I had made some med-packs for him: amino acids, nootropics, cognitive enhancers, vitamins and minerals, and his mood is noticeably improved after a couple of days on them.

I knew it had been a while since I had blogged, but it came as a bit of a surprise to see that it had been 3 months.  In that latest entry from mid-November, I mentioned my dog.  He died December 22.  What with that, Greyfox's situation, being snowed in and ill a lot, this has been a rough winter so far... but it is getting better.  Days grow longer and generally warmer.  I'm okay.

I've gotta write this now, exhausted as I am, while I can still hit these keys, and the memories are fresh.

Ted, the kitten formerly known as Klaxxon, was old enough in October, at six months, to be neutered, but for some reason  Hagee Veterinary Service and Alaska Dog and Puppy Rescue didn't have the usual monthly low cost spay and neuter clinic last month, so we made our appointment for this month's clinic and waited.

We'd had a minor snowfall in mid-October.  It melted, then the weather turned cold and the ground froze hard.  When it started snowing early this week, we knew it would stick.  It wasn't much snow, couple of inches of fluffy stuff.  Then a night and a day of high winds brought trees down on power lines and left the whole upper end of this big valley without power one night.  I was feeling glad afterward, that the wind died down before I was scheduled to make that trip down the valley and across Wasilla to get Ted fixed -- not that he's broken or anything -- maybe you know what I mean.

That little snowfall did stick, in the sense that it's still out there in its frozen form and is quite likely to still be there come next May, but it certainly didn't stay put or stay pristine.  After the wind abated, that snow was rearranged, packed, drifted and mixed with all sorts of debris, mostly bits and pieces of trees.  I'd be challenged right now to find any of it, though.  Yesterday and today it was buried under another foot or so of white shit, as the sourdough types around here like to call it.

Ted had to be restricted from food all last night.  We confined him in the dog crate so none of the other cats would have to fast along with him.  He cried a lot all night, and he wasn't named Klaxxon for nothing.  I had set the alarm for 5 AM, to get to Wasilla by 7, but I needn't have bothered.  Doug had brewed coffee for me by 4:45, 'cause he'd been up since midnight or so (on the night-shift leg of his ever shifting approximately 26-hour wake/sleep cycles) and we'd been conversing after a fashion since about 3.  Since there was coffee, I saw no point in lying abed that extra quarter hour.

It was snowing when we left, but hadn't done much more than just dusting over the paths that had been shoveled late last night.  Snow plows hadn't been around the back roads, but a neighbor had laid down some tracks, so I didn't have to break trail all the way out to the highway through that foot of snow.  Plows had cleared the main road sometime in the night, but with new stuff falling and blowing around when cars passed, the ups and downs and curves of this well-traveled (for this far out of town and this latitude [62°N]) 2-lane "highway" (It's all relative, y'know?)  -- it was challenging in the dark, slick in spots, with enough traffic to keep me blinded by headlights oncoming and in my mirrors.

Getting to the clinic to drop off Ted was a big relief, and the vibe in that busy place, with cars coming and going in the small lot outside, crated dogs and cats piling up on the concrete floor inside, was happy and efficient.  It was evident that they'd done it all before, and that they liked what they were doing.  Pre-dawn on a windy snowy day, and an attentive crew was getting things done without fuss or hassle.  We got our part of the whole parade sorted out, and threaded our way out of the driveway through a steady stream of new arrivals.

The nearest big box store was just opened, and Doug, on foot, followed me as I rode a crip cart up one aisle and down another, finding about two-thirds of the items on my list.  By the time we left there, it was getting light outside.  By the time we found a couple more items and left the next big store, the sun was coming up.  It was daytime for real when we got out of the next supermarket, and a nearby fast food joint was open, so we had lunch.  I ate half my order of fish and chips there, and finished them off just now as I've been writing this.

A little side trip to a thrift shop netted 20-or-so episodes of Upstairs Downstairs (@ 50¢ each) on VHS, a few other movies on tape, a juice glass, 2 small "underliner" plates of sturdy old diner-style china and four or five assorted pasta dishes (or soup plates, depending on where and when one grew up) plus 2 tiny toy astronauts and an incomplete Transformer for Doug, the BIG kid, but the big prize of that visit was a kitchen timer, saving us ten or fifteen bucks and who knows how much more online shopping before we'd finally settle on which to buy... marvelous how these things work out!

Then on our way out to Greyfox's place, we stopped at AIH, Alaska Industrial Hardware, for a big roll of 3" ordinary silver gray duct tape, a small roll of 2" fluorescent green duct tape and a roll of 1" strapping tape, all of a quality unavailable closer to home.  One of the best things about trekking into town is getting more and paying less for it.

We filled Binky's gas tank (he's our "new" '94 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo, named for the famous late polar bear from the Alaska Zoo, just 'cause he's big and white, not because we expect him to munch on any tourists.  Then we met up with Greyfox at his cabin and followed him over to the sports center where he and a bazillion other vendors are setting up for a weekend holiday craft and trade show. 

Doug helped him schlep boxes, and I set up tables, unpacked merchandise... until Greyfox realized he'd left behind in his storage building some essential stock, and that his breakfast had been inadequate.  While he ate, Doug and I hit yet another big box store for a BiiiG box of rolled oats, several small packages of gluten-free spaghetti (oh how I'd love to find gluten-free pasta in economy-size packages) bananas, etc.  Then we rendezvoused with Greyfox at his storage place, cleared out a few boxes of stuff he'd accumulated for us, in the process of which we uncovered the 2 important boxes of knives he'd nearly despaired of finding.

By then, it was time to go fetch our fixed Ted from the clinic out the other end of town.  Traffic heading our way was fairly heavy, probably swelled by a lot of Valley folk headed to town to party, it being Friday evening.  Coming toward us from the Anchorage direction, it was 2 lanes nearly bumper-to-bumper, prompting Doug to utter an awed, "Wow," 'cause he's not had occasion to view that phenomenon before.  By the time the stream of weekend refugees from the city reach our end of the valley, it's thin and attenuated.  I confessed to him that I was forcing myself to relax and stay focused on the goal, when what my instincts were urging me to do was scream, get off that blasted highway out of that traffic and closer to nature -- IMMEDIATELY!  But, Ted awaited retrieval.

One more stop back at the same big box store we'd wandered through almost alone at the crack of dawn, for a package of absorbent pads for Ted's convalescent crate, then on across Wasilla for a final visit to Greyfox to get the rest of the things he'd forgotten to unload on us the other times, and we were on the road up the valley.  And this is where my story starts -- heh, I'll bet you thought it was almost over, eh?

Snow had been falling all day, a little bit here, little more there, big wet flakes followed by little dry ones, blowing around on the road, piling up along the center line... the usual.  From Wasilla out to Houston, it was mostly kinda slushy, catching the tires if one strayed out of the tracks laid down by previous travelers.  By the time we'd passed through Willow, it was frozen, slick, icy with patches of black ice.  Between Kashwitna Lake and Sheep Creek, the only way I could maintain traction consistently was to decelerate, and that's a self-limiting tactic.  Even keeping a steady speed on a straight course, my rear wheels would spin or I'd fishtail a little due to those incessant tiny steering corrections that are one of the prices paid for power steering.  Any acceleration would spin the wheels and threaten a skid, but accelerate one must if one wants to travel, and I did want to get home, so I made my wheel-spinning, fish-tailing way on up the valley. 

Doug, having worked hard after being up 20-some hours, dozed off holding Ted's crate on his lap.  After we got home, he told me that every time he woke on that ride, I'd given him a moment of terror and a jolt of adrenaline.  I can relate.  I was there through it all, keeping the shiny side up and the greasy side down.  Vehicles with more traction, better tires, 4-wheel drive and such, had been passing me, and I'd pulled over a few times to get the blinding following lights out of my mirrors.  I pulled into the parking lot at Sheep Creek Lodge and discovered that it hadn't been plowed.  I bogged down in the deep snow trying to get out onto the highway again, had to back up and slew around a few times, with ditches yawning on both sides of that snow-choked driveway, before I got back onto the plowed pavement.

When I slowed down for our turn-off, I skidded past the first exit, went on half a mile or so and took the roundabout road that comes out on our road from the other direction.  Somebody had been through with a blade mounted on a truck, leaving one clear lane, but the big plow still hasn't been through.  On my second attempt, I got through the berm and far enough into my driveway that I'm fairly confident that the plow will leave Binky unscathed when it passes. 

The house was still warm:  50°F, but the fire had gone out.  My first task was to get the fire going.  Then I phoned Greyfox to let him know we'd gotten home safely.  Doug unloaded most perishable and frozen foods, partially prepared the big dog crate for Ted's convalescence, then muttered something about sleep and fell into bed.  I made a few trips out to the car, brought in things that might be adversely affected by freezing, found my fish and chips and sat down here to finish them and the last cup of coffee that was left in the carafe from this morning.  Now, I think I'll go finish preparing Ted's convalescent crate, get him out of his carrier, and tucked into the crate, then it will be my turn to fall into bed, but since I sleep in the top bunk it won't be as easy for me as it was for Doug.

BTW:  we got 2 surgeries for the price of one today.  When we collected Ted, we learned that he'd had one retained testicle, so he has two incisions - one in his scrotum, another in the inguinal area.  I can't adequately express my appreciation and gratitude for the low cost clinic and the expert crew that does so much for so many (about fifty dogs and cats spayed and neutered today) and apparently enjoy doing it, saving each of our families hundreds of dollars in the process.  Good job, guys!