Counting Our Blessings

Today is Thanksgiving and although there is no turkey in the oven here at The Pink House (Bob can't eat, so why bother), it seems time to take stock and count our blessings.

Last year, Bob and I spent Thanksgiving at Kindred Hospital (a specialty critical-care hospital for pulmonary patients), where he was daily "shaken" by the airway vest machine in order to breakup the congestion in his lungs caused by pneumonia. A year ago, I did not blog but wrote in a conventional journal. Here is an entry from back then:


November 21, 2010  At Bob's bedside in ICU still. Oh, this is so hard. Today is the one month anniversary of that blasted stroke. 

The nurse said he said his name "Bob" to her!

Still he looks like shit.

Some days I would like to crawl in a hole and die. I don't know what to do. People say don't go there everyday (it's so depressing, he doesn't respond..) but what would I do? Sit home, stare at the walls? I know there is cleaning & the yard is a mess--but I have no energy for that. None at all.

Today, I went for a walk around this place--there is a strange boarded-up building here--3 stories, gray stucco, a sort of monolithic tower that rises up from the ground like a monster--dreadful looking. A place where one might imagine cruel experiments happening inside. The main door is padlocked and an abandoned parking lot, choked with weeds, near it with spots marked DR TEIGMANN (4 spots for one doctor or four doctors with the same name--a family of mad scientists, I imagine.) Also there is what looks like an old heliport surrounded by mangroves, their long tentacle roots reaching out, into the dark waters of the bay.

A frightening building, really, one's imagination can run wild with it.

This whole place is frightening--every patient is on a life support machine. Death, daily walks these halls... Bob would freak out, if he knew.

So now, it's a year later, and looking back, I know I have many, many things to be grateful for but most of all, that Bob is safe home with me.