Chop water, carry wood...

The Homestead

"Chuck Taylors," the bodyguard-sized black guy, remarked approvingly, glancing down at my feet. We were sharing an elevator at the Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation. He wore khakis, a Baylor-issued polo shirt with Baylor Rehab stitched over the tit, and enormous cross-trainers.

"Yeah," I told him proudly. "I can do anything in my Chucks." And stuck up one foot so he could check it out.

"I know that's right," he said, grinning.

It's right and it's true. When facing a gruesome job (frightening kid diseases, vomit, cat shit, horrible glop in the refrigerator) my sister always says, "I can do anything in rubber gloves." With me it's Chucks. Once I'm laced up I'm ready for serious rock n' roll. My mini-encountor in the elevator cheered me up. I was wearing my Buddha t-shirt, tight dirty jeans, and a hoodie in honor of Training Day with the Team and the black guy was obviously hip. I'd be assisting a person twice my size, half of him inert as public sculpture.

The black guy was certainly hipper than the lady with concrete hair, gold shrimp earrings, a $$$$$ suit, and foot-killer heels, when we encountered one another in the elevator at the Roberts Tower. She looked me up and down as I sagged grayly against the elevator controls. At the time, Lynn was in ICU, I had the Swine 'flu and was chugging between two hospitals, the house and drug store, and I had on my Awful Life uniform (see above) in honor of The Horror Show, and my attitude was as advertised.

"I looked like you in junior high," the lady told me.

"So flame on," I said, getting out on my floor. If I came on like an old badass, offending all and sundry, then avert your eyes muthafuckahs.

But this particular day, getting off on the 3rd floor, I spotted Lynn stretched out on the bed, wearing his navy scrubs, looking like the old athlete he is, and grinning his new lop-sided grin. And then suddenly the Team piled in. There was Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Lifestyle Counseling, plus two or three I can't remember, and they all seemed young, well-adjusted, determinedly nice, with a kind of Lutheran Youth Group vibe and smelled like hand sanitizer. Each therapist addressed Lynn one by one, rattled off the goals he'd met, and predicted a stunning comeback. My boy, it seems, had worked his half-paralyzed ass off and this hoo-hah was a valedictory and graduation.

Perhaps it was a graduation too soon, I thought, trying to fathom the directions on a Foley catheter, while Lynn snarled, What's the problem? from his bed. The problem was that he was home and I was up to my chapped elbows in Baylor reading materials, scary-looking equipment, and a long list of arcane quandaries.

Even wearing my Chucks, I felt queasy. He had to have a glucose reading in the AM and PM, and our glucose-monitoring stuff was out of date and the unidentifiable battery was fritzing. His carbs had to be counted at every meal and each meal had to weighed and measured out, then recorded.His catheter was a leg device in the AM and putting it on was like putting clothes on a raccoon for sheer impossibility. The PM catheter held no joy either. His shoulder brace looked like a bondage freak's delight and everything I picked up was made out of velcro. He had eight separate perscriptions of which we had only two and lots of calls to make to the charge nurse at Baylor and the two other pharmacies involved in the fuck-up. Lifting him up was impossible and, lying on his back, he ate most meals with his fingers and all my blessings.

By two in the morning I was face down on the bed, still wearing my clothes, feeling I'd been beaten with a pair of cast-iron xylophone sticks. And that's all I remember.

Sunday was better, but that's a whole other radio show.