elfination

My father had post-surgical complications - some little duct that ferries fats from the digestive tract into [I don't know, somewhere else] got nicked somehow. It has something to do with the surgeon removing a few lymph nodes from near his lung to confirm that there was no cancerous spread (he’s clear on that regard). What was happening was his lungs were filling with fatty fluid. Nice, huh? So they re-admitted him, put him on IV fluid nutrition, and kept pumping out his lung area to remove this excess fluid… and testing it to see if the triglyceride levels in the fluid matched his regular blood stream. (If they match, it’s the correct fluid that belongs there. If they didn’t match, it’s because fats were leaking over.) He was later started back on first ice and water… (”He’s on an expanded diet,” my brother told me, “He can have all the water and ice he wants!” I made jokes about delicious Ice Crunchies Cereal with Water for breakfast.) He progressed quickly through clear fluids and back to low-fat solid food on Saturday. When I talked to Dad on Sunday, he still had a PICC line in him, but it was supposed to come out Monday, and he may be home as early as this evening.

A woman with whom I was “Friends of Necessity” has been released from the institution wherein we were both temporarily held. Those of you who know what’s been going on probably have some clue who Lucy is. She’s got some stuff she needs to do today in preparation for leaving for a house in Nashville, where she will be able to live in relative peace. While Barrett has discouraged contact with people with whom I had previously become Friends of Necessity (especially people who live local to the Huntsville area), I will be seeing Lucy today to run errands with her. She was my roommate for a while, a very helpful voice in the hell that I was enduring, and won’t be settling in the area, so it’s not like there will be continued in-person contact and/or “hanging out”. This isn’t just some random rule… I’ve maintained steadfastly that I don’t really want to have continued contact with anyone I knew from that particularly miserable seven weeks of my life. Nobody was a “friend”, truly, and not even “Friends of Convenience.” My moniker “Friends of Necessity” is quite astute… and now that the necessity is past, I no longer require that manner of contact, choosing other support mechanisms instead.

That being said, I do want to see Lucy and help her on her way up to Nashville and wish her well in her journey through the rest of her life. I hope she is eventually able to move far, far away from this area. I’m glad she can get out of the state; that’s not exactly something I’m able to do right now.

On the topic of not leaving the state, Barrett will be visiting his mom for Christmas. I will be here with four Fuzzy Beasts. This is not a decision that was made yesterday, is not a decision that was made lightly. It’s a decision that was made about a month or so ago. Yes, it was a difficult series of discussions, with many very difficult and complex feelings involved. I wholeheartedly support a Barrett-Sees-His-Mom-And-Has-A-Vacation kind of Christmas, that was never in doubt. He’s been through a lot of shit this year, mostly shit I’ve caused, and he absolutely deserves as long a vacation as he can possibly take. We’ve resolved it successfully to the point that I feel secure enough to say it here now, but I have a couple of requests:

(1.) Please do not offer for me to come visit somewhere else. I cannot leave the county, and certainly not the state… And that’s one reason Barrett is going alone and I’m staying here. I would like to go somewhere other than Barely-More-Civilized-Than-Deliverance, Alabama….. (more than anything) but I cannot.
(2.) Please do not do something crazy like come down here. I have friends from the college who live in the area. I have met a few people with whom I can spend time with while Barrett is gone. I’m making some plans with a nice girl I’ve met who’s become a very good friend.
(3.) If you do NOTHING ELSE in your WHOLE LIFE, please DO NOT TELL MY MOTHER. This is desperately vitally important. I know: Christmas, Family, all that bullshit; but PLEASE do not inform my mother of this situation!!!!

If you know me, you know how much anxiety (to put it mildly) my mom can create. She’s also decided she 100% hates Barrett, and now believes that she’s ALWAYS felt that way. She’s insisted that I fall into “that demographic” of “women who are murdered by their husbands.” She’s lately insisted that she “tried to warn me about marrying that [redacted] mama’s boy”. This is untrue, she didn’t dislike Barrett until The Great Moving Adventure of 2008… but I digress. I will do fine and will not be “alone for Christmas”, I’ll have people nearby. We’re going to do OUR christmas on New Year’s.

I appreciate your time this morning for this last-minute meeting… everyone have a great day and a great rest of the week.

Meeting adjourned.

–Em