|
|
|
Gretchen returns from the hospital
Friday, September 15 2017
rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
After walking the dogs this morning, I puttered around the house, doing things like doing the laundry, making the bed, emptying litter boxes, and making the dining room table suitable for human dining (it had been covered with crumbs of cat kibble from two catfood dishes that I'd been using to feed Janet the Kitten and Charles the Cat separately from the other cats). Gretchen's parents would be driving her back from the hospital and the house needed to be at least somewhat presentable. It was a dreary cloudy day, though it wasn't actually raining.
Gretchen and her parents arrived at 1:00pm exactly, when my customary videoconference began. I skipped out of the early part of that to help Gretchen get into bed. She was weak, unhappy, and depressed, and seemed traumatized by her recent hospital stay. She also seemed newly germophobic, which is perhaps understandable given that her hospitalization was the result of an infection. [REDACTED]
The workday passed, with me taking constant breaks to check in on Gretchen (who was mostly resting) and my inlaws (who were either resting or reading in the living room). I debugged one problem with a contact database tool, saved the main web server when it began to crash, and gave a rundown of what I do to a new member of the IT team, but other than that it was hard to get much done.
This evening, Gretchen's mother made rice & beans on the stove (not using a rice cooker), and all of us (including Gretchen) assembled around the dinner table to eat it. Gretchen did well, considering her frail health, eating several teaspoons of food that she would've considered too flavorful for most of the past several weeks. Later she ate all her prescription antibiotics, as well as a anti-nausea drug, and various pills related to pooping.
I was so sleepy by 9:30pm that I climbed into bed with Gretchen and the critters and quickly fell asleep.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?170915 feedback
previous | next |
