Doc Hop

Hellosh, guys. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and survived their Monday morning without being too worse for wear. It’s another four-day work week for me, which is nice on the weekends but not so much fun come Monday. As much as I love having a day off, Tuesday comes without fail. It doesn’t matter if I’ve worked 40 hours or 40 minutes — come production day I have to have something to fill the paper.

This Monday was actually pretty hard for me.

As soon as I got into work I received a text message telling me that my Aunt Martha, who has been like a grandmother to me since the day I was born, was in the hospital. She’s always had heart problems, and the day after Christmas she suffered from congestive heart failure.

Congestive heart failure occurs when the heart is not pumping as well as it should to deliver oxygen-rich blood to the body. It can develop over the course of years, and symptoms typically get worse over time. As the heart tries to make up for its gradual weakening it enlarges and forces itself to pump faster, which usually causes fluid to build up in the lungs.

When I spoke with her, my aunt told me that on Sunday she had been feeling really tired and that her legs and knees felt really weak. She couldn’t lay on her back without coughing, and toward the end of the evening her symptoms had gotten so bad that she thought she was having a heart attack.

When I was eight my Aunt Martha did have a heart attack, and I made myself so sick about it that my third-grade teacher had to send me home from school early nearly every day she was in the hospital. Being older doesn’t help at all, because for the past two days I’ve felt like curling into a ball and burying myself under covers until the entire ordeal was over and she was home.

In fact, the only difference between now and when I was a kid was that when I was younger I always had someone to talk to about the things that were bothering me. Addam is great about helping me calm down and catch myself when I’m so upset that I forget to breath, but I miss having the support of a strong family behind me. I know that I’ll always be a part of Addam’s family, but lately I’ve been wondering if I’ll ever be a part of my own.

But that can come later. Right now I just want my Aunt Martha to get better. I didn’t get to see her this Christmas, but I’m determined to see her before the next. She’s planning to send someone down to pick me up so I can visit her as soon as she is out of the hospital. I don’t know that it will ever actually happen, but she promised that if I came up she’d make sure that it would just be the two of us, so we could really talk.

I don’t have much faith, but I’m trying.  I’d say that that counts for something, but as someone way more intelligent and composed than I’ll ever be once said, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Maybe I’m the one that needs to change. I just wish I had the motivation.

“Well, I miss my mother,
And I miss being her son.
As crazy as I was I,
Guess I wasn’t much of one.
Sometimes I miss her so much,
I want to hop on the next jet,
And I get lonely, but I ain’t that lonely yet.”
— The White Stripes, I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t that Lonely Yet).