Last week I mentioned my persistent, nonproductive cough to my oncologist. We agreed it is probably lingering from the lung surgery in June.
So the oncologist suggests we raise the head of my bed by placing a brick under each leg at the head. “Your husband won’t even notice the slight slant, and it may be enough to improve your cough, which he probably will notice and be grateful for.”
You know how it goes. If one solution is good, doubling it may be better. Cliff gathers enough bricks to start another patio and puts two under each leg at the head of the bed and one brick under each middle leg so as not to stress the bed frame. He is an engineer, after all. Or else he really wants that cough gone.
So now our bed is clearly aimed upward and looks as though it is headed for outer space. It is like our early camping days, when we cluelessly pitched our tent on the only spot available, which happened to be a slope, and we would both slide down the tent floor in our sleep and by morning end up in a heap at the lower edge, wet with condensation and ready to be born through the seam into the outer world.
In the middle of the night, I find myself with feet hanging over the lower edge and my arms grasping for the head of the bed to pull myself upward to a normal sleeping position. My husband is heavier than I am and doesn’t seem to deal with this. But gravity wants me. And it almost claims me, every night.
I would start pulling out the bricks myself, except I can’t lift much right now. My son is in the prime of his life, but he was recently visiting Brooklyn and stepped off an upper porch, falling 3-4 feet onto the sharp spikes of one of their neighborhood wrought iron fences.
So he has lifting restrictions for a while, which is a small price to pay, seeing as how he survived the impalement and all. His sternum was the hero that saved his inner organs. He has little spike mark wounds — and one big one on his sternum – in a line on his chest, which are still healing.
Who designed these friendly (rusty) neighborhood fences anyway?
- The iron fence spikes in Brooklyn that Evan fell 3-4 feet onto, saved by his trusty sternum
And Cliff is working long hours these days . . . although he just now walked in and said he’d get to it tonight. So perhaps gravity is claiming him as well.
So maybe by the end of today, I will get all three of us somewhat compromised people together and we’ll get the job done and level the sleeping arrangements out a bit. In the meantime, the launchpad remains and the mattress is aimed at outer space if anyone would like to try launching a bed into the unknown.
On another note, today is Joanna’s birthday. Happy birthday, my darling, darling daughter! We love you and are so very proud of you! When you were born, the nurse wrote on your card, “My name is Joanna and I’m a real joy!” And oh, you are!
And I may be losing my mind. But Audrey “double-dog dared” me to print this. I don’t really know what that kind of dare is, but I have two dogs, and I stand by them.