jet lag

I must be in a foreign country.  I don't know the language and I'm eating with the randomness of a time-warped tourist who doesn't care if it's time for breakfast or dinner because it's all the same, and as long as she gets sugar and caffeine somewhere in-between, she will keep on going.

Until she collapses, which is about now.

We're home.  So why does this home feel like a hospital?

Maybe because there's an IV pole in one corner, and our mini-fridge that usually houses my baking flours is filled with Rich's eight-day supply of antibiotics, and the visiting nurse comes in and wipes down our dining table with a potent sterilizer that kills every living thing and whose instructions, I read afterward, specify not to be contacted with food, and so I wipe it down while Rich gets his drip, and today I tell her don't you dare, and she says rubbing alcohol is just fine, no problem.

But there are lots of problems.

About the visiting nurses who instructed us in the use of his IV line, four-plus hours a day, and 

while helpful, Rich and I have been around hospitals long enough and are observant enough and Rich has experienced more than enough to know that that some of their procedures and instructions are wrong. 

About this hellish regimen, to be continued through mid-June.  Every marker since the surgery has indicated no staph infection.  And we can't get answers.  Shall I trust the revered medicine gods when they say they need to be aggressive with this further destruction of Rich's body, not to mention quality of life (mine, too) in these weeks before the aggressive chemotherapy begins?  

Of course not.  Trusting anyone or anything means we're kissing our assets good-bye -- reason, intelligence, experience, in-the-guts knowing, and becoming a drug-infused piece of meat.

This isn't life.  This isn't a good day.  I'm the Ugly American Tourist who wants to go home where the food is familiar and I understand everything.

Candace