April 13, 2010
I thought that I would be able to lift the refrigerator to dust under it after all the red blood that was transfused last week, but alas. I didn’t feel well until Sunday, and then it has been better but not grand. Our doctor friend told us that this can happen when someone is given a large amount of new blood – the body takes some time to become acquainted with it and one can have headaches, an uneasy stomach, etc., for several days.
As I mentioned, Alphie was very “clingy” after I got home, and chose to spend the next night on the floor between bed and bath instead of his usual place. In the darkness of 3:00 a.m, I tripped over him, falling hard on my right knee and on my face. My nose and my mouth struck the floor with great force. I thought at first that I had broken my nose, however it was all right except for a carpet burn on the end of it, and a black bruise at the base of the nostrils. These effects look very peculiar, especially with an upper lip that became swollen to about three times its normal size. After a day or so, I began to look as though I had tried one of those lip puffing procedures and it had gone very, very wrong. My upper lip is still thicker than normal, and it remains a dark purple because the tissue is bruised. Actually, I fared pretty well because my teeth are still intact, and the bigger lip look isn’t all that bad.
Fierce winds from the south are running through the tops of the Austrian pines that are near the house, and one can almost hear snippets of conversations that took place in Texas this morning flying overhead this afternoon. Yesterday’s warm air must be in northern Canada by now, and the molecules that passed in and out of my lungs may be those that are inhaled and exhaled by Arctic creatures today. Sometimes birds unintentionally get carried along in the jet streams and uncommon species make an appearance at the feeders. Tomorrow may be calm and rainy – perhaps it is the passionate, constantly changing weather of this state that makes its human inhabitants appear calm and even a bit staid. All of us rejoice together, however, as spring comes, summer makes a brief appearance, winter may spend a day or two, then spring comes again – at last! Hallelujah!