Relics

I have several half-baked blog posts written up, but this is the one burning on my mind. 

Andy and I have been packing up our apartment and moving to a new townhouse.  Every now and again, I run across a relic from some memory or another--maybe from when Mike lived with us for a year, or the infamous cream of tarter story that Andy will never live down, or remembering when we had just moved in and played a game with some friends that involved one of my characters being a possessed food processor ("KitchenFiend," with special ability Three Step Salsa).  More often, though, the relics I'm finding are relating back to--well, I don't have a really good word on what to call it, actually, but I'll stick with "the first year and a half of our marriage."  That rough patch, where my health was our major concern.

I found Hibiclens soap.

This is the soap that I had to use on my open wounds and ostomoies or the night before another surgery.  It was safe for those very sensitive and vulnerable places, coating in a  red veneer.  More often I referred to it as "the gas station soap" because that's what it smelled like.  I threw this out with some extra force.

I found all three of my Mayo Clinic pillows.

I made it a point to bring one of these home from each Mayo surgery.  I can point to this and tell you which parts I don't have anymore and what is particularly angry still.  I referred to any one of these as "Little Red."  They were also functional:  whenever someone has had surgery on their abdomen, the most dreadful thing can be a cough or a sneeze, a violent wracking of the body when all the sutures are trying to hold together.  The idea was to hold the pillow against the body for laughter, coughs, as a pain coping mechanism, etc., so that the compression against your stomach would help counter sudden movement.  When my kidneys were starting to quit from all of the antibiotics and the stress of infection, I even used it walking around.  Plus, you had to give yourself a hug as part of the process, which was kind of nice to have anyway.

Speaking of my kidneys stressing out, I found the wrappings for my legs.

[No picture for this one, but just think longer, looser ace bandanges]

My kidneys really were shutting down, as in they were discussing dialysis as a possibility if they didn't start leveling out soon.  We couldn't leave for home until my creatinine and a few other indicators came back down.  My body was breaking in a few ways at that point, the dissolving of that tissue around the internal sutures on my colon, well, that mean there was a lot of infection floating around in my abdominal cavity, something that can never fully be cleared, frankly, as we still see in the random infections that pop up.  There's only so much the body can take.  What this meant in terms of other physical symptoms though was that my kidneys were no longer shunting fluid around like I needed them to.  My legs and body swelled to some ridiculous proportions.  That swelling pulled against my sutures.  I literally would roll to one side (pillows propped underneath me to keep me rolled but not too far), sleep a couple of hours, and then need to be rolled to the other--in that time, one side of my body was quite literally heavier, where the fluid had sunk down to the low end in a doughy mass.  That weight pulled on every fresh, healing part of me, worse than the normal after-surgery stiffness.  I threw these out immediately. 

I found one complete ostomy bag change kit.

This one I kept on purpose.  It is a tangible part of some of the most horrific moments of my life.  I have a lot of mixed feelings about it.  I don't know why, exactly, but I know that it's very important to keep it.  Also, with it I found my Mayo Clinic Commemorative Plate, this being the small sandwich plate when accidentally stole from them but keep as a trophy.

We cleared out all of the furniture and stood in the empty living room, Andy and I.  For months, I lived on a small spot of that apartment, only moving from couch to bathroom and back.  I remember trying to stop my ostomy from oozing everywhere one day while I was still determined to be able to take care of myself for a couple of hours.  I remember breaking down into tears in the bathroom, frustrated that I couldn't get the bag to stick correctly.  I remember how we had to stuff pillows so that I could finally sleep in our own bed again.  I see a blur of faces of the people who came to visit me or stay with me for a while, with a warmth in my heart.  I see Andy trying to handle his own frustrations with our situation, managing a similar but still different kind of helplessness.

In that empty apartment, we saw a place where we had had some of the worst experiences of our lives.  I want so very much to leave it there in that space, to abandon it there with a handful of nails, fuzz, and indents in the carpet.  And at the same time, I know that I will keep it, partly because I haven't figured out the best way to carry it, so the weight can still chafe, but also in that Andy and I both grew stronger for the experience.  The good and the bad are all a part of us, the obscenely bad where we made through with the help of those that love us, communication, and a whole lot of grit.  There were some very good memories in our old apartment, our home of five years. 

It's time to pack up the pieces we want to keep and establish something new.