Good night.

NOTE FROM TRUDI: This posting has been cut short, because Frank was whisked away to the pre-op MRI. We got to the hospital at 5:30. Surgery -apparently- starts at 11 or 12, and is set to go for around 4 or 5 hours, with a couple of hours in post-op and several days in the hospital under observation. Before he was wheeled off, Frank asked me post this for him. I know how deeply, deeply he has valued the fact that people have been following along with him in this experience. Thank you all, and we'll keep it up.



My head is aching, softly, all around the back of my skull. It has been for a few hours. It isn't anything to worry about. After all, I just had dinner with both my parents and we argued about our politics, a discussion which could hardly have been more polarized and inane. I'm surprised I didn't have a seizure.

I feel confident that the worst scenario will not happen again. I am confident I will land in that 98 percent safe area. Why shouldn't I be? It's 49 times more likely than not. Yet as I'm writing this, I'm musing. . .what if. What if the two percent rules out, and this lousy blog post is the last coherent thing I offer up to the world. This is a morbid line of thought, and forgive me for going there. Perhaps I should just not go there, for my sake and everyone else's. I mean, it's silly, right? It's so damn. . . unlikely.

That's the farthest away I can keep the big-dark-scary right now: "unlikely." I'd prefer it unfathomable, impossible, absurd, uncanny, historical, unexplainable. But it's not. It's simply, "unlikely."

Let me try to embrace that fear. Flip that 98 green to 98 red. What could I say to make feel better about leaving this life tomorrow afternoon?

I might tell my parents I love and forgive them, though I was never able to forgive them nearly much as I would have liked. I would have liked to understand them better.

I am sorry for hurting people. Most of this category falls to ex-lovers. What greater way is there to hurt someone then to sleep with them for a long time? I'm being flip. It's because I'm finishing this post in the hospital, in one of those silly little gowns. The pain I've caused others always stays with me, even after they have moved on.

(We are interrupted again--I have written out a actual will, and there is a chaplain here who is going to notarize that for me. So much precaution we take for this mist of death around us. But it makes me feel more grounded in life, still.

While we wait for Trudi to track down my power of attorney forms and living will, we talk. He's a very round and well groomed man--white beard, white hair. He tells me he's on call. He tells me the children are the worst, he had one this morning, he said. He is not solemn, but plain, and it feels honest. Then he tells me he used to be a corrections officer. I say, "Well, you certainly have found yourself in places where you see some difficult human experience." "Well, yes," he said. Their was a hint of pride, but it seemed it wasn't part of some plan for him. His voice and attitude had a habit of ease. This was just where he wound up, "funny, no?" was what his face said. I wanted to ask him why he thought he wound up in places where people were about to die, did before this in places where their lives were confined by bars and rules. And why do I care?

Cute girls in hospital garb are constantly approaching me.
"Hi, I'm Kathy."
"Hi Kathy--you have a metal object in your hand."
"I do. But the good part is I just put it in your ear."