bodlon: (cumberbatch - with book)
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I grew up in hospitals. This is (almost) not an exaggeration.

Some of the earliest photographs I've seen of myself have me in an incubator. There are later photos of me in a hospital crib, which I remember looking a bit like a tiny cage or jail cell; truly children's medicine has come a long way in the last 30 years. I topped that off by being an accident-prone kid with asthma. I spent more time under x-ray machines before the age of 18 than some entire countries.

When I wasn't failing to breathe, concussed, or otherwise injured in some unlikely but actually probably serious kind of way, I was in there for my family. My mom had a major surgery go wrong when I was in early grade school, and nearly died in ICU. They eventually bent the rules to admit me -- kids under 12 were prohibited -- and the doctors used to make me toys by inflating latex gloves and drawing on happy faces. My grandmother had heart attacks, emphysema, and life-threatening ulcers. My mom had a heart attack when I was 16 that necessitated me staying at a friend's house two hours from home over the winter break to be near her while she had bypass surgery. My uncle had a prolonged series of illnesses -- a brain tumor, gangrene -- before he died in hospital. My aunt had MS and was on dialysis before she went.

One of the most convenient things about moving to Columbia has been that all the hospitals are right here.

These days, it's pretty much me and mom who are left. It's not a normal year if she doesn't wind up in hospital over something terrifying that gives me a whole new frame of reference on things that can go wrong with a human body.

This morning I e-mailed the current draft of my (re)Visions novella to my editor. In an hour or so I'll be mailing April's installment of Hold Something. I've got my Major Field Test for my B.A. in English at 5. Right now, though, I'm sitting by myself in a surgery waiting room mainlining episodes of Glee on my netbook and waiting to hear that my mom is out of recovery. From there they'll move her to the room where she'll be spending the night (something that I only found out was on the agenda about 30 minutes ago) on blood thinners and under observation.

In so many ways, this is all situation normal. I'm used to the sitting around, the vending machine coffee, and even the smell. But that doesn't make it any easier. Not really. And probably not ever.

~*~

- From NPR: The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything. I read this on my phone while mom and I waited in line for surgery check-in. At heart I'm the sort of man who prefers to surrender and accept that I won't get to see and hear and read everything, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that there are plenty of things I'm glad to cull just for aesthetic reasons.

- The wreck of the Titanic is being devoured by microorganisms that show signs of collective intelligence. Resistance is futile. Biology is freaking awesome. I wonder if anyone in my Environmental Ethics class has seen this?

- Facebook deletes gay kiss pic. Fuck you, Facebook. (Hey, any local guys want to be seen kissing me on the Internet? It's a political protest! Really!)

- For my friends celebrating Passover: the Cat Haggadah.

- If you hadn't heard yet, Golau Glau's got a new, free EP out called Somato. Minimal vocals, eerie. I like it very much.

- Somebody baked a cake for the Bronx Zoo's Cobra. This made me laugh probably more than it should have. Or exactly as much as it should have. I wonder if I have enough flour? And the right size saw?

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

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