#36: Role Reversal

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted to this blog but, basically, I’ve just been very very tired and very busy at the same time.  I got off my maintenance schedule when I went to Lamar last month and pushed chemo back (with the oncologist’s approval) for a week.  That was fine.  I felt really good the whole time I was in Beaumont…except for my voice.  But that meant I had chemo (after returning to San Antonio) only a week before AWP in Chicago and, so, had to cancel my trip to Chicago.   

I hated missing that trip but love the video greetings from the Pecan Grove Press poets who partied on.  Louie Cortez did a great job of getting the party together at the Gage Art Gallery and of selling books from the PGP table!

Meanwhile, back in San Antonio, I didn’t fully recover from the delayed chemo treatment until late last week.  I am now back, pretty much as healthy as I have been, and will not have another chemo drip until next week.

That “pretty much as healthy as” refers to the fact that I am exhausted again.  Sunday night (err, Monday morning) at 2 a.m., Susan woke up with a terrible pain in her chest that radiated through to her back and to her left arm.  I rushed her to the emergency room at Stone Oak Methodist Hospital where it took doctors until last night to determine that her heart was fine and that the pain was probably gastric in nature.  She’s fine now, but it was scary!  I stayed with her in the hospital both of the full nights she was there.  And got very little sleep.

It was a role reversal as Susan has been trying to sleep on those uncomfortable chairs whenever I’m in the hospital!

Right now, I’m tired (okay, just tired) and about to go back to sleep.

My best to all of you,

Palmer