Gail's Blog

My BIG MEDICAL MESS was about this:  I had my hip replaced in Georgetown Hospital, and they kept me one night, shifting me to I NOVA Fairfax, Telemetry Unit, which was my home hospital. There they found a pulmonary embolism, started pumping me with blood thinners (Heparin, to be specific) and found that my hemoglobin was dropping like a stone. The trick was to thin my blood without driving me into hemorrhagic shock. In spite of their efforts, I fell into it, anyway. INOVA Fairfax they saved my life again. The first time was almost three years ago when they brought me out of cardiogenic shock , something people survive 50% of the time. Both times I was a guest in CICU, or Cardio Intensive Care. The hip was still in "screaming pain", as my friend, Jeanne calls it from experience, but after they allowed me out of bed (I did get really good at bedpans), and I had physical therapy, which is God's gift to all of us, I was finally transferred to a state-of-the-art intensive re

I have to admit that I have been obsessing about my age lately. I've allowed my hair to go grey because I want to dare to be myself, as God has me right now. Yet I am wondering if God cares that I look older than my peers who color. I don't think she does. Also, I am reasonably fit but I still have droopy skin and a crinkly neck. I work with people who are ALL YOUNGER THAN I, a first in my life. I feel alternately hot and over-the-hill depending on how I'm feeling at any given moment. It is unsettling to feel hot when I really am not. Gail as Older Person I simultaneously want to be as fit and up-to-date as possible to offset my age as well as to just be as I am, sinking into comfortable sloth, gluttony, and evil humor as befits my status as a senior citizen. So I'm ambivalent. My close personal friends from high school might remember that I've always been this way. In adolescence I was a hippie (not going into details) but as a performer I was glamorous.