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

My mother, before she learned to run like a girl. My mother taught me how to run like a girl. I was outside (we were always outside) playing with girlfriends. We raced each other, and my mom came out from behind the screen door. She said, "You shouldn't run with your fists clenched! You are a girl. You should be more feminine. Here, let me show you." She demonstrated a few adorable steps with hands flapping listlessly beside her.  She stopped and glared at me. "See?" I dutifully practiced, feeling terribly frustrated. How fast can someone run if they to think about how cute they look while doing it? Not very.  I was never able to integrate that pretty, graceful girl my mom had in her mind's eye. And I suspect that those women who were raised in the days of segregated women's and men's employment newspaper ads, and women's news, mostly had difficulty with these superimposed requirements. So when I read Judith Martin's In defense