Posts by Jonah

My husband just deep fried marinated portobello mushrooms.

Wow.

Michele’s foot hasn’t been doing well. I talked to her on the phone today. She said cheerily that it looked like they’d only have to amputate a third of her foot. “But there’s a vein of black going all the way up to my ankle,” she said. “And when I say it’s black, it’s not blue or dark. It’s black like coal. But I’m hoping that part is just faking it.” They scheduled an MRI today to see how much bone was alive. If bone is dead, it doesn’t grow back. They have to cut it off.

I was a little distracted the rest of the day.

I went to visit Michele this afternoon and got to be there while the foot doctor was there. I even got to watch him change the dressing. “You okay with this?” he said, as I eagerly peered forward.

“Oh yeah,” said Michele.

“I used to work in the OR,” I said.

He nodded and unwrapped stained bandages. Michele’s foot looks horrible. It’s the worst wound I’ve ever seen. I watched an amputation once when I worked in the operating room as an anesthesia aide before going to college; a lady with diabetes had to have most of her foot taken off. That was gross. This is unbelievable horrendous looking. Her flesh is a raw mass of black and red and blue on one side of her foot. The two toenails look like fuzzy growths of fungus clinging to a rotting loaf of what used to be bread.

“This is good,” said the doctor, pointing at her toes. “See this pink here? This wasn’t there before.” I have to say that it looked like a miracle to me…that new life could be generating out of that ugly mass of black seemed entirely improbable.

He doused it with a little saline and then wrapped it up again. The MRI results weren’t ready yet, he said. He’d come back when they were.

He popped back in the room a little later. No change in the bones, no spread of dead tissue. He wouldn’t need to amputate tomorrow. He wouldn’t do any cutting, just “power-wash” the dead stuff away and put synthetic skin grafts over the places where the skin was gone.

I asked him about these grafts, and he started explaining them. Michele said something like, “Ooo! Biotech!” and wanted to know all about the company. I was interested in the science. He said they have big petri dishes where they grow skin cells. Then they remove the cells, just leaving behind a protein matrix. He said he’s starting to use this kind of stuff to replace injured cartilage in knees and stuff too.

He was explaining all these while Duncan walked in. Poor Duncan was waiting to hear how much of his wife was going to be removed, and the doctor kept going on about the technical aspects of this new grafting technique. Finally, I blurted out, “He’s just going to do a power-wash tomorrow!” which, I’m afraid, didn’t help Duncan out at all.

The doctor explained what that meant. He said Michele would probably lose both toenails, but with her continued recovery, he expected her to come out of the hospital with all ten toes. “There goes my modeling career,” said Michele. He said he might send her home Friday. He says he’s very happy that there has continued to be no infection, and he thinks she’ll be less likely to develop infection outside of the hospital.

All three of us looked like we were trying not to break into tears.

Boy, this has been a roller coaster day. I’ve been asking God all day, why. And he seems to be saying, “Oh, I’m not finished yet.”

I’ve had better birthdays

We had a late campaign meeting the night before. I finally got home around midnight. When I got up the next morning, there was a message from Max Bremer’s wife Tamsey (she and the kids are staying with Michele and Duncan while Max is deployed flying over Iraq) saying that, when Duncan got home from the campaign meeting the night before, Michele was in intense pain. She’d had surgery on her left foot last Friday to correct damage to her toe joints as a result of the Lyme disease.

(Had I mentioned that Michele was diagnosed last year with Lyme disease, not untreatable MS as she thought she’d had for 15 years?)

So Duncan was up all night with Michele at the hospital. Turns out she wasn’t getting circulation to the two toes that had been operated on. It’s still up in the air whether or not they’ll have to amputate part of her toes. And the pain is horrendous.

The good news is that today she asked Duncan to bring her knitting and some chocolate. So I think she’s feeling a little better.

On top of this, Berck was sick, and I was coming down with his cold as well.

Tamsey and the kids got me a balloon and a card, though, that they gave me when I got to the Bremers to work. (JB got a Thomas the Train balloon as well, and Gloria got a “Thinking of You” balloon, which will eventually perform double-duty on a trip to the hospital.)

I got home to find Berck crumpled on the couch in the study. “I don’t think I can construct you anything for dinner,” he said weakly. And he certainly didn’t look like he should be dragged out into public to eat. “Doesn’t making you lasagna from scratch and a seven layer torte last year carry over a year?” he whimpered.

So I ordered a pizza from Extreme Pizza (“The best overpriced pizza in town,” according to the Independent newspaper), complete with anchovies on the side, just for me. And Berck didn’t even complain about being in the same room as them. It’s been so long since I’ve had anchovies. I’d forgotten how good they can be.

Then for dessert I ate refrigerated fudge sauce with a spoon.

I spent most of the evening on the phone, either with my various family members or my campaign staff and volunteers.

Today my neighbor rang the doorbell to our open door (the weather was beautiful today, and we don’t have bugs) and handed me a plate of zucchini bread. For my birthday.

Berck said he’d cook me a special dinner tonight, but I told him I don’t know if I’d be able to taste anything. I feel pretty pathetic. (I think today is my cold’s apex.)

Tonight he’s making me pea casserole.

Actual Fact: In auto accidents, injuries are twice as likely to be fatal for whites as for blacks.

It’s sleeting and thundering and lightning.

Actual Fact: The Dutch special forces are called the Korps Commandotroepen.

I made lasagna Sunday. Berck helped by making his famous tomato sauce. I used all three of the eggs left in the carton to make the pasta. I like playing with the KitchenAid pasta maker. It’s like playing with an electric Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop.

Then I wanted to make cookies, but we were out of eggs. So I used mayonnaise instead and left out the salt. They ended up being a different texture, very crumbly instead of chewy.

Berck refuses to eat them. He insist they taste like mayonnaise, but I think that’s only because he saw me put it in the batter. I think they’re yummy.