I have a really important appointment with my old friend Dr. Most Interesting.  He is a heart surgeon who dabbles in acupuncture.   He is a very cool guy.  I imagine he is hurting now because Syria is his home, even though he is a man of the world.  I can't understand the scans nor the reports.  I do notice a number comments such as "this is very odd," "I have not seen this before" and some other comments that seemed to leave the gentleman perplexed.  While strong, all of my organs are aging at a more rapid rate than normal.  One more little complication I can wave bye bye to that transplant.  

Think of me a little tonite if you please.  I could use all the help I can get.

To sit at my keyboard today is not the same as it has been since I started.  To rip one straight from Dexter, I got me a dark passenger (that would be depression) at the moment.  It has been many years since it was more than a shadow.  It's just a part of me, I am not under any illusion, and I face it.   Today it is no shadow.  It blocks out the light.  I know the light is there, so I have reference if I keep faith.  The dark shadow tries very hard to stip away the faith.  Faith, you just hold on to, once you learned the trick. I got a good, strong, tenuous hold. :)

It's all like that.  Everything.  From the biggest to the smallest of the small.  That dark shadow will make it far too complex, make it impossible, make it unlikely, make it in no way double fucking possible.

I felt it when I was coming to consciousness while intubated.  The notion that anything positive was going on would take a good long while to process.  That of course represented no problem per se because I was on the outer limits of that propofol Mike Jackson stuff.  In what seemed to be a relative short period of time, and with a surprising lack of discomfort, it did not reach pain level, out came the tube and I felt like I was being reborn.  It  felt so wonderful.

I'll publish this and then just add to it later.  I am not posting to FB for a while.

I don't know what to write about today.  I am very in between Doctors appointments, thought they will come fast and heavy starting tomorrow.  I will pick up the phone and ask for lifts and some help.  I will not be stubborn or pretend that everything is ok.  I hope I have peace today, something that a estranged loved one has been determined to ruin for the last few days. I have no means to stop this, and no one to help me in the family.  I am as sad as I possibly could be.

I am going to have a cookie and see if I can get my thoughts more positive.  All I feel right now is hate staring through me. I have felt that for days now.  Mission accomplished, huh.

I will be back and I will be ME.  Gimme an hour. 

I am sure that virtually every medical account is plein de merde. I will get my charts somewhere along the line and start making this semi honest. V.2.0


Last week, one morning I came out of my office with a revelation.  I needed to tell Nicole before I lost it.  The thought was perhaps original or maybe I read it somewhere and stole it.  I don't really know for sure.  The revelation was that I was hard at work at having a "polite death."  That hit me like a ton of bricks.  Who the fuck ever worked at having a polite death?  What was the point?  You die they cry.  Pretending that you are cool with dying don't ease anybody's pain.  It is fucking absurd to the max.  We laughed and laughed and laughed.  Right.  You lie over there and die, politely.  Don't make waves.  No unpleasant truths.  I still have so far to go, so much to learn, to see, to understand.  I know nothing about myself.  I am an enigma to me, and, time is running out very fast.
I am very sad today.  I feel lonely and alone.  Lana came to see me and Nicole called me a lot.  She needed to rest she was exhausted.  My aunt called.  She is my Mom's sister.  She is one of those unconditional love types. Like my mom.  Nicole is just about there too.  She could not love me more.  Lana is like that.  The last one I have, I think other than marriage and a few bowling nuts who have promised to get my ashes under the greens for me. :)



I am very weak.  Very little stamina.  I can get out of bed into a chair with some help.  Early Saturday morning my blood pressure went out of control.  Blood pressure, pulse everything way north of 200.  Let me tell you two bouts of that in one week and you got some mighty sore ribs and a heart that feels like its been punched over and over again.  Also pretty sure I broke a couple of ribs coughing a couple of weeks ago.  Was hardly worth mentioning at the time :)
  

I miss Xamie, I have no idea what's going on in the places we keep our eyes on.  I don't know what those asshole Americans have done or are going to do.  I want to tell everybody I will be back and I love you all.  I miss Monica, Ellim, Stacey, Gareth, Paula and a whole lot more of you.   

I miss my left wing politics, my steampunk, Monica's Lego adventures, my photographers, the scientists who teach me every day.  God how I miss you all.  I Miss my posts, your comments, that connection we share.  

There are tubes coming our of me all over the place.  Blood gas monitor, 3 iv's, many many wires hooking up to the ECG as well as the ventilator on standby.  Moving around in bed in an immense technical challenge.  The steroids have turned my skin paper thin and my arms are both red, raw and bloody, the right one with a very large clot that looks like a spilled bowl of red jello.  I am getting additional prednisone, instead of 15 mg a day its now 65 and there are also other steroids in the iv drips I am still on. 
Today is Tuesday and it may be the day I get to go home.  I hope so.  I have the second part of the nuclear stress test this morning.  At the same time as I am pleased to be going home, I am afraid, too.   The breathing attacks, the tachycardia  are painful and so distressing and difficult that death soon seems an enviable option.  My life was saved a second time on Friday morning.  A boatload of equipment, respirologists, two nurses and a Dr took 8 hours to keep me alive.  I don't have any of that at home.  Brave Russ shivers just a little at that thought.

Since last week I have been brutal, if loving towards Nicole.  Her support rug is being pulled out from under her.  While I know how hard it is for her I cant let that touch me.  She has to get her intellectual shit together.  It took us so long to get as far as we did in the three years we worked hard together at therapy.  For maybe five more years she worked off and on with crafts.  That shit stops now. Many, many hours a day of pure intellectual work along with communication skills.  She is going to script, rehearse and control every phase of her life even if it makes her hate me.  She can thank me twenty years after I am gone.  She joins the Canadian Aphasic Marine Corps half hour after I get home.  There will be tears.  There will be anger.  It is the only way she knows how to learn.  I love you so much, Nicole.  Enough to make you hate me if it will help you in the coming years when I can no longer speak for you.


It is Wed morning and I have been here for a week, now.  I feel ready to go home now.  I am not sure they will let me because they do not seem to have a grasp on what caused my tachycardia  twice.  I suspect after a lot of thought that stress is playing a major role. I hope its today though.  I am homesick.  
My stamina is coming back, fast.  My vital signs are all in good order, the only give away is my pulse rate that is above 90 sitting.  I am used to this, though.  I am the luckiest little fucker on the planet.  I get to die twice in one week to no ill effect and probably without even losing a step.  I have been walking on my own since Saturday.  I am now called the healthiest person in ICU.  I do six minute walking tests all day around the ward. 
A lot of my family and extended family has called me to wish me well, (and one to wish me as horrible a death as possible, ideally at his hands) to say lets get together before its too late.  A couple of weeks ago I think the idea would have been abhorrent to me.  No longer.  Five minutes with my cousins.  I don't want to live hidden away.  I will get a walker.  I will get a wheel chair.  I will adapt.
I am afraid of dying.  I am afraid of the horrible pain that my disease sometimes produces.  Rib crushing, lung collapsing, heart destroying wracking pain that lasts for hours and hours at a time. This is all new.  I used to describe my disease as being relatively pain free.  This is no longer the case.  The spasms crush your ribs, crush your lungs and your heart gets pounded and pounded until you really wish you were dead.  

I am so afraid for my Nicole.  I have had to do what I have had to do things to keep us afloat.  The attack last Friday night took away any patience that I may have had towards the necessity of protecting her.  

It is Wed night and I am up in a ward awaiting a cardiologist to sign off on my discharge.  I have been here for about 7 hours now. ICU needed the bed, I really am no longer in need of 24/7 monitoring.  ICU had no cardio this morning so after all my nuclear stuff they sent me up here.  I promptly found out there was no cardio on the floor and the chances of their being one today not so good.  A nice Russian Dr. came to try to exercise some patented patient control on me after I laid out the story and, after one week of being a very nice Russell I lost it.  I savaged her up, I savaged her down, I threw darts above her head once I realized she was not even a cardio.  She is the GP.  I tossed her at the same time as she figured she would make her escape.  

Life can be interesting if you play from the heart.  She came back.  Sat down.  Told me the cardio would be by to see me and check me out the second he/or she possibly could.  That might only be tomorrow.  He is short staffed down in emergency and they seem to by dying on him.  I figure I don't come in first. She was night and day.  She sat next to me on the bed, took my hand and spoke softly to me.  Answered my questions and then accepted my continued hostility at not having been instantly understood and respected.  Her focus was now me, her patient.  I fell in awe of a true physician.  Lord knows what she walked away from initially only to have me blast her because my day was not going to plan.  She had clearly read my chart.  My chart takes a Dr over an hour to familiarize themselves with it.  

The Dr. had devoured my chart.  She came at me from two different directions.  Lung transplant.  Where exactly were we in so far as the listing went?  No, I told we were close now to filing, making a case.  She make it clear that she is affiliated with Notre Dame, in some fashion.  She knows the rest of my team, Dr. Fox, Dr. Garfield, Dr. Affaki, Dr. Luterman and a couple of others who may bolster my case. There is also a new program out of the Jewish experimental micro targeted radioactive therapy.  

Hope they like me, think I can offer science something.  Can I convince them that there is some not small amount of gravitas in me, that when I say please put me on that list I will devote myself to science first and foremost.  No amount of suffering , no amount of pain will stifle my desire to make the end of my life a gift to humanity.  

I want all of my medical records from all of my doctors going back about ten years.  I don't know the legal implications of this in Quebec, the right to documents.  I am not looking for anything.  I want to understand better and be able to write more concisely and to better evaluate my options as they come up.

 I have to call in family.  Nicole's brother in law, my own.  We are more or less solvent but I cannot even cope to look at a bill never mind manage a ledger.  This has been going on for some time.  It must stop.  I must make any intelligent steps towards having some kind of burial insurance.  I need to look at all of Nicole's long term options.  Just because I want to die at home does not make it the most sensible thing for us as a couple.  The end is nigh, it is time to put away foolish things and act like a man. 

I ain't getting signed out tonite, the cardio just did not show.  This floor is hell.  I went to walk a buddy out and quickly found out I was locked in.  That took five minutes to fix and I felt like my claws were flexing a bit.  I liked it.  I asked for the non existent rules, listened to their explanation about all the alzheimers and dementia patients and people with noxious diseases who keep walking up to me like the walking dead.  To say the least I am fucking mad, mad, mad.  I advised the nurse station to take a good look at me and make sure that fucking door is snapping open when I get there.  Where I go and when I come back aint their business.  They moved a guy in next to me whom I swear snores at more than 100 DB.  These evil motherfuckers offered to sedate him more for my comfort.  I said I figured some ear plugs for me and about 10 mg or rivotril ought to do the trick.  Baring that I am going to sleep outside with a blanket.  Call the police.  All this shit because any fucking cardio who can read did not have the balls or the ovaries to stick their ass out to help someone over the course of 17 hours.  I will learn to stay cool, but I will remember how to be the smartest person in the room, too.  I do that real well.  Nobody ever suspects that oh so effeminate, cowardly useless all around POS.  

I don't know if I will get over my current sense of mortality.  Of course I cannot predict my death at this moment or any other, anymore than anyone can, I have already started to broach the subject of end of life and hospice assistance and planning with Nicole and other people.  Very reassuringly they know how much I want to live.  They witnessed to horrible and needless suffering that my mother endured, and all have made clear that they expect no such act from me.  When the time comes, I will take my own life in the way of my choosing  I will also soon involve Nicole's sister Danielle and Pierrot.    

I am very sorry I did not follow my normal practice when writing with strong emotions when I composed this blog entry.  Normally I do not publish anything that leaves me with strong feelings until I have a chance to review it the next day, or sometimes have a writer I respect review it for me.  I did not follow that practice that night.  I just published a chunk of the accumulated writing from my ten days in the hospital.  

It was wrong and I apologize to the people who took offense.  I feel very badly about it.  The offensive parts are removed.  This will not happen again.  I will not bother you again. I will call my Dr's tomorrow to ask for some emotional support to make sure that I am as ok as can be and you will not have to suffer any further outburst from me. 

I offer no excuse, wrong is wrong.  My only mitigating circumstance is I was still so drugged from the hospital stay which had ended the day before.  I tossed out a med that I felt was making me crazy, rivotril.  Nicole tells me I was literally falling from wall to wall to wall while navigating around the house until Sunday.  My Dr. was pissed I was issued it.  This also was an emotional and inappropriate reaction to something that I have allowed to cause me a lot of pain over a long period of time.  This is no excuse.  I did a bad thing.  I am sorry I did.  I regret my action and apologize. 



I am sure that virtually every medical account is plein de merde. I will get my charts somewhere along the line and start making this semi honest.

I lost about 26 hours this week.  My lungs collapsed somewhere around 3 AM on Wed. morning.  I remember seeing 3:01 on the digital clock when I gave up on alleviating my breathing distress by sitting up in bed.  I am fairly lucky since most folks with lungs in my condition have to sleep sitting upright, I normally do not.  I could not recover my breath that way so I felt I had to get up.  The distress turned into a major breathing attack, worse than any before.  I actually got it under control for about 5 minutes before it launched off again at 5 AM.  This time Nicole woke up and she called 911 right away.  I lost consciousness before I was loaded into the ambulance.

I was treated for a heart attack as someone with COPD and intutubated at about 6 AM yesterday.  The tube was removed at 11 AM today, 29 hours later.  I did not have a heart attack.  My heart simply stopped, went into some other rhythm, or something I do not grasp yet. They had to sedate me more than is normal.   Apparently I was violent and extremely difficult to deal with.  I regained consciousness at about 9 AM this morning.  What woke me up was the feeling I was being water boarded, and I pretty much was.  I could feel the tube down my throat and it was suffocating me and on top of that they had a screen over my face and misting ventolin and other meds down the tube.  As I tried to move I realized I was restrained in the most complete manner you can possibly imagine.  I only could wiggle my toes.  Not even my fingers.  They were restrained, too.  They left me with no means to communicate.  I tried to use my toes but my reputation preceded me and they simply presumed I was trying to hurt them and made jokes about it.  I tried to point with my toes to the water jug.  Please wet my lips.  Nothing.  

Finally at about 11 AM the Dr came in and ordered the tube out.  I was so fucking relieved.  He later told me there was no real need to have ever intubate me.  Nicole told them I had severe COPD, the ambulance drivers told them I flat lined in the truck, they had actually stopped because of it.  Since they were close to the hospital the senior guy told them to finish the delivery, and they did.  They got my heart back into rhythm and because I have severe COPD they intubated me.  The lab results that proved I did not have a heart attack took 29 hours to get into the Doctors hands.  29 Hours unnecessarily intubated.  29 hours in a drug induced coma.  Does this make It sense?  Do not get me wrong.  I don’t know for sure a mistake was made, but somehow I think you can determine if someone has had a heart attack faster than that.  The test the Doctor told me about measured enzymes that had leached out of my heart on account of the trauma of not receiving O2.  The heart muscle had received virtually no damage.  (I have a report for my cardiologist and in fact there has been some manner of damage, we shall see) He told me today that I have an incredibly strong heart still. 

 Tonight, sitting here in ICU in my bed, I am both glad they saved me and glad they did not kill me.  
Today I feel quite odd, emotional, often sad.  I cried earlier for a minute, something that has only happened a single time since I got sick.  That was the day that Nicole and I realized that my lung disease was a major deal and destined to kill me at a young age.  I never did cry again a single time again until today.  Today I cried for what I have done to myself.  My parents provided me with a magnificent powerful strong body.  I spent my life thinking it was a weak, small, useless and unfair body.  Instead of being happy I chose to be unhappy.  I chose!  It has taken imminent death for me to even get a glimpse at the damage my ego has caused to my life, to my friends, to my family over the last 35 years.  

I have hidden myself from the world for the last year.  I do not go out.  I do not call my old friends.  I think I have chased everybody away.  This is wrong.  This is a waste of a precious gift of life.  I should suffer publicly, openly and show my love for everyone and everything good in this world.  I should cry over my fate until I need to no longer cry.  I should allow myself to be weak.  

The care I am receiving is beyond compare.  I am in a 12 bed ICU unit with a nurse for each bed and a half a dozen support staff and Dr's on hand at all times.  The technology is mind boggling.  My hear Dr. spoke to me yesterday and today he ordered up nuclear imaging for my heart.  He knows I do not need that test for what happened to me a couple of days ago.  He knows I did not have a heart attack.   He ordered the test to support my lung transplant application.  He was so versed in my chart he was able to tell me that my cancer had not grown at all!!!  He also was versed in the lack of transplant/cancer protocols in Quebec.  His opinion is that it is on a case by case basis and I think I got one or two more excellent Doctors on my side.  I am going to get that transplant.  I am going to get another little shot at life.  I am.

No longer will I accept putting others first.  No more.  No more will I care what anyone thinks of me.  Not one shit will I give.  I spent my life thinking about others first, and, fuck you to the end of time if you do not think this is so.  Stop reading and go away now.

Last week, one morning I came out of my office with a revelation.  I needed to tell Nicole before I lost it.  The thought was perhaps original or maybe I read it somewhere and stole it.  I don't really know for sure.  The revelation was that I was hard at work at having a "polite death."  That hit me like a ton of bricks.  Who the fuck ever worked at having a polite death?  What was the point?  You die they cry.  Pretending that you are cool with dying don't ease anybody's pain.  It is fucking absurd to the max.  We laughed and laughed and laughed.  I still have so far to go, so much to learn, to see, to understand.  I know nothing about myself.  I am an enigma to me, and, time is running out very fast.
I am very sad today.  I feel lonely and alone.  Lana came to see me and Nicole called me a lot.  She needed to rest she was exhausted.  My aunt called.  

  
It is Sunday today, August 31.  I am thinking a lot about the time on early Wed morning when my heart stopped.  There was nothing from my point of view.  No light, no warm glow, no mother or father.  At my desk I lost consciousness   Some ten minutes later my heart stopped.  There was nothing.  An absence of being.  I cannot decide what my beliefs are, as far as life after death.  If forced to I would say that we simply cease to be.  We go back to the state of nothingness that we were in prior to being born.  Yet, that entire cosmic miasma as unlikely as anything else.  I have no glimmer.  Given a choice I would like to be me, one more time, see how much better I do this time.  

I am very weak.  Very little stamina.  I can get out of bed into a chair with some help.  Early Saturday morning my blood pressure went out of control.  Blood pressure, pulse everything way north of 200.  Let me tell you two bouts of that in one week and you got some mighty sore ribs and a heart that feels like its been punched over and over again.  Also pretty sure I broke a couple of ribs coughing a couple of weeks ago.  Was hardly worth mentioning at the time :)

I had to be ventilated, again for about six hours.  It was really terrifying.  For the first time ever since I got sick I really wanted to die if dying would stop the attack.  I would have pushed that button.  The two nurses with me kept me together enough so that I could try to follow instructions. One of them would not let my hand go.  She gripped it and gripped it and squeezed and talked to me with so much love and compassion I cannot begin to describe the experience.  These women and men in this ICU unit are truly cut from special cloth.  Every single one of them.  From the lowliest to the chief they demonstrate what teamwork is all about.  They do it with joy and compassion.  The whole event lasted about 8 hours, it felt like an infinity.  Getting all those tubes out of your throat is better than sex.  

I miss Xamie, I have no idea what's going on in the places we keep our eyes on.  I don't know what those asshole Americans have done or are going to do.  I want to tell everybody I will be back and I love you all.  I miss Monica, Ellim, Stacey, Gareth, Paula and a whole lot more of you.   

I miss my left wing politics, my steampunk, Monica's Lego adventures, my photographers, the scientists who teach me every day.  God how I miss you all.  I Miss my posts, your comments, that connection we share.  

There are tubes coming our of me all over the place.  Blood gas monitor, 3 iv's, many many wires hooking up to the ECG as well as the ventilator on standby.  Moving around in bed in an immense technical challenge.  The steroids have turned my skin paper thin and my arms are both red, raw and bloody, the right one with a very large clot that looks like a spilled bowl of red jello.  I am getting additional prednisone, instead of 15 mg a day its now 65 and there are also other steroids in the iv drips I am still on. 

Today is Tuesday (hah!  they let me out Friday) and it may be the day I get to go home.  I hope so.  I have the second part of the nuclear stress test this morning.  At the same time as I am pleased to be going home, I am afraid, too.   The breathing attacks, the tachycardia  are painful and so distressing and difficult that death soon seems an enviable option.  My life was saved a second time on Friday morning.  A boatload of equipment, respirologists, two nurses and a Dr took 8 hours to keep me alive.  I don't have any of that at home.  Brave Russ shivers just a little at that thought.

I had an attack of some kind this morning a few minutes after I got up.  All of a sudden I could not breathe at all.  None of my tricks were working.  I could feel the panic rising.  Alone in my office, trying with less and less success to stay calm I tried to restart my breathing fitfully.  My chest burned and all my muscles were spasming uncontrollably.  I could feel my consciousness starting to fade.  It was terrifying.  After what felt like an eternity I began to gain control and get my breathing into a rhythm.  This led to hyperventilation and I was swept with a wave of nausea and chills. Sweat poured out of me, I was soaked in an instant.  Then I started to shiver, harder and harder.  At that point I had regained control of my breathing again and I knew that the worst was over. I had come close to getting Nicole to call 911. 

 She did not see it, I kept to myself in the office.  I wandered out of my space and went to join her in the living room.  She was alarmed at the sight of me shivering and sweating.  A nice blanket was brought out and soon I felt ok again.  I ate a cookie and within a half hour I was talking non stop, playing with cats, dressed and bird watching a beautiful cardinal who put on a show for us at the big window.  Now, a couple of hours later, whatever the hell it was is past.  I feel quite good again.  I will have a nice easy Saturday.  Two soccer games on this morning.  I have spinach gnocchi and a tomato sauce to make this afternoon.  Couple of movies this evening and a bit of G+.  I have so many things I want to write about, too.  A lot of stories to tell.   

My wife, Nicole Dumas, is my hero in real life.  She has an indomitable spirit, for real.   She was simple when I met her and she is simple still.  We are not at all alike in character.   I complicate everything, she simplifies it.  

We met two weeks before my 30th birthday.  She had just turned 39.  It was a Friday in mid February.  I was starting a new job on the following Monday and I thought I would stop by to check out my new office and meet the people.  I was returning to Montreal that very day after five years in exile in Ottawa and various parts. Though I should not have been, five years earlier I was caught by surprise by an instantaneous and completely unexpected end to my marriage to the girl next door.  Someday I'll write about those years.  Enough to say that I tried hard to destroy myself with drugs and alcohol, moved away and carried on generally very poorly. Eventually I wearied of it, my body and soul said no more.  I went back to the real world, a step at a time. I cleaned up.  The scars were deep but I survived.  One day I decided I wanted to go home again, if I could find it.  I missed home.  That was when the chance to move to Montreal with a very cool job materialized.  I took it.  

She was sitting in a glass walled wood lined board room, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and a crystal tumbler filled with a couple of fingers of scotch, in front of her.  She was wearing a tight black velvet dress and she was gorgeous.  I don't remember the rest of the office visit at all, as if it did not happen though I am sure it must have.  She invited me to sit and have a drink with her.  Of course I did.  Eventually, somehow, I convinced her to take me home with her.  I did promise to make her the best steak she ever had, and she assures me that I did indeed do that.  Just as I was closing the door and leaving peacefully, if somewhat confused, much later that night, she grabbed my arm and pulled me back inside, and, that was that.  I never did leave.

One day led to another.  After a while we jokingly started to make weekly contracts, then monthly.  We both had nothing at all when we met.  Nothing.  Nicole had a little bit of cheap furniture.  We had no debts, no assets.  After a while we decided to team up 100%.  No mine, no yours, just ours.  We had a lot of fun together.  Nicole is very bright.  Her bookshelves were full, rooms of them.  Four languages.  She is, was, proficient in three.  My family and friends grew to like her.  I grew to love her.  She comes from hard times.  I don't know anybody who had a more horrific childhood than she had.  How in the world the sunny bright woman with the simple and open heart came to be is beyond my kin.  After a while, when we knew we could count on each other until death do us part, we decided to get married.  It's the proper corporate thing to do.  


That was followed by fifteen years or so of smooth, smooth sailing featuring a lot of good times, laughter and warmth.


I thought that we were drifting apart.  Walls that were not there before, were.  Doubts, uncertainty, uneasiness.  Thats what I thought.  Then, like you first were able to describe it when you found words again, your brain blew up.  Poof.  Just like that.  I was there with you.  It took me hours to understand and react properly.  Lord knows how I wish I had reacted faster.  Twenty hours after the stroke happened I understood exactly what had happened to you and I was full of despair.  All of the uncertainty was gone.  I wanted you so badly it burned.  Such clarity I have not felt before or since.  I was going to do anything, anything I could.  You were gone!  Erased! Major brain damage.  Broca center destroyed.  Frontal lobe severe damage. Extensive left side damage.

She worked very, very hard for a long time.  I did too.  Daily for about three years. We did everything together as much as possible, weaving therapy into our daily activities.  I got a part time job, she came to work with me. She proved them wrong.  We had a lot of help.  I had Nicole back.  She suffers from aphasia.  She kicks the shit out of it mostly.  We make it fun.  We laugh at aphasia a lot. 


We sailed smooth again for almost a decade and then the world slowly began to change again.  Our roles are changing.  She is rising to the occasion brilliantly.  I feel bad that she has this added pressure.  I think she mostly feels like doing something nice for me.  I love her to bits. She makes me feel good, good, good.