Wash, Rinse, Repeat

Swollen, steroid face is back. And wait, who is that masked woman holding my hand? The Virgin Mary? Actually she belonged to my father-in-law Hank who passed in 2013. And yes she’s wearing a mask in sympathy with the 3,000,000 who have gotten the Coronavirus and the 200,000 + who have died (worldwide). (And in the US over a million cases with death tolls approaching 60,000 and cdc says that’s a low count.)

Yesterday, before my visit to Sarah Cannon, my 5-year-old granddaughter Madeline called and asked to interview me as a “famous” poet. That cracked me up. But she had an old copy of my chapbook “Heart Language,” so I agreed. Hers was a school project and was coming on the heels of one of my poems being accepted by JAMA. But it made my day. She read my poem “everyone loves blue herons” to her class with big words like ascends and massive.

But back to treatment day, Dan was not allowed to come into the building with me, so he went back to the hotel. My blood work looked fine and after a few hours they started infusion. They shot Benadryl into my port, and immediately, I felt it in my jaws. Then my pelvic floor! weird. I also got steroids and pepsid. Suddenly I started getting restless legs so I asked Sally my nurse if they could cut down the Benadryl bc it was very uncomfortable. It had happened last week but I thought it was an aberration.

At about 12:30 we were finished and headed back to Knoxville. We do it again next Monday. The famous poet is signing off with all kinds of gorgeous peonies from her garden.