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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: General Interest
- Published: 02/18/2018
2018GoodDay Approx. 1,100 wds.
The Good Day
Yesterday was a good day. I want to get it down here before, like all yesterdays, it vanishes into the past. Maybe I feel this compulsion because, at my advanced age, I don’t anticipate too many good days. Maybe I want to re-live it as I write about it. At any rate, here it is.
Two weeks ago I was taken into the emergency room with a terrible stomachache and from there to the hospital, where my gall bladder was removed. The gall bladder we (my wife Sally and myself) had died and was black. I was discharged from the hospital in three days and, after waiting all day to be released, Sally drove me home just barely before it got dark. I suppose the hospital was no worse than such places are but I hated it and was glad to be home.
The gall bladder, as I learned, is part of the digestive system and when it’s gone, the system has to adjust to functioning without it. One horrible after-effect of having your gall bladder removed is diarrhea. The day after coming home I had two terrible bouts of this. Sally called my HMO and it was back to the ER. Thankfully, I was back home that afternoon. Since then I’ve had one more bout of diarrhea, not nearly as severe. A second bad after-effect, at least for me, was that it appeared to have activated the acid reflux that I’d had for years and had always kept under control with meds. Two days ago I had a bad acid reflux attack in the morning and so ate lightly the rest of the day. I had had various people come from a home health agency: a nurse, an occupational therapist and a physical therapist. The nurse suggested that I ask my doctor to refer a dietician as all of my questions to her concerned my diet---what should I eat and what not.
On the good day I slept through the night without having to get up to go to the bathroom for the second night in a row. This was a relief to me. I’d had surgery for an enlarged prostate some twenty years ago and since then was probably one of the few residents in our retirement community who didn’t have to get up during the night. Sally usually got up once.
It was early bit I’d slept enough. Sally was still sleeping. I hoped she had slept well. Sally too was an octogenarian and was tired from taking care of me as well as from worrying about me. After my bathroom business I went into the kitchen and set about preparing for breakfast. I set out Sally’s apple juice, her pills and cereal bowl. I drank my orange juice, got out some canned mandarin oranges and started a decaf coffee. Cafine, we’d read, promoted diarea. I’d been drinking caffenated coffee in the morning because we’d read that this was good for you.
I got out cereal and berries (berries were supposed to be good) and prepared my cereal.. I derived great pleasure in doing all of these familiar things. This was a Sunday and to me Sunday meant the NYT (Sunday Times) and NFL. The NFL season was over, capped by a terrific Super bowl, which I was lucky enough to watch from my sickbed. I ate my mandarin orange and cereal, then took the decaf coffee and half a blueberry muffin along with the Sunday Times out to our patio (enclosed) where it was nice and sunny. I tackled the Times crossword puzzle while finishing my coffee. It was a pleasant interlude.
Sally had gotten up by this time and she had slept well, getting up once during the night. She brought me my morning pills and we talked about what I should eat that day. We decided on vegetable soup for lunch and a TV turkey dinner. I then dressed and went to my computer room, as we called it, to tackle the printer. On the same day as my acid reflux attack I’d put a new cartridge in my printer and disaster resulted, paper not printing but spitting out. At one time you just put in a new cartridge and then printed. Now there was an alignment process to go through. I think I knew what had happened; somehow I’d botched the alignment process. Now I found another new cartridge, inserted it, carefully went through the alignment process and, lo, the printer was okay. The day was going along nicely.
I spent the rest of the morning reading the Times while half-listening to the news on TV. Then I had my vegetable soup and the other half of the blueberry muffin. I finished reading the Times and then it was back to the computer. As the reader may have gathered, I’m a writer. I write two columns for the Sun Senior News, a paper delivered monthly to our retirement community. I also write short stories that appear in online magazines, like Storystar. I wanted to get back to writing and I had an idea for a story about Uncle Pringle, a character who’d suddenly appeared in my mind a number of years ago. Uncle Claude Pringle was a small white-haired man with neat hand and feet who resembled the English actor whose first name he shared, the British actor claud Rains. Uncle Pringle had served in a secret government agency and was now a consultant, although what he consulted about and for whom was not clear. What was clear was the he was a problem solver. In my first Uncle Pringle story he’d solved a workplace problem for the narrator; he was actually the uncle of the narrator’s wife. In subsequent stories, he’d taken care of a witch who’d put a hex on the narrator’s friend, a con man who swindled old people and had confronted mob bosses. In this new story he would come to the aid of a man who’d been the narrator’s mentor, a professor unjustly accused of sexual assault.
I worked on my story until I got tired. Even before the surgery, I usually tired in the afternoon. I had a cup of tea on the patio, then I had what our Irish daughter-in-law would call a lie down. After this I checked my e-mails and there was one from my doctor saying a dietician would be calling me. This made the good day even better. Eventually, Sally and I had the turkey dinner. We did various things until about eight o’clock when we settled in to watch television, first The Crown, then Endeavor, in which the young detective investigates deaths at the local hospital, including a man who’d been there to have his gall bladder removed. We then went to bed. I reviewed the events of the day and concluded I had felt the best I had in a long time. It had been a good day.
###
A Good Day(Martin Green)
2018GoodDay Approx. 1,100 wds.
The Good Day
Yesterday was a good day. I want to get it down here before, like all yesterdays, it vanishes into the past. Maybe I feel this compulsion because, at my advanced age, I don’t anticipate too many good days. Maybe I want to re-live it as I write about it. At any rate, here it is.
Two weeks ago I was taken into the emergency room with a terrible stomachache and from there to the hospital, where my gall bladder was removed. The gall bladder we (my wife Sally and myself) had died and was black. I was discharged from the hospital in three days and, after waiting all day to be released, Sally drove me home just barely before it got dark. I suppose the hospital was no worse than such places are but I hated it and was glad to be home.
The gall bladder, as I learned, is part of the digestive system and when it’s gone, the system has to adjust to functioning without it. One horrible after-effect of having your gall bladder removed is diarrhea. The day after coming home I had two terrible bouts of this. Sally called my HMO and it was back to the ER. Thankfully, I was back home that afternoon. Since then I’ve had one more bout of diarrhea, not nearly as severe. A second bad after-effect, at least for me, was that it appeared to have activated the acid reflux that I’d had for years and had always kept under control with meds. Two days ago I had a bad acid reflux attack in the morning and so ate lightly the rest of the day. I had had various people come from a home health agency: a nurse, an occupational therapist and a physical therapist. The nurse suggested that I ask my doctor to refer a dietician as all of my questions to her concerned my diet---what should I eat and what not.
On the good day I slept through the night without having to get up to go to the bathroom for the second night in a row. This was a relief to me. I’d had surgery for an enlarged prostate some twenty years ago and since then was probably one of the few residents in our retirement community who didn’t have to get up during the night. Sally usually got up once.
It was early bit I’d slept enough. Sally was still sleeping. I hoped she had slept well. Sally too was an octogenarian and was tired from taking care of me as well as from worrying about me. After my bathroom business I went into the kitchen and set about preparing for breakfast. I set out Sally’s apple juice, her pills and cereal bowl. I drank my orange juice, got out some canned mandarin oranges and started a decaf coffee. Cafine, we’d read, promoted diarea. I’d been drinking caffenated coffee in the morning because we’d read that this was good for you.
I got out cereal and berries (berries were supposed to be good) and prepared my cereal.. I derived great pleasure in doing all of these familiar things. This was a Sunday and to me Sunday meant the NYT (Sunday Times) and NFL. The NFL season was over, capped by a terrific Super bowl, which I was lucky enough to watch from my sickbed. I ate my mandarin orange and cereal, then took the decaf coffee and half a blueberry muffin along with the Sunday Times out to our patio (enclosed) where it was nice and sunny. I tackled the Times crossword puzzle while finishing my coffee. It was a pleasant interlude.
Sally had gotten up by this time and she had slept well, getting up once during the night. She brought me my morning pills and we talked about what I should eat that day. We decided on vegetable soup for lunch and a TV turkey dinner. I then dressed and went to my computer room, as we called it, to tackle the printer. On the same day as my acid reflux attack I’d put a new cartridge in my printer and disaster resulted, paper not printing but spitting out. At one time you just put in a new cartridge and then printed. Now there was an alignment process to go through. I think I knew what had happened; somehow I’d botched the alignment process. Now I found another new cartridge, inserted it, carefully went through the alignment process and, lo, the printer was okay. The day was going along nicely.
I spent the rest of the morning reading the Times while half-listening to the news on TV. Then I had my vegetable soup and the other half of the blueberry muffin. I finished reading the Times and then it was back to the computer. As the reader may have gathered, I’m a writer. I write two columns for the Sun Senior News, a paper delivered monthly to our retirement community. I also write short stories that appear in online magazines, like Storystar. I wanted to get back to writing and I had an idea for a story about Uncle Pringle, a character who’d suddenly appeared in my mind a number of years ago. Uncle Claude Pringle was a small white-haired man with neat hand and feet who resembled the English actor whose first name he shared, the British actor claud Rains. Uncle Pringle had served in a secret government agency and was now a consultant, although what he consulted about and for whom was not clear. What was clear was the he was a problem solver. In my first Uncle Pringle story he’d solved a workplace problem for the narrator; he was actually the uncle of the narrator’s wife. In subsequent stories, he’d taken care of a witch who’d put a hex on the narrator’s friend, a con man who swindled old people and had confronted mob bosses. In this new story he would come to the aid of a man who’d been the narrator’s mentor, a professor unjustly accused of sexual assault.
I worked on my story until I got tired. Even before the surgery, I usually tired in the afternoon. I had a cup of tea on the patio, then I had what our Irish daughter-in-law would call a lie down. After this I checked my e-mails and there was one from my doctor saying a dietician would be calling me. This made the good day even better. Eventually, Sally and I had the turkey dinner. We did various things until about eight o’clock when we settled in to watch television, first The Crown, then Endeavor, in which the young detective investigates deaths at the local hospital, including a man who’d been there to have his gall bladder removed. We then went to bed. I reviewed the events of the day and concluded I had felt the best I had in a long time. It had been a good day.
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