Bonnie Recovery

Cataloging Life

Ouch, it has been a LONG time since my last post.  Thank you Betsy and Melanie for prompting me.  Bets, I’ve been thinking of all the good Tex-Mex food you are eating (though Melanie may get better food in Houston!).   

Speaking of food, we have been cooking around here.  What started as a relatively small BBQ for students in the online course I took this spring (they are on campus for a two week course) became an outdoor dinner party for 30.  Daniel has learned to cook “mama style” and so of course we had food for 60.  It was so much fun to host a party again.  I baked bread and made half a dozen sides.  It felt good to sit down with our guests and just get to know them.  I had to go to bed for a couple of days afterward.

Last Friday Margi Olson and her husband came for dinner.  On a whim I invited Emmett McTeague.  Emmett hired Margi at Aetna during a sabbatical she had twenty years ago.  She lived in my Hartford house during the three days she was there from NY.  Emmett and Barbara live in Rhode Island now, but they came with less than 24 hours notice.  Before we moved here, Margi, Emmett, and I had some rounds of email about getting together; after four years we finally made it happen.  We had such a good time catching up on the past two decades.  Margi and I shared the house just before she met her husband Peter; Daniel and I met during her last month in Hartford. 

When I got overly tired after a small dinner party, I began to pay more attention to the small rash I was developing.  Sure enough my graft vs. host problem is back.  I’m back on 20 mg of prednisone (ugh).  It is giving me more energy even if artificially so.

I’m donating my seminary books to St. Philips, the church I’ll be attending once we get moved.  I thought I had about a hundred books.  Turns out the donation will be almost 300 books.  St. Philips has no library currently.  So, I figured I should start a circulation system.  I designed a book plate with our names as well as identifying St. Philips as the owner of the book.  The book plate invites people to email me if they want to talk about the book.  When I thought of donating the books I was imagining just putting on a book plate and shipping them off.  Starting a circulation system that is all paper based is quite another project.  I found a library supplier for labels and those little envelopes that hold circulation cards.  I’ve been looking up the Library of Congress number online, entering book information in what will pass for a database, and then copying some of the information onto a card label template.  After computer work during the day I do the label sticking (onto cards; card holder, book plate, and the spine label onto the book) at night while watching the Celtics beat LA.  All the time I’m thinking about my books on contemplation and trying to maintain a contemplative mood in this action.  It’s been a good exercise; I’m almost done. 

There’s a certain reflection on life in doing a task like this.  We lost all of our books in the moving fire four years ago.  While cataloging some of my spirituality books I would remember a book that I’d lost.  This collection is not quite complete without that book I’d lost and not replaced.  I’m also fascinated by looking at what became a passion for me even when I didn’t have a course on the topic, C.S. Lewis, for example.  This has been a good practice for me as a completion of seminary study.  It’s given me a perspective on my path here that I don’t think I could have gotten another way.  I’m reminded of how much we get when we give. I would never have cataloged all my books with such loving care and so would have missed this time of retrospection and inspection as well as what we call “formation” here in the seminary.  I’m reminded of Melanie’s observation that in 33 years she hasn’t written a hymn like she did when her music teacher told her to listen to the sun; why don’t we find the time to do things that are so satisfying?

Next week I’m in NC being Zac’s chauffeur to his baseball day camp.  His mother reports this about him:  “Right now he is yelling at Abi "give me a break Abi" as she knocks down the tower he is building.  Now he is mumbling "thank you very much Abi... I didn't even want another person in my family..."  I’m very much looking forward to being there.

Love and peace, Bonnie for BanD

What a drag it is getting old....

My dear mother is having difficulty with her memory and getting the right things into her purse, though she is perfectly lucid, even erudite on a wide variety of topics.  This is the woman who gave me life and took care of me when I was too little to do so on my own.  This is the woman who served on the Glencoe School Board and twice on the New Trier School Board and the committee to interview and select a new Rabbi for her Temple.  Ohhh my, my dear mother.  sigh.   

My dear wife, continues to suffer under the drag of Graft vs. Host Disease.  Her mouth hurts. It is hard to eat.  Even Key Lime pie is too "sharp" in her mouth. Her beautiful Scots-Irish skin is plagued with rashes and scabs where the tiniest bump creates bruises that later bleed.  The surface of her eyes are again roughened up and hurt.  Only her scleral lens are protecting her from the pain that is difficult to bear when she takes the protective lens out.  The eye surgeon says her cornea graft will fail sooner or later and Bonnie will have to have another cornea and lens replacement to save her eye and hopefully give her decent sight in her left eye.

Bonnie saw the Graft vs. Host dentist and mouth specialist at Brigham and Womens Hospital 4 months ago to have the sores in her mouth evaluated and treated.  She had no cavities at that visit.  She returned to see him yesterday and she had 10 cavities, mostly where her gums and teeth meet, and a few under gold crowns that were solid for years.  Bonnie's dental work will require 4 two hour appointments over the next four weeks to correct.  Due to Graft vs. Host Disease of the mouth and the anti-immune drugs to treat the GvHD, Bonnie developed more cavities in four months than she has had in the previous 64 years of life.  And Bonnie has been swishing her mouth with Flouride every day.  Arrrrgggggghhhhhh.

It is a challenge to know which specialists to see to stay ahead of the effects of her GvHD, much less to get appointments booked in time to save Bonnie's health.  We must find a real effective cure for this GvHD with Dr. Cutler's help.  There is a promising trial, but it is over now.  We shall see what we can do.