Rehab ward(s)

I honestly don't know when or whether  I shall return to this page, so dutifully fulfilled for so darn long, but I owe long-time readers of this blog some explanation.

For the first time in weeks, I sat down with my laptop and wrote this little story out for some friends who wondered where I went and why I stopped writing.

This, if you missed it elsewhere, is that story.

*

My fingers are more than a little unsure of themselves, but then the computer isn’t responding all that well either, having been on break now for more than a month. I’m using the old Mac instead of the desktop that sits at home, friendless, and me?—I’m exceedingly fidgety, wondering whether the words will be there.

 But I owe a number of you some sort of explanation of my wholesome silence.

 I’ll try not to make it a novel.

Way back in November, 2023, I walked two miles, then sat down for a game of Monopoly with my spouse and my youngest grandson, who’s now a high school freshman, but, back then, was, Trumplike, interested in buying the whole city.

When I sat down on the couch, I told myself the position I took was an odd one for an old man, but I was feeling no pain. That’s when and where it began—an aching in the small of my back. I was only partially aware, back then, that something had shifted.

There were some moments of searing pain, however, enough so that our doctor and others recommended back surgery.

I’m a veteran of back surgery, had one back in 2000, in fact. I wasn’t gleeful about another surgery, but what was going down in my ever more bungled body told me it was time to try. I signed up and in.

Two weeks later my legs and knees broke down.  Hence, the hospital stays—Orange City for a few days, Sioux City’s St. Luke’s for a week, then Orange City again—for the last week.

I probably don’t need to tell you these words are my very first attempt to sit at the keys and compose like the old days. I couldn’t carry it out before and I’m not sure I’m doing it now.

The bottom line is this: I’m sitting in a hospital room telling you that if you’ve missed me here in the last month or so, I’ll likely be back when it doesn’t cost me so much just to move around.

So here lies our immediate future: either we choose to do some more physical rehab in a suitable institution, or, very soon, I return home and we live by some difficult strictures.

Meanwhile, we’re doing okay, but standing in the need prayer.

Thanks to all of you.

Jim

And that's not the whole story. Tonight I'm sitting in Marcus, Iowa, in their old folks home, in a new section dedicated to patients requiring physical rehab. It's not at all cramped here or stodgy, and the nurses are like all the others--really capable of having a good time.

But don't be fooled. I want to go home.