I think I can. I think I can.

As you may already know, my cat, Schroedinger, bit the third finger of
my left hand on Tuesday night, June 16. There was blood all over the place
and my hand started swelling immediately. It’s a good thing I know some
first aid. At least I could clean and bandage it. But two days later it
was more swollen, so I called my primary care physician. She had no openings,
so I went to see her partner. He gave me a tetanus shot and a prescription
for antibiotics. He also wrapped my hand in about a mile of gauze. What
I've learned is that there's a bacterium (which I guess lives in cats’
fangs) that kills the cat's prey. My finger is not as big as a mouse, hence,
major infection. By Sunday, June 21, the back of my left hand looked like
a ripe plum. That's when I went to the ER. They kept me in the hospital
until Friday afternoon, June 26. The last time I was bitten by a cat was
in 1969.

Before I went to the ER and in spite of my swollen hand, I put my June
blog up in this space. Why did I do that? I had to. I owed it to the people
who read my blogs here. Remember The Little Engine That Could?




The Little Engine That Could is a children’s book that was first
published in the U.S. in 1930 (though there was an earlier version in 1920
that was part of a set of children’s books sold door-to-door). It’s still
in print and has appeared in numerous editions with numerous small changes.
It’s also been voted by teachers to be among the best books for children.
In the story, a long train needs to be pulled over a mountain. It asks
several large engines for help, but they all find reasons not to. Finally,
the long train asks a little engine, and the little engine works and works
and works—“I think I can, I think I can”—and gets the train over the mountain.
“I thought I could.” (You can read more
here.) 




Little kids like me who started school in the post-war years got fed a
lot of lessons in the middle-class values that had, our parents said, won
the war: hard work, perseverance, optimism, etc. My schoolmates and I at
Central School in Ferguson, Missouri, got thoroughly
Dick-and-Jane’d  and
Little Golden Booked. We were primed (brainwashed??) for the rise
of Middle America in the 1950s.

I posted my June blog and went to the hospital. I arrived at the ER at
6 p.m. and arrived in my hospital room on the sixth floor at 12:30 a.m.
The first thing they did (after giving me one of those highly fashionable
hospital gowns) was start an IV antibiotic. Then another one. One once
a day (at 5 a.m.), the other every six hours. For three days. Then we noticed
a streak moving up my arm. Two different (presumably stronger) IV antibiotics.
But I have psychic veins. They’re small and when they see a needle coming,
they hide. This means I ended up with IVs in five different places on my
right arm (not all at the same time) because I kept swelling up and they
kept having to find new veins to stick the catheters in.

Nobody likes to be in the hospital, and I was on the acute care floor,
where everyone else was dreadfully sick. Except for that swollen hand,
I was fine, so I struck up conversations with everyone who peeked in my
door. I met some terrific nurses, one of whom is a witch! I bet I was the
only Pagan patient at St. Mary Medical Center, which was founded in 1923
by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word (yes, it’s a Catholic hospital)
and my nurse is no doubt their only Pagan nurse. My daughter-in-law (also
a witch) came to visit me on Monday while the nurse was in my room. That’s
when the Catholic chaplain stopped by to chat. Was he surprised! He tried
and tried and tried to cite movies with witches in them, and we had to
keep telling him that movie witches are not us. Nevertheless, it was a
very cordial conversation.




I talked to the guys who empty the trash and scrub the floors, one of
whom is a philosopher; we had a good long conversation about, among other
things, ecology. I also talked to the young volunteers. One referred to
a website about a movie (I think) about people who travel back in time
to prevent other time travelers from changing things, like the works of
Charles Dickens. So I told her about Dickens’ life. I also told them my
nurse story: When I was in the sixth grade, I wanted to be a nurse. They
took us to a hospital. I saw blood. That’s when I said, “I’m going to be
an English teacher!” I introduced myself to all three of my physicians
as
Dr. Barbara Ardinger and told the nurses that Ph.D.’s were scholars
600 years before M.D.’s learned to wash their hands. When one of my doctors
came in on the Friday the Supreme Court made its wise decision about marriage
(June 26), he was wearing in a pink shirt and tie. He’s gay. And we have
mutual friends. I also got to explain who the Goddess is to a bunch of
people. Among other things, I told them about
Lucia Birnbaum’s  thesis that people walked out of Africa 50,000
years ago carrying their dark mother goddesses with them. (Lucia invited
me to lecture to one of her classes several years ago.) My guess is that
no one on the floor had met anyone like me before. Ya think??




Soooooooo, I ended up in the hospital for five nights and five days. My
neighbor fed the cats and my daughter-in-law brought me some stuff from
home—clean underwear, deodorant, books, my iPad, my phone and iPad chargers.
Comfort food: chocolate-chip cookies and pretzels.




My neighbor and my daughter-in-law both petted Schroedinger, but only
on the head. Since I've been home, we have both been to see our doctors.
Three times each. Schroedinger had a huge, painful abscess on her hip,
but I couldn’t see it under her beautiful Maine coon fur. When I touched
it by mistake, she bit me. She has an extreme sensitivity to fleas and
was going into what were almost seizures when a flea bit her. She was more
or less eating herself. Her doctor examined her, shaved her hip, and gave
her shots of antibiotics and other things. She is now completely healed
and the fur is growing back in.




And The Little Engine That Could? I’m not quite totally thrashed anymore.
But I can’t just sit around while my finger is healing, can I. Things have
to be done, and when your only roommates are two cats, you’re the one who
has to do those things. Go to the grocery store and the gas station. “I
think I can.” Fix meals (well, sort of—I haven’t been hungry). Nothing
heroic. Doing what has to be done. Feed the cats, empty the little box.
Do the laundry. “I think I can.” Take out the trash and the recycling.
Work for a living. “I think I can, I think I can.” The back of my hand
no longer looks like a plum and though my finger is still stiff, I can
type again. “I thought I could.”