Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Froggyisms

Froggy comes downstairs in her undies where Auntie Honka and I are watching TV. She has her mimi under one arm and a box of Nerds in her other hand and says, "NOW it's a party."


I dropped Froggy off at my dad's vet clinic while I did some last minute Christmas shopping. Grandma S. works there too, and my dad had the day off. Froggy stood at the door waiting for the animals to come in. She had a box of treats and wanted to great them as they entered. After a while of no visitors...

Froggy: Why aren't there any animals here?

Grandma S: Because Papa isn't here. And they come to see him.

Froggy: Well what do you do?

Grandma S: I do the books, pay bills, clean, file, make calls.

Froggy: Oh, so you do the WORK.


Froggy playing with a doll.

Froggy: She's sick and has a disease.


FM: What disease is it?

Froggy: Apopopria

FM: What's that?

Froggy: A very bad disease.


FM: What does it do to her?

Froggy: It tries to kill her lungs.

Froggy is trying to process CF and it comes out in her play. She always has one stuffed animal, doll, figurine with CF. A few days ago, while playing with her ponies, this was her conversation.

Froggy picks up her purple pony and explains to the other ponies:


Froggy: This one has Cyxtic Fabrosix.

Her pony plays with the others for a while and then in an empathetic voice says to the other ponies...

Froggy: She isn't free. Cause she has Cyxtic Fabrosix.

Thursday, December 09, 2010

CF Clinic

Froggy had her CF Clinic Appointment Friday. She weighs 37 pounds, is 108 cm. And despite a nasty cold was still 100% on her PFT's. Her smaller airways were only 93% but that's to be expected with her cold. She's in the 25th percentile for weight and 50th percentile for height. The nutritionist thinks she should have gained more weight, so we're switching her formula to one where the proteins are already broken down so her body has to do less work.

Her bloodwork was a-okay! We're just waiting to hear about her sputum culture. So far, no pseudomonas! Woo Hoo! Tomorrow we'll know more. Night night.

Froggyism

Froggy loves playing with her doctor kit. She heals all of her dolls and stuffed animals with potions and shots. The other day Froggy was trying to find my heartbeat with her stethoscope and after listening intently for a while she said, "just as I suspected, you have slow heartbeat-itis." Well, there you go.

Thursday, December 02, 2010

Lilies by Mary Oliver

From her book HOUSE OF LIGHT


Lilies


I have been thinking
about living
like the lilies
that blow in the fields.


They rise and fall
in the wedge of the wind,
and have no shelter
from the tongues of cattle,


and have no closets or cupboards
and have no legs.
Still I would like to be
as wonderful


as that idea.
But if I were a lily
I think I would wait all day
for the green face

of the hummingbird
to touch me.
What I mean is,
could I forget myself

even in those feathery fields?
When Van Gogh
preached to the poor
of course he wanted to save someone-


most of all himself.
He wasn't a lily,

and wandering through the bright fields
only gave him more ideas


it would take his life to solve.
I think I will always be lonely
in this world, where the cattle
graze like a black and white river -


where the ravishing lilies
melt, without protest, on their tongues-
where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,
just rises and floats away.



by Mary Oliver



This poem is one of the many reasons I am in love with Mary Oliver. She writes simply, without pretension, and packs the world and all of it's complexity in just a few words. "I think I would wait all day for the green face of the hummingbird to touch me." That lines strikes me now as I am in wait for a new life, in this strange in-between world. And "there is no shelter from the tongues of cattle."

Across the road from my parents house cattle grazed and one day, I stood on the fence face-to-face with a cow. I was studying the length of her eye lash, when she licked my cheek. Her tongue was the size of my kid arm and the intensity, the strength of her tongue was like someone slapping you in the face while screaming "I LOVE YOU!" It wasn't sandpaper it was like a sandblaster exfoliating my face with bovine slime. Her breath was milky, which I never quite understood. And then this big beautiful beast looked at me like, "That's love lady - shocking, painful, wet, milky and kind."



It was such a profound experience and in my fleeting childish devotion, I became a vegetarian for one week. What I love about her poetry is she takes you back to a moment when everything made sense and elegantly simplifies that moment. Life, love, cows. Oh my.