[more from 2006...]
One of my wife’s nurses is a beautiful, soon-to-be married young Indian woman. Her slender hands are the color of patina bronze, and they’re adorned with an intricate Henna pattern. She is talking to my wife about her upcoming wedding while replacing the painkiller in the syringe infusion pump. She forgets to swing the plunger over the syringe; I tell her that it’s not connected. She checks the tubing, but then I point out the error. She flashes me a smile of gratitude, but I’m the grateful one because I just prevented a bout of agony for my wife. The drip is behind the gurney, out of my wife’s view.

The painkiller is an opioid, which causes constipation. Bowel movements are infrequent and large when they happen. She tells me that the Pastor visited during one. What luck, right?

Our daughter is upset this day. She turned in a big assignment to her third grade teacher by leaving it on his desk. But he never saw it. Thus, when the assignments are graded, our daughter is the only student who doesn’t get awarded for the effort. She is terribly upset. My wife, although she’s incapacitated by spinal inflammation, gets the school’s Vice Principal on the phone, tells her what happened with so much emphasis that the Vice Principal herself visits the classroom the very next day to personally hand-deliver the award to our daughter. My wife can’t move herself, yet she can move others.