So This Is Christmas
We headed into the weekend well enough it seemed, for a little while, but M., who's had a problem lately with acid reflux, complained long on the first day of the holiday, Friday, being the first full day of school holidays, of intestinal pain. Naturally, since it's only just over a year or so ago that I had my appendix out, we initially assumed she was only jealous of my vestigial organ-free lifestyle, but it was really too severe, too painful to be ignored or glossed, so in the end, at about 6 p.m., we headed over to St. Vincent's emergency room with a presenting appendix. Or so we assumed.

Of course, appendicitis wasn't all we went with in our heads, given the new complexity of acid reflux, but after about four hours, the consultation suggested only two things: (1) not M.'s appendix and (2) we don't know what else it might be; and thus we were admitted, if just to the casualty floor beds.

A day later, now Christmas Eve, we soon found ourselves having to face the fact that M. was unlikely to be released in time for our celebratory plans and made the call to Mark & family that we were forced to cancel. M. spent the night in the Emergency Medical Unit (EMU, which leads one to wonder if there are any other fauna-related acronyms in use at the hospital, but I'm not going to speculate on what KOALA might stand for), with an early call for a scan in the morning, which, upon duly completing the 2-hour ingestion of the contrasting solution, was not conducted until nearly ninety minutes later.

And there we were: Christmas Eve and no more information than that her colon showed some inflammation down near where the appendix would present itself if that had indeed been the cause of her distress. Over six hours later a surgeon finally turned out to discuss the diagnosis and our plans for Christmas Day, neither of which was particularly pleasant, although they weren't by any means catastrophic either. Most probably some kind of viral or bacterial infection, M. would spend the next couple of days on intravenous antibiotics and we'd unwrap our pressies in the ward.

Note on Christmas Morning: M. & I received most excellent gifts from overseas; notably subscriptions to the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly - bye, bye The Monthly, not that you were ever particularly worth the cost of the subscription - and a gift card each to Barnes & Noble, that paragon of on-line booksellers (because they don't have the same Red/Blue political donation ratio of Amazon, who favor the GOP), which I already know what I'll spend it on. Betweeen ourselves, however, I came out ahead, at least in the immediate context: M. got a promise of the 30th Anniversary edition of Horses, the 1975 Patti Smith album which may be one of the most perfect rock 'n' roll records ever, but also Joan Didion's new memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, which in a variety of ways may have struck more close to the bone than otherwise. M. got me Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America, which I've been pining for, and the latest UQP edition of the Best Australian Poetry annual (not the Les Murray version, since although his own verse is good, we find his taste, at least as expressed in Quadrant, questionable). Presents were of exceedingly high quality this year. Now to sort the health issues.