Déjà vu

(from the French, literally “already seen,” the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has been experienced in the past.)

If ever you are in the hospital because you have been passing clots of blood profusely out through your rectum, so many and so often that you think you might be about to die from what is called “bleeding out,” and if after several days you slowly begin to recover to the point that the doctors can move you from a clear liquid diet to a bland diet and eventually to a high-fiber diet, pray with all your might, even if you are an atheist, that the last meal the kitchen brings you prior to your being discharged will not include a bowl containing black cherry gelatin with blueberries in it.

I’m just sayin’....

I do not think we will be speaking more about my hospital stay. I have heard, though, that it is common for people who have had problems with their innards to give their visitors an organ recital.

Just to keep the record intact, here’s one for you (2:22).

My new Best Friends Forever

...in no particular order, are:

* Nurses Eva (from Jamaica) and Vickie and Joy (from the Philippines) and Penny (from Kenya) and Matt;

* Nursing Techs Lillian (from Kenya, Luo tribe), Cleo (from Kenya, Kikuyu tribe), Juliet (from Bangladesh), and Jamie;

* Lab Techs Vincent and Jamie (a different one) and Lindsey and Pam and Melissa (about to be a grandmother for the first time -- twins, a boy and a girl);

* The whole crew in the GI lab including two Nicoles and two anesthesiologists (Doctors H. and B.) and a few others I didn’t have time to get to know;

* Doctors K. and H. and M. and another Dr. K. (from India) and his physician’s assistant Dennis;

* All the volunteers who wheeled me around.

I’m sure I have left out some names.

I knew I was going to have a grand adventure the first night I arrived when I was greeted with the following board on the wall of my room:

I am not even kidding. That is an unretouched, non-photoshopped, original photograph.

Yes.

My nurse was Thelma and my tech was Louise.

I decided not to give them my car keys.

Thelma didn’t need car keys as she was a trip all by herself. Seventy-two years old and come out of retirement to do some more nursing two nights a week. Wife of a retired Wesleyan Methodist minister. Sharper than a tack.

I went to the Emergency Room at noon on Sunday, Sep. 22, was admitted a few hours later, and was discharged in mid-afternoon on Saturday, Sep 28. I had lost a lot of blood before I was admitted and more afterward. I had an endoscopy, a colonoscopy, and a CT angiogram; and I received two units of blood while there. The diagnosis was gastritis (inflammation of the stomach lining), duodenitis (inflammation of the duodenum or small intestine), diverticulosis (not -itis, but -osis) in the lower intestine.

I also have anemia temporarily while my hemoglobin levels return, it is hoped, to normal (the hemoglobin should be 14 and mine is 8.7).

They say I will be fine; I just have to stop having so much fun.

So two cannibals are talking to each other...

...and one of them says, “I hate my mother-in-law,” and the other one says, “Then just eat rice.”

*pa-dum-pum* (rim shot on the snare drum)

I have not had access to a computer for nearly a week. The reason will be revealed before you finish reading this post.

But thank you for being concerned enough about me to wonder in the comments section of the preceding post where I was.

Where was I?

I’ll tell you where I was.

Since noon last Sunday until a couple of hours ago I have been in the hospital/in hospital/at hospital (pick your favorite).

*collective gasp or bored yawning, as the case may be*

More to come.

(P.S. -- I began blogging six years ago today.)

Oh, be careful, little ears, what you hear

Blogger tells me I have 1260 posts and 126 followers. My quickly-disappearing mathematics skills are still intact enough to be able to determine that this blog has -- let’s see, divide by 5, carry the 7 -- one follower for every ten posts.

I think the time has come for you to do some of the heavy lifting. Out of all 1260 posts at rhymeswithplague, tell me which 10 you would like to have associated with your own exalted self. I know, I know, this assignment will require you to do quite a bit of reading over the next few days, but my faith in you is complete.

And no fair picking the last 10 posts.

This should separate the sheep from the goats.

No, no, Blogger, I said “separate the sheep from the goats.”

Still not right.

Readers, Blogger is having a problem with her hearing, so I don’t think I would be able to trust anything she tells me about your choices.

I'm just going to have to cancel the assignment.

If you have something in the middle of a whole lot of nothing, what have you got?

I want to talk today about French Polynesia.

It has a flag* and everything:

...and according to wikipedia, some important atolls, islands, and island groups in French Polynesia are Ahē, Bora Bora, Hiva ’Oa, Huahine, Mai’ao, Maupiti, Meheti’a, Mo’orea, Nuku Hiva, Raiatea, Taha’a, Tahiti, Tetiaroa, Tupua’i, and Tūpai.

I kid you not.

Island paradises all, probably.

The capital of French Polynesia is Papeetē on the island of Tahiti, but the largest city, according to wikipedia, is Fa’a’a....

Say what?

Really?

Fa’a’a?

Then why have I, the legendary rhymeswithplague, never heard of it?

Chalk it up to a faulty education, I suppose.

Clicking on Fa’a’a in that wikipedia article took me to another article entitled Faaa.

Faaa, without the accompanying apostrophes.

The mind, it reels.

And asks continually, why? Why? WHY?

But no explanation is ever forthcoming.

I am interested in history and exploration, and the following paragraph was my favorite part of the article:

“European communication began in 1521 when the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, sailing in the service of the Spanish Crown, sighted Puka-Puka in the Tuāmotu-Gambier Archipelago. Dutchman Jakob Roggeveen came across Bora Bora in the Society Islands in 1722, and the British explorer Samuel Wallis visited Tahiti in 1767. The French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville visited Tahiti in 1768, while the British explorer James Cook visited in 1769. In 1772 The Spanish Viceroy of Peru Don Manuel de Amat ordered a number of expeditions to Tahiti under the command of Domingo de Bonechea who was the first European to explore all of the main islands beyond Tahiti. A short-lived Spanish settlement was created in 1774. Some maps still bear the name Isla de Amat for Tahiti, which was named after Viceroy Amat in the 18th century. Christian missions began with Spanish priests who stayed in Tahiti for a year. Protestants from the London Missionary Society settled permanently in Polynesia in 1797.”

Unless it was this photograph of the building that houses the seat of government, the Assemblée de la Polynésie française or, as the islanders call it, Te âpoora’a rahi o te fenua Māòhi:

(2007 image by veromortillet used in accordance with GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2)

Hey, except for the sign out front it could be an A-frame in Sevierville, Tennessee:

(2007 image by Brian Stansberry used in accordance with GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2)

But it isn’t.

No, French Polynesia boasts scenes like this:

(2007 image by PHG under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2)







...and this:

(2006 photo by Scott Williams used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2)

...and this:

(2005 image used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2)

They sure beat mowing the lawn on a hot afternoon.

Ah, French Polynesia, the land of James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific; the land (though not exactly) of French planter Emile De Becque (as portrayed by Ezio Pinza) singing “Some Enchanted Evening” to U.S. Navy Nurse Ensign Nellie Forbush (as portrayed by Mary Martin) ; the place called home by the likes of painter Paul Gauguin, Tarita Teriipia (third wife of actor Marlon Brando), Cheyenne Brando (daughter of Marlon and Tarita), Tuki Brando (Cheyenne’s son, a model who is “currently the face of Versace menswear” according to wikipedia), and writer Robert Louis Stevenson.

But perhaps you are a winter person, a lover of ice and snow, bobsledding, skiing, one-horse open sleighs. For you we will now all link arms and join in a round of a grand old wintertime song:

Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
Fa’a’a Fa’a’a Fa’a’a!
'Tis the season to be jolly,
Fa’a’a Fa’a’a Fa’a’a!

So, I ask again: If you have something in the middle of a whole lot of nothing, what have you got?

Possible answers:

A. French Polynesia
B. Another fascinating post from rhymeswithplague.

The correct answer is B.

*This post was inspired yesterday afternoon when I found the flag of French Polynesia in that little Feedjit Live Traffic Feed thingy over in the sidebar after someone from Mahina (the third largest city in French Polynesia after -- class? -- Fa’a’a and Papeetē) visited my blog. That flag became the 163rd flag in my little collection of flags of the nations of the world that have visited my blog.

Anybody who likes The Eagles is okay by me

There is a news item out of Charlotte, North Carolina, today about
a woman who stabbed her roommate because he wouldn’t stop listening to music by The Eagles.

Shame, shame on her.

I like The Eagles.

Very much.

I think everybody should listen to The Eagles.

Therefore, the rest of this post will feature music by The Eagles.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

* "Hotel California" (6:28)

* "You Can’t Hide Your Lyin’ Eyes" (6:25)

There’s lots more, of course, but I think that thirteen minutes of The Eagles should be enough to get you hooked for good.

If you have a roommate, though, hide all the knives.

It’s all downhill from here

And so the long descent begins.

Having reached the heights, there is no place to go but down.

Having conquered the peaks, nothing but valleys remain.

Sara Teasdale said it better than I can, but from a woman’s perspective:

THE LONG HILL
by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

I must have passed the crest a while ago
And now I am going down--
Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know,
But the brambles were always catching the hem of my gown.

All the morning I thought how proud I should be
To stand there straight as a queen,
Wrapped in the wind and the sun with the world under me--
But the air was dull, there was little I could have seen.

It was nearly level along the beaten track
And the brambles caught in my gown--
But it’s no use now to think of turning back,
The rest of the way will be only going down.


Every year, as summer begins to wane and an early autumn coolness fills the mornings, a strange thing occurs. Instead of becoming invigorated, I become melancholy. Wistful. Lonely. No, not lonely exactly, because I do have a wife and children and grandchildren.
I don’t know the right word to use to describe my state at this time of year, but when the leaves begin to fall, it happens like clockwork.

Sooner or later I remember, and then it makes sense.

My mother died on the 4th of October, many years ago.

Once I can identify the reason for the feeling, I manage to get on with my life. But until then, I like to read Sara Teasdale.

If this post makes any sense at all, it’s not my fault.