D Selby Designs

Good studio day yesterday. I’ve been wanting to paint Cindy’s hollyhocks that stand outside her Brambleridge Orchard barn and the work came easily for a change. Greg walked into my studio in the evening and said, “Step away from the easel! You are through!” He was right. Sort of. I still need to glaze the center of the blooms with a bit of magenta, but don’t tell him.

He’s feeling much better today, perhaps because he finished the steroids–until the next treatment in two weeks. Our pal, Mike Kujawa, is undergoing IV antibiotics for yet another blood infection. Such stinky diseases, Lymphoma and MS. Hang in there, Georgene.

Yesterday was Hollyhock Day, and today is Barnes and Noble day for me, if I can get out of here. Carey is coming over to take her Gran to physical therapy. I knew there was a good reason for having kids. Eventually, they grow up and can be guilt-ed into helping out! Our 2 + 1 kids have shown true character these last two weeks.

Carol, you’re in my heart and prayers. What a summer you’ve had. I hope you can come up to breathe, soon.

September 4, 2008 at 3 PM, my body went white-hot from shoulders to hips and I didn’t know whether I was going to faint or vomit. Dr. Gross led me to the examination table and helped me lie down. His nurse brought a cold cloth for my head.

He’d said ‘looks like lymphoma’, and I lost it. I was so unprepared, thinking it was just indigestion.

My husband was fine. He looked at me as though I were nuts. And I felt nuts. And shocked, and thoroughly and completely out of control. There’s ‘flight’ and there’s ‘fight’ and there’s ‘freeze’. I’m ‘freeze’.

But not today. It was all about the heat, shooting from my brain to my bowels which were both very loose. And the tears! I’m not a crier. Never have been. Talk about ‘cry me a river’!

If I was the patient, it would make more sense, I suppose, but the patient is my husband. For thirty-seven years he has been not just my other half, but my three fourths. We have been our own little island, sufficiently entertained by each other to have no need for society.

Just the night before, my cousin said, “I want Greg to be my husband! He’s a keeper!”

He is. He is protective and funny and loving and an excellent cleaner. How can he be sick? I am the strong one and he is the sensitive one. I went through open-heart surgery and was tough as can be. He cried. I didn’t have time to be sick, and even worked on projects the day after surgery.

I don’t even cry at funerals. It is important for me to be in control at all times.

That all changed today.