Tales from the Shark Tank

Ok, now. Time for roll-call. Brain? Check. Hands? Check. Internal random connection generator? Check. Lungs? Hey, lungs, wake up! Yeah, you have to. The others can’t go anywhere without you, so get going, ok?

Let me tell you, this is no way to run a vacation. It’s a good thing we cancelled the trip to Ohio, because there is no way I could have done it anyway. As a friend of mine said, I need to remember that bronchitis is a disease, not a hobby. I’ve reached the point of being uncertain which is worse – the illness or the cure. These are some kickin’ antibiotics, and I can tell you they’ve kicked me pretty effectively. It’s sort of like staging a raid on an apartment building. All the good, helpful tenants go quietly when told. It’s the trouble makers you want to evict that chain themselves to the plumbing and shout rude things at the cops in the riot gear. That’s where I am. All the bacteria that are supposed to be in a body have been summarily evicted from mine, leading to attacks from the rear and other unpleasantness that I will not specify. Unfortunately, those causing bronchitis demonstrably still have claws dug into the carpet.

Mind you, I’ve managed to have a good time in spite of it all. I can sleep when I want to, and sew when I want to. I may not have enough breath to take a walk, but I can greatly appreciate warm sunny days anyway. It’s wonderful not to have people popping in every 10 minutes with another crisis that has to be dealt with forthwith before I’ve finished putting out the previous brushfire. I know I’ll walk into a full forest fire on my return, having missed two of three days before I was due to be out. I know I won’t be able to find anything in my office, because the rest of my department descended upon it and cleaned up my horizontal filing system. I don’t have to try to banish the quilt designs that want to dance in my head, because I’m not obligated to think about and resolve something Very Serious Indeed. Hey, I can sit here and write! Should have done it sooner, I know, but kvetching when I can’t summon a sense of humour makes me crazy. I don’t want to listen to me, and if I don’t want to listen I won’t inflict myself on anyone else.

So that’s my vacation. It’s a quiet interval taken up with a total lack of energy. My brain is getting the break it so desperately needed, but this is still no way to run a railroad!

I actually did get the number of the truck – ok, school bus – that hit me. It was 112. No harm done to any human, and minimal harm done to the car. I won’t say as much for a neighbor’s lawn, as I drove up onto it in an almost-successful attempt to avoid being swatted by a skidding bus.

But that just seems to be part and parcel of life around this neck of the woods. I was planning to take my mom and go visit my aunt and uncle in Akron again this year, this time sans kidlet. It just takes him too long to recover from the disruption of his expectations. That is now on hold, as their younger daughter, all of three years younger than I, has just been put on a transplant list for a liver transplant. Given her blood type (B-), I’m not holding my breath. So far no one in the family is a match.

The worst of it is that the damage was caused by physician carelessness. Her doctor put her on a dose of a drug that does liver damage way over the level recommended, and then never checked to see if it was affecting her liver for several years. I foresee a malpractice suit in the near future, but first things first – and the first thing is sheer survival. She has three kids, and while they’re pretty well grown, none of them has made the leap from “mom’s real sick” to “mom might die”. I understand that. It’s normal to think your parents are immortal when you’re 18 or 19. But the fact is that their mom very well might not survive this.

Then there are her folks. Her mom is worried sick about this daughter, and about the prospect that another of her kids might yet be put at risk to save the sibling’s life. (There’s one kid who has yet to be tested.) My aunt was planning to take off work the week Mom and I were coming in. Now she isn’t; she can’t stand to keep still. I understand it very well indeed.

On the other hand, the news from another quarter is good. A friend who had brain cancer a few years ago had called about a month ago, saying that it looked like there might be a new lesion on his most recent MRI. He had another today, and thank all deities you can think of, it’s clear. The docs have decided the spot was a radiation artifact.

And there’s something else huge in there too, but I’ll talk about that after the fact. I want it to happen so badly I can’t see straight, which leads directly to a superstitious fear that to talk about it would be to screw it up.

I think I’ll go to sleep for a while. Maybe when I wake up, the time-storm will be over. Even if it’s not, I’ll at least be more rested when I face it.

Recently my agency has been much in the news for -(gasp)- issuing id based on fraudulent documents. Everyone is shocked – shocked! to learn that there is a little group of less-than-scrupulous translators and smugglers that have been assisting illegal immigrants to obtain id cards and driver’s licenses from Indiana. For so many to be issued, say the pundits, there must be a lack of oversight.

Document forgery has a long and dishonourable history. There’s no way that low-level clerks in government agencies can keep up with all the ways technology can fake social security cards, permanent resident cards, visas, driver licenses, id cards, and so on and on. And of course, the best place to conduct such business is in a city, where there are so many people in and out and so many transactions that the clerks don’t have time to examine each and every document too closely. And you know, this ring has been operating in Indianapolis, in the most densely populated area of the state. Funny thing about that.

I feel sorry for the Commissioner. What isn’t being reported is that this ring has apparently been operating for at least seven years, through several administrations. The current Commissioner is being blamed for something he did not set us up for at all. He has in fact tightened id requirements tremendously, often over the vociferous objections of the inconvenienced public. I think personally he really has stepped on some civil rights, but that’s just my personal opinion.

Now we’ve been told that the Governor has appointed an independent investigator. The man is a former federal marshall. All agency staff are to give this person and his staff “all assistance possible”.

I have no idea what this man is going to do, but I do know it will be neither pretty nor pleasant. I suspect strongly we’re in for several months in which my boss will have all her time and attention taken by this brouhaha, which means in turn several months in which I will be doing both my job and hers, and that while the legislature is in session. And did I mention that part of my job is writing or rewriting sections of code on the fly?

You know, I would really like a few dull moments.

For one reason and another (mostly sheer inertia) I hadn’t checked my non-work e-mail since Tuesday. I just went and read it.

The e-mails and the comments on the blog blew me away with the depth of friendship in them. Kerry, I’d read Thinking In Pictures, but the other things were new to me. More wonderful is that you took the time to track those things down and give me the links. Thank you even more for the vote of confidence. I miss you, Chick.

Dorothea, thank you. That was utterly unexpected and completely marvelous, as well as impeccably timed. When all my focus has been on Joseph, you reminded me that I’m in this too, as myself and not just his mother.

Li, I will indeed talk to your mom. Murray, thank you for hugs when I need them.

I have some amazing, wonderful friends. Because of you, I’m pretty much in one piece. Thank you all.

My ever-quirky imagination is chanting “Oh, have you seen the Michelin Man” to the tune of “Muffin Man”, with a closing line of “He works at BMV”.

Yeah and verily, I have seen the Michelin Man. He’s blond, about 6′5″, roughly 400 pounds, and wears a knee length pale grey down jacket quilted in 6 inch wide poofy channels. The overall effect is quite – um- striking.