Don't Leave Me This Way: Or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry by Julia Fox Garrison Page A
Authors: Julia Fox Garrison
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fortune cookies—I could use some good insights in bed.”
Your eldest brother, Jimmy, does his service on Friday nights, and he prefers to bring swordfish kebabs on rice with salad, and a blondie for dessert. He knows that you like it, so that’s what you got every Friday night.
John has Tuesdays. Sometimes John would bring his own favorite, caesar salad with grilled chicken. Joe brings pizza from Fig’s, a local pizza joint. It’s always half eaten by the time it gets to you.
“The smell got to me and I was hungry,” Joe says.
Jerry always brings a loaded tuna sandwich and fruit salad. Justin always brings lobster-salad rolls.
Jeffrey would travel over an hour to visit. He’d bring you a loaded sub and, although it was messy, he’d pick up the stray shreds of lettuce and diced tomatoes and help you get most of it in your mouth and not on your lap. “I love the smell of a sub when I’m starving,” you say. “I just hate the smell after I’ve devoured it.”
Your brother Tommy calls you one day and says, “I’m going to bring you some home cooking; it’s going to be a surprise.” He arrives that evening with a roasted chicken on the bone.
Now the rule is, supposedly, whoever brings the meal stays and helps you eat it. This is important because you have difficulty sitting up and even more difficulty eating one-handed. You also have to be monitored closely because you can choke easily. Tommy has to drop and run because that’s the way he is, off to another important meeting. He’s always on the go.
You had begged Jim to stay home that day because he was running ragged coming to the hospital every evening and most lunchtimes.
And Tommy just left.
So you’re all alone.
It’s you and the chicken.
You stare at it. You’re starving. It looks delicious. And you have absolutely no idea what to do with it.
Hell, it’s dinnertime. You’re going to eat this damn bird.
You have some useless plastic utensils. You ponder why they even bother with plastic knives. “Self,” you think, “figure it out.”
You do a face plant on the roast chicken and start gnawing it like an animal. You know you look disgusting, but you don’t really care. You’re hungry.
Unbeknown to you, Jim has been standing at the doorway watching his lovely wife reduced to gnawing away at a carcass, like a fox in the pack. You both have a good belly laugh over this.
“There are going to be a lot of weird images of me, honey,” you say as Jim cuts the chicken into pieces for you. “Images of me coping with my situation, images that I want you to erase from your memory banks. This is one of them!”
YOUR DOCTORS HAVE A CAFFEINE RESTRICTION on your chart. You think it includes chocolate. This was a self-imposed rule because none of your doctors restricted chocolate. You love chocolate with every cell in your body.
Eating chocolate is sometimes like sex. It feels great and you always want more. The day Jimmy brought you your first post-stroke blondie bar you were uncertain about eating it. But there’s an important moral principle at stake here: One should never be timid when it comes to chocolate.
The urge to have a piece of chocolate is greater than the fear of death. It’s only a few chocolate chips, and after all, it’s blond chocolate. You nibble and then wait, anticipating an explosion in your head. No trauma occurs, other than the realization that you can still eat chocolate and your hips can still expand.
PEOPLE YOU’VE WORKED WITH often bring lunches. Yoshi, a coworker who handled the Japanese products at your company, visits often. He always brings you something interesting from his culture. One of these was a little plaster doll with blank eyes. He explains that it symbolizes a goal. You color in a black spot on one blank eye while setting the goal you want to achieve. When you have reached your goal you color in the other eye.
Yoshi explains that the doll represents a proverb: “Fall down seven
Your eldest brother, Jimmy, does his service on Friday nights, and he prefers to bring swordfish kebabs on rice with salad, and a blondie for dessert. He knows that you like it, so that’s what you got every Friday night.
John has Tuesdays. Sometimes John would bring his own favorite, caesar salad with grilled chicken. Joe brings pizza from Fig’s, a local pizza joint. It’s always half eaten by the time it gets to you.
“The smell got to me and I was hungry,” Joe says.
Jerry always brings a loaded tuna sandwich and fruit salad. Justin always brings lobster-salad rolls.
Jeffrey would travel over an hour to visit. He’d bring you a loaded sub and, although it was messy, he’d pick up the stray shreds of lettuce and diced tomatoes and help you get most of it in your mouth and not on your lap. “I love the smell of a sub when I’m starving,” you say. “I just hate the smell after I’ve devoured it.”
Your brother Tommy calls you one day and says, “I’m going to bring you some home cooking; it’s going to be a surprise.” He arrives that evening with a roasted chicken on the bone.
Now the rule is, supposedly, whoever brings the meal stays and helps you eat it. This is important because you have difficulty sitting up and even more difficulty eating one-handed. You also have to be monitored closely because you can choke easily. Tommy has to drop and run because that’s the way he is, off to another important meeting. He’s always on the go.
You had begged Jim to stay home that day because he was running ragged coming to the hospital every evening and most lunchtimes.
And Tommy just left.
So you’re all alone.
It’s you and the chicken.
You stare at it. You’re starving. It looks delicious. And you have absolutely no idea what to do with it.
Hell, it’s dinnertime. You’re going to eat this damn bird.
You have some useless plastic utensils. You ponder why they even bother with plastic knives. “Self,” you think, “figure it out.”
You do a face plant on the roast chicken and start gnawing it like an animal. You know you look disgusting, but you don’t really care. You’re hungry.
Unbeknown to you, Jim has been standing at the doorway watching his lovely wife reduced to gnawing away at a carcass, like a fox in the pack. You both have a good belly laugh over this.
“There are going to be a lot of weird images of me, honey,” you say as Jim cuts the chicken into pieces for you. “Images of me coping with my situation, images that I want you to erase from your memory banks. This is one of them!”
YOUR DOCTORS HAVE A CAFFEINE RESTRICTION on your chart. You think it includes chocolate. This was a self-imposed rule because none of your doctors restricted chocolate. You love chocolate with every cell in your body.
Eating chocolate is sometimes like sex. It feels great and you always want more. The day Jimmy brought you your first post-stroke blondie bar you were uncertain about eating it. But there’s an important moral principle at stake here: One should never be timid when it comes to chocolate.
The urge to have a piece of chocolate is greater than the fear of death. It’s only a few chocolate chips, and after all, it’s blond chocolate. You nibble and then wait, anticipating an explosion in your head. No trauma occurs, other than the realization that you can still eat chocolate and your hips can still expand.
PEOPLE YOU’VE WORKED WITH often bring lunches. Yoshi, a coworker who handled the Japanese products at your company, visits often. He always brings you something interesting from his culture. One of these was a little plaster doll with blank eyes. He explains that it symbolizes a goal. You color in a black spot on one blank eye while setting the goal you want to achieve. When you have reached your goal you color in the other eye.
Yoshi explains that the doll represents a proverb: “Fall down seven
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