Stumbling Back

To say that it's been a tense month would be an almost-criminal understatement. There are, it appears, many levels of tension one can experience when confronted with a health problem like this. The obvious first stage has to do with "will they live?", and all the related fears and regrets that never occur to you until you're faced with the final exam and you haven't done any studying.

After a while, the fear of death starts to ease, and you become aware that "survival" and "meaningful recovery" are two different things, and that, despite the fact that you're not sleeping most night and your life is almost completely disassembling before your eyes, you just know this is going to go on for months.

And at that moment, that's when you crash, because your body's had enough and needs you to take a break. When you surface again, nothing's changed, and it reinforces the feeling of slow doom you'd suspected before. And that's when you start to really go back to living.

It feels like it's been half a year, but it hasn't even been a month. I can't even remember what I was doing before.

Thanks to all those who wrote kind words at the start of this, and to give a general update: she is not awake, but opens her eyes and moves her body, reacting to stimuli, and is out of danger. There's no way of telling what happens next, I guess, so we have to wait. Anxious is the word.

It's funny, because at times like these, telemarketers seem t call more often. We don't use the phone much here, so when it rings we expect it to be from the hospital in Japan. It's really REALLY annoying to get a call selling you crap you don't need when you've been steeling yourself for bad news.

I don't know when I'll be back up and running for real. I won't be doing "Push" for a while, and all my previously-scheduled activities are still on hold. I have to make up for lost work-time on other projects first. I want to finish a short story I've been contemplating the last 3 weeks, but I'm not sure I have the brainpower just yet. And I hope to have news on two long-standing projects of mine soon. Maybe even video to show.

If I owe you an email (or worse yet, a physical book) please re-send what I'm meant to reply to. I've got a big list, and things at the top get more attention :)

Hope all's well out there. It's balancing out in here.