Status Update • 19 August 2021

 

Three weeks now since my wife was discharged from the hospital. Since then we’ve had an almost-constant stream of doctor’s appointments, follow-ups, hospital out-patient procedures, and various nurses and therapists parading in and out of the house, all while sticking to her every-eight-hours infusion regimen. I’ve gotten pretty good at handling the equipment and performing the procedure and can now do it without waking her. Still, it takes roughly an hour to prep, do the infusion, and clean up afterward, so there go three hours out of every day. 

I remain amazed by the sheer volume of plastic waste modern medicine produces. That’s something to factor into your next post-Apocalyptic novel. There will be a lot of people checking out in the first days after The End of the World As We Know It, as they won’t be able to get their perishable medications and disposable medical supplies. On top of everything else, because her meds must be kept in a carefully temperature-controlled state, each week we get a new one-cubic-foot Styrofoam cooler packed with the coming week’s supplies. I’m hanging on to all of the coolers, as in a few more weeks I figure I’ll have enough to pass on to the grandkids, and then they can play Minecraft in real life.

In the meantime, everything else here at Stupefying Stories and Rampant Loon Press is taking a back seat to the medical situation and I’m running on about 4~5 hours of sleep daily, so here’s a picture of a cat.

—Bruce Bethke