Sick Bunny

Hazel is a ravenous beast. Especially at breakfast time. Normally when he hears me coming in the morning, he bounds to the front of his (huge) cage and stands up with his front feet on the door. Sometimes he bangs out it: the picture of impatience. When I do open the door, he starts hopping around my feet and standing up with his front paws on my leg, reaching up for those delicious pellets. Now that he's almost a year old, he only gets a quarter cup in the morning and a quarter cup at night, so he devours every crumb.

Except yesterday, he refused all pellets.

It started when he completely ignored both my approach and the offer of food. This has never happened before in the history of Hazel. He was crouched in the back of his cage with his eyes bulging out of his head. He wouldn't eat. With a rabbit, this in itself is an indication that a trip to the vet is in order. When he eventually hopped into his litterbox, one of his back legs seemed to be dragging.

I freaked out and flailed around the internet for guidance. Then I called the vet. Thankfully they gave me an appointment for that morning.

The vet pronounced Hazel's limbs intact, but said something was indeed wrong, possibly an inner ear infection which was affecting his balance. Hazel huddled where he was placed and absolutely did not want to explore. We came home with antibiotics and a painkiller for Hazel, and he spent the whole day motionless at the back of his cage. I looked up inner ear infections in rabbits and found out they can be fatal. The anxiety mounted.

This morning Hazel refused his pellets again and there were no new poops in the litterbox. Very bad. (A rabbit that isn't eating and pooping is at risk for GI stasis, which basically means his digestive tract shuts down and dies...)

However! Hazel did accept a few stalks of cilantro soon afterward. He followed that up with some hay-nibbling. I worried when he refused subsequent offers of parsley, and when he barely moved all day again, huddling in a box. Worst, he lost his balance so badly as to fall over with a crash. I was not feeling optimistic when I came home and dragged poor Hazel out of his cage for a second dose of cherry-flavored antibiotic. But to my surprise, he responded by grooming himself for the first time all day, and then eating some hay! I also discovered some poops in his hideaway box. And what really has me hopeful is that an hour or so ago he hopped up onto his second story and sat there looking around for a while. He descended without crashing, too. Thank God, I think he's getting better.

Tomorrow morning I'll call the vet; hopefully these are enough good signs that I won't have to further traumatize Hazel by taking him back to have bloodwork done and spend the night.

As I write this, Hazel is grooming himself. I hope the improvement continues overnight. Lord, in your mercy...

Food Poisoning

Yesterday was a milestone in our young marriage: I witnessed O. vomiting for the first time.

On Saturday night, we had taken my parents out to dinner at a local Mexican place they've started going to recently. The food was good and we admired the Diego Rivera art (posters, but the images still spoke) on the brightly painted walls. O. downed his entire burrito, a corner of mine that I couldn't finish, a lime soda, and my mother's leftovers.

Home, bed, sleep. Around 2am O. got up, and moaned to me that he felt sick. In the morning, he still had a stomache ache, but we made it to the 8am service at church (albeit a bit late, but that was my fault) for this great sermon. We intended to drive up to San Francisco after that and explore Golden Gate Park, which O. hasn't seen. But since we hadn't had time for breakfast before church, we stopped at home to eat.

It was very fortunate that we did stop, and that we lingered, because O.'s condition deteriorated rapidly. After he threw up violently, we had to conclude that SF was out of the question for that day. O. ended up lying on the couch most of the day, looking and sounding miserable, and arousing all my affection and compassion. I read him 40 or so pages of Roald Dahl's charming book The BFG, which we had started the previous day. He ran a fever and worried that he wouldn't be able to take our scheduled flight (8:15am tomorrow).

He ended up swallowing a couple of my parent's traditional Chinese stinky pills (no obvious effect on him, but my mom says he should have had four, the full dose), and two or three cloves worth of minced garlic, one clove at a time. Thank God, in the morning he was all better, and was able to enjoy our last day here.

O. has seen me vomit from motion sickness a few times already, but yesterday's episode was the first time I saw him reduced to that level of physical discomfort. I would never wish it on him again, but on the bright side, I do feel a little closer and more intimate with him now. Even food poisoning can have a silver lining.

Disjointed Observations

I'm still toiling away at my statement of purpose. When it becomes more presentable I'll share parts of it here...

November is one long series of sniffles and sore throats for me, at least in New Jersey. I don't remember being sick like this at Stony Brook--dragging on and on and on.

The amaryllis blossoms are fading. They have lost their gloss. Their edges have purpled and withered. But the second stalk has thrust its head high, and two of its buds peep out from the green sepals.

Hazel has come of age and is determined to mate with O.'s slippers, which are fluffy black bears wearing red hats. The rabbits take turns rubbing their chins on them as O. travels back and forth between their territories.

Is that a third slipper?

O.'s last day of work was a week ago, but Thanksgiving immediately followed, so it's only sinking in now. This is day three of his unemployment, and he has been lovely around the house, baking bread studded with sesame seeds, doing the laundry, and starting the dishwasher without being asked.

He also scheduled Hazel's neutering appointment, thank God and the NJ House Rabbit Society, who supplied us a voucher for an affordable neuter procedure ($75 instead of $200+). Hopefully we can rebond the bunny boys soon after that, and take down the wall that has divided our kitchen and living room these past five months (Has it really been that long?)--"the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility."

Catchup

Dear Reader,

I have been absent from this blog a long time. Many things have transpired:

O. and I had some huge arguments, settled back down, then finally sought out a counselor. My best friend stayed with us for two weeks, commuting into the city to work at a publishing company. I read a book on attachment theory and another on codependence.

I went to Turkey with O., his parents, my parents, and my sister. We swam in the Aegean and the Mediterranean, we touch marble columns and walked under arches in the ruins of Ephesus, we ate meat every day for two weeks. I picked up more Turkish. I met O.'s grandparents and his cousin and her husband and her two small boys, one of whom had chickenpox.

We came back home. My sister stayed with us for ten days. The girl rabbit was discovered to be a boy. O. and I went camping for a weekend. The anniversary of our wedding arrived, and we watched together a rom-com ("The Holiday") that O. had watched to mend his broken heart when I cut off our friendship three and a half years ago, in the days before our worlds meshed.

I started a part-time job for our church; my title is Communications Coordinator. I sent out some emails. Then I came down with chickenpox and we went to the ER.

And now finally here I am, re-acquainting myself with this blog, with the internet, with writing at all. Normally after a long absence from blogging, I just pick up wherever I am and continue my reacting-to-the-moment blogging. This time, I want to actually write about the things that happened in the past couple months. I feel willing, for the first time, to let this blog be more of a story, a comprehensible narrative, and less of a series of fragments. This time I want to bind the fragments together, and let a whole scene come into view.

This post is going to be the itinerary. I have a lot of things to reflect on and I want to do a lot of the reflecting here, at least one post per paragraph. This is the beginning, or a beginning, since life and reflecting on life seem to require beginning again and again. This is another beginning.

And here we go.

100 Things

For four months, I've been weary and congested. It is easy to disintegrate into gloom and grump, especially as the days shorten. The light dims early, and by the time O. gets home, I can barely keep my eyes open. The antibiotics I finally started taking two weeks ago have suppressed but not expelled my sinus infection. Mild despair is a constant temptation.

My home remedy today: gratitude list. I recently encountered from two disparate sources (one of them The Good and Beautiful God) the suggestion to make a list of one hundred things you are grateful for. I am keen on lists, but the idea of a 100-item list is somewhat daunting, and I've been putting it off. But I think today is the day! So...

Today I am grateful for...

1. the return of my sense of smell
2. the smell of orange and the fine spray that bursts from its rind as I peel the orange
3. a super-comfy sleeping bag to curl up in
4. the Persian carpet I'm sitting on--the most extravagant-feeling item in our apartment
5. how most of the things in our home were presents from friends, and came accompanied by well-wishes and expressions of affection
6. the hundred friends at our wedding
7. all the other friends who couldn't be there: for loved ones scattered across the continent and globe, for such an abundance of relationships that it's impossible to gather the whole network into one room
8. God's provision of new relationships in this new place
9. the way that God often waits for me to realize I need something before He gives it to me
10. O. & our relationship (marriage!)
11. that miserable programming class where I met O.
12. O.'s amazing persistence in pursuing me
13. my mother's cooking lessons
14. Douglas Hofstadter and his beautiful & fascinating books, especially Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
15. having read GEB, without which I probably would have remained another silly/stupid Christian in O.'s eyes
16. parents who read me bedtime "stories" up through high school
17. my father's love of mathematics and ideas, and his audacity in starting to read his thirteen-year-old daughter an 800-page tome that is packed with propositional logic and number theory (GEB)
18. the pain of my mistakes with IJ the spring before I met O., without which the lessons of IJ would not have stuck.
19. the lesson of my sin: God is merciful and I need His mercy so very badly.
20. the book of Ephesians which changed how I see myself and my God
21. the sermon on Ephesians 1 and God's riches, generosity & abundance, which turned me to the book of Ephesians in the first place
22. the university library which provided me with so many books: educational, edifying, entertaining; informative, influential, inspiring
23. three years of leading a Bible study / small group with Intervarsity
24. my co-leader, my brother in Christ: without you I couldn't have led, certainly not for three years
25. God's faithfulness in keeping me at Intervarsity even when all I felt toward my chapter was disappointment, frustration and pain at how I couldn't fit in
26. my brothers and sister in Christ who showed me the love of the body of Christ and made me see for the first time that the body can't say to me "I don't need you."
27. the joy of running barefoot across a lawn, chasing a frisbee, surrounded by friends
28. dandelions like little suns in the green grass
29. planetariums
30. the night sky, the million billion stars
31. the internet
32. Google, which helps me find so many things online, provides the software for this blog, and pays O., thus providing our food, shelter, savings, health benefits, etc.
33. electricity, especially for lights
34. candles and the freedom to burn them here whenever and wherever I want
35. fresh bread on the counter and sharp cheddar in the refrigerator
36. being able to walk everywhere I need to go in this town
37. money for groceries, including the "luxury" items: clementines, apple cider, goat cheese
38. ready access to the Bible in my own native language
39. the several hundred books O. and I own between the two of us
40. my sister's paintings on our walls
41. my sister & the shape of our sisterhood
42. free phone and video calls between here and Vietnam (where my sis is): thank you, Skype
43. ice cream
44. O. spontaneously buying ice cream for my benefit
45. the dozen roses O. sent me once upon a time, which I still have, sere and somewhat shriveled but still scented
46. antibiotics, decongestant, allergy med.s
47. medical insurance
48. the way the light marbles when it passes through our glass pitcher, leaving a pebbly shadow on the painted wall
49. minuscule air bubbles inside the glass sides of our water glasses
50. the look of the naked winter trees--like so many veins and capillaries, the sky a lung and the earth the heart
51. such a good high school education, in science and writing and math
52. having graduated college; the end of homework (for a time).
53. washing machines
54. central heating
55. hot water
56. the current absence of mice and mouse-droppings
57. how cute and small mice are, with lovely round eyes
58. glasses that let me see clearly
59. eyes that see
60. the ability to read quickly and easily
61. an upbringing that taught me to look for the effects of personality, culture and personal history
62. how friendly and approachable the Bible (usually) feels to me
63. the relative ease with which I believe the vast majority of the time that God is good and trustworthy
64. God's trustworthiness
65. God's love of beauty
66. Christ's saving sacrifice: that now "in him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence" (Eph. 3:12)
67. the parable of the Good Shepherd: that it's okay that I'm a sheep and I can't take care of myself, because I have a Good Shepherd (John 9)
68. the bread that came down from Heaven (John 6)
69. the gospel of John
70. language, words, speech, writing
71. the diversity of languages
72. Tim Keller, particularly his talk on marriage, given at Google
73. my intuition for spelling which I really can't take credit for but which makes my life so much easier
74. poetry workshops and the cool people in them
75. Kevin Kim, whose presence in the MPPC leadership tells me it's okay to be Korean, it's okay that I only partially resemble an Anglo-American (in both looks and culture). He also gives fantastic sermons.
76. being biracial, neither one thing nor the other
77. knowing what it's like to not belong and to stand out on the street as a stranger, because without that experience of exclusion and isolation, how could I empathize with the stranger and foreigner?
78. having someone to belong with and to, and who accepts me & wants deep intimacy with me: O.
79. a place that feels like home
80. the beaches of northern California: the color of the cold, cold sea against the shining blue sky; the grit of the sand under my feet; the green anemones in the dark tide pools; the flocks of sea gulls white against the sand and sky and sea
81. small groups at church here
82. free time in abundance
83. the story of Elijah being fed by ravens as he hid in the ravine for three years: sometimes God calls us to long periods of inactivity and non-productivity
84. not having any food allergies
85. the widespread availability of soy milk that actually tastes good
86. free access to the Oxford English Dictionary through my alma mater's website
87. art and art galleries and art museums, accessible to me
88. professors who spent time with me & loved me
89. a pastor who knows my name and takes time to meet with the people of the congregation
90. Latin classes in high school, so much etymology just under the surface of my mind (congregation has as its root "grex, gregis: a flock or herd")
91. a God who is Love and who is Three in One: "God is the opposite of solitude" (Letham in Holy Trinity)
92. peace when I'm troubled
93. being called to hope (Eph. 1)
94. the sky which is visible wherever I go, beauty freely given
95. cameras and photographs
96. my memory, a healthy brain
97. legs that can climb stairs and walk for miles
98. not being discriminated against because I am a woman
99. being here to be a person and a story, not a machine or a formula (thanks, Thomas Merton)
100. freedom in Christ. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." (2 Cor. 3:17)
101. chocolate*

*N.B.: These are in the order in which they occurred to me; there is no other ordering principle. :)

Things a sick person is grateful for

This gratitude-list is perhaps not very dignified, but it is entirely sincere!

• lotion-enhanced tissue
• Ricola cough drops
• a husband to bring home the cough drops & take out the trashbags full of dirty tissues
• herbal tea that tastes of cinnamon
• honey in the tea
• the microwave (or the stove & kettle) to heat the water for the tea
• decongestants recommended by the doctor
• the doctor
• insurance to pay the doctor
• a furnace
• the furnace being on and working properly

I have essentially been sick for four months straight--ever since marrying and moving here. At the same time, I've been struggling with questions about whether it's okay for me to be here being absolutely unproductive (by external standards), for months on end. What does rest mean? What does it mean for me to rest? Who am I when I'm not doing anything?

I think this sickness, annoying as it has been and continues to be, may be God's way of making sure I know it's okay and even good for me to rest and to do nothing. In the ordinary course of life, I believe rest is good but I don't necessarily believe it is good for me to rest. When I'm sick, though, I know I should rest, that it's the right thing to do. I tend to see that as a temporary state of affairs, though: the sickness departs, and at that point I ought to go back to doing and doing and doing. I've never been sick this long, and I've never rested so much. I'm learning. I just hope it won't take lifelong sickness for me to absorb the lessons of lifelong rest and an identity dependent on relationship, not accomplishment!

But thanks, God, for teaching me.

Medicine

This morning I woke up 45 minutes before my alarm actually went off, but I hallucinated that I'd woken up to my alarm, and I never did get back to sleep. A headache and a new batch of colored nose-fruit greeted me. On the other side of the window, the trees were writhing. Rain battered the glass and the wind sounded angry.

My morning improved once I got out of bed: Tulsi tea, Nutella sandwich (I need to find a fair-trade alternative to Nutella), comfort from John 17. And it was better when I got back in bed and read Poetry 180, and journalled, ink bleeding through the lined paper, the notebook almost full.

But before I actually got out of bed the first time, and in flashes of sorrow throughout the morning, discontentment pervaded me. Sick sick sick, and all alone. I wanted someone to take care of me, be with me. Actually I didn't want just any someone, I wanted the person who holds me, the person whose presence reminds me--life is sweet. I thought: I am tired of sleeping alone. I want to wake up with O. (109 days...) I want hugs in the morning.

And I thought: Waah, I don't want to be sick.

But I got through the day (cancelled almost everything but made it to my German test; drank at least 5 cups of tea).

Then around 6pm, O. called. "I was partly calling to ask if you've had dinner?"
Me: "No..."
O. "I was thinking about coming by and making you dinner and trying to take care of you."
<3

So he did. He improvised dishes from ingredients I'd been worrying about cooking before they went bad, and it was all very unplanned and it was all very sweet, and much better than chicken soup or Tylenol or breathing steam or all the honeyed cups of tea.