:: enteric fever and other extremely fun things ::

[ this seemingly random picture of my quaint little city was snapped from the roof of the hospital parking garage. i was up there feeling pretty freaked out and i distracted myself by taking this photo. i took daily pictures of brian, too, but they're kind of hospitally so i decided to exclude them from this post. ]

what a week. or two-plus weeks, really. here's the condensed version:

brian was sick. then he was sicker. then maybe he was getting better. then maybe he wasn't and we went to the hospital for surgery that he didn't end up having. then we came home. days later, he was really sick. which is when we went back to the hospital. this time when i came home, he stayed there.

for four days.

and now he's home but the recovery is slow.

because he has enteric fever. or he had it. or he's sort of halfway got it? i don't know.

i especially don't know because he didn't get a definite diagnosis, but rather a "probable" one. even after every organ was scanned, every bodily fluid cultured, the best we got is this: the head infectious disease doc thinks that's what it was, and he treated brian for it, and brian slowly got better.

the end.

during the course of all this, i of course got sick (from exhaustion), and i had to close the shops for the first time ever. kids were shuffled, babysitters were called and canceled and called and canceled. grandparents were mobilized and mobilized again.

this whole experience was a major eye opener. here i was a few weeks ago saying how thin we're spread and then brian gets sick and suddenly we're spread thin enough to poke holes in us.

it made me realize just how close to the edge of things we are: how close to the edge of health, of our finances (thankfully brian has excellent health coverage through work, so this whole enteric fever thing won't ruin us or anything); how close to the edge of patience and energy.

it also made me realize how fragile my business is. how me-centric. i've spent two years cultivating something that needs my constant attention. there is no room to breathe. my business is not even the tiniest bit emergency-proof.

i spent many hours at brian's bedside (the hours when i wasn't playing word games on my iphone, anyway) wondering what to do about all that -- how to make the business a little hardier, how to give brian and i a little more breathing room, you know, that kind of stuff.

having the shop closed for five days has been nice, i've got to admit. i've been getting an average of 90 more minutes of sleep each night, for one thing. and i've basically ignored twitter and facebook and email and all those things that help me feel connected to a larger community but that at the same time eat up precious time. the time off will definitely give me fodder for figuring out a slightly easier way to do what i do.

but anyway i'm back now. the shops are open, as of 3:30 today. things are slowly settling back into place like cats who've found their favorite position on their cushions. funny how these crazy weeks pop up and shake us till we cry and then just recede into the background like shadows, eh?