Totems of Transylvania, Prefigurements of Malady and Disruption

What new terrors await unmasking? Blinded (and blind-sighted) by present complications.

Strange, perturbing happenings have descended upon my little world -- a fast-moving fog shrouding my life with uncertainties and new concerns.  Just as an infusion of milk might hang and twirl in a tumbler of cold summer tea, an opaque murkiness muddies my comprehension of where things lie.  Friday evening, news broke that a lifelong pal, our high school class valedictorian and virtuoso researcher, had been admitted to the Coronary Care Unit of a Brooklyn-area hospital.  According to his anxious and understandably distressed mother, a colleague had escorted my friend to Park Slope Presbyterian earlier that day after the chambers of his heart became blocked and slow to function.  Apparently, appraisal by emergency room attendants swiftly led him to the management of cardiac specialists and, as of mid-day Saturday, rumors of surgery for a temporary pacemaker had been substantiated -- by a woman calling from Europe, no less.  (Needless to say, this fellow has a far-reaching path of influence.)  That an otherwise robust thirty-three year-old holds in his chest such an instrument is both bewildering and wholly unexpected.  To relieve the serious mood amongst those effected I've started observing that, like Darth Vader, he's "more machine now than man."  Perhaps he will emerge as some sort of modern variant on The Six Million Dollar Man?  Certainly, knowing the cost of healthcare, his bill may approach such a tally.

To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit:  "I'm not bad.  I'm just dyed that way."

The parents of the afflicted felt an understandable desire to drive through the night to reach his bedside, and, in their absence, I adopted my usual duties of caring for their cat.  Now it begs inclusion that this perfectly genial and good-natured animal had the misfortune of being born a black breed, which, although elegant in appearance, carries with it the stigma of superstition.  As most of us are told as young and impressionable Trick or Treaters, popular thought connotes such animals with the Devil's brand of bad luck.  Jack truly is a friendly and appreciative creature and in no way deserving of a prejudice built by centuries of myth and dubious allegory.  However, it is well worth mentioning, as only later that night a bat no larger than a moldy lime scrambled down our chimney as I sat adjacent, eating my second, larger meal for the day.  Exhausted and apathetic, I failed to devise his release or (God forbid) extermination.  As with other species of fauna maligned by negative reputation, I harbor special interest and sympathy for these ostensibly liminal beings.  Dismissing tenets of demonology and Gothic literature, I instead revere their delicate beauty, fascinating taxonomy, and remarkable physical capabilities.  Furthermore, being that they are a sort of hybrid of rodents and birds --two of my favorite animal orders-- they are to my tastes just as charming.  (I am confident Beatrix Potter herself would have made delightful characters out of them, and perhaps she held specimen in her menagerie at one time, despite their jarring absence from her more familiarized cannon.)  The bat took several turns of flight, tracing the rectangular perimeter of our large back room, then melted into shadows.  Over twenty-four hours passed without indication of his presence, with reemergence timed for midnight Saturday.  Now making circles in our front corridor, he quite literally whooshed past the faces of my parents as they gingerly felt their way down the bannister from the second floor bedrooms.  Despite it being late (beyond midnight) and with my father in a state of undress (his nightgown), they were determined to get him to the ER, a good twenty-minute drive north along coastal Route One.  Having changed into trousers and summoned my mother, he hurriedly explained that urgent medical care was necessary -- available pain killers had already proven ineffective.  Apparently, a ripe canker in his abdomen had become unbearable; under its impact he was now succumbing to fainting and fever.  Every year with the first signs of fair weather my father tackles scraping and repainting of our mid-nineteenth-century townhouse.  For as long as we had seen summer he had been displaying symptoms commonly attributed to lead poisoning:  constipation, difficulty sleeping, irritability, low appetite, even lower energy.  Naturally, it was not unreasonable to assume this as a probable diagnosis given his frequent exposure to old layers of veneer in his work with clapboards, porches, and, most recently, a rickety, neglected trellis.  Bloodwork had not found evidence to substantiate our suspicions, but something was amiss with his gastrointestinal functions, and he refused meal suggestions with increasing regularity, opting for only the simplest foods and half-portions.  This of course has been distressing to witness; I have done my best to supplement his diet with liquid alternatives such as chocolate Ensure® vitamin drinks and strawberry-banana smoothies bottled by Odwalla®, a Coke® subsidiary.  All of this had come to a head  --quite literally, in fact, as that winged pest was now diving towards ours.  Upon safely reaching the local clinic and being examined it was determined that he should be given care there only until he could be transferred (by ambulance and on stretcher) to a more capable facility.  Apparently, all the doctors trained to administer the necessary endoscopy were away on vacation --sailing, likely-- and he would find better treatment awaiting him in Portland.  For the next day and a half my father was permitted no food as he prepared to cleanse his upper GI tract for the EGD.  Only by noon on Monday did we receive interruption from suspended worry and uncertainty, finally receiving an answer and, with it, mild relief.  According to a call placed post-surgery by the patient himself, two small stomach ulcers were detected during the procedure, which required immediate cordoning.  Also, we later learned, a tumor in his throat may be responsible for the random and violent hiccup attacks that regularly leave him croaking, muck like a dog straining under collar.  This is the most I can divulge as of the current hour; although cursory, the above report helps me feel like a responsible friend and daughter to those afflicted.  It calms my mind with its unburdening and confronts nagging concerns related to the two-pronged arrival of those iconic Halloween "fiends," those so-called harbingers of doom.

Marlon Brando was often seen as a friend of the misunderstood and the disenfranchised.  Here the actor is shown in his early days with a clearly beholden underdog --er, "undercat."  
He would have likely been a proponent of Black Cat Appreciation Day, arriving on Sunday the 17th.

I find comfort in addressing superstition directly, quelling its rumbles with written disclosure.  Illness is a natural and unavoidable part of life -- shades of death color all things.  For every ailment that brings our knees to buckle, another opportunity awaits for us to reclaim posture, composure.  As one popular Japanese proverb says, "fall seven times, stand up eight."  The bat that entered our home this weekend did not find freedom on his first few laps within its walls nor manage escape until his second day of residence.  But he chose to fly again, compelled by instinct and the invisible lasso of a rising August moon.