About This Chicken

But first the important stuff:

Sherri was walked twice today followed by short sessions of chair-sitting. The walks were only out of her room and one door down, but it's something. . .the sitting lasted about 30 minutes each session. Needless to say the violent movement out of bed and back in bed were less fun for her than,  well, let's say anything else she's ever done. But many people are telling me that no matter how awful this is for her, it's super important for her to be moving around, so I'm trusting them. Now we've just heard that they're going to get her out again. . .not loving that idea.

My current gripe is that we have not yet seen an oncologist or heard from the pathologist about the makeup of her tumor or next steps. Since they said it would be at least 24 hours until we heard something, I gave everybody the benefit of the doubt until this morning. After all, the thing was ginormous (hmm never had to spell that one before), and so maybe it'll take super-extra-long to analyze, and it's rare, so maybe there's some special pathologist that they're waiting for to do the thing, but the uncertainty is a little off-pissing, and I wish someone would just communicate with me about the holdup. And yes, Jack, I've shaken every tree I can think of around here for an answer.

Apparently my temper tantrums are not yet legendary enough to have made it this far west. . .

Since some of the blog readers are psychologists, professional or amateur, maybe someone here can help me with this chicken thing.

I first saw this guy (gal? Terry B. would know) when I needed a power walk around the hospital and ended up in the gift shop, and for some reason it just made me smile. . .here I am standing before a display of multi-media farm animals grinning at this thing like a four-year-old. The craziest part is that there were other chickens on display, but this was the only one that had any sort of effect on me. In fact, there was a smaller version of this bird that looked identical other than in size, and provoked absolutely no response.

So for the last three days, on every trip I've made to the main floor (and this happens a lot because Sherri regularly kicks me out of the room when something too embarrassing or too painful is about to happen to her), I've stopped in to peek at this bird for a little or a long while, and she never seems to get less funny for me.

Today when Sherri was first booted out of bed for the walk/sit cancer biathalon, I, of course, headed down to the gift shop, but on the way, I broke into a hot sweat as this thought went through my mind: "What if someone bought the chicken." Stupid, I know. . .I mean, who on Earth would buy this stupid chicken. . .but I didn't care. I couldn't wait for the elevator and sprinted down five flights of stairs in a panic and burst into the gift shop. It probably looked like I was about to annouce VJ day or something.

And there it was. My chicken was still there. . .which is when I realized that over the course of three days and a dozen or so visits, I had started to think of it as 'my' chicken, and unwilling to risk having someone else take the bird away, I shelled out what every one of you would certainly consider a stupid amount of money for an object composed of a carved Styrofoam block, a bit of papier mache, some paint, some cardboard, and feathers.

Sherri is far too gorked out to understand what the chicken is and why it's here, let alone to consider it just another one of my quirks, but I'm guessing even when she's all compus mentis, I still won't be able to explain it to her.

Truly yours,
Farmer GW