Tuesday, November 13, 2007

contemplating a return to the two-dog (and a crotchety cat) life

Tonight, I am stoned from the Demerol that I am given to mitigate the side-effects of the Herceptin.

Boy, typing is hard when I'm stoned.

I am reading, A Three Dog Life, a memoir by Abigail Thomas.

She starts her book with the following quote from Wikipedia;

Australian Aborigines slept with their dogs for warmth on cold nights, the coldest being a 'three-dog night.'

I am loving this book. I am seriously too stoned to be coherent as to why, so here is the blurb from Abigail's web site:

When Abigail Thomas’s husband, Rich, was hit by a car, his brain shattered. Subject to rages, terrors, and hallucinations, he must live the rest of his life in an institution. He has no memory of what he did the hour, the day, the year before. This tragedy is the ground on which Abigail had to build a new life. How she built that life is a story of great courage and great change, of moving to a small country town, of a new family composed of three dogs, knitting, and friendship, of facing down guilt and discovering gratitude. It is also about her relationship with Rich, a man who lives in the eternal present, and the eerie poetry of his often uncanny perceptions. This wise, plainspoken, beautiful book enacts the truth Abigail discovered in the five years since the accident: You might not find meaning in disaster, but you might, with effort, make something useful of it.


This memoir is really resonating with me (and not just because she has three dogs and knits).

I especially love the last line of that quote.

Amen to that.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful quote.

joy said...

Now I'm adding a new one to my reading list. Reading blogs is enough, and then I find all these cool smart folks with books that they're reading, and then I have to read those books. It never ends!

Anonymous said...

Laurie how is/was The Penelopiad? I loved Handmaids Tale and liked some of her others not as much but still good.

Nancy

Anonymous said...

After he had his gall bladder out -- and there were complications, so a hospital stay -- my true love made up a little rhyme:

Demerol is my friend.
Demerol is my friend.
I will never feel pain again,
Because Demerol is my friend.


At the time, he was -- you guessed it -- still on Demerol.

Sounds like a great book.

Sherry said...

I remember being stoned from Herceptin treatment day!! I just wanted to come home and sleep!! I never had demerol...I had benadryl..and I read a lot...but darned if I could tell you what books I read...couldn't ever remember what I'd been reading in the chair!!

Being Her2+ isn't great, but aren't we blessed to have Herceptin?!?!

laurie said...

Nancy, I loved the book and saw the play, as well. Very interesting stuff.

Sara, that poem made me laugh out loud!

Sherry, yes, I have often thought how lucky I am to have been diagnosed in a post-Herceptin world.

Mom2Amara said...

That book is on my TBR list! But I recently acquired a book not on my to-be-read list so now I'm a bit behind. I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it. I can't wait to read it myself!