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Jill called yesterday afternoon. "Well," she said, "the oxygen's gone."
Ah. She'd planned to have our old medical-supply company come to our
apartment and fish Alex's now-dusty oxygen tanks and pulse-oximeter
from our closets. "We had one of the those big e-tanks," Jill said, "in
the back of the front closet. Did you know that? Amazing they expected
me to schlep around with that."
I remember they did. I remember that at one time in our past,
healthcare professionals expected my wife to lug a scuba tank around to
get groceries, fetch mail, and otherwise live the life of a new mother.
"I think if you're going to inflict this on someone, you should know
the consequences and long-term outcomes," Jill said.
She also expressed regret about finally losing the pulse-ox. "Trouble
is, it didn't take up that much room. And I guess we'll never get to
use it at parties." Back when this stuff was front-and-center in our
lives, when it was the wail of pulse-ox and not the touch of our sons
that woke us three times a night, an e-mail friend suggested using the
pulse-oximeter at parties, to measure the blood-oxygenation of guests.
It would have been a hoot, no doubt. Just Sunday night, my hands got
dusty moving the pulse-ox to the back of the upper shelf in Alex's
closet, to make way for "big boy" books - science, arithmetic, social
studies - that people had given us and which I sure we'll be using
someday soon.
I remember the e-tank, and the b-tanks, and the m-tank; I used one last
summer to blow up a beach ball. I remember the pulse-ox and all its
monitors that used to erupt every time the two-year-old Alex wiggled
his toe. But earlier today I couldn't remember who our medical
suppliers were, or even know for certain if they were still in
business.
"Alex's closet looks ordinary now," Jill said, and hung up.
We've cleaned out our closets before. We've sent to the basement or to
their next owners more prosaic baby- and toddlerhood stuff. The bouncy
seat went first, I think, way back in Queens. Alex bobbed in it during
his first, ultimately tragic week home after the NICU. Ned's crib we
sold to a woman who handled public relations for Times Square, and in
exchange she brought us a bag of weird-flavor Kisses from the Hershey's
store. The fold-up crib went sometime later -- I think we sold it
online, that new parents' extravaganza for used stuff -- and I remember
thinking how we were really on our way then, with a boy in a real bed.
The panzer-sized double strollers I don't miss, having shoved two of
those things across upper Manhattan on more than one hot afternoon.
Of course other stuff has come into our closets. Grandpa has one
carseat, but we have the other, behind the carton of wine and under the
folded pack-n-roll. We still have a single stroller slung in my closet
across the coat bar, but I don't know why. It's all I can do to keep up
with the boys as they scale the rocks of Central Park now.
Medical gear is at a minimum. We still have the shoebox-sized nebulizer
for when Alex gets a cold, but we may well never use it again: Jill
recently bought a neb machine that's about the size and weight of a
Walkman and that dispenses Alex's inhalant in about a tenth of the time
of the old machine. Somewhere I have a knotted plastic grocery bag of
cannulas, pulse-ox monitors, and oxygen tubing that I planned to
digitally photograph for use on the cover of my book, but I never got
around to it. I think the cat has dragged the bag off someplace.
As Alex and Ned get older, I understand a whisker more about why my
mother treated me like a little kid until long after I was shaving and
paying taxes: the years went by too fast for her, just like they have
for me. Still fresh is the memory, the chapter, of when laying hands on
Alex's cannulas constituted an emergency that turned my bowels cold.
It's a long process to move into the new chapter when medical stuff
won't need to be around.
New chapters. Last night, I thought how we may finally be starting one.
This morning, Alex had a seizure.
Bio: Jeff Stimpson's articles and essays can be found on his website at jeffslife.net Jeff has also written a book entitled: Alex: The Fathering Of A Preemie.
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