Dreaming Again...

The house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer,

the house allows one to dream in peace.

-Gaston Bachelard

It's happened again,  you guys. I have fallen in love. 

Meet the Whitaker House, a circa 1890s mansion that looks as if it could be the setting for one of my favorite girlhood books, The Velvet Room:

I took my Mom to meet her over the weekend.  This is all I have ever wanted, I breathed, hand wrapping around the iron garden gate that, seemingly by magic, creaked open. I took it as an invitation. Wouldn't you? We creeped inside the brick and iron wall and just stared at the old place.

It was for sale but now it isn't. Apparently a local optometrist purchased it from the estate of an out of town doctor, but there's no word on what the eye guy intends to do with the place.

I intend to find every dollar I possibly can and pray, wish and hope beyond hope that one day the phone will ring and it will be a gruff-sounding voice on the other end saying, So, I heard you were interested in the old Whitaker place....

Not interested. Enthralled, is a better word. Utterly smitten and completely in love.

It's time to find a place to dream in peace again....

E-n-d-o-c-r-i-n-o-l-o-g-i-s-t and the Woman Subject to Bleeding and Me and Jesus

Danged if we weren't just rocking along and working and planting seeds and keeping house and minding our pet project when suddenly everything went red again.

Blood red. *shudder*

See, over the past year I've been diagnosed with a bleeding disorder. One day I'll be fine, and the next I begin bleeding out. I get anemic. My blood pressure tanks. I have no energy and do crazy things. Things like:

Me: Yes, I'm here to pay my rent. 
Rent office lady: Address?
Me: 304 Butler Street.
Rent office lady: ...typing...
Rent office lady: You said Butler Street?
Me: Yes.
Rent office lady: 304?
Me: Yes ma'am.
Rent office lady: 304 Butler Street? Are you sure?
Me: Pretty sure. Yes.
Rent office lady: ...typing again... It's just that we don't have any properties at that address. You're sure you're on Butler Street?
Me: ... ...
Rent office lady: Give me your name and I'll look it up that way.
Me: Okay. Brin  __________.
Rent office lady: Oh. Brin? I have you at a different address.
Me: What?
Rent office lady: Yes. I have you at __________________.
Me: ... ... 
Me: ...Oh. Crap it. I'm really sorry. Yes, that's the right address. 304 Butler is an old address. I'm... sorry.
Rent office lady: (weird look). Okay. I'll take that.
Me: (hands over rent check)

I cannot be trusted to handle even simple tasks like paying rent quickly when I'm in the midst of a bleed-out-athon.

So Monday, my doctor took one look at a picture I emailed to the office and said I needed to see an endocrinologist immediately. I had to look it up. E-n-d-o-c-r-i-n-o-l-o-g-i-s-t? Sounded like a bug scientist, but of course that's an e-n-t-o-m-o-l-o-g-i-s-t. Let's get our en-ologists straight, shall we? Because being sent to an insect scientist was about all I needed to make my life story complete.

So Tuesday, I was in Dallas/Fort Worth in the office of one of the most renowned endocrinologists in the U.S. Yes. In one day. God arranged that. The endocrinologist is fantastic. I liked her so much that I kinda wanted to ask if I could have a sleep-over at her house, that way when I got scared in the bathroom she would be there and could tell me in her cool and funny medicalspeak why I wasn't going to die and how women with this are totally fine and treatable. (But thank God I didn't ask. I've creeped out enough people with my bleed brain for one week.)

I got a shot that spiked my blood pressure up above 164/110+. Then I got prescribed four medications. The warning label on my favorite one says: Adverse reactions...may include constipation, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, dark stools and severe abdominal pain, hard word, hard word, hard word, metabolic acidosis, hard word, dehydration, drowsiness, pallor, hard word, lassitude, seizures, shock and coma. 

That's my favorite. I take that one at night after dinner.

So Thursday, I was sent back to the hospital and then the lab for four more tests that involved x-rays and drinking dye and lying completely still for two hours and getting my blood drawn four times in two days and so on. Endocrinologists mean business, people. 

We're hoping for word today (but likely next week) on why in the world my body is trying to empty itself of all my blood. Until then, I'm as busy as I can manage, and I'm wearing pajama pants every single moment I possibly can.

I'm also reading Luke 8 (above) over and over. I almost have it memorized. Love how the woman bled for 12 years and although no one could help her (and the account in Mark says she was getting worse), Jesus did. He could. He did. And since He went to the trouble to put it in the Bible, I almost feel like every time I read it, He's saying that He can do it again.

So today, come walk over by me, Jesus. Let me grab at the hem of your coat. Let me tell you my old addresses and ask you for a sleep-over and tell you how disgusting drinking that red stuff is and how I don't need a bug scientist, just you.

All I really need is you.