I spent six weeks this summer in bed eating 80 mg of Oxycontin every eight hours to stave of horrid back pain and spasms.  Include flexerill, two at a time, and some fast acting oxycontin (cutely referred to as Roxycodone) up to 50 mg a day.... and welcome to my world.

A wonderful physical therapist comes to my home to administer massage and ultrasound treatments.  My Occupational therapists comes to my bedside to talk with me, listen the the horrors bouncing around inside me.  A wonderful 65 year old woman comes to bathe me and clean my house.  My husband was off work for part of the summer and brought whatever I called for into the bedroom to me, including a wonderful Sixth Wedding Anniversary present, in honor of the tradition: Phreon on the Sixth Year (air conditioning!!)

I found a cloisonné vase in the shape of a fish.  It is a wonderful, heavy piece and I have never seen anything as whimsical and beautifully made.  It is his anniversary present.  He resents picking up the packages at the Post Office.  He lugs in huge boxes that have been carried down the hill by a guy in a brown uniform.  The dogs look up through the window next to the bed where they rest in air-conditioned comfort and they bark, but they don't lose their seat on the island that is my home.