Morning Thoughts

The last of the Day of the Dead holidays are finally over, I think. I can never be sure about the holidays here because they last so long.

 I am very sick. I have pneumonia. I went to a different clinic than the expensive one I went to the first time. I had about three days of being well, just enough time to go to the Thriller Dance and then it hit me again. So off I went to the Ajijic Hospital, afraid of what he would say. And I was right. He wanted to immediately put me into the hospital there. I said no. For many reasons, money being one, my animals at home being another and the third is I hate being in a hospital. I can take better care of myself at home. 

So I bought a nebulizer at the Guadalajara pharmacy and a bunch of meds and walked home. It sure seems like a long ways when it is impossible to breathe. But I made it. Put the nebulizer together and no steam. I worked with it most of the day and realized that the instructions inside the box and the photos of the parts did not match the parts, and all instructions of course were in Spanish.   So no treatments that day. The next day I went back to the pharmacy with the useless nebulizer, feeling even weaker, and the manager spent a lot of time there trying to get it to work. He agreed that the directions didn't match the parts. But he finally knew enough about the part that wasn't listed that it was missing a very small and essential part in order to make stem. So he put that other part in and it worked. 

Today is my second day of being home and doing the nebulizer every few hours. Friends have brought me food and I stupidly spend too much time looking at the US news. Making myself depressed. I can't do much else. Just walking from one room to the next is exhausting. I really feel sorry for people with permanent lung problems. And I am hoping mine won't be permanent. It sounds like a bunch of bees are in my chest and also people are having conversations in there. I can't quite figure out their words, just all their noises. Maybe it is ghosts trying to figure out how to kill me off while I am here and sick. I know that some people die from pneumonia. Okay, I am ready. Take me away if that is what you want, you ghosts inside my chest, chattering away. How fitting, to die on the Day of the Dead Holiday. 

But, hopefully, I will get well  and be able to live again. I have had this same sickness twice this month and a cold before that.

The Day of the Dead celebrations were wild here. It was too noisy to sleep. My neighbor spent the day with his friend hammering something between our two roofs. All day long and it sounded like he was right in my house. I have never complained to people here before but I was sick and hurting and it was almost nine at night. They were still hammering. I yelled out the window, asking when they were going to finish. They said, another hour. Then I heard a strange noise in my kitchen. It was their dog. He somehow had climbed up their roof and over to mine and fallen down onto my patio after he tore down my sun shade. Then casually walked into my house, took a huge three piece dump in my bedroom and walked into my kitchen and started drinking Chico's water. This is a big, very strong looking pit bull.  Scary looking but very gentle. Chico and Olive were too stunned to do anything but watch him drink. 

At that point I went off the rails. I made him go out my front door and yelled at my hammering neighbors that their dog was in my house. I forgot that I hadn't combed my hair that day and was wearing my night clothes which means an old t shirt and old lady cotton under pants, nothing else below that.

As I was yelling at them, the dog just casually walked home and I realized that I looked like a total fool . Maybe one of the scary trick or treaters.    That was my Halloween night......

Other than that excitement, I have just been stuck in my house trying to keep on breathing......  and hoping those chattering ghosts in my chest don't win this battle.  Maybe I will spend some time sitting in the sunshine in my garden today. I hope your Day of the Dead holiday was more fun than mine.