567 days, 13 hours, 22 minutes, 10.9 seconds

CNN is on in the patient waiting room. She looks at the set through the translucence of another patient's IV bag. News of the terrorist bombings in Glasgow and London.

CNN discloses that there were two doctors possibly involved in the Glasgow attacks. And possibly this will uncover a whole network of professionals. She thinks of her doctor. Of her father. How at least her father's concern for her has taken the focus off his own pain. As long as he remembers

567 days, 15 hours, 36 minutes, 7 seconds

Her father, in the hospital, telling every doctor how wonderful he is. Her father, at home, throwing out all the business cards. All these doctors saying come see them for follow-up. All they want is money. And he doesn't want to see any doctor who isn't American.

Her grandmother in the hospital, in a room the size of a closet (the size of her last apartment), but a private room, watched television well into Jack Paar and beyond. The nurses would come in and watch with her. She loved the nurses. Then she started to feel better.

567 days, 15 hours, 37 minutes, 32 seconds

Rots of Ruck.

567 days, 15 hours, 45 minutes, 38 seconds

The moon's been chasing her around all week. She woke at dawn to see the pale white disk between her and the other side of the building, still a full circle, pale, all the light drained out of it. The moon, a tumor.

567 days, 15 hours, 50 minutes, 30.3 seconds

Seven. Lucky Seven. She starts part seven the second day of the seventh month. On many slot machines, even one seven pays. Then she sees 567 days, so that's the third seven. When did these sections start coinciding with the months? It doesn't matter. What she needs is luck today.

570 days, 11 hours, 35 minutes, 28 seconds

She washes her hair with Suave Kids' Dragon Fruit shampoo. All she could find up here. And she thinks of Dungeons and Dragons. All the roles we play. And she thinks of the museum last week – was it just a week ago? It was exactly a week ago. – how she looked at the unicorns and mermaids but skipped the dragons. Still confusing dragons with dinosaurs, boys' toys. And this is, she supposes, a shampoo for little boys, nothing like she expected, her hair wild, sticking out every direction. For all types of hair, they said. And she believed them.

570 days, 11 hours, 37 minutes, 27 seconds

Yesterday, she swears, the Backwards Bush site headlined The End of an Error. Today that's gone again.

570 days, 11 hours, 47 minutes, 32.5 seconds

Devil, be gone! In Borders yesterday, she found a George Bush voodoo doll – he stuck it to you, now you stick it to him! She was on the verge of buying it until she noticed, two shelves up, a Hillary Clinton voodoo doll. Nothing but a slick marketing gimmick.

She thinks of one of her students, a former teacher. The assignment was to write about dolls and stuffed animals, and he wrote about the voodoo doll students made of him. Still haunted by it.

They say be careful where you stick the pins. The curse can cycle back to you.

She bought her own voodoo doll, years ago, when his mother was still alive, from the Voodoo Museum in New Orleans. Or a voodoo doll kit, rather. It was a white doll in a blue robe, used for healing. And she thought to set up a shrine around her headaches, to protect herself from headaches, but she never did. She could always see past headache pain when she needed to.

570 days, 12 hours, 1 minutes, 14 seconds

She's up here pretending this is a normal summer. The temperature down to 54 last night. And when she just looked at the thermometer in the kitchen window, it was 666. Devil, be gone! It was 62.5 outside her bedroom, shaded by the porch.

She remembers fights with him other mornings like this, other summers – her refusing to put on the heat with the windows open. But that was when his mother was still alive. That was before she bought the new windows.

571 days, 21 hours, 45 minutes, 28 seconds

She turns out all the lights, goes out on the porch to see the full moon, sits down just in time to watch the orange disk fade behind the overgrown lilacs. She stays there counting the fireflies. Standing up, she can see the top third of the moon again.

572 days, 5 hours, 31 minutes, 57 seconds

Riddled. It sounds like a child's guessing game.

572 days, 5 hours, 53 minutes, 43.2 seconds

Unable to stay awake, despite a nap after lunch (naps are for two-year-olds). She snacks on grapes (screw the diabetes) then grabs her second iced tea of the day (screw the headaches). Actually it's diet Lipton white tea with raspberry flavoring. And quite possibly less caffeine than regular tea (last summer she was drinking green tea, thinking it had more caffeine, not less). She thinks of afternoons like this, thirty-five years ago, when a friend who lived nearby often stopped over on his way home, and she'd make tea, and they'd sit and talk. Like old women, she thinks now. She was maybe twenty-five. She experimented with different teas back in those days – black teas, flavored teas, herbal. He taught her how to boil mu tea. He glued a leg of her table that had come loose. Then he left town. Then he died of cancer. His body riddled with it. Actually living years longer than anyone expected.

572 days, 12 hours, 48 minutes, 37 seconds

She turns to each day's news, especially now, to move the focus away from her petty aches and pains. Mostly the news is political. Bush, at least, gives her a good laugh. But today she's buried her head in another story: Florida Man Wakes Up With Headache, Later Finds Bullet in Head. It was 4:30 a.m when he woke in agony. His wife drove him to the hospital. When they found the bullet they immediately thought it was a stray, rare in his upscale neighborhood. His wife drove home to see if she could find a hole in the wall where it entered. Doctors said the bullet had been shot at close range. She claimed it was an accident.

And here she is, in her country house, alone, for this week between surgeries. She thinks of her husband taking off work for every doctor. Her husband waking at three a.m., four a.m., five a.m. just to hold her. Her husband not wanting to leave her side. Not wanting her to leave him.

So much for getting away.

574 days, 0 hours, 23 minutes, 49 seconds

One more weak week. Then the cycle begins again. The moon three days the other side of full by then.

574 days, 12 hours, 46 minutes, 33 seconds

Enter the elevator of any NYC hospital and see all these bobbing black heads. Men who haven't worn their yamalkas since they were thirteen have found them deep in some closet. They smell of mothballs. Another man in the waiting room alternately cleans his glasses and fingers a rosary. Her husband, up since 3:00 a.m. with a crisis at work, naps beside her.

576 days, 23 hours, 6 minutes, 24 seconds

He reminds her that a year ago she was making herself sick over her dead computer. As of tonight, the new one's out of warranty. Six weeks ago, his biggest worry was the refrigerator making strange noises. The lemon law's expired. There are no guarantees.

577 days, 1 hours, 13 minutes, 56 seconds

One nut. Or is it a bolt? Like a lightning bolt. It's a nut. It came loose when they were unscrewing her head brace, fell into her bra, she thought, but she couldn't find it. No, she isn't nuts. At home later, undressing, it falls on the floor. She has only one hand to pick it up with. She put it on her desk, she thought. Or in her pocket. A week later she finds it on the bathroom floor.

577 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes, 17 seconds

She stands behind a pregnant woman in line to see the Mythological Creatures show at the Museum of Natural History.

580 days, 1 hours, 44 minutes, 35.6 seconds

The Ben Casey bobble head est arrivé. Her E-bay special. He takes his place on the one shelf devoted to figurines – Dopey with his cymbal still on the shelf beside him, three dachshunds (one pewter bought at a craft fair; one a Hummel sitting and looking at a book with a little girl, bow in hair, that her husband bought her in Sweden; one sitting up and begging who looks exactly like Peanut did, down to the bone jutting out of his chest). Further back on this same shelf – a pottery mask sculpture made by her closest friend and a deconstructed Ginny Doll, arms and legs pulled off the torso, groping in all directions from that wire basket she's tossed them in. Ben's not perfect either, you know. There's a chip out of his shoulder, another three chips out of the base of his skull, none of which can be seen from the front. She finds this appropriate.

581 days, 0 hours, 31 minutes, 52 seconds

Now he says she should have saved the duck. If she didn't want it she could have given it to the whining child at the next table in Brooklyn Diner, where a hot dog costs $15.95. It strikes her as a long way from Brooklyn.

She thinks of Dick Cheney, wonders what the difference is between duck and grouse. Last spring a duck lay nine eggs in a pile of mulch next to the Treasury Department. One duck (named Duck Cheney) and nine eggs, guarded by the Secret Service.

581 days, 5 hours, 9 minutes, 46 seconds

Once a dead duck, always a dead duck. Three ducks dead beside her pond, then more fish than she could count. Only frogs and mosquitoes survive. This summer it hardly matters.

581 days, 5 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds

The taxi to Town Hall (where she doesn't really want to go) almost doesn't see her and starts to turn the corner, then backs out. She slides the door open to see a white stuffed animal (duck, she thinks) with a red head and yellow bill. She's nauseous but keeps writing. She's sick. Animals offer comfort. Does she have any right to this?

581 days, 9 hours, 34 minutes, 38 seconds

She drops everything.

584 days, 13 hours, 38 minutes, 46 seconds

Her cousin sends flowers, accidentally, twice. Her husband sends a mermaid.

584 days, 14 hours, 21 minutes, 7 seconds

On the news the other night, photos of a very special high school graduation: from Sloan Kettering. Patients with volunteer tutors to help them keep up with classes they'd previously attended. Fifteen this year, clad in bright purple robes, some using canes, at least one dragging an IV pole along. They seem happy here, but she wonders how many return to their former schools during remissions or on breaks between surgeries. How many are in special ed. How many are taunted by classmates. On the way home from Columbia Presbyterian two days ago, they passed the New York State Psychiatric Hospital. She almost went to school there.

585 days, 23 hours, 52 minutes, 17.8 seconds

A colander, she thinks, never certain if that o is long or short. The silver pot for draining pasta. All the holes for water to run out. Drianing vegetables, but she never cooks fresh vegetable and never thinks to wash salad. Years ago she gave her friend a beautifully crafted pottery colander as a gift, then found a similar one for herself at a yard sale. Better than aluminum. Better than plastic. It sits centered on her table, sometimes holding fruit. But none so polished as this one. Probably glows in the dark. 201 very precise holes, the nurse explains, testing her head for the size of it. And she thinks of children growing up in the 50s, glued to the tv, Vic Morrow starring in Combat, handsome Vic Morrow, years before Dr. Kildare. One of tv's good guys. Troops of children prowling the backyards after school, colanders upside down over their pony tails.

586 days, 17 hours, 22 minutes, 34.3 seconds

They use a scissors to pin the top of her gown together. Cut throat, cut rate, the cutting edge. Don't move, a man tells a woman in every crime drama she can think of at the moment. She watched them all, then turned to the medical dramas, closing her eyes or running from the room at each procedure. We can't let this woman die, the doctor says as the credits roll on the afternoon soap her friend scripted. No, he says, he didn't write that. His own words on the cutting room floor. In the holding cell next door, they're calling ouot directions for some of the helmet holes. Sounds like they're playing bingo. Or Russian roulette.

586 days, 18 hours, 25 minutes, 28.7 seconds

She's following the stars. He's following her.

586 days, 18 hours, 34 minutes, 18 seconds

Oh, he says. Ronald Reagan.

586 days, 23 hours, 19 minutes, 29 seconds

She'd wanted a helmet, like the space men wear. To keep her cool all summer. To save her from darting from one airconditioned shop to another, making herself sick. To save her marriage. She bargained, cajoled, and pleaded. But she never imagined it permanent, never feared mad physicists drilling into her scalp like this.

587 days, 0 hours, 20 minutes, 26 seconds

Find Waldo. Whale watch. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Bush watch. They say it was just a $50 Timex. They say it was in his pocket. And she's still upset she lost Cinderella.

587 days, 4 hours, 39 minutes, 21 seconds

In Albania, President Bush is mistaken for a rock star. He stops to greet the crowd in a tiny town, emerging from the trees near where his car's parked. They call his name, they reach out to shake hands with him (though you can see this every night on Jay Leno, people crowding the stage as the star prances on). Bush moves further into the crowd. Leaves are left behind. Monkey see, monkey do. People grab his arms. One woman plants a kiss on his cheek, another ruffles his hair. People wave little American flags. He climbs up on the running-board of his limo. He blows kisses just like Marilyn Monroe did. Suddenly his watch is gone from his wrist. Men in suits close in around him. He's lost track of time. His hands keeps shaking. Follow the stars.

587 days, 8 hours, 59 minutes, 4.3 seconds

Not just gamma knife, Leksell gamma knife. Invented by a neurosurgeon in Sweden forty years ago. She was in Sweden three years ago, the wedding of her husband's friend's daughter. His closest friend. Dead now.

587 days, 9 hours, 29 minutes, 5 seconds

Follow the stars, the receptionist tells them. Go in the Children's Hospital entrance, follow the beige and brown stars set into the floor, past the gift shop, past the live performance area and snack bar, past the outdoor garden. They get larger and more colorful as they approach the elevator, then the elevator itself with bright red, blue, and yellow stars, leading directly to the gamma knife. God's ray gun.Glow, little glow worm, glow. Glimmer, glimmer, dimmer, shimmer. And she thinks of her sophomore year in high school, a boy running for student council president that she had a crush on. She'd given him her sorority key for good luck, but it wasn't good enough. Keep looking at the stars, kid, he told her, slipping it over her head in the hall back by the lockers. Four months later she dropped out of school.

589 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes, 49 seconds

Sheila Ballantyne, 70. Larry Leon Hamlin, 58. Harvey R. Colten, 68. Steven Billiard Jr., 42. Charles Maynes, 68. Samuel A. Garrison, 65. Jörg Immendorff, 61. Two months ago, she'd look at the New York Times obituaries and notice all the people who died in their nineties.

591 days, 3 hours, 48 minutes, 5.8 seconds

Boy, it's good to see this guy back, her husband says, sprawling on the downstairs couch, the Yankees game on tv . This guy is Bobby Murcer, former player, now broadcaster.

591 days, 9 hours, 9 minutes, 18 seconds

She blow-dries her hair. Not wanting to get sick again. And thinks again of Tony Blair spending over $3000 on makeup. In recent news, a principal is in trouble over dragging a high school boy to a barber shop. A straight-A student is expelled from 8th grade because of her hair color. And a four-year-old is banned from pre-school because of pink hair. She thinks how not much has changed in the past fifty years, not really. Except maybe that parents go to bat for their kids. In their first correspondence in the three weeks she's been sick, her father reiterates that he wants a plain pine coffin, nothing fancy. He also might have paid for the funeral in advance, but he can't remember.

591 days, 9 hours, 32 minutes, 54 seconds

No more tears, no more tangles, no more stitches, no more dried blood. Looking in the third drugstore, she comes up with L'oréal Kids extra gentle shampoo – no knots! More conditioning! With a burst of watermelon. For thick, curly, or wavy hair. She'd been hoping for Johnson and Johnson baby shampoo, but God knows if they even make that these days. Watermelon, evident the moment she opens the cap, she decides is enough of a reminder.

591 days, 15 hours, 9 minutes, 37 seconds

A stitch in time saves nine. She wakes up confident all the pain's from the stitches. Coming out today. And not stitches, staples. She probably shouldn't have fought so hard all her life to be writer, not woman. All her teenage angst catching up with her. And her mother dead, and her father dying. No one else to blame. Unless you count Bush, of course.

592 days, 14 hours, 24 minutes, 37 seconds

Yesterday was the the anniversary of D-Day. June 6, 1944. The day world allied forces invaded Europe and stormed the beaches of Normandy. Her husband reminded her yesterday. She meant to ewrite about it yesterday. Yesterday she didn't even go so far as to open a newspaper. Yesterday it was as if there was no larger world around her. Just her own pain.

593 days, 9 hours, 36 minutes, 5 seconds

Percocet in the middle of the night, but she woke up feeling good enough to get some work done. A nap then, heading out for lunch, she decides to wear the shoes with a slight lift, making her an inch or two taller. Keeping her back straight. One of the orthotics has come loose again, a small patch put on last fall to see how well it worked, worked, but she never took it back for a more permanent attachment. Every year around May or June, right before she leaves for the summer, her orthotics seem to wear out. today she just attaches it again with double-sided tape she bought to mount photographs. Not planning to walk very far. Holding her head up.

594 days, 1 hours, 53 minutes, 42 seconds

Dr. Susan Penullo. One of the few doctors she's had who isn't Jewish. And she can't help thinking about Joseph Perilla, family-owned tours to Italy since 1945. They used to advertise on CBS radio all the time, she'd hear their syrupy ads before she started with audio books. Her husband took her to Italy the year she turned 50. No tour. No group. Nobody telling her what she has to do and see. No compromising her intelligence. The ad said give them a call. Come talk to Pappy.

594 days, 12 hours, 51 minutes, 1.3 seconds

Staple? Dried blood? Her imagination? Only her hairdresser knows for sure. Her grandmother's hand-mirror is upstate. Just her luck, she can't see herself. Luckily, she can't see herself.

595 days, 7 hours, 45 minutes, 8.1 seconds

She thinks of the Staples Easy Button. She thinks of Staples, by far her favorite store. Thinks of the first Staples she saw, on Sixth Ave., a block up from the library. Their huge signs about discount office prices. And how they opened more stores, and had just about everything in stock. Then she thinks of his brother, in the office supply business in Houston, and how chains such as Staples were killing him. His brother doesn't know about the cancer yet. Neither of his brothers knows.

595 days, 9 hours, 42 minutes, 13 seconds

You can't go home again, Tom Wolfe wrote. Oh, but she does go home. Despite walking hospital corridors, the two block walk to the coffee shop becomes unmanageable. She orders the wrong lunch. She stayed an extra day to get diabetes under control, and now she's not sure. It seems as if every doctor's on vacation. She wakes up with her head pounding, or the staples pounding, tight, digging in. And everyone so happy that she's home.

596 days, 4 hours, 35 minutes, 43 seconds

Some men go to church on Sunday mornings. Some volunteer at a hospital.

596 days, 12 hours, 32 minutes, 47 seconds

The indignity of diapers. The woman beside her, even at her most rational, screaming that she has to go to the bathroom. Her bones too fragile to let her risk getting out of bed. Nurses having to change her, like a baby. Her daughter trying to change her.

596 days, 13 hours, 17 minutes, 13 seconds

Stereotaxic. Stereo opticon. Who could have understood, when they bought that fanciful clock, how much meaning it would have. The slide made to look antique. The world in focus. And her husband, he's the one with the stereo equipment, the one who can tell when a level's slightly off, the one who listens. Their whole living room a comfort. She married him for...

597 days, 1 hours, 24 minutes, 18 seconds

She supposes she should be grateful to that pediatrician. He's the one who filled her with distrust of doctors. Were it not for him she might be butchered now.

597 days, 2 hours, 5 minutes, 24 seconds

When they first moved her here from ICU he was positive he heard a baby cry. But it wasn't until the next day, getting lost on her way to the vending machines, that she wandered into pediatric intensive care. The lounge right outside it (with the vending machines) filled with Legos and other quiet toys. For the brothers. The sisters. She thinks of the asinine pediatrician they took her to, insisting on weekly iron shots, two people holding her down. She screamed from the moment she entered that office until the moment she left. These toys were not for her. That much was clear. And she had, they told her, paratyphoid fever as an infant, but got well before they could confirm the diagnosis. And that doctor, they told her, was the first person she smiled for.

597 days, 2 hours, 13 minutes, 23 seconds

It's Saturday night, for God's sake. People are supposed to be out on dates. Young couples are supposed to hire babysitters. Don't they have better things to do than surf the Internet? Yet for nearly a hour now Earthlink hasn't let her on. She imagines half the city on Match.com. The city that never sleeps. The woman beside her finally given a sleeping pill.

597 days, 2 hours, 29 minutes, 26 seconds

And she pictures the doctor, or maybe the nurse practitioner, standing over her head with a staple gun, saying here, and here, and here, and maybe one for good measure here. All the staples that are pulling at her scalp tonight. And she recalls their apartment being wired for DSL, how the technician ran out of staples but came the next day with a better plan. These were the days before wireless. Before stereotaxic brain surgery. In one ear, out the other. Until the staples hold.

597 days, 2 hours, 56 minutes, 17 seconds

Her last day here, her roommate seems a little better, and they have the nerve to ask. Stroke. That's when the delusions started. And before that, nine years ago, the osteoporosis got really bad. That's when she moved in with her daughter. Such devotion gets rarer and rarer. Her nephew (really his nephew) has already said he'll pay for his parents' care, it will be up to his sister to care for them. And here they are, with no children. And here she is, in the hospital. Friends talk of moving to Brooklyn, for their daughter's sake.

597 days, 11 hours, 56 minutes, 30 seconds

Great news – Kevorkian has been released from prison after serving only 8 years. One photo shows him smiling next to his suicide machine. It could be any IV, in any hospital. Three bottles draining.

597 days, 12 hours, 30 minutes, 10 seconds

One more day, she asked for. Is that such a crime? And her husband reminded her that one more day might cost the insurance company another $10,000. Then, two hours after she says she doesn't care, she reads a "weird news" story about four people charged in twenty false brain surgery insurance claims. GHI paid out over $300,000 in reimbursements. A 36 year-old man, his wife, and two sons. She wonders what they were thinking.

Earlier today she read a story about a Dutch tv reality show where three people competed for a kidney transplant from a woman dying of an inoperable brain tumor was revealed to be a hoax. The brain tumor woman was an actress. The three contestants really do need kidney transplants, but they understood this wasn't real. The plan was to raise public awareness on how many people are in need of transplants. Fhat's all. And she thought okay, she'll save this story for someday later. Diabetes can also affect the kidney.

597 days, 14 hours, 8 minutes, 42 seconds

She should have started a new chapter on her computer yesterday. Better late than never. A day late and a dollar short. She's in the hospital. She's lost track of time. But she got her extra day, didn't she? One more day off the steroid, one more day on the new oral diabetes drug, to see if she can get her sugars down without insulin or lantis. Everyone shows her how easy it is to give herself the injections. She closes her eyes. She gets nauseous. One more way in which she doesn't measure up to what everyone else can do. Childhood revisited. Grow up already.

597 days, 14 hours, 13 minutes, 41.1 seconds

As she tells her husband: when she was young her mother would go out and bring some friend home to play with her. She'd set about making a party for her dolls. The other girl would get bored, eat her cookie and go home, while she was still involved in making the party.

597 days, 14 hours, 26 minutes, 54 seconds

Maybe she wouldn't be thinking about this if there hadn't been two stories in the news lately about elderly women, one of them 101 years old, the victim of muggings and beatings, but from the scattered mumblings out of this woman's mouth, she thinks she might also have been such a victim (the other two were in Queens, so neither would be in this hospital). But something about them wanting her earrings, the earrings her father gave her. And something about getting out of her house. She was nice to him, she fed him, get out of her house.

597 days, 19 hours, 20 minutes, 59 seconds

She made the mistake last night of talking to the woman in the next bed, of saying yes, she'll be here all night. And the woman, who couldn't get her name right, said they'll throw a party, and started planning what they'd serve, where they'd buy the best meat, and she tried to say we'll wait till we're home. The woman also didn't like her cough. Finally she put on her headphones, just to get away.

598 days, 0 hours, 4 minutes , 7 seconds

At midnight she calls home. He wants to know where she is. Then why she is. He thought she was upstairs. He had dinner and two drinks with Nina after the two of them left here together. The elderly Spanish woman in the bed beside hers sounds as if she'll scream all night, she's really scared here alone, without her daughter. Tied down. Now she screams for Mercedes who, by the way, has been really helpful to everyone. Then her other children.

598 days, 12 hours, 54 minutes , 7 seconds

Eleven o'clock. And he isn't here yet. Why today? Why isn't he here yet? Why doesn't he care enough? He knows by now that he's bringing her medication. And her glasses. She can barely see without them. Audrey called. Nearly blind Audrey. Her father's cousin.

598 days, 13 hours, 12 minutes , 15 seconds

609; the escort service. It isn't what you think. But they need someone on the other end of this stretcher. To get back to her room.

598 days, 13 hours, 12 minutes , 15 seconds

609; the escort service. It isn't what you think. But they need someone on the other end of this stretcher. To get back to her room.

598 days, 13 hours, 34 minutes, 10 seconds

He tells the nurse he'll be here in an hour. She says she hates him. She used to think 609 was the worst day of her life. This is what angry feels like. This is what married feels like.

600 days, 12 hours, 46 minutes, 15 seconds

15 seconds. And 15 years ago, just before he turned 50, she drove all nght from the country, rushing to see him before gall bladder surgery. Then she couldn't find him. Then when she did it was right as he was being wheeled off. They stopped for a second. She tried to kiss him, but the stretcher was too high. The last thing he did was laugh at her.

600 days, 13 hours, 7 minutes, 51.9 seconds

Nearly 10 a.m. They've been here since 5:45. She's not allowed to eat or drink, but all he's had is orange juice. Niether of them got enough sleep last night. He dozes beside her. She figures she'll get enough sleep after surgery, fights to stay awake. She suggests he at least go in the family waiting room for coffee, but he says he's okay. He'll go out after they take her to surgery, maybe find the hospital coffee shop. She tells him of the good places along First Avenue. She knows them all, since she used to teach right near here. Alzheimer's patients.

It's almost 11, not almost 10. She read the clock wrong.

600 days, 13 hours, 38 minutes, 43 seconds

Ben Casey was not a nice person.

601 days, 0 hours, 14 minutes, 43 seconds

A Pajamas NJ middle school closes on the eve of her surgery because dirt contaminated with chlordane has been found adjacent to the school property. A fourteen year-old boy shows up today wearing a gas mask. A twelve year-old stayed home with yet another headache. School officials knew about the problem for months and never told anyone. It's just to kill termites. And hasn't been used in years. They say children would have to eat lots of this contaminated dirt every day for seventy years in order to suffer harm. But she knows better.

601 days, 10 hours, 7 minutes, 35 seconds

And she thinks of how half a grapefruit and an English muffin, toasted dark, used to be her staple at the coffee shop. Then they put her on Zocor. Then they put her on Glucophage. Fed up? the small print at the bottom of the sign asks, directing her to honest advice about weight loss. She's fed up.

601 days, 10 hours, 25 minutes, 7.9 seconds

At Popover for what might be the last lunch of her life. They seat her by a window, a dirty Teddy bear on the ledge behind her head. And she thinks of Mary again, in Berkeley, those Teddy bears over her head. She orders her favorite here – Waldorf salad, actually they call it What's Up Waldorf on the menu. Probably because it has a lot of shredded carrots. What's Up, Doc?

601 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes, 18.4 seconds

On the news tonight (last night), they talk about 1,075 killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since last Memorial Day. So there are all sorts of deaths. And, she supposes, many of those killed would have had all sorts of medical problems had they been kept alive. And that's 1,075 Americans killed. As if the other deaths don't matter. Countries, like people, can get so caught up in themselves... It's ridiculous.

602 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes, 37 seconds

She can't help thinking about her aunt. 1952 or 1953. Forty years old. Dying. No one ever mentioned the C word, just as, in those days, doctors told the families but not the patients. The point was don't let them know they're dying, give them hope, give them strength to live. Nettie knew. Convinced she was dying of lung cancer, that she'd brought this on herself, smoking two packs a day. It wasn't lung cancer, though. She thinks it was breast cancer.

602 days, 5 hours, 46 minutes, 54 seconds

Memorial Day. Which of course makes her wonder if a year from now there will be people visiting her grave. Placing stones or flowers. They've decided they want to be buried in Rhode Island, because his family is larger, because she's closer to his family. His father sends them a photo of himself standing by where his wife is buried, showing the two plots next to it: theirs. They haven't told her father yet.

They haven't told her father about being sick, or about the hospital.

Memorial Day. In 1991, just before her one other major surgery, they decided to go to Washington for the weekend. Originally thought they'd drive down, then decided to take a train, then decided to take an earlier train home. Temperatures in the nineties. The weekend from hell.

Ten years later, after the first breast cancer, they decided on a trip to Nova Scotia. Another hellish journey. But nothing so frightening as this next trip across town. Or his coming back from there, alone.

604 days, 5 hours, 41 minutes, 18 seconds

Leave it to him to remind her of the time, their first year together, when the pigeon shit on her head.

604 days, 10 hours, 31 minutes, 35.2 seconds

She remembers shaking. Actually, she thought the bed was vibrating. It was in a hotel in Philadelphia, maybe six years ago. She thought someone in the room downstairs might be doing something to make the bed vibrate. Then she gave up thinking and just lay there. Her father, whom she'd seen that afternoon, was home in Margate. She'd thought maybe he'd stay with her, or at least have dinner. That's why she kept the room a second night. But he wanted to get home right after the doctor told him his mind was fine, there was nothing to worry about. Wanted to get home while he still remembered where home was. Maybe it was seven years ago.

604 days, 10 hours, 38 minutes, 14.5 seconds

Middle of the night, last night, she woke in a state of panic. 2:34 a.m. Not asleep more than an hour. Normally, she would still be up and working at that time, but nothing's normal. She twists the wedding ring around her finger, takes a Clonitin, decides to wake her husband. Arms around her, he's quickly back to sleep. She's calming down, but still shaking, sleepless, searching for that giant brass ring again, the hell with the rest of this.

604 days, 10 hours, 51 minutes, 12 seconds

Sixteen years ago ago, when she went in for surgery, they removed all her other jewelry but taped down her wedding ring, crosswise, only a hint of gold visible. The ring was just fifteen months old then, and it still felt new. What will they do this time, the surgery three times longer, her finger somewhat swollen from where the ring's grown tight against it? The surgeon says the numbness in those two fingers might be coming from the larger lesion in the brain. She knew she should have had her head examined when that finger first numbed. Knew in the back of her head, where the tumor is. This could have been caught over a year ago. It was around then that she lost the ring, or thought she lost it. Only to have it turn up two days later in the unmade bed, pulled off sometime in a nightmare she couldn't remember. And this hospital bed? And this nightmare?

604 days, 13 hours, 59 minutes, 4.6 seconds

Four days until another 100-day mark. Four horrendous days. Four days of Clonitin to try and keep her calm. At midnight of the 600 mark she'll be unable to eat. Around six a.m. of the 600 mark she'll be heading for the hospital. Around noon of the 600 mark she'll be in surgery. Around five p.m. of the 600 mark she'll have no idea where she is. The very next day the month will be changing. She's supposed to start another section of this blog then. God only knows if she will.

605 days, 1 hours, 27 minutes, 54 seconds

Her fortune: To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides. His fortune: The weekend ahead predicts enjoyment. She hates the sun.

605 days, 10 hours, 55 minutes, 53 seconds

Immunity, the water bottle says. Fruit20, berry-pomegranate. This is a new one. She's become addicted to these flavored, no carb, no calorie waters since she discovered them four years ago. But they keep changing around the flavors. Immunity, she thought it a stroke of good luck at this moment in time. Enhanced with Antioxidants C & E, plus Vitamin A. She drank all of two bottles before the nurse advised her to stay off Vitamins C and E. Immunity. It was probably just a catchy name anyway. Like they name plants and wedding rings.

605 days, 13 hours, 34 minutes, 49 seconds

It started in Vermont, so picturesque you could believe the whole world started there. Originally it was going to be the two couples. Then her husband backed out. So it was the three of them. Three on a match. And while her friends were hiking she drove into Middlebury. Saw the Backwards Bush clock for the first time (she didn't think to buy it). Saw the hand sanitizer lotion in her friend's backpack. Better than soap, she said, and you can't always get to a bathroom when you want to wash up. She started using this last year when two close friends were dying.

605 days, 16 hours, 0 minutes, 40 seconds

Two years ago? Three years ago? The friend of a friend called to warn her that her friend was freaking out, crashing at her country home, not answering the phone, not taking care of the animals as promised. And this friend might well be headed in our narrator's direction. A few days after that the friend called, not knowing how to explain the call, except she's learned that this friend at whose house she was crashing has a brain tumor. Hence the personality changes.

605 days, 16 hours, 12 minutes, 41 seconds

Time stopped two days ago. Papers on her desk piled high enough that they rested against the new fantasy clock's exposed hands. She moved the papers, turned the hands, and nothing seems the worse for it.

When she had this workspace built, two years ago, she asked for closed cabinets instead of open shelves, thinking to hide the clutter. Instead more piles up in what little open space there is. Then again, you should see the piles of papers in her father's study.

An article she read talks about how colors affect the mood of a workplace. But everything's oak veneer here. She fools around for hours, finally selects a soft rose screen for her desktop. It's the most she can do.

606 days, 8 hours, 21 minutes, 57 seconds

At least she has a primary care physician now. When she had the last surgery she'd never even heard the term, and had to rely on hospital interns. And of course the PC's leaving for vacation tomorrow (it's Memorial Day weekend, after all). She makes an appointment with an associate. Gets out of the cab with less than a minute to spare. Coughs. Tries to see through the thick mass shrouding her legs and arms and brain. She finds the right address. A fireman holds the door open for her.

607 days, 4 hours, 31 minutes, 38.9 seconds

Four tables pushed together in the patient dining room. People sit and write. She remembers when she led this workshop in the library, two round tables together, eight or infinity, or simply people slotted in with their backs to others. For weeks a man was wheeled in on a stretcher and dictated on and on, hard in that small room that's now a nurses' station. Easier here. Four rectangular tables pushed together, windows that can be openned, plenty of light. There could be six tables, eight tables. Some weeks floral centerpieces are removed so there won't be distractions. Even though it's nearly the end of May, tonight there are no flowers.

607 days, 21 hours, 4 minutes, 33.3 seconds

She has to feel a certain sense of comfort with her doctors. They don't have to be hot shot, cutting edge, top ten of the top 100 bullies, they just have to know what a scalpel is or when an x-ray's upside down. They have to smile. They have to warm their lips before they touch her, just like Grandma's doctor, just like that doctor when she went away to camp.

608 days, 0 hours, 2 minutes, 42 seconds

Yesterday's news: Avandia, a hotshot medication for type 2 diabetes, has been found to increase the risk of heart attack by up to 64%. Six million people have taken the drug over the past eight years. She takes a deep breath. Six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Six million diabetics. Breathe in. Breathe out. She can feel the cancer in her lungs now.

And how close, she wonders, did she come to taking this? Five years fighting off medications, then relenting. Glucophage, then Glyburide for a few brief days, now back to Glucophage. Avandia was never even mentioned. Insulin, possibly, for a brief time, if she needs steroids. On and then off. With a doctor she has complete trust in (not to mention a cell phone number, and a home phone).

And with some other doctor? The endocrinologist at NYU with whom she first made an appointment? The doctor recommended by her gynecologist's nurse? Slowly but surely she's learning her nose is a dog's nose, cold, dripping a bit, but on the right scents. A dog tied to a tree out behind a little dollhouse, perhaps. Safe in Allstate's hands.

Google turns up 1,231 stories on Avandia. Yesterday's news.

608 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes, 9.2 seconds

Shortly after Isaac Asimov died, NPR replayed an interview from a decade before in which he was asked what he would do if he was told he had only six months left to live, and he responded "type faster." Looking up that quote on the Internet now, she sees some places state it as six minutes to live.

She repeated that quote when she got breast cancer. The first time. But she never expected it would ever really come down to that. Not for her.

At least 609 is over. Gone. Banished. The worst day of her life. And she'd been waiting so long...

609 days, 6 hours, 47 minutes, 7 seconds

Her parents grew up through the Depression, always looking to save money. So when the ban on cyclamates was introduced, back in 1970, they ran to all the supermarkets in the area, buying up diet sodas for next to nothing. They'd been drinking it for years, so why stop now? But she was away from home by then anyway.

609 days, 7 hours, 2 minutes, 51 seconds

That last Botox, the one that she didn't think was working? Remember, that was on her anniversary.

609 days, 13 hours, 6 minutes, 28 seconds

A headache wakes her in the middle of the night. She has one of her worst coughing fits, despite gulping cough syrup. When she wakes again she has the pervasive sense that he's going to want to attack this as aggressively as possible, hospitalize her for two weeks, give her the chemo and insulin. She pictures all her other organs shutting down. Looking outward, it's a crisp, almost cloudless day. So was September 11.

609 days, 23 hours, 27 minutes, 7.2 seconds

609. She can't tell you how long she's been waiting, looking forward to this day. 609, her address. 609, the area code from a childhood before there were area codes. The number seems to follow her around.

609. Take out the 0.

609. He had this address before she knew him (she married him for his apartment and his medical insurance, she used to joke). Then his insurance went downhill. Then she went downhill. Or downstairs. This building's one of the few built with all duplex apartments, even won some sort of design award. He's carefully mentioned that there might come a time when climbing the stairs every time they needed a bathroom would be too much for them. He doesn't say which one of them.

Now, half a day away from the doctor's office, she goes to take a shower, sees her towel is ripped, and just throws it out. It had been part of a monogrammed set they received as a wedding gift.

610 days, 2 hours, 3 minutes, 31 seconds

For the second night in a row, coconut sorbet soothes her throat and lungs. To hell with diabetes. Coconut and pumpkin have become her favorite foods. Then she remembers those coconut heads her parents brought home from Nassau on their one vacation. Her mother, she learned later, was cracking up at that point. Spooky to the child. Who turns her thoughts to Jack-O-Lanterns.

610 days, 3 hours, 41 minutes, 52 seconds

Amsterdam's new airport security system reveals all, the headline says. In these terrified days, this is a first. It sees through clothes, outlines body contours. Analyzed by attendants in a separate room, the face blurred beyond recognition to maintain the illusion of privacy. It's sure to find drugs, smuggled money, or weapons. But she wonders if it would have found the tumor. If anyone would have looked, or cared. If, given the choice (and travelers, at least for now, can elect to have normal body scans), she would have thought to choose it. It's been over thirty years since she was in Amsterdam. The man she worked and studied with there is dead already.

610 days, 8 hours, 7 minutes, 17 seconds

Funky pink socks for $1 a pair, a strawberry and raspberry crepe, and a $10 for 10 minue chair massage outside at the Amsterdam Ave. street fair. This is what it's come to.

611 days, 2 hours, 34 minutes, 19 seconds

611. She thinks of it as a comfort zone, halfway between 911 and 311. She'd planned it for her answering machine code, but somehow ended up with 116. Now she finds it's the code the used for her breathing test.

612 days, 1 hours, 57 minutes, 24 seconds

She scratches her head. Wishes now she'd washed better. She can almost feel the two lesions under the surface.

In camp, fifty years ago, she recalls other kids getting ticks in their hair, and was disappointed when counselors examined and just told her to wash better.

She twirls a dirty strand around a dirty finger. Last summer her greatest fear was of Lyme disease.

612 days, 14 hours, 52 minutes, 30 seconds

She's cold. She was cold yesterday also. Knowing how hot she gets, she'd asked the attendant to turn off the heater in her holding cell yesterday, then wrapped up in a blanket and had to call someone to turn the heat back on. Now, in the waiting cell at the hospital, she's cold again. And she never gets cold.

612 days, 15 hours, 42 minutes, 39 seconds

On the morning of her lung biopsy, she notices Dopey's cymbal has fallen off. The little leather strap crumples in her hand. The car service can't make it and the first cab they find doesn't notice her. They wait ten minutes and finally get another cab. The guard downstairs at the hospital greets them warmly. She'll have to find a small leather strap. Or a shoelace.

613 days, 12 hours, 54 minutes, 55 seconds

One of her students, years ago, talked about a poem she wrote at one of the workshops. After that she got sick and was running from doctor to doctor, held onto her sanity by having that poem along with her, sitting in waiting rooms revising it. She's used that example with class after class, never dreamed she'd be applying it to her own life. And it wasn't sanity E. was hanging onto, more a sense of self. E. was always sane. That's what she has to remember.