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.