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.