Blimie and Kalman Try To Kill Me!*

It's hard for me to imagine now, but in the five weeks or so that I was in Columbia Presbyterian, I couldn't walk.  Indeed, when a physical therapist came to see me, whatever exercises I did were done in bed.  There was one therapist who gave me two Poland Spring bottles and told me to do arm curls with them.  At the beginning (in the ICU) I was so weak I couldn't open a container of milk.  The double wrapped kosher food was completely out of the question.  When I got to Silver Lake, the first P.T. had me try and walk (with a walker) from my bed to the door and back; it wasn't a  particularly large room, and I did it with great difficulty.  It's truly amazing how quickly your muscles abandon you when they're not used for a week or so.  Apparently I had barely moved while I was sedated and when I came to, my muscle tone had turned to jelly.  I think it was apricot.  Anyway, this is all a long, convoluted way of setting the stage for the time Blimie and Kalman tried to kill me.  They were both there visiting one day, and together with the nurse-de-jour decided to take me on an outing.   Now, I love my children like crazy, but all I wanted to do was lie in bed and watch Judge Judy.  This particular nurse (I don't recall her name; let's call her Brunhilde) was one of these proactive, happy- and-peppy types that you just want to smack.  She made me struggle out of bed and sit in a chair.  Sit in a chair, for G-d's sake...can you imagine the unmitigated gall?  Then she and my two geniuses put their little well-meaning heads together and decided that it was time for me to escape my room for a little while: Blimie and Kalman would wheel me to the Columbia Presbyterian atrium.  If I recall correctly, it was on the same floor.  So once more I struggled out of bed, this time into a wheelchair.  I was sooooo very weak; I knew that in theory this was a good thing to do, but all I wanted was for everyone to just let me stay in bed and wallow.  So there I was, all settled in for the excursion when someone realized that I needed to be transported with oxygen.  There are wheelchairs that accommodate oxygen; they have tank holders attached to the back.  Unfortunately, this particular wheelchair was not one on them.  I guess the task of getting me out of one wheelchair and into another one was too daunting, so it was decided that they would get a rolling oxygen tank and Blimie and Kalman would roll the wheelchair and oxygen tank in perfect tandem.  Riiiiight.  And I have a bridge to sell you.  Our little trip started out innocently enough, with Kalman manning the wheelchair and Blimie rolling right along with the tank.  They were happily chatting and apparently not paying all that much attention to their poor ol' dad, because their lockstep synchronicity soon fell apart.  As a result, the tubing attaching the oxygen tank to my trach became tangled around my neck.  I took a moment to ponder whether I should say something or just let them do me in, but I figured they might feel guilty about it for maybe ten or fifteen minutes, so I decided to spare them.  Ever articulate, I cried "Mmmph!"  That got their attention maybe twenty minutes later, after they finished discussing Lady Gaga.  We made it to the atrium without further incident.  It was gorgeous as advertised, but the food that was supposed to be there wasn't.  Believe it or not, I was wiped just from the trip.  After maybe five minutes I told the dynamic duo that I wanted to go back to bed.  It was decided that they would switch roles, with Blimie pushing the wheelchair and Kalman on the oxygen tank.  About a minute after he had finished razzing her about her lack of rolling-oxygen-tank prowess, he proceeded to strangle me yet again.  "Mmmph!", I bellowed , figuring that by now they'd know what that meant.  "Oops" came the reply, in unison.  They both thought it was quite hilarious; I thought about pressing charges.

* While the gist of this story is accurate, I must confess that I may have exaggerated some of the details just a teensy little bit.