Home Sweet Hospital
So here's the part where I find myself at University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, feeling a little bit like I just arrived at summer camp. I got checked in by the camp counselor who helped me unpack and brought me my very own camp socks. She’s got to go tuck other campers in but hopefully she’ll be back to tell me some ghost stories before bed.
And I’ve got my new camp uniform (awkward!) and a cabin mate —though she speaks only Hindi and there’s a curtain between us so I’m nor sure she even knows I’m here. So much for any camp skits.
Joking aside, despite the strangeness, I’m thrilled to be here. I’m here for five days of immunoglobulin treatment (IVIG, as the cool kids call it) for my recently diagnosed (Thursday) necrotizing autoimmune muscle disease.
I started noticing the muscles in my back and legs were getting progressively weaker back in April. Apparently my immune system has been killing off muscle cells. IVIG involves infusing the blood with antibodies which somehow get the body’s immune system to back off. I like to think of it as the antibody FBI coming in to tell the local immune system police to lay off and stop killing the muscle-cell residents. “Back off, guys — give yourselves a break. We’ve got this.”
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| Room with a view! That’s the Sandia Mountains. “Sandia” means watermelon in Spanish, but I don’t see the resemblance. |
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| “We’re #1!” But I’m not so sure about these camp uniforms . |
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| My cabin mate |
Love the camp analogy! Hopefully it's better than Camp Granada.
ReplyDeleteWe miss you back at "the monastary."
You are amazing! Keep strong, Laura.
ReplyDeleteLooking out the window seeing everyone go by in the normal lives can be hard. From my book for your edification as you look out the window. The Sandia Mountains are perhaps the most prominent geographical feature in central New Mexico. Just 30 minutes from Albuquerque, they provide 140 hiking trails for the half a million New Mexicans who live nearby. The Sandia Mountain Wilderness Area includes 37,232 acres and the Sandia Game Refuge encompasses the entire range.
ReplyDeleteMuch of the northwest Sandia Mountains are part of the Pueblo of Sandia and the mountains are sacred to the Puebloan people. To the Tiwa, the mountain is named posu gai hoo-oo, "where water slides down the arroyo.” It is the Sacred Mountain of the South to the Tewa, who call it 'Okup'i n i7, or Turtle Mountain.
Sandía means watermelon in Spanish and it is commonly believed that early Spanish settlers named the mountains this because of their reddish hue at sunset. However, it is more likely that they were named after local squash gourds that resembled watermelons.
The Sandia Mountains have been home to hunter-gatherers for millennia; Puebloans and their early ancestors have lived near them for thousands of years. In 1936, archaeology student, Frank Cummings Hibben, discovered Indian artifacts in a cave overlooking Las Huertas Canyon at the north end of the Sandia Mountains. Found in the “Sandia Man Cave” were artifacts over 10,000 years old: stone arrow and lance points, basket scraps, bits of woven yucca moccasins, and skeletal remains of Ice Age animals such as the mastodon. However, no human remains were discovered.
The Sandia Mountains are a hugely diverse ecosystem encompassing four of the six life zones: the Upper Sonoran, Transition, Canadian, and Hudsonian. They are home to more than 890 species of vegetation ranging from beargrass, sage, saltbush, gray oak, mountain mahogany, Apache plume, prickly pear and other cacti in the piñon-juniper woodland to ponderosa pine, gambel oak, white fir, Douglas fir, and limber pine at higher elevations. While Mexican grey wolves and Mexican grizzly bears have not been seen in the Sandia Mountains since the 1940s, today there are mule deer, bobcat, black bear, badger, porcupine, and mountain lion.
Peggy, I read this to myself while looking out over the mountains from the LIFESAVING picture window in the hospital room. I did not know about Turtle Mountain — or BADGERS! But Tim and I happened upon the Sandia Man Cave a couple of years ago.
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