…and it’s my mom. I know how you feel, I was as surprised as you are when I found out! But it’s true, we don’t have to look any further to find the true identity of that masked crusader; Captain Hardcore is my mom!
She’s been having some pain in her shoulder, and by some pain I mean a tremendous amount of pain. To remedy that, she underwent a relatively simple procedure, where they run small electric currents down a needle that’s stuck in certain key nerve clusters. It turned out that procedure was super-painful, and they had forgotten to mention that. When my mother had kind of gotten over the shock of that pain she kept saying that the pain was different, and she didn’t really know if she was having some residual pain from the procedure, so she waited for things to become a bit more clear. In the meantime, the following day, she had to have several things done, amongst others, a thorax scan, a CT scan of her torso. She was good and well home for about an hour after having done what she needed to do in the hospital that day when she got a phonecall from the doctor. He asked her if she’d felt short of breath, dizzy, or a stabbing pain in her chest. She told him that she didn’t think so, but that with all the pain lately she couldn’t really be sure. It turns out that she had a collapsed lung and she didn’t even know about it! It seems that during the pain procedure her lung had collapsed, and that was what caused so much pain.
My sister told me about this friday afternoon by way of SMS, casually informing me that my mother had to be admitted to the hospital because her lung had collapsed. When I called my sister to ask how my mother was doing, I was still under the impression that this had happened only a short while ago (not that she had been walking around with a collapsed lung for two days), and that she’d be in severe pain. My cousin Mark had a collapsed lung about a decade and a half ago, and I remember that wasn’t pleasant. My sister said; “Let me describe the situation. We’re getting ready to go to the hospital right now, and we’re just waiting for the car to come and pick us up. Mom is sitting on the sofa and has just stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray.” That’s when I knew things were still alright; my mother had a collapsed lung, but was still smoking cigarettes, so it couldn’t possibly be that bad.
Since then she’s been in the hospital, but she’ll be discharged today, since her lung reinflated itself when they put a drain in her torso to get rid of some built up fluids. This was unexpected but fortunate, otherwise she’d have to get some surgery.
.: Crafty Misinformation Jim
Jim had been working his arse off in London, Madrid and Leeds all week long, and used up all his karma-pool. With no dice left in his karma-pool, he came up a few successes short when he was supposed to come over on Friday night, and sadly his flight was canceled. So instead of him coming over on Friday night, he came bastard-early on Saturday morning instead. That was too bad, considering how he was only going to be around for a short time, in which he wanted to meet up with as many people as possible while still having the opportunity to hang out without too much stress.
When he finally did land we made our way into the city talking, as we do, about all kinds of stuff. I like talking to Jim, and not just because he reaffirms much of what I already think and believe (we’re frighteningly similar, which makes me wonder how well he’d get along with Marco), but also because I like his energy and cheerful demeanor. Even when we talk about the shitty things in life, it manages to be with humour and ridicule, yet without the loss of gravitas.
We ended up having brunch with Moulsari, and afterwards we headed over to L’Opera for him to have lunch with Sam. (I guess dude was hungry). I went home to have a little nap, because the previous evening I had gone to bed rather late and had to get up early to pick Jim up. Later I met up with Jim and Sam and talked a bit. When Sam went to her retail therapy session, Jim and I met up with Moulsari and we hung out at Brix, which was great. We had cheese-sticks and drinks and talks and laughter. Afterwards we headed home where Moulsari prepared us a wonderful meal while it was Jim’s turn to take a nap. After our meal we engaged in some deep geekery by huddling around Mouls’ laptop and watching various youtube videos that we’d come across. We decided we wouldn’t go out and go through the liquor I still had. I ended up having quite a few drinks, as did Jim, as we ate popcorn and watched all episodes on my The Hire DVD. Moulsari went to bed and Jim and I decided to watch The Bourne Ultimatum. We’re both big Damon fans, but Jim even goes so far as to travel with the Bourne collection in his luggage. We ended up dissecting the film in the same way that literary critics and philosphers dissect books by Ayn Rand, which was hilarious. About halfway through the film I woke up and noticed that Jim was sleeping, too. Time to turn off the film and go to bed.
The next day we all slept in. We had lunch with Eva at around noon. Moulsari had made fantastic French toast, we had strawberries, raspberries, banana and grapes and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. After that it was time for me to head out to Hoorn and help my brother with some studying, and so I said goodbye to Jim.
It was a pleasure to see you again, Jim. Hope to see you again soon.
Not that I want to take any credit from your mom, cause to be honest she starts to scare me a bit, but I recently entertained a thought that motherhood adds some superpowers to previously completely normal women. I mean, I often think of my mom as hardcore as well and heard a few stories about mothers of other friends in the similar vein to what you describe here. Problem is: I never knew any of these women before they became mothers so it’s difficult to assess my theory at this point. Will have to come back to it in 10-20 yrs or so and compare how my friends who became mothers changed in this time.
I’m happy she didn’t have to go through surgery this time.
I believe that as well. Mothers can see through walls, and have super-hearings, it super!:)