Interregnum

  1. in·ter·reg·num

[ˌin(t)ərˈreɡnəm]

NOUN

  1. a period when normal government is suspended, especially between successive reigns or regimes.
    • an interval or pause:

“the interregnum between the discovery of radioactivity and its detailed understanding”


According to both my doctor and my lovely wife, Urban Mermaid came perilously close to becoming a one-off novel, at the cusp of May & June. Just after the chequered flag dropped in Monte Carlo, a 4 mm nugget of calcium oxalate in my right kidney made a break for freedom. En route to the outside world, it became stuck and the resulting backup was excruciatingly painful.

I was able to hold on long enough for the green flag to drop at Indy and was then hauled off to the Urgent Care facility, up US 29, by my lovely wife. Following the standard blood-work as well as a CAT scan – no cats were harmed during the course of this scan – it was determined I was the proud owner of not one, but two kidney stones. I was subsequently written a script for Oxycodone, and sent home with a referral to a Urologist on Tues. morning.

Since Monday was Memorial Day, I spent the following 48 hours in a drug-induced, pain-free state where sleep was the major pass-time. The script said “One tablet every 4 hours” but I needed only one and one-half tablets every 24 hours.

All_That_JazzAt some point, the backup went septic and I was suddenly the proud owner of a runaway staph infection. My lovely wife was able to wangle a 3:30 PM Urologist’s appointment and it didn’t take very long for the doctor to send me up the hill to the hospital for an emergency catheteritsation procedure. I don’t remember very much after that.

My lovely wife and I sat up late, my second night in the hospital, singing selections from “All That Jazz”. Fortunately, we never made it to the finale, “Bye-Bye Life.”

Long story short, I’m at home in Charlottesville with energy levels that fluctuate and a tendency to suddenly drop everything in favour of a two hour nap.

All this has wreaked havoc with wrapping up the Epic Giveaway, paying bills, completing the Syrena short story, and getting the A/C fixed and front porch painted in Hopewell. I intend to both persevere and sneak in a day at Virginia Beach around the end of the month.

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