In the early days when I was just home from the hospital, after knee replacement surgery, I had a terrible time sleeping. My feet would get very hot and my knees had a hard time resting on any surface. Sometimes I resorted to prayers and went around my beads, 108 in total, three times before I would relax enough to fall off to sleep. I said Christian and Hindu mantras. The Hail Mary in latin is a long prayer all by itself.

Then I might wake me up, in discomfort, in an hour or two.

On one such night, I woke up to my hot and feverish knees, and was also smelling uric acid fumes coming from the commode. I was on that side of the bed nearest the bathroom. Getting out of bed was a very slow affair, set off agains the dire need to get to the bathroom on time.  The walker seemed to get between me and the pot. As I flung around that walker and yanked at my night ware I was wishing for depends. 

I was fuming at the pain, loss of control and at the smell on this cold November night. I opened the window in the bathroom as much as I could. I decided that the commode needed a good brushing. I got the toilet brush and placed it between the lid and the commode, with the brush in the center of the commode. This was some kind of code that I wanted my partner to scrub the pot down for me. There was no way I could do such a thing now.

Then I left the bathroom and closed the door against the smell and against the cold of the open window. I was fast asleep in no time having vented my anger on all things bathroom and thinking I had solved the problems. I slept well after that. I could blame the medications….

I did not hear my partner get up later. As he told the story next morning, he said he ran into a closed bathroom door on his way to the bathroom. He was close to fast asleep and found himself trying to climb up that closed door. 

When he woke up enough to open the door, he then turned around in the dark and sat on the pot, where that wiry brush was lurking, ready to attack his private and delicate parts. He said he leaped off the pot not knowing what kind of animal might be attacking him. 

He said that brush went all the way up to his tonsils and mumbled about the closed door and the tonsils more than once. 

As I woke up that morning, to the pain and stiffness of those pared down and lacerated knees, I listened to my partner’s story and found myself falling into a reluctant laugh. He was still mumbling about the brush reaching up to his tonsils, as he made his way to that cold bathroom and found the window open. I heard some scrubbing going on and laughed some more. For some reason I felt I had to keep it a silent laugh.

Happy Holidays and All the best from Rose Marie.