A mystery

Dear friends and family.

Like yesterday and the past few days, mid-day has been slump time. I can deal with that: it makes me free for the early morning and the evening, and I can minimize what I do around noon. And I am planning a lot for evenings—parties, theater, visits from family. Even if I have to renege at times, it makes me feel good to have a full calendar. I plan to have fun.

I continue to work on a 1938 edition for hamletworks.org, and it is especially intriguing to me because the two editors usually use one word to explain a Shakespearean word. No wordy paragraphs there. As one who is planning an edition of Measure for Measure with notes, I wonder how concise Laury and I can be. Since it's evening, I feel energy enough to say that I do plan to sign the book contract. I better do it before mid-day tomorrow! Actually, fatigue time can change easily to another time of day, but I will swing with it, whatever it is.

The big news of the day was the visit to the pulmonary specialist. Voilá, a mystery condition. I have things in my lungs, strange pillowy shapes that have the surface look of ground glass. The Dr. is going to try to figure it out with the help of other specialists: caused by p. vera? by the meds? something else entirely? The shapes are not near where the spleen is impinging on the lungs. The neat thing is that the Imagining Center gave us a CD of the scan. I regret that we didn't have a tape recorder because the doc mentioned so many possibilities. I can't have a biopsy because my platelets are so low. For me that's a plus, actually. We wait a month for a second scan, Jan. 7th, and see if there is any change. In the meantime, scientists will confer to work it out. I leave myself in their capable hands. Of course, we relayed as much of this as we could to our son Harvey, who is at Yale (OB dept.). A friend of his is a pulmonary specialist there. And Sandy, our daughter-in-law, is the business head of the radiology dept. there. We will wait and see if we need to call in any specialists. Right now Shakespeare, recipes, family and friends are more fun to think about.

I didn't get a chance to try more potato pancakes tonight because Merwin wanted his favorite egg dish, a Winnie-the-Pooh, or egg in a hole or whatever it's called. What do you call it? I have added some grace notes:veggie bacon, grated cheese. He's in heaven; a man of simple pleasures. I want to try carrots grated in the latke mix: this is what EH's grandmother always did (as he wrote in an email today). I also forgot to mention that I never peel the potatoes before grating them. Just remove the deep eyes. Yukon gold potatoes work very well because they don't seem to oxidize as readily as other potatoes.

Love to all,
Bernice