Good days and bad days, then some really bad days. Broken pipes didn’t help, but a good friend really did.

A Trickle of Trouble

On Tuesday, when Beth went to wash dishes, she found there was only a trickle of water. I immediately powered up my electric wheelchair – the manual one is too difficult to use now – and went to the basement door. The sound of the water pump running continuously was instantly audible.

If we didn’t get it unplugged quickly, it would burn out, and that would be a catastrophe. Around here, getting a plumber takes somewhere between a month and forever. When you can’t walk or even stand up for more than a minute or two, that kind of delay is a disaster.

My only immediate relief was a galvanized garbage can, which I’d kept next to the kitchen sink for just such an emergency, believing it held enough water to flush the toilet a dozen times. The surprise was that over a decade, the bottom of the can had slowly rusted out, and the water had leaked away, so gradually we never noticed.

Fortunately, we have some very good friends. One of them, G, is a new HVAC school graduate who works for the best company around, and he always, always comes to help when we really need him.

He quickly determined that two pipes had broken at the pump, completely draining the reservoir. G immediately went to the very large plumbing supply company where he used to work, but then his car broke down.

A friend had already driven him to our place because his first car had broken down, making this the second breakdown in a few hours.

Still, G made it back without any dinner after a long day at work, only to find he’d gotten the wrong pipe. By then, of course, the store was closed. The next night, after a full-time job that usually includes considerable overtime, he arrived at nine p.m., again without dinner, and got the pipes repaired in a few minutes.

The fix was fine, but we still had no water; the natural spring that feeds the concrete reservoir is only a trickle. It’s plenty for normal use, but it takes time to fill up.

Hospital Memories

Meanwhile, I had a pretty bad day, followed by a good one, but with serious problems using a portable toilet – a grim echo of my time in the hospital. There, they wouldn’t let me use the actual bathroom, insisting on a portable contraption which, combined with the lack of effective pain killers, was hell to navigate.

At least at home, I wasn’t presented with three meals a day loaded with sugar. I am diabetic, and they knew that at the hospital, so why I got meals with ice cream, sugared fruit, and pudding, I have no idea. All I had one lunch was a bit of lemon in tea.

Of course, the nurse marked down that I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t, because I don’t eat those things without my diabetic medicine which they didn’t seem able to provide.

I often have days when I simply have no appetite, even with pain and anti-nausea pills. I have to force myself to drink enough liquids just so I don’t end up back in the hospital for massive amounts of fluid delivered intravenously.

Finding Strength in Routine

I mostly eat cold cuts now and no longer make bread at home. I know it’s not ideal food – for decades I seldom ate anything from the deli section – but now a French roll and a couple slices of cotto salami is about all I can face.

The other day, for the first time in a month, I was having a good day and filled up the bread maker. I don’t like the texture from the machine, so I only use it to mix and for the first rise.

I recently learned that setting the microwave to Warm for up to ten minutes proofs the dough as well as an hour in a warm room. It’s a small victory.

These days I often make either one very large sandwich or two at a time. When I am simply too weak to even think of making a meal, I have a sandwich ready in the fridge. Often, those two sandwiches are all I can eat for two days.

A couple of times a week I break several eggs into a teflon pan already with melted butter, salt and pepper, add some half and half and make some scrambled eggs. If it isn’t too hard to find I often put in some corn starch and use a wire whip.

I can eat up to 4 and seldom eat more that day.

I never seem able to make tea or coffee in the morning these days but I sometimes put some fresh ground coffee in a french press with cold water over night.

Thankfully, good friends and small victories help to make up for down days and broken pipes.

Part of John McCormick’s “Last Deadline” series — reflections from a journalist writing through his final chapter.

Explore more from John McCormick and his books.

Series so far:

• Hospice, The Last DEADLINE of a Correspondent
• A Correspondent’s Notes: Day Two in Hospice
• Hospice Notes Day 3–4: Pain, Swelling, and the Relief of Oxygen
• Hospice Notes, Week Two: Pain, Cookies, and Letting Go of a Library
• Another Day in Hospice — A Good One This Time
• Hospice Notes: Good Days, Bad Days, and Broken Pipes
• The Mechanic, The Sailor, The Journalist, and The New Definition of Self-Reliance
• Dispatch From the Frontier: The Mechanics of the Long Sleep
• Good Days, Bad Days, and the “Hospice Paradox”