1 part imagination, 2 parts cold hard fucking reality

Sleepy Hollow is on TNT tonight. It strikes me suddenly how much I love this movie. I love the atmosphere, the costuming...the hoogedy boogedy of it. It's romantic. I don't mean hearts and flowers romantic, I mean like Byron and Shelley Romantic. Romance with a large undercurrent of darkness to it.

No segue.

My friend T (the friend since fourth grade) called tonight. I had called her this past Friday while drinking wine on K's porch. We were talking about school for a while. Me, about my bad Special Education class that just finished, and she about the class she just finished teaching (something on kinetics). She's one of those ridiculously smart "student-for-life" types. She's in the process of getting her doctorate out at University of Arizona. She does a lot of work on body movement, specifically on the geriatric side of things.

Anyway, I digress. She's going to be back here in Illinois this week. Her mom is not doing well. And herewith I feel like a complete ASS for not visiting like I should have. Her mom had surgery on her hip in late May - there was cancer. Supposedly everything went well and the doctors at Rush Hospital got it. NOT QUITE. Here goes some bad PR for Rush. They were so fucking busy looking just at the hip that they neglected to look elsewhere AND they never said that the cancer had originally started in the BONE, not the tendon (which is what they had operated on). In short, her back started hurting not too long ago and it winds up that the cancer has spread to her spine. There is a tumor which broke apart a vertebra. Fuck and fuck and fuck. Needless to say, her mom canned that oncologist and went to a different hospital - Condell - to get treated. Rush is not people oriented - more research, and let us say in this case that it shows.

She's in there this week and she's going to start radiation and chemo treatments. Good lord. I think I'll go to the hospital over my lunch break tomorrow. T is coming in on Wednesday and leaving on Sunday. Has to cook for her dad too - he's not exactly the Renaissance man who knows how to look after himself. I should bake him (and her mom) some cookies. I feel horrible. These people are like my second family. Growing up, I'd go running to her house whenever things were a wreck with my mom. I really hope her mom can beat this.