Portland – Cantwell's Reef

AT LEAST IT DIDN’T HAPPEN on my remote little island nobody’s heard of. No helicopter evacs were involved, thank God.

That’s the best thing I can say about my recent up-close-and-personal encounter with America’s emergency health-care system.

Your faithful scribe and cat, happy to be back at the Nuthatch.

Loyal readers, if you were wondering about my long absence from the Reef, it was because I was busy living Brian’s Dreadful December.

When last we shared screen time, I was in the midst of a six-week housesitting stint in the lovely bayview home of friends Daniel and Jean in Olympia. In fact, after the presidential election I had resolved to make Olympia my next home.

That housesitting assignment was to conclude December 15. My plan was to return to my island for a week before hotfooting it back down the highway to spend Christmas with Portland friends Ken and Kate. Their daughter had orchestrated a plan for Christmas Eve dinner at Portland’s posh Ritz-Carlton hotel, followed by a couple of nights for family and friends at her Oregon Coast holiday home.

For me, all those holiday plans began to unravel on Friday the 13th (just like a bad movie).

After three days of serious digestive dysfunction in Olympia, I was on the phone at 7 in the morning to an old college friend — Kathy Pruitt, to whom I’m forever indebted — begging a ride to the nearest Emergency Room.

I had managed to pick up a nasty intestinal bug that over the course of the week had dehydrated me such that my blood pressure registered just 60/30 when they cuffed me in the St. Peter Hospital E.R. Never had I seen so many medical professionals swoop around me so quickly with armloads of I.V. bags, tubes and needles.

I was in the hospital four days before I.V. hydration, a liquid diet and a course of serious antibiotics set me right.

The lost time canceled my December return to Center Island. After a couple days of convalescence with my now-returned Olympia hosts, I packed up Galley Cat and drove straight to my Portland friends’ floating home on the Portland shore of the Columbia River.

On a back channel of the Columbia in Portland, my friends’ floating home is moored behind their sailboat, outlined in lights.

We had a nice few days. Toured a collection of Paul McCartney’s photos at Portland’s art museum. Shopped a holiday bazaar. Had a lovely little solstice party.

Then my digestion went south again. At 7 in the morning on Christmas Eve, I asked my hosts to drive me to another E.R.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the bug I’d suffered had a common side-effect: ulcers of the bowel. Admitted to a hospital in Vancouver, Washington, I got transfusions of five units of blood, then underwent emergency surgery on Christmas Day to stop the bleeding from a duodenal ulcer. Four hours on the table with only a local anesthetic while a surgeon probed my arteries. Ack.

Five more days in a hospital. My holidays were a culinary blur of green Jell-O and steaming yellow broth rumored to have once met a chicken. A far (and gastronomically anguished) cry from the Ritz.

Throughout the ordeal, my chums in Olympia and Portland showed me what true friendship means. The day after Christmas, daughter Lillian flew out from her new home of Philadelphia. Three weeks of her unsparing help and support was a godsend as I convalesced, first at my friends’ homes down south and finally at the Seattle-area home of my ever-generous sister-in-law Julie. I struggled to overcome stamina-robbing anemia and low blood-counts. In a quick trip to Center Island last weekend Lillian helped me transport my belongings and a carload of groceries homeward before I had to return to Seattle for final medical exams.

Tuesday night I drove Lillian to catch a Philly-bound plane. Wednesday, already halfway into January, I finally returned on my own to Nuthatch Cabin for some long-anticipated nesting and recovery time with Galley Cat.

With temperatures stuck in the 40s here, last summer’s fuchsias are still blooming on my deck. Blazes in the wood stove cheer the cabin nightly. Awakening mornings in my loft, I look out to watch each day unveil itself, whether wrapped in mist or warmed by the sun’s first lemony fingers caressing the treetops.

I’m getting back into my fitness routine, including a daily half-hour on the stationary bike. So far, so good. (Thursday I included two naps in my day’s itinerary. So I’m not overdoing.)

I’m working to boost my hemoglobin count, including another in a lineup of steak dinners tonight. Red meat isn’t my dietary norm but it helps bolster my blood, along with iron supplements.

For now, Galley Cat and I are both just glad to be home on our island. She’s back hunting the mice that live under the woodshed. I’ve returned to pleasant afternoons tapping the keyboard in my writing hut. Day by day, I’m encountering the rock’s few winter neighbors and chatting them up after my long absence. Sunny skies and coppery sunsets are a healing balm.

For now, I want to pull up the drawbridge and never leave. I hope your January offers comforts as dear.

I MET MY GOAL. Whew.

Yesterday, as September arrived, I punched the “publish” button on “Murdermobile 4: The Fall Will Kill You,” the fourth and final book in the Portland Bookmobile Mysteries series.

My late wife, Barbara, and I co-authored the murder-mystery series over the past 10 years, writing under the pen name of B.B. Cantwell. The stories were inspired by her happy years as a bookmobile librarian in Portland in the 1990s. We last published Book 3 in November 2020, a Christmas-themed installment. It was our COVID-quarantine project, written in a six-month period when we rarely left our island.

Walla Walla friend Stevie Lennartson once again produced artwork for the cover.

This latest book took a bit longer, with me writing all on my own. But the project got me through a tough couple of years after her death, keeping Barbara’s spirit alive for me.

The first three books were very much an enjoyable collaboration. She was a brilliant plotter and idea person who originated most of the stories and characters. I was good at getting it all down on a keyboard and coming up with red herrings. Self-publishing through Amazon, we made a decent little pile of cash, but mostly we just loved doing it. Bookmobile librarian Hester Freelove McGarrigle and Portland Police Detective Nate Darrow became our favorite imaginary friends.

In her final months on this firmament, Barbara worked with me to plot out this fourth and final book in the series. Among other things, she wished to resolve Hester and Nate’s long-simmering romance (done!). Among other fresh storylines, “Fall” finally gets Hester to the coast to visit her brimming-with-personality parents. While a fatal fall does figure in the plot, it also happens in the fall, with a colorful Halloween theme. Who doesn’t love October?

Download it for free Sunday through Wednesday.

Considering that time element, I set Labor Day, September 4, as my publication goal. Despite a hectic and busy summer, with many hours in the writing hut I beat that by three days.

Whew.

If you need a fresh and easy read for the rest of your holiday weekend, you can download “Murdermobile 4” for Kindle in less time than it takes a trick-or-treater to chew a tiny Snickers bar. And the cost is less than you’d pay for a bag of those goodies. Want it in paperback? That option is coming soon. Drop me a note and I’ll notify you when paperbacks are ready to order.

Here’s a link to the whole series, in case you missed any. In fact, if you’ve not already met Hester and Nate, you can download the original “Murdermobile,” the first book in the series, for free this Sunday through Wednesday (September 3-6). My treat, in Barbara’s memory.

Happy reading! We had fun.