My husband is in the hospital, with oxygenation around 5, whatever that means. I think normal is 12 or something. Anyway, he's bleeding internally, but they can't figure out where or how or why.

So he'll be there for at least the weekend. He was getting so weak, I was worried. Now that he's in professional care, I'm greatly relieved. If the cause can be found, I'm sure the VA doctors will find it.

However, anecdotal evidence is that a slow leak can be difficult to pinpoint and many people just need their whole blood topped off every so often. I hope that's not the case with him, since this emergency room/hospital stuff is disruptive to our lives and very stressful.

It's always something, it seems. I've gotten to the point where I answer the phone by saying, "Now what?" Not very welcoming, but the damn phone is always the messenger of bad news. Why can't it be good news once in a while, just to break up the pattern?

Almost finished with The Glass Castle. Yes, the two factors that seem to have made the difference were a love of reading (both as escape and as a doorway to an alternate way of life) and an awareness of the claims and standards of normal behavior of the larger society (learning what other people considered normal helped me understand how crazy my mother was).

The third factor is an inborn resilience, the ability to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as Hamlet said. Survivors have it.

Survival. You're doing it right.