Four weeks

It's been four weeks since we flew from Hamburg to the US and my health spiraled out of control. It seems like a lifetime. When the plane landed in Dulles, I didn't have the strength or lung capacity to take a single step. Even last Friday when I was discharged from Mt. Nittany Medical Center, walking 5-10 feet (with oxygen) left me out of breath. Since then I've been increasing my stamina and gradually venturing out on short walks around the neighborhood.

This was a week of firsts. On Monday I walked a mile for the first time (to Atherton Street and back), with Lily as my oxygen tank caddy. I bumped up the oxygen level, walked very slowly, and monitored my oxygen saturation levels. Everything went fine. 

I also drove by myself for the first time. The last few days I've been able to breathe without supplemental oxygen for extended periods while I'm sitting. I use the pulse oximeter to gauge whether I need oxygen again (i.e., if saturation falls below 93%). As I write this, I've been only breathing room air for 2+ hours, the longest I've been able to do so since July 28. I guess I take all the oxygen out of the room.

Yesterday I walked to my office for the first time (about 1.25 miles round trip), with my oxygen tank in tow. 

What awaited me after more than a year away?

• stacks of academic journals
• a fleece blanket from the College of Education (holiday gift)
• Cathy Kassab and Dave Abler's annual holiday card with pictures of their many dogs, cats, and critters (Lily memorized all 23 of their names when she was a toddler)
• a thank you card from someone whose tenure case I reviewed (I thought these letters were always confidential...good thing it was positive)
• a box with copies of my co-authored book that came out in December!

This was my first time getting to see it.

I'm starting to join work-related meetings again and also working with colleagues on revising an article on Christian nationalism and education for Educational Researcher. This may turn out to be the most important and timely publication of our careers.

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We are tremendously grateful for the meals, donations, flowers, gifts, and cards from our family and friends. Leland often takes twice as long to walk home from campus because he runs into neighbors asking about me and the family. These gestures of care and support demonstrate how our lives our woven together. I did some online searching for Wendell Berry's writings on neighborliness and came across this quotation from Jayber Crow, a Berry novel that I haven't read:

“I have got to the age now where I can see how short a time we have to be here. And when I think about it, it can seem strange beyond telling that this particular bunch of us should be here on this little patch of ground in this little patch of time, and I can think of the other times and places I might have lived, the other kinds of man I might have been. But there is something else. There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.”