For Mufasa

I know that I like to make out that my life is all about me, but really without my peeps it would be dull and boring. In fact it is my peeps who get me through the day when I am feeling 'special'. They point out that I am not going to put back on 20 kg just because I skipped the gym and drank wine with them, and they understand that some moments in life can only be expressed through the wonder of interpretive dance.

A couple of weeks ago one of my main peeps decided that he needed to teach me a lesson--a lesson about life and how precious it is. Mind you, I am pretty sure that he sees it from more of a 'manly' point of view; he thinks that he just taught me a lesson in how to harden the feck up.

The story goes like this. He was having one of those days where his veins pop out of his head and his eyes change colour. I am not kidding. They go from blue to lime green in a matter of seconds when he is pissed off. I knew that he would not bother to eat dinner that night, so I popped over to nag and mother him and basically piss him off a bit more until he had no more fight left in him and let me win 'bestie of the year'. He was so stressed and cranky that you could almost feel the waves of anger coming off him. I knew that nagging was not going to help, so I did what all good women who can not cook for shit do--I went and bought Thai take away and a six pack.

After dinner he was still simmering, and I knew that this hissy fit was a good one because he did not even enjoy South Park. Usually SP makes everything in the world good again, but on this night it was not even causing a smirk. About 9.30, he started to complain that he had pins and needles in his left hand. Within the hour, he had it in his foot ,and it was spreading up his leg. He tried to pass it off and be a bloke about it, but in the back of my mind I remembered an email that I read ages ago about the signs of stroke. I made him smile at me (nuh, no lopsided grin). I made him say his name and date of birth (nuh, he knew those). He rolled his eyes at me a bit and then told me that he was started to feel numb and he had a headache. He also told me he felt dizzy. At this point we immediately went to the ER.

At the ER he got his chest shaved into patches and sticky heart monitor type things stuck all over him. They drained litres of blood out of him, and he had a CT scan and chest x-ray. He had every person with the letters '-ologist' after their name poke and prod him. He had an MRI, an ultra sound on the veins in his neck, and a stress test on his heart. After 24 hours of probing, he was admitted. All of the specialists gathered around him and said the words that no person at the age of 39 wants to hear --You have had a stroke.

He was lucky, it was a 'mini stroke'. It was the stroke that they call a warning sign. Kind of like a good hard slap in the face with with a giant piece of frozen cod. It was the warning sign that said, "if you continue to stress, smoke, not exercise, not eat properly, have high cholesterol and blood pressure and generally live your life like you are 25 and full of piss and vinegar, you are going to die. And you will die soon because you will have another stroke, and it will be the Mt Fuji of all strokes."

After a few days he was lucky enough to get most of the mobility back in his arm but his left leg is still a bit gammy; he still needs a walking stick. He had lost some vision in one of his eyes, and this was also slow to return but is almost back to normal. The physios in the hospital did not hold back on him because of his age and gave him a 'fun' exercise routine that involves such items as green putty and and a green piece of rubber that he had to do various things to.... like throw at me when I make fun of him for being a cripple. The putty he uses like a stress ball to get his hand muscles working. The dogs thinks that this is the best piece of exercise equipment ever; they like to stalk him when he has it in case they get to 'taste' it.

The hospital let him out after a week because they figured that he might go insane with boredom in the rehab ward with all the other stroke victims who average around 85 years of age. But they would only let him out if he had someone where to go where he could be watched in case he fell or had anther stroke. So, he won a nice, relaxing stay at Karana Downs, and the hounds thought that all the Christmases had come at once because he was home all day with them feeding them Schmackos. For the first time in a long time, I was allowed to nag and lecture, and he had no way of escaping or ignoring me. Nor could he stick his fingers in his ears and yell "la la la I'm not listening!" He did try to smack me with his crutch a few times, but I got him back by reminding him about how the physio made him tuck his jammies into his undies so she could see the movement in his legs better. She was a hot blond sassy physio so I am pretty sure that it hurt him more than it hurt my stomach muscles from laughing when I recalled this series of events.

He is on the mend now and back home in his own unit with a fridge full of my cooking (ie ,one container of pasta and sauce) and bathroom full of medicine that I call daily to remind him to take. I can be cynical about a lot of things, but I know that there was a reason that I needed to go and see him the night that he had the stroke. Maybe I had a feeling in my waters....or maybe there is a power bigger than all of us that sent me over there to make sure that he was going to get to hospital in time. All I know is that life is short, and our bodies are just like cars. If you don't put the right stuff into them and look after them they will cease up and breakdown at the worst possible time.

I love my best friend. Watching him struggle to get up and walk that first day in the hospital was like being punched in the guts and keeping a big happy smile on my face. Watching the most capable person in my life struggle to open a bottle of water broke my heart and still I kept the smiles up. I waited until he was passed out from exhaustion and then cried my eyes out in the family room. A nice old lady sitting near me told me that it was going to be OK because God was taking care of us. I explained to her that he was not my husband but my best friend. For the first time someone seemed to understand the concept that boys and girls could be best friends no matter how old they were. The hospital staff were completely baffled by our relationship. Even the hippy social worker gave me curious look when I explained that we were 'besties'. And this is what the nice old lady told me -- She told me that she believed that life partners were not just people that were married. They were people that shared their lives and would continue to share their lives until they were old and grey just like her. The more I thought about this comment the more it made sense to me. Life peeps are the people whose names you can count on one hand. They are the people that you dial the most on your mobile phone and the people that are allowed to see you at your very worst. They are the people that you let hang your undies on the line when you are too sick to do it yourself.

I have one life partner that is going to get snorkeled to death if all of my (and the doctors') nagging does not make him change his life. If he ends up in hospital again, I will so be taking pictures of him in the rehab ward with his bum crack showing and his jammies tucked in his undies, and those pictures will be going straight to Facebook. Just try me, Mister. I am NOT joking. And these photos? They're going in as is. I'm not touching them up like the ones of me in Bad Girls with Good Dogs.