235 titles in alphabetical order. Includes movies and TV shows/episodes. I’ve removed the ‘A’ and ‘The’ at the beginning of titles. This is the complete list to accompany the post Christmas Movie Watch.

Christmas movie watching season begins the day after Thanksgiving and ends January 6 (twelve days after Christmas).

1000 Miles From Christmas (2012)
12 Christmas Wishes For My Dog (2011)
12 Dates of Christmas all episodes, all seasons (2020)
13 Slays Till Christmas (2020)
42 Days of Christmas Movies
8-Bit Christmas (2021)
AD/BC: A Rock Opera (2004)
All Creatures Great and Small (2022)
All is Bright (2013)
All the Creatures Were Stirring (2018)
An Elf’s Story: The Elf on the Shelf (short) (2011)
Anna & the Apocalypse (2017)
Apartment (1960)
Arthur Christmas (2011)
Babes in Toyland (1986)
Bad Moms Christmas (2017)
Bad Santa (2003)
Bakin It – TV Series
Batman Returns (1992)
Best Man Holiday (2013)
Best. Christmas. Ever. (2023)
Better Watch Out (2016)
Bishop’s Wife (1947)
Bitch Who Stole Christmas (2021)
Black Christmas (1974)
Black Christmas (2006)
Black Friday (2021) (is it a christmas movie, tho?)
Candy Cane Lane (2023)
Carol for Another Christmas (1964)
Castle for Christmas (2021)
Catfish Christmas (2022)
Christmas as Usual (2023)
Christmas Carol (1951)
Christmas Carol (1984)
Christmas Carol (TV series) (2019)
Christmas Chronicles (2018)
Christmas Chronicles 2 (2020)
Christmas Flow (didn’t finish) (2021)
Christmas Horror Story (2015)
Christmas House (2020)
Christmas House 2 (2021)
Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
Christmas Inheritance (2017)
Christmas is Cancelled (2021)
Christmas Karen (2022)
Christmas Movie Christmas (2019)
Christmas on the Farm (2021)
Christmas Prince (2017) the movie that sparked it all
Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby (2019)
Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (2018)
Christmas Set-up (2020)
Christmas Story Christmas (2022)
Christmas Tale (2008)
Christmas to Treasure (2022)
Christmas Train (2017)
Christmas Vacation (1989)
Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Christmas With You (2022)
Cloudy with a Chance of Christmas (2022)
Cup of Cheer (2020)
Cupid for Christmas (2021)
Dash & Lily (2020)
Dashing in December (2020)
Dashing Through the Snow (2023)
Days of Our Lives: A Very Salem Christmas (2021)
Dean Martin Christmas Show (1968)
Deck the Halls (2006)
Designing Christmas (2022)
Dickensian (2015), Ep 9&10
Dickensian (2015), Ep. 8
Dickensian (2015), episode 2
Dickensian (2015), episode 3
Dickensian (2015), episode 4
Dickensian (2015), episode 5
Dickensian (2015), Episode 6
Dickensian (2015), Episode 7
Dickensian (2015), series, first episode
Die Hard (1988)
Dognapped: A Hound for the Holidays (2022)
Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square (2020)
Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas (2022)
El Camino Christmas (2017)
Elf (2003)
Elves (2018)
Elves (Netflix Danish series) (2021)
ExMas (2023)
Falling for Christmas (2022)
Family Man (2000)
Family Stone (2005)
Family Switch (2023)
Fantasy Island: Welcome to the Snow Globe (2021)
Father Christmas is Back (2021)
Feast of the Seven Fishes (2023)
Four Christmases (2008)
Fred Claus (2007)
Friday After Next (2002)
Frosty the Snowman ()
Genie (2023)
Ghost Story for Christmas (series), ep. The Stalls of Barchester (197-)
Godmothered (2020)
Great British Baking Show: Holidays (2020)
Great Rupert (1950)
Gremlins (1984)
Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas (2023) (didn’t finish)
Hanukkah on Rye (2022)
Happiest Season (2020)
Haul Out the Holly (2022)
Hitched for the Holidays (2012)
Holdovers (2023)
Holidate (2020)
Holiday (1938)
Holiday Affair (1949)
Holiday Dating Guide (2022)
Holiday in the Vineyards (2023)
Holiday Shift (series), episode 1
Holiday Shift, episodes 2&3
Holiday Shift, final episode(s)
Holiday Sitter (2022)
Hollywood Christmas (2022)
Home Alone (1990)
Home for Christmas Season 2 (2020)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1969)
How to Ruin Christmas (Season 1 – 2)
I Believe in Santa (2022)
I Hate Christmas (), S2 Ep6
I Hate Christmas (2023), S2 Ep2
I Hate Christmas (2023), S2 Ep2
I Hate Christmas (series 2022)
I Hate Christmas (Series), (2023), episode 1
I Hate Christmas, S2 Ep3, December 23
Ice Harvest (2005)
Ideal Home (2018)
It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947)
It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)
It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder (2022)
It’s Christmas Carol (2012)
Jack Frost (1997)
Jack Frost (1998)
Jingle Bell Bride (2020)
Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020)
Jinkx and Dela Christmas Show (2020)
Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show (2019)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Klaus (2019)
Krampus (2015)
Ladies of the ‘80s: A Divas Christmas
Last Christmas (2019)
Last Holiday (2006)
Last Tango in Halifax Christmas Special (2017)
Let It Snow (2019)
Letters to Satan Claus (2020)
Librarians and Santa’s Midnight Run (2014)
Love Actually (2003)
Love Hard (2021)
Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
Medea Christmas (2013)
Meet Me in Saint Louis (1944)
Menorah in the Middle (2022)
Merry Friggin’ Christmas (2014)
Merry Happy Whatever (2019), TV Series, episode 01
Merry Little Batman (2023)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Miracle on 34th Street (1994)
Mistletoe & Menorahs (2019)
Mixed Nuts (1994)
Most Wonderful Time of the Year (2008)
Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962)
Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Murder She Baked: A Plum Pudding Mystery
My Southern Family Christmas (2022)
Nasty Piece of Work (2019) (Blumhouse holiday Into the Dark series)
Naughty or Nice (2021)
New York Christmas Wedding (2020)
Night Before (2015)
Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
No Sleep til Christmas (2018)
Noel Diary (2022)
Noelle (2019)
Once Upon a Christmas (2000)
One Magic Christmas (1985)
Pottersville (2017)
Preacher’s Wife (1996)
Princess Switch (2018)
Princess Switch 2 (2020)
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
Red Christmas (2016)
Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer (1964)
Sacrifice Games (2023)
Santa Camp (2022), documentary
Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970)
Santa Clause (1994)
Santa Girl (2019)
Santa Inc. (2021)
Santa Jaws (2018)
Santa Stakeout (2021)
Santa Who? (2000)
Scrooge (1935)
Scrooge (1970)
Scrooged (1988)
Serendipity (2001)
Shared Rooms (2016)
Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! (1989)
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)
Single All the Way (2021)
Snow (2004)
Snow 2: Brain Freeze (2008)
Snow Globe Christmas (2013)
Spirited (2023)
Stopped – Da Kath and Kim Code (2005)
This Christmas (2007)
Trading Places (1983)
Trailer Park Boys: XMas Special (2004)
Treevenge (short) (2008)
Under the Christmas Tree (2021)
Unlikely Angel (1996)
Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011)
Very Murray Christmas (2015)
Very Sunny Christmas (2009)
Violent Night (2022)
While You Were Sleeping (1995)
White Christmas (1954)
White Reindeer (2013)
Who Killed Santa? A Murderville Murder Mystery (2022)
Winter Romance aka Colors of Love (watched 11/26) (2021)
Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)
Yoh! Christmas (2023), episode one
You Better Watch Out (aka Christmas Evil) (1980)
Your Christmas or Mine? (2022)
Your Christmas or Mine? 2 (2023)
Yule Log (2022)
Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas (2021)

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it on this blog but I have watched A LOT of Christmas movies. (I’ll append a partial list at the bottom of this post.) And, on Friday, I’ll start to watch more.

I haven’t always been this way. There was a time when I shunned everything Christmas. Just not my vibe.

So, how does something like this happen?

Our Christmas movie watching started in 2019 but it’s rooted in our movie watching habit which began in 1999.

One of the ways Jennifer and I bonded when we started dating is through movies. Friday night quickly became movie night when we dated (hmmm, now that I think about it, we started hanging out and watching movies before we started dating) in 1999 and it’s been a part of our routine for the last quarter century.

Some quick math. Watching 50 movies a year for 25 years equals 1250 movies. We haven’t watched a movie every single Friday night, but more often than not. And, we often watch movies even when it’s not Friday night. So, a conservative estimate is that we’ve watched more than 1300 movies together.

That’s a lot of movies.

We’ve watched entire horror franchises, we’ve selected performers and watched every movie in which they appeared. We’ve picked out directors and writers and watched everything they’ve done. We were once diligent about watching everything nominated in the major categories of the Academy Awards. We’ve gone through phases of watching classics, indies, international, animation, musicals, and all the genres. We watch highly recommended flicks and cringe-inducing schlock.

But not Christmas movies.

Until 2019.

It was the day before Christmas, or perhaps the day of or the day after. It was a cozy night and we were lazing in front of the television trying to decide what to watch. Netflix was pushing A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby, and because it promised to be frothy and cozy, I suggested the first of the series — A Christmas Prince. It was cheesy and got us talking about classic Christmas movies and what we’d seen and what we hadn’t.

We made some idle plans to watch more Christmas movies. That same winter there was a BBC dark fantasy version of A Christmas Carol that I watched. In all, we watched eight or nine Christmas movies between Christmas eve and a few days after the start of the new year.

In a different timeline that was the end of it. But in this timeline, 2020 was a very special year.

By the time Thanksgiving rolled around in 2020 we were conditioned to stay inside. Covid deaths were high and there was a lot of uncertainty when and if a vaccine might be rolled out. Recalling the coziness of the previous year’s Christmas movie watching, combined with our past experience of immersing ourselves in particular genres or styles of movies, we decided to go all in on Christmas movies and Christmas shows.

It was a lot of fun. (Remember, we have a remarkable tolerance for cringe-inducing schlock.)

We watched about 40 movies between Thanksgiving and Epiphany (12 days after Christmas). And about 10 or 12 shows/episodes.

An aside. I grew up in a place with snow. As a child I built snowmen and lived through blizzards. One memorable winter, wind blew snow against the front of the house creating a drift that reached the roof. We had to exit through the back until we dug out the front door.

Here, in the semi-tropical weather of Florida, there are none of the environmental triggers I learned to associate with winter or Christmas. And so, Christmas time in Florida is weird to me. How can there be Christmas lights, Christmas music, AND I’m walking through the neighborhood in shorts and a t-shirt? It feels alien and wrong.

Watching Christmas movies helped Florida feel a little more winter-y, a little cozier in a time when we craved comfort and coziness.

So, we did it again in 2021.

This year will be our 5th year of Christmas movie/show binging. To this point we’ve watched approximately 235 shows and movies. Last year we watched about sixty shows/movies. So, if we do something similar this year, we’ll be pushing 300 by the time we wrap up in 2025.

That’s a lot of Christmas movies!

Here is a list of what we watched in the winter of 2020. I’ll post the entire list of 2019-2023 in a separate post. Here’s the complete list for 2019-2013.

Christmas Movie Watchlist 2020

Drama
Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
The Bishop’s Wife (1947)
It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
A Christmas Carol (1951)
The Apartment (1960)
Die Hard (1988)
Scrooged (1988)
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
The Preacher’s Wife (1996)
The Family Man (2000)
Love Actually (2003)
This Christmas (2007)
A Christmas Tale (2008)
All is Bright (2013)
Ideal Home (2018)
Happiest Season (2020)
A New York Christmas Wedding (2020)

Horror
Black Christmas (1974)
You Better Watch Out (aka Christmas Evil) (1980)
Gremlins (1984)
Black Christmas (2006)
Red Christmas (2016)

Musical
Meet Me in Saint Louis (1944)
White Christmas (1954)
Scrooge (1970)
Anna & the Apocalypse (2017)

Comedy
The Great Rupert (1950)
Mixed Nuts (1994)
Elf (2003)
The Night Before (2015)
Cup of Cheer (2020)
Holidate (2020)
Letters to Satan Claus (2020)

Hallmark Style
Christmas Inheritance (2017)
A Christmas Movie Christmas (2019)
The Christmas House (2020)
The Christmas Set-up (2020)
Dashing in December (2020)

Variety Shows
A Very Murray Christmas (2015)
The Jinkx and Dela Christmas Show (2020)

Cartoon / Animations
The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)
Klaus (2019)

Television Shows / Episodes
The Librarians and Santa’s Midnight Run (2014)
Last Tango in Halifax Christmas Special (2017)
Dash & Lily (2020)
Great British Baking Show: Holidays (2020)
Home for Christmas Season 2 (2020)

The combination of the beginning of the semester, two hurricanes, and an anxiety-provoking election season left me feeling I was done with My Gothic Body. However, I’m now feeling much refreshed and have started back up on the writing. Looking forward to the long weekend.

The zero draft of My Gothic Body is about 10,000 words. I’m going to add another braid about representations of masculinity in mid-1970s television. In an utterly non-trivial way television shaped the way I understand what it means to be a man. Some representations I adopted, some I rejected, but all the TV men I watched helped shape the way I recognize the boundaries, parameters, and meaning of manhood.

It’s these ideas of masculinity (among others), ghosts, intangible forces that haunt my experience, that shape my reality, and contributed to the way I approach(ed) my health, which led to the kidney stone operations.

So, as I pursue this new draft I might drop some sections into the blog. Or not.

I’ve also decided to join Bluesky. Partly to see if judicious addition of a well-curated social media feed can help me navigate whatever is to come. (lol, or to see if I can find a way to distract me from writing!) I’m @patadave.bsky.social.

It turned out OK. I have a ton of notes, read a bunch of classic Gothic novels, closely annotated Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and started incorporating it into a longer work about my relation with my body. I’ve started piecing it all together into a longer project and with any luck I’ll start sharing chunks of it in the next couple of months.

I want to do something with all this malevolent energy burbling up, might as well blog! This round I think I’m going to shoot for quantity over quality. And, I want to do more short posts about the random stuff bouncing around in my skull, and less pointing to stuff on the internet.

Don’t forget to stay hydrated, move your body, get away from the screen. If you don’t meditate or do yoga, now might be a good time to start incorporating those practices into your routine. Connect with friends and allies. Allow yourself time to feel grief and anger. Despair is a rational response.

“I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.” —Toni Morrison

In his biography of William Godwin, William St. Clair suggests the following passage from St. Leon is Godwin writing about the birth of Mary Shelley. So much to unpack!

“At length the critical period arrives, when an event so extraordinary occurs, as cannot fail to put the human frame in considerable jeopardy. Never shall I forget the interview between us immediately subsequent to her first parturition, the effusion of soul with which we met each other after all danger seemed to have subsided, the kindness which animated us, increased as it was by ideas of peril and suffering, the sacred sensation with which the mother presented her infant to her husband, or the complacency with which we read in each other’s eyes a common sentiment of melting tenderness and inviolable attachment!

“This, she seemed to say, is the joint result of our common affection. It partakes equally of both, and is the shrine in which our sympathies and our life have been poured together, never to be separated. Let other lovers testify their engagements by presents and tokens; we record and stamp our attachment in this precious creature, a creature of that species which is more admirable than any thing else the world has to boast, a creature susceptible of pleasure and pain, of affection and love, of sentiment and fancy, of wisdom and virtue. This creature will daily stand in need of an aid we shall delight to afford; will require our meditations and exertions to forward its improvement, and confirm its merits and its worth. We shall each blend our exertions, for that purpose, and our union, confirmed by this common object of our labour and affection, will every day become more sacred and indissoluble.—All this the present weakness of my beloved Marguerite would not allow her to say. But all this occurred to my reflections; and, when we had time tranquilly to compare our recollection of the event, it plainly appeared that in all this our hearts and conceptions had most truly sympathised.

“The possessing a third object, a common centre of anxiety to both, is far from weakening the regard of such a couple for each other. It does not separate or divert them; it is a new link of connection. Each is attached to it the more for the sake of either; each regards it as a sort of branch or scion, representing the parent; each rejoices in its health, its good humour, its smiles, its increase in size, in strength, and in faculties, principally from the idea of the gratification they will communicate to the other. Were it not for this idea, were it possible the pleasure should not be mutual, the sentiment would be stripped of its principal elevation and refinement; it would be comparatively cold, selfish, solitary, and inane.

The first paragraph is very sweet. The “melting tenderness” as they gaze upon their first born.

But then, the use of “creature” and “it” to refer to the newly born infant is unsettling to modern ears. Is this a testimony to Godwin’s emotional inhibitions? Or is it simply a different norm, language from a different era and different place?

If this is indeed Godwin reflecting upon Mary Shelley’s birth, and knowing that Mary Wollenstonecraft will be dead within a week (and that this passage truly reflects sincere feelings about the birth of his first child), then the third paragraph takes a dark and haunting turn. The joy of the baby is in the sharing; the sharing of creation, the sharing of responsibility, the sharing of love. Without this shared sentiment then a single parent is confronted with a world that is “cold, selfish, solitary, and inane,” a phrase that seems to aptly capture Godwin’s parenting style.

Mary Shelley writes about the birth of Frankenstein’s creature.

“It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

“How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

“The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.”

“The beauty of the dream vanished.” Echoes of St. Leon. The dream of a child as a source of joy evaporates for both Godwin’s St. Leon and Shelley’s Frankenstein. Frankenstein removes himself from his child, instead of feeling connected to the new life, he feels “breathless horror and disgust.”

I haven’t taken a deep dive yet into the critical studies of Frankenstein, so I don’t know what others have written about the creature as an analog for Mary Shelley. My reading, however, suggests that Mary is often writing about herself when she is writing about the creature. Not necessarily autobiographically, but that she uses her experience to inform the experience of the creature. In many ways she is writing about the experience of women when she is writing about the experience of the creature. Perhaps in another world Frankenstein was subtitled: A Vindication of the Rights of Monsters.

Part 1, part 2, part 3.1

TW: life with nephrostomy tube and bag; emergency room visit

I stayed in the hospital the night of February 7 to be monitored. Mostly, I think, to make sure the internal bleeding was under control before being allowed to leave. (The surgeon nicked my ureter during the procedure, which prompted him to halt the operation. He rescheduled a second attempt for after my ureter healed.)

The first night home, Thursday, February 8, I felt a little disembodied. Presumably due to the anesthesia and the shock of the unexpected new life thrust upon me. That night was the only night I took any of my prescribed narcotics. It wasn’t that I was in pain exactly, it was more that I felt entirely discombobulated and didn’t know how to categorize all the new sensations my body was experiencing.

Alvin the dog was not happy with my arrival. I smelled weird, I moved weird, and I was carrying a white bag, which, presumably, smelled of urine because it was filled with urine. He was uncomfortably interested in my nephrostomy bag and so I started carrying that bag in a cheap cloth grocery bag, later replaced with a purse-like bag with a shoulder strap meant to be used for carrying dog-related stuff when out walking the dog.

Due to anesthesia and then oxycodone my bowels weren’t moving as they should and by Friday the constipation was increasingly uncomfortable. I first tried to rectify this with the stool softeners prescribed by the doctor. When that didn’t work I asked J to run out and get me an over-the-counter laxative from CVS. It was a pretty crummy day overall, discomfort from constipation, discomfort from the surgical wound in my back, and discomfort from trying to find positions in which I could sit without pressing on the nephrostomy tube worming its way from my back, and anxiety about going through all of this and still going to work on Monday.

Fortunately, the laxatives had their desired effect around 10pm and I imagined I would be able to get some rest.

At 4am Saturday morning I found myself wide awake and experiencing a calm lucidity. I went online and ordered new sweatpants and a special bag with a belt for carrying the nephrostomy bag. I had to be back at work on Monday and needed to figure out how to live life with this unexpected development.

Confident I had everything sorted out I did almost nothing on Saturday except rest.

#

Over the course of Saturday I experienced some problems with the bag. At least, what I perceived as problems. Until Saturday the bag collected urine consistently. Starting Saturday there would be stretches of time when nothing went into the bag.

I had been told by the nurse to expect this and presumed it was time to clean the tube with a special syringe apparatus they gave me just for this purpose.

Here’s the process —

• turn the stopcock to off to stop fluid from flowing into the bag,
• detach the bag,
• attach the special syringe full of sterilized water,
• turn the stopcock back to allow the syringe water to flow into the tube,
• squeeze the water, slowly but deliberately, into the tube,
• turn the stopcock to off,
• remove the empty syringe,
• reattach the bag,
• turn the stopcock again to allow urine to flow from my kidney into the bag.

I spent a lot of time online trying to find reliable information about the whole nephrostomy bag process, but didn’t have a lot of luck.

The drainage continued to be erratic over the course of the day. By bedtime I’d flushed the tube multiple times and thought everything was working as it should. I awoke in the middle of the night with nothing in my bag. By dawn the bag was still empty and it looked like it was time to visit the emergency room. (An NHS site said that if nothing flowed into the bag for 10-12 hours I probably needed professional help.) If this had been a weekday instead of a weekend I could have gone to the doctor’s office, but, because Sunday morning, I had to visit the emergency room (which my local hospital calls an emergency department). When J woke up I explained the situation. There was no rush but I needed someone to help me understand why urine had stopped moving from my kidney to my bag.

We arrived at the hospital emergency department around 9am on Sunday morning. If nothing else, that seemed like it would probably be a time when not many people would be there. And, there weren’t. Still, there was a wait and the nervousness of not knowing what the end result might be. My hope was that I’d only need to swap out my current bag for a new one. But who knew?

We were eventually moved into a small examination room where we waited some more. Just before being moved to the room I’d peed in the bathroom and so there was nothing available when the nurse asked for a urine sample. I started diligently drinking from my water bottle to generate a sample while we waited to see a doctor. There was a door leading to a hallway used by staff and it was open. Several nurses worked at computer stations in the hallway and we passed the time listening to them gossip. They had a lot to complain about.

Eventually one nurse (wearing a paramedic t-shirt, so maybe a paramedic?) came in and listened to my tale and said I probably needed to have my tube replaced. I didn’t really appreciate what that might entail but it sounded reasonable. She left and we never saw her again.

Not long after she left two doctors came in. One I recognized from the morning after the operation. He’d come by to check on my progress and he’s the one that told me officially that the procedure had been shut down. He was part of the urology team, a resident I believe. His associate was an impossibly young-looking woman, very out-going and positive, and she did all the talking. I learned later (though she didn’t mention it at the time) that she had also been part of the team that did my operation.

“We finished our surgeries and rounds for the morning and saw that you’d been admitted to the emergency department and thought we’d swing by and see what was happening.”

I explained how the bag wasn’t collecting anything despite multiple cleanings.

She detached the bag (without turning the stopcock) and using a syringe withdrew urine directly from my kidney (there’s the sample!). Weird sensation. She also cleaned the tube. In retrospect, I think whatever she did ended up fixing the problem. The tube was blocked somehow? Regardless, it worked after she was done.

I mentioned that she didn’t turn the stopcock and she explained that the stopcock wasn’t for stopping the urine flow. Instead, it was meant to hold the stent in place. Every time I’d turned the stopcock I’d loosened the wire holding the stent in place. I think that ended up dislodging my stent ever-so-slightly leading to increased discomfort as time passed. I’d seen the wire retreating into the tube more and more every time I tried to flush the tube but didn’t realize its purpose was to hold the stent into place. I didn’t really understand what purpose it served.

She didn’t mention it during the visit but shortly afterwards I got notice from the doctor that I needed to come into the office to have the 3-way stopcock attached.

FLASHBACK!

Remember this conversation from my night in the hospital?

“What’s this?” Nurse Mary asked Nurse Cindy. They were looking at my back and I couldn’t tell what they were talking about. I was still wrapping my head around what it would mean to live with a bag attached to my body.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you put it on?”

“No. It was like that.”

“Well, take it off. It’s redundant. We don’t need it. See (and she fiddles with something I can’t see) you can just twist this instead.”

“OK.” Nurse Cindy leaves the room to retrieve all the bandages and stuff Nurse Mary directed her to collect for me to take home.

In retrospect it seems clear that Nurse Mary removed the 3-way stopcock and incorrectly identified the stent lock as the flow control element. Possibly the stent would have been uncomfortable regardless, but I kind of think constantly loosening the stent lock led to increased discomfort.

Once the impossibly young doctor finished flushing the tube and taking a urine sample the bag started working as it should. She mentioned that if she were the lead urologist she would have capped the tube and not made me wear a bag. She offered to phone my urologist to see if he was willing to do the same. She stepped out of the room to make the call and returned a few minutes later saying my urologist wanted me to wear a bag.

She sent me to get an x-ray to make sure the stent wasn’t wildly out of place and then I was sent to the waiting room until she could review the x-rays. About 30 minutes later I was discharged, bag once again collecting urine from my kidney.

Wow! Such a long entry. Still to come — working and living with a bag, bacterial infection, and farewell to sleep. Oh! And ultimately, it all works out and my health is returned.

Part one, part two.

TW: back tubes and bags attached

My mindset the night of February 7 was pretty good. There was little pain. I knew I wasn’t going to get much sleep because the nurses would be checking in constantly. I got lucky and got a private room. I was disappointed the procedure didn’t work but, you know, things happen. I was bored but able to doze on and off and so made it through the night.

Nurse Manny, I liked. He attached some air compression leggings to my calfs that massaged my legs through the night. (These wrapped around each leg, from knee to foot. Each was attached to a machine that forced air into one, let it out and then forced air into another, alternating between legs to give each an air pressure squeeze. They are sold commercially as air compression leg massagers.) He helped me walk around the room when I couldn’t tolerate lying on my back any more and just generally had good vibes.

Nurse Mary was weird and alarming. She came across as way too hyper and happy. I immediately didn’t trust her. She was awkward interpersonally and out of nowhere wanted to shake my hand. It was weird.

She also broke the news to be that I’d be living with a nephrostomy bag until the next procedure. This was unexpected and a little hard to hear. I was not emotionally prepared.

My urologist, it turns out, is the cautious sort. Not every doctor in this situation would recommend living with a nephrostomy bag but given all the possible scenarios we might face moving forward, it was his preferred method of treatment.

A nephrostomy bag attaches to a nephrostomy tube. The nephrostomy tube is a tiny tube with one end in the kidney and the other end hanging out of the body. In my case, hanging out of my back. The bag attaches and fills with urine, fresh and direct from the kidney.

Nurse Mary was bossing around Nurse Cindy as she prepared to teach me how to care for the bandage that covered place where the nephrostomy tube entered my back, and how to care for my bag. Before she taught me these things she taught Nurse Cindy these things while also rattling off a long list of stuff Nurse Cindy needed to go fetch for me to take home.

I’m going to highlight this part of the conversation I overheard because it will be important later.

“What’s this?” Nurse Mary asked Nurse Cindy. They were looking at my back and I couldn’t tell what they were talking about. I was still wrapping my head around what it would mean to live with a bag attached to my body.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you put it on?”

“No. It was like that.”

“Well, take it off. It’s redundant. We don’t need it. See (and she fiddles with something I can’t see) you can just twist this instead.”

“OK.” Nurse Cindy leaves the room to retrieve all the bandages and stuff Nurse Mary directed her to collect for me to take home.

Nurse Mary looks at me slightly exasperated. “I was going to show her how to flush the tube,” and she shakes her head slightly, still grinning like a goon.

-Then you should have told her that instead of expecting her to read your mind, I thought.

Nurse Mary then explained to me how to detach the bag. There was a stopcock I’d turn to stop the flow of urine from my kidney to the bag. To flush the tube, I’d attach this special syringe I could screw onto the tube, and push in the pre-filled liquid into the tube, thereby clearing the tube. I might need to do this a couple of times a week. Then, I’d reverse — remove the syringe, attach the bag, and turn the stopcock so the fluid could flow.

She also showed me how to change the bandage, information I’d convey to J.

Eventually they determined everything was flowing the way it was supposed to. There was still a lot of blood in my urine (or, it seemed like a lot, but, as the emergency room nurse would tell me in a few days, blood is like food dye, it only takes a few drops to make everything reddish). The fluid in my bag was the color of a Jolly Rancher watermelon candy.

I got dressed in the gray sweats and hoodie I wore to the hospital, and carried out clear plastic bag full of syringes, gauze bandage packages, a urine collector/container (for unexplained reasons), my spirometer (a tube to breathe into to promote breathing and diminish the likelihood of pneumonia), and holding onto my nephrostomy bag. They loaded me into a wheelchair and escorted me to the waiting room where I waited for my prescriptions (oxycodone and stool softener) and for J to arrive to take me away.

to be continued…

TW: hospital, medical procedure

After learning about my stone I made an appointment with a urologist to discuss my options. He suggested a percutaneous nephrolithotomy as the procedure with the highest possible success rate for the large non-obstrutive stone in my kidney.

This means approaching the stone through a tiny incision in my back. Additionally a tube is inserted through the urethra, bladder and ureter into the kidneys to allow fluoroscopic guidance (i.e. the ability to introduce a contrast agent to allow better visualization when using bursts of x-ray to see what’s going on inside me in real time). I agreed to the procedure and we set a date.

On Wednesday, February 7, 2024 I awoke early and showered. After drying I wiped my body with some anti-bacterial wipes provided by the hospital, dressed in comfy clothes, and headed off, nervous but ready to get this over with.

Let me pause a moment to acknowledge my extraordinary privilege. I’m exceedingly lucky to have an awesome partner helping me with all this. J drove me to the hospital, hung out as I got settled into the pre-op gurney, and was there to provide whatever help I needed. Throughout all of this process I have been profoundly conscious of how lucky I am and what extraordinary privilege I have to be able to do this. I’m a mid-career professional with solid health benefits and the economic means to cover what my insurance does not. It’s a fucked-up world that restricts those not as lucky as I am to access to the kind of health care I received.

Eventually I was settled in, J left to get to work, and I alternated between dozing and working on my mindfulness meditation. While curtains kept me from seeing the others who were also in gurneys and also awaiting surgery, there was plenty to eavesdrop on.

One male Indian nurse was called aside by the head nurse and told he’d been taken off a patient. He was defensive and upset and the head nurse trotted out some balderdash about how some older women in the south expect to be called ma’am. What she didn’t say, but I think the talk might have gone better if she had, was — look, this racist lady doesn’t like your accent and complained. Let’s move on. But, instead of calling out the racist old lady, the Indian nurse kept getting signals that he was somehow doing something wrong, but without any clear direction on how to do things differently.

I recited my birthday a hundred different times for various doctors and nurses and eventually they switched on the anathestic and I slipped into a narcotic slumber.

I came to in the post-op holding room, a room of unknown dimension that held an unknown (to me) number of gurneys laden with folks coming out of surgeries of their own.

Apparently I had just missed the doctor but J was there and conveyed the news.

The procedure was called off before it could be completed. The stone remained untouched. It turns out I have an abnormally narrow ureter and in the process the lining was nicked slightly. To avoid causing any further damage the surgeon canceled the procedure and made the decision to try again at a later date with a slightly different strategy.

Next: Bag Life

to be continued…

Despite the quantity of titles published, Gothic novels of 1790-1820 era are scarce. Valancourt Books is currently the best go-to for this particular niche.

In addition to publishing the list of “horrid novels” mentioned by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey, they also publish a representative list of Minerva Press titles (I count twenty-two).

Valancourt’s whole catalog is worth checking out if you’re interested in the following:

• Gothic & Romantic
• Victorian & Edwardian
• Literary Fiction
• Vintage Thrills and Chills
• Horror & Science Fiction
• Rediscovered LGBT Literature

Arno Press went through a phase of publishing novels from this original Gothic (OG!) era in the 1970s. These were published for the library market and many are still available through interlibrary loan. On the open market, though, they can get kind of pricey.

Broadview Press is another strong contemporary source for some of the early Gothics. (Though these can be pricey.)

My current less-than-methodical pursuit has me reading a 1970s paperback with the traditional lady fleeing the spooky house cover written by Gil Brewer. Brewer interests me because he was a local writer and much of the crime fiction he wrote under his real name takes place in the Tampa/St. Pete/Clearwater metropolitan area. Some of his crime fiction work is quite good.

He wrote some Gothics in the early 1970s under the pseudonym Elaine Evans.

“The mansion had been built more than a hundred years ago by Brady Holloway, who had made his fortune in Pennsylvania before moving to the Louisiana bayou country. Brady was known as a demon, and his rages were infamous throughout the countryside. When he fell in love with the beautiful Charlene, some hoped that he would settle down. But instead his raging way of life continued — until Charlene was found brutally murdered. Shocked, Brady Holloway converted his entire fortune –$750,000 — into gold, and disappeared from the world. Now, more than a hundred years later, another beautiful young woman was coming to the mansion renamed Malpoindre — Evil Dawn — after Charlene’s murder. Would Kirsten Holloway, too, meet her doom on these haunted grounds?”

I just finished a scholarly work about the Gothic paperbacks of the 1960s/1970s. It wasn’t that great. The next on my TBR pile will take me back to Walpolian England. And after Black Autumn I’ll probably turn to The Graveyard School.

“The poetry of the Graveyard School—gloomy meditations on mortality, often composed in churchyards—was immensely popular in 18th-century England and was an important forerunner of the Romantic period and a major influence on the development of the Gothic novel. Yet, despite the unquestioned significance of the Graveyard Poets, critical attention has been scant, and until now there has been no anthology of their writings.”