The Dangerous Life of a Beaver

This is Jeff. I’m guest blogging today. So my little sister is in the hospital. The surgery involved cutting through her abdominal muscles. This is a bad thing, a very bad thing, especially for our family, especially for my little sister because the strongest way for my two sisters and me to communicate is to make jokes and play off of each others jokes, which requires stomach muscles for laughing.

So on the way room 301 in the pediatric area of the hospital, Jennifer (older sister) and I (middle brother) are giving each other a pep talk.

“We can NOT make her laugh” explains Jen. “It’s all about the safety valve”

Jen goes on to explain that an attempt to not laugh at all is hopeless, the more you try the more pressure will build up and ultimately will fail. Now if you let out a little giggle or sigh here and there then you are releasing laughter pressure and avoiding a laughter blow out.

“Safety valve. Got it. Then no looking at me with those faces or I’ll lose it” I forcefully tell my sister.

Ten minutes, two close calls, and about 15 tears later, we found that without jokes and poking fun, we have nothing to talk about.

“Wow, that is a nice picture of those gazelles,” I attempt to fill the void with.
“That zebra follows you wherever you go,” my sister notices. We talked about anything and everything could think of that didn’t involve humor. Jen then goes on to tell us about her boring trip to zoo. “Here is an interesting fact, do you know what’s the leading cause of death for beavers?” queries my sister.

Waiting for a dull response, Miranda and I both respond “what?” Jen then waits a second and explains “Falling trees”.

In an attempt to not laugh until I cried, I throw my face into my hands and let out a snort that sounds like a passed a lung through my left nostril. After regaining some sort of composure, I heard Jen faintly laughing. Now when I say faintly laughing, it only because she has been laughing so hard that she had no more breath and could only let out a light laughter with reaming air in her lungs, but her face was bright red and eyes teary. When we finally recovered, we looked over to see our baby sister crying from pain, and her white knuckles are hitting the morphine button as hard and fast.

After that Jen and I weren’t allowed to visit her at the same time unless we promised to behave. And even today all we have to do is mention “beavers” to get a rise out of Miranda.

From Jen:

Mim is out of the hospital and settled on the sofa. She did have malignant cancerous tumors, but they have all been removed. The prognosis is good. We’re still on schedule to deliver her to her dorm room in a week. Thanks for all the well wishes.

Cancer seems to be the black sheep of our family. Our mother, my father, my cat and now my sister. It sounds a bit odd, but we’re old hands at this stuff. The waiting on Mim hand and foot is more of the issue.

So, in happier news, I hit two shoe stores with enormous success. The jaunt to Sephora also yielded great rewards. Sparky is a bit worried. When he called to check in today and I was gone, he was rather concerned. Miranda wanted to tell him I was shopping for more shoes, but was too drugged to make a good joke.

Pictures tomorrow.