Blue Hawaii

Yesterday was kind of scary and is a demonstration of the power of the mind to make one feel worse than one really is. After a walk from Ekuhai Beach Park on the bike path to Sunset and back again on the beach, I noticed that Linda’s feet were blue. I immediately assumed that her socks had bled dye onto her feet. But when I pointed it out and she pulled up her pant legs, her legs were blue as well. Then we discovered blue arms. Linda felt a bit faint. She lay down on a low wall and I ran over to Bart’s pickup where he was waiting to tell him that Linda had turned blue! He drove over and picked her up. At home she felt headachy. The blue did not fade. Then she felt dizzy for a moment. After that she felt fine. But she was still blue. I wasn’t blue but I was getting concerned. I raced to the computer to Google “Blue Skin.” I came up with “cyanosis”, blueness of the extremities, a symptom found in thirty three separate diseases or ailments like heart attack, drowning, pulmonary thrombosis and other lung related diseases. None of them seemed to fit. Bart hadn’t seen anything like it. I called our medico Aran and described the symptoms. He was baffled because the blueness was even on both sides. Yet she had no other symptoms. He thought it might be a reaction to something on the beach; something involving the circulatory system. I mentioned it to the big wave surfer who lives in the cottage at Bart’s place. He’d never seen that symptom. But he allowed that the sand in the morning is a lot colder than you might think and perhaps she had gotten cold. The blue parts of her skin did seem cooler. I emailed my friend Jim who is knowledgeable in natural health. His wife Susan immediately suspected that Linda was becoming a Goddess like Inanna, the ancient Sumerian Queen of Heaven and Earth, who was blue. Susan mentioned  Hindu goddesses who are various shades of blue as well. Linda has been into the Goddess thing lately so that, of course, was considered as a possibility. Our son Noble had recently finished a novel about a blue demi-God and I wondered if there could be some kind of transference taking place. Jim suggested the blueness was a classic case of what is known as  "regressive vicariation," or some sort of cleansing event.
Linda took a hot bath, and seemed less blue. She felt fine. The blue was going away...mostly. But, at the same time, it was depressing. We’d been through a long, mysterious illness with her before and I was flashing back in post traumatic stress fashion. We didn’t feel like doing anything. No energy. I wondered what we would do if we had to attempt to seek medical attention, to get blood pressure or heart or lungs checked. We sat around an listened to music and later watched American Idol.
This morning we were up at 6 a.m. to begin another walk but Linda said she was tired, didn’t want to go. I argued that we had agreed we would walk every day. She got up and went into the bathroom. She was blue again. Noticeably blue. We turned on all the lights and took a closer look. Definitely blue. I tested her fingernails and toenails squeezing them the way Aran had suggested to see how long it took the blood to flow back. The nails turned pink right away—under the blue. She decided to run in place for three minutes to see what would happen. The blue seemed to fade a bit. She felt fine, though. Then I noticed what I thought was blue on the surface of her toenails. We no longer needed an internist. We needed an externist. “Let’s check those sheets,” I  said. Linda grabbed a white wash rag and swiped it across the blue plaid flannel sheets. We had automatically ruled these out because I wasn’t blue. But blue dye rubbed off onto the wash rag. I showed Bart the rag. “I washed those sheets,” he exclaimed. That was another reason we had not considered the sheets. We knew they had been washed.
Mystery solved. We were quite elated. Felt better instantly. No circulation problems, heart fine, lungs working properly. Linda got back in the tub and scrubbed off the blue. It took some work. Then we went for a walk and a swim, stupid but pleased not to be blue, happy to have avoided death by sheets.

* Painting of Blue Woman by STEPHEN PITLIUK

Comments

[kirsten]

You guys! You are silly!