Doom and Gloom Abounds

1962-Dad, me and my grandparents

Oh Hi! Thanks for stopping by.

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We sprung Mom from the Nursing Home due to her pathetic pleas and brought her home to live this weekend, but things are not going well. Now that she's home, she's stopped being pathetically nice and has turned into a tyrant again. She has her caregivers completely cowed. Refused to take her medicine. I stopped by yesterday and practically had to shove it in her mouth. Plus having home caregivers round the clock is simply not affordable for any sustained period of time.

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Work is going ok, the kids are doing great, and my sister broke her arm in like three places riding horses last weekend. Then last Tuesday I swerved to avoid a dog in the road while entering the freeway, went off the side, overcorrected, and managed to slam my car into one of those reflector posts. $2,300 damage. $500 deductible.

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Mom went back to the hospital today for a condition entitled Pyloric Stenosis. I knew about it from reading Manana Banana. It's when your stomach has a very narrow opening which doesn't allow food to enter the intestines. They widened her stomach opening from the size of a finger to the size of a quarter. Now maybe she can eat and gain weight. The procedure was successful and she's already back at home. Maybe now she will perk up some.

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That's about all the cheer I can take for one day, how about you?

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I like the Cymbalta though. That's going ok.

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More later, ok? Thanks for stopping by.

Diamonds and Rust

Me-Easter 1962

Ok, I took one dose of Cymbalta, and had no terrible effects. Usually I tolerate drugs well. Onward and upward, to a day when I can picture visiting my mother without sobbing.

I take the girls over to my parents' house.

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Empty.

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I so miss being able to say "My Parents". My Parents would kill me if they knew about... I'm spending the weekend with My Parents...My Parents are so excited about the adoption plans we're making (for a 1996 adoption that fell through, cracking my heart just a little more) My Parents are coming down to see me walk in as Faculty at my job's graduation ceremony. "Daddy! Take my picture underneath the tree!" My Daddy with his omnipresent camera, capturing all the moments of my life. My Daddy shot a picture that I can't wait to find in the house somewhere--it was law school graduation day and I'm walking away, with my colorful robes, waving my diploma triumphantly....

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I had My Parents until I was 36. I know I am lucky.

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I enter the empty house with trepidation. Where are My Parents? One's a heap of ashes, one is lying in a nursing home.

I begin cleaning, filling four large garbage cans with the deitrius of a life. Innumerable magazines, old newsletters from How To Avoid Brain Atrophy (she was worried about Alzheimer's for years! I knew it! She would never talk about it though).

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I take the girls to Mom's bedroom and look at the bed. Did My Parents ever, like, you know, do, um, THAT? Their door was ALWAYS unlocked and open. ALWAYS. Maybe I was sleeping when the door was locked. My parents were very physical. They kissed, necked, hugged, my dad caressing the body of a woman who never, ever, got fat like his friend's wives. My proud Dad. Who would sit down to a meal of healthy food that a rabbit would turn up his nose at. So he could avoid heart disease.

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The heart attack didn't care. It struck at the exact same age that my grandfather's did, even though my grandfather enjoyed wine, whisky, a good cigar, and real dairy cream and butter. Both died at age 76. If I carried their bloodlines, age 76 would worry me, oh yeah.

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You cannot fight genetics. Well, you can try. But genetics wiped away every bit of my parents' health, even though they tried so hard to be healthy. Good food. Walks. Hard exercise...And my Dad had a quadruple bypass at 54, the same age as my husband is now.

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I eye the photographs and declare out loud "I think I'll just steal this picture of me at Easter" since Easter is so fresh in my girl's minds. Meredith, Miss Conscience, "You can't STEAL ANYTHING." "I'm not, sweetie, just kidding, I'm BORROWING it." I tell the girls the story of the picture. I remember that day and Mom and I both drew pictures of the toy bunny I got and Mom's picture was better than mine and I was wildly jealous and I vowed that one day I would do the same to my kids. I have never done that.

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I open a drawer and find my Daddy's and Grandfather's cufflinks. The Joan Baez song runs through my mind. "Ten years ago I bought you some cufflinks.....You bought me something...We all know what memories can bring..They bring diamonds and rust."

I find my Grandfather's stethoscope. The years drop away as I press the stethoscope to the girls little chests and they giggle 'cause it's cold. "See how you can hear your heartbeat? You can? Wow, you're so smart! Maybe you'll be a DOCTOR!" It's 1964 and my Grandfather is showing me his real stethoscope. "Lorrie's so BRIGHT! Lorrie, promise me you'll be a doctor like me and your AUNT!"

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Yes, my aunt went to medical school in the thirties, while her sister was writing her thesis in French. Sorry, I was such a bust at French that I can't stop marveling at this.

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I wonder if Grandfather would approve of his legacy being carried by two little Asian girls. I think he would. He was ahead of his time.

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I leave the beautiful house I grew up in, so lovingly decorated, so alone now. Except for the ghosts who wander through. I can feel my Dad and Grandfather so strongly that I know they are there, laughing at the girls as they play with the stethoscope.

Cymbalta

I am not depressed..I am not depressed.....I tell myself.

I have a wonderful job, husband, house, and kids. I'm not terribly bad looking. I'm fairly intelligent.

I have fibromyalgia and guai treatment takes years to really work and a mother sliding into dementia who is currently telling us that she is miserable in her expensive nursing home that I don't know if she can afford after taking a hard look at CD interest rates which are dropping like a jet plane whose engines have died and consist of a major part of mom's income..... while my sister I and I frantically try to figure out how to bring her home while both working demanding jobs plus raising a family and running a home and....

After sobbing uncontrollably during the first two (and only) visits to mom, I have decided to try cymbalta. I don't feel depressed, as in I usually wake up filled with optimism and looking forward to the day ahead. I don't sit around and think about how miserable I am. I love life but...

Sobbing uncontrollably isn't a good thing is it? And when I mean uncontrollably I mean UNCONTROLLABLY. I have been down before. Who hasn't? Once, after being dumped and thrown out of the apartment in New York by my fiance, I was forced to come home to Columbia and I laid on the couch eating Lean Cuisines for three months. I lost 20 lbs. But I never remember sobbing uncontrollably.

Please write me if you've had any experience with Cymbalta. I'm terrified of taking this drug. Askapatient.com has people who love it and people who hate it. People talk about how hard it is to get off Cymbalta. Well, I stopped Paxil cold turkey (I was taking it for shortness of breath which was incorrectly diagnosed as anxiety attacks--it was an early fibromyalgia symptom) and had no problems at all and people talk about Paxil withdrawal like they're talking about being tied up and tortured. People talk about how hard it is to get off Lyrica--well I take it only sporadically and have had no problems.

So we'll see.

Road Map to Acceptance

This is a book review for Mother Talk. I have received a free book. I am donating it to a friend who is a special ed teacher.

The book is Road Map To Holland, and I specifically requested it because I enjoy reading stories of women far more...well...everything..than I am. Nicer. Better mothers. Why? Read on.

When I was back in those long ago fertile years when it actually seemed possible to, you know, get pregnant after engaging in thatspecialthingthatmenandwomendowhentheyreallyreallyloveeachotherandarepreferablyjoinedtogetherina committmentceremony..... Oops!! Can you tell I've been spending time around children? Can you tell that I can't actually talk dirty any more unless I'm locked in my bedroom after homework and Madeleine's daily 46 phone calls (now to one person at a time), when all I want to do is sleep? Anyway, I digress. I told a friend that if I became pregnant, I wanted prenatal screening, then a brand new and very expensive option for expectant mothers.

"Oh!" she said. "So, if there's a problem, you can prepare for it?" I just looked at her for a minute, trying to figure out that statement, until it dawned on me that she thought I'd keep the baby. I'd have had an abortion that same day, if possible. Now, after experiencing the miracle of life and seeing fingernails and heartbeats on ultrasounds and all that, I'd have the baby and put the baby up for adoption.

No, I wouldn't keep a child with Down syndrome, so I was interested to see what Jennifer Graf Groneberg had to say about her baby. He was born both premature and with Down, while his twin was born premature without Down.

Here's the deal.

For better or for worse, I was raised with parents who valued the life of the mind greatly. Parents who started talking about Phi Beta Kappa while I was watching Captain Kangaroo. (I'm not kidding). A B.A. degree was, for them, the equivalent of finishing the 8th grade for most families. The next question was which master's degree did you intend to pursue first, and did you intend to get one or two before you began work on your PhD. I decided to shortcut that and get a Juris Doctor. That kept them off my back.

I decided that I would not give them grandchildren who I knew up front could not follow in their academic footsteps (four generations of doctors and M.A. candidates (my aunt wrote her graduate thesis entirely in French back in 1935). I could barely memorize French verbs so this impressed me more than it should have, I guess. I wouldn't throw a child with learning difficulties out into the snow, but I would not take a child into my family knowing that they would experience them. That's me. Right? Wrong? Snobby? I cannot wipe out 18 years of brainwashing as easily as I wiped my countertop yesterday.

Am I raising my children this way? Not really. College is presented as a must, the natural step after high school. However, after seeing many four year, heck, two year college graduates be faaaar more successful than I am, I am leaving any further education options up to them.

But I digress. Anyway, I was interested to see what Jennifer Graf Groneberg did when she found that her son had Down syndrome. The book is a story of his first two years on the planet and her shock, dismay, and later on, acceptance.

It is beautifully written without being pretentious. Jennifer has the gift of writing seemingly ordinary prose yet making it sound interesting without dressing it up with headlights and flashiness. I read each page eagerly, waiting for the next drama to begin.

She's honest about her exhaustion dealing with fragile premature twins and her and disappointment after learning of her son's diagnosis. She's honest about her next door neighbor who avoided her as if Jennifer had posted a "Measles. Quarantine" sign on her door. Even I know that Down's is not contagious. I hope the neighbor wasn't revolted but simply unsure what to say. Congratulations? Gosh, glad it's you and not me!....Who knows.

It's not a story with a big flashy ending, because it's impossible to know what a 2 year old can do. Jennifer makes it clear though that she has worked through the initial angst and has found joy in her son, and confidence in his future, whatever it is.

There's a young lady in Japan with Downs' who has actually earned a four year college degree from an accredited university but that is an exception to the rule. Regardless of the internet superstars, most Downs children are retarded, ranging from moderately to severe. We don't know what Avery will become but by the end of the book I'm convinced that Jennifer and her family will love him and will be able to cope. I'm impressed by both her writing and Jennifer herself.

Anybody Interested In A Threesome? Or A Three-Way?

The bill that almost put me into the nut house. In all, FIFTY three way calls were made. I was too lazy to scan page two.

Ok! Ok! So I wanted some kinky Google hits. If you're here for the dirt, look elsewhere. Sorry, I'd love to tell you about the time that I **** with ***** and then did some **** with **** and then **** some guy named ****** but I can't. I'm too easy to find on the net. I am using my real name. I wanted to be "honest" and "authentic" when I began my blog. Sorry 'bout that.

So it started out as a routine rainy Saturday. I arose from my bed groaning at the arthritic like pain that fibromyalgia sufferers get when it rains, apparently. I stuffed some pain pills down my throat and my loving husband prepared some awesome French toast for breakfast and I hopped on the computer to see if my emails about acquiring a new toy poodle had born any fruit. Just another day in paradise.

Yes, I think we might have found a poodle. More later.

Oh, and I got a phone call from Mom complaining loudly about the nursing home she's in. She's still nauseated, but is starting to sound feisty again. She wants to go home. When I think of how much the nursing home costs and how her cds may not bear enough interest to pay for it, oh so do I!

Then I opened the mail. And saw that my phone bill was $95.00 instead of the usual $26.25. And I nearly had a stroke.

DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE IS SOMETHING CALLED THREE WAY CALLING? WELL I DO NOW!! I LEARNED ABOUT IT WHEN I OPENED MY PHONE BILL!!!!!!

You know what? The only 3 way calling I knew about before today was in Mean Girls. I love that movie. Madeleine's constantly on the phone with her friends now, having dramatic fights and all, just practicing for the teen years I guess. They had a scene in Mean Girls where Jane calls Julie and puts Amy on the line without Julie's knowledge and asked Julie what she thinks of Amy and Julie replies with something derogatory and Jane says "Ha! Gotcha! Amy's on the line!" That's all I knew. I don't know how to make the dang calls, and I didn't know you even could make them from our phone.

When we hooked up our home phone again last year after several years of just cell phone use, I told the nice lady on the phone that I wanted only the BASIC PACKAGE. JUST local calls. NOTHING fancy. I explained that I had young children and I didn't want them being able to do anything but make local calls. No long distance. That's for the cell phones. The nice lady said all right.

So I got on the phone with A TEE AND TEE.

The first person I talked to said "someone made the calls, you have to pay for them." I said a lot more, but I'll save you the details. I also threw a few dishes at various targets.

The second person I talked to said it was just too bad that I had a daughter who did stuff on the phone that I didn't even know you could do and they sent me a 4 page letter at the time I signed up describing all the horrible things that could possibly happen with my "basic plan" so suck it up and pay or else they'd do terrible things to my credit report and then he offered a $20.00 credit. I hung up.

I called back and said, "Look, if you're just going to give me the party line about how the calls were made and I have to pay for them even though the nice lady I signed up with had a long chat with me. I carefully and in detail explained to her that I had young children and wanted nothing on the phone but simple local phone calls. She told me that is what I had. So if you're going to just give me the same old spiel, let's cut to the chase and let me speak to your supervisor."

He said, "Would you hold on a minute, ma'am?" I replied "sure."

He said "I'm putting a block on your phone so 3 way calls can't be made any more." I thanked him. Neither of the other two people I talked to had mentioned that this was possible.

He said, "I'm giving you full credit for the calls. Just pay the normal fee. Are you satisfied with the service that I offered you today at A TEE and TEE?" I grinned and said yes indeedy.

So what have we learned here today guys?

1. Make sure your phone is blocked from 3 way calling.

2. Be a pest. A total, obnoxious pest.

3. If you do ***** with ***** and then include ***** while doing ********* always use protection. This has been a public service announcement. The more you know..... I talked to Madeleine a little today about The Birds and the Bees and she cut me off with "Mom, I already know about condoms." Well. Excuuuuuuuuseee me.

So, Let's Talk About Something Else

So let's talk about something else...but before we do, I have to tell you that Mom was admitted to the hospital on Saturday, March 22, suffering from starvation and dehydration. I don't think she'd be alive if we hadn't convinced her doctor to admit her. She was so weak and dizzy she could barely walk. She was nauseous, so she wasn't eating, so she was getting weaker and weaker and got down to a skeletal 92 pounds.

The doctors ran a zillion tests on her and found several things--a gut infection, a bladder infection, and painful internal hemorrhoids (I had to look that word up). What they didn't find was any serious or fatal diseases, except Alzheimer's, which is enough really, don't you think? Of course being so weak exacerbated the Alzheimer's and she didn't recognize her friend of 30 years, or her doctor of 15 years...

So on Friday, March 28, she was transferred by ambulance to a locked Alzheimer's unit filled with people in advanced stages of the disease. Some of them just walk around all day, some sit in a chair and stare at nothing, but there are a few ladies who dress up for dinner and seem to be able to carry on a conversation. Maybe they'll be future friends. MAYBE.

Mom has no idea that she may be in that unit for the rest of her life. Fortunately the social worker told her that she had to go to the unit for "rehabilitation." She thinks she's coming home any day now. That would require private nurses to the tune of $12,000 a month. Um, not happening.

Mom is crabby and complaining about everything, especially her stomach. She is on strong antibiotics which should cure the stomach pain---I hope, I hope. We will just have to take it one day at a time, like AA.

Ok! Well, that was fun. Now let's talk about the kids and what they've been up to. I'd post a picture of myself but I look like the caption should be Survivor: Bataan Death March. I'm beyond exhausted and extremely emotional. But I am keeping up with my job requirements and the virus that has plagued me since January is GONE. (I hate to write that, I hate to tempt fate!) I'm actually able to wake up and go to work and drive home without sleeping in my office, so that is a good thing. You know, so I can collect a paycheck and all that. And eat, and put gas in the car. Good God, gas is expensive.

First we had Easter, and an ungodly amount of sugar.

Then we had an art show on the deck.

I mean, Picasso couldn't even begin to produce such masterpieces.

Portrait Of The Artist As A, well, something. Not sure what.

Then we had some special guests. The famous Gwen and her delightful mom Karen and a friend visited. We all had a blast. Karen turned out to be one of those people who you meet and five minutes later you are BFF. Karen's new blog is password protected. Write me if you want me to write Karen and ask for the password. I will forward the emails to Karen.

The lovely Miss Gwen in a contemplative mood.

And then tonight the artistes were honored at a reception at the local library. Madeleine's piece was one of two chosen (out of 120 4th graders) to be displayed. It's the one with the yellow border.

And Meredith's piece was one of three chosen (out of 150 first graders) to be displayed.

Am I proud of them? Nawwwww..........