Silklady

One More Attempt

2008-10-29T22:08:00.002-05:00

The orthosurgeon says: "That black shadow in your spine--it's arthritis! You need to see a neurosurgeon."
The neurosurgeon says: "I can't do a thing without and MRI so I have a complete look at where I'm going." After two tries when he can't lie down for more than two minutes, he says: "I don't order anesthesia for an MRI." Then what do we do, Doc? "I don't know. You need to see a physiologist."
The physiologist says: "You need physical therapy and some drugs for the pain."
The urologist says: "Your PSA is 41. That's cancer in your spine."
The oncologist says: "You can't take my chemo pill? I don't know what else to do." When asked about nutrition, his response was to say "I can't help you with that" and walk out of the room.

Every doctor looks at only his own little leaf, and no one sees the tree. So we're making one last attempt at the Cancer Treatment Center of America. They say they look at the whole person. They won't come up with any treatment until they know what we're dealing with.

What have we done to our medical professionals that they are afraid to say what they think? That they can't afford to show concern? That their nurses and receptionists must apologize for them? That they can't spend the time, even five minutes, to ask what would help most? That they pay no attention to pain level beyond a hydrocodone pill?

Where's Dr. Welby when we need him??

Dr. Who?

2008-09-29T12:22:00.002-05:00

Why can't one doctor treat one patient? Why is it one doctor who treats a patient's hand and another who treats his foot and another who treats his gut and another who treats his lungs and another who treats his heart and another who treats his ear, and on and on ad infinitum???

Where is just one doctor who sees a patient with two conditions and treats them both? Where is just one doctor whose ears are trained to listen to all of the complaints? Where is one doctor who cannot see the pain for the possibly interesting condition?

If he has to go to 100 doctors, we'll find one who listens.

Blood Pressure

2008-09-05T18:13:00.002-05:00

I think it's worth writing about. For the past few weeks my systolic BP has been about 50 points higher than I'd like it to be. Change of medication didn't make much difference. When I went back for 10 day checkup after change, the doctor asked what in the world could be making my BP go so high. I said it might be stress, but none of the stressors were anything I could control. I told him about my husband's health and my niece's health and my friend's financial straits and my parents and . . . He offered me an antidepressant, which I don't think I need, and he said that if I felt the need for a mild uplife I should let him know. Then he said, "And I'm going to uplift you right now. I can't do anything about those concerns for you, but I will pray that you can handle them." He said he would pray for me in his evening devotional.

I think that is the first time a medical doctor has ever offered to pray with or for me. I trust that man.

Desperate Friend

2008-08-25T18:31:00.003-05:00

I've spent a few days helping a friend who has gotten into major financial trouble. Not because of identify theft or drugs or other bad habits, but stupidity does factor in. She isn't stupid, but she did some stupid desperate things. She may lose her house, and her credit is now zero. She can't borrow the $7,000 that would get her out of trouble and her family won't help. She's pretty much alone with this.

Another friend from her church and I are going to pay off enough to postpone the foreclosure and bad checks for another month. Maybe that will give us time to help her find a more permanent solution.

It was on-line and payday loans that did her in. She can live on what she makes but she had some extra expenses and took these "little" loans to help with them. When pay back came and she had no money, she took out another. Then the overdraft fees piled up, and it snowballed into big debt. Now, if the sharks deposit the post-dated checks she gave them, she could have criminal charges as well. The solution is elusive.

She's as good a person as I know when it comes to helping others. She has supplied the little extras her cousin's soon needed for college because he was on his own. She has made several 200 mile trips to take her friend to a cancer doctor. She volunteers to do anything somebody else needs done.

Now where are all those helpees? She needs them, and they mostly say it's too bad, they feel really sorry about her situation.

Maybe the best thing is for her to let the house go. It's still in her dead mother's name and she could walk away and let it revert to the mortgage company. It's probably not worth the tax accessor's valuation because it needs so much repair. But it has been her home most of her life and she probably can't find anywhere to rent as cheaply.

Well, I can't do much more. Neither can the man from the church. I think she's going to dissolve into a pool of humiliation, and maybe face the court system.

There ought to be some limits placed on these "quick loan" companies that charge such terrible fees. There ought to be something done to a company that would lend thousands of dollars to an elderly woman who was clearly senile and incapacitated (her now deceased mother).

And there ought to be common sense in a 50+ year old woman, but I've never been so desperate, so I won't judge her. I don't know what to do now but listen and encourage her to find an attorney to help her work this out.

Are you tired of listening to me about this, Lord? I know you've got an answer.

Good New Is Always Better Than Bad News

2008-08-13T22:36:00.002-05:00

Ha! I have outdone myself with profoundness. But things that could be considered bad news become good news when compared with worse news. I believe that even if I can't explain it.

The bad news: He has arthritis in his spine. The good news: it is arthritis in his spine. The doctor and we thought it was cancer. Arthritis is very painful, especially in the spine, but it doesn't kill. Even though it might be so bad at times one would wish for an end to it, any end.

So now we go a whole new way with treatment. We don't have to decide about chemo, although he already said he absolutely wouldn't go that route. We are already doing something that helps with the pain, and we'll keep doing that. And we'll go back to our herbal practitioners to see what they can do for pain.

I never thought I would want to be tied down as I am now, but I am finding real joy in being able to relieve his pain. There is an intimacy in our rituals that we might have missed. There are no barriers left.

Life is good.

a

Waiting

2008-06-22T14:12:00.002-05:00

Waiting for anything is hard. Waiting to ride on the roller coaster, waiting for service at the restaurant, waiting for Christmas, waiting for a birth. So far, the hardest thing I've ever waited for is this waiting we're going through now. I can't even say what it is. Relief, maybe? Wellness?

The man I love more than life itself is sick, critically. His body is going away, ounce by ounce, pound by pound. Cancer is cruel. He is afraid of the scale in the bathroom, what it will show if he gets on it. When he must, he dresses for it: heavy shoes, a jacket, woolen pants. And it's not that he doesn't eat at all. I make him whatever he thinks will taste good, or at least not make him sick. Before he eats, he takes nausea pills, and afterward he goes to the bathroom. He's tired of chocolate milk shakes made with instant breakfasts, and he has been through all the flavors of the nutritive drinks on the grocery shelves. The steak he used to love is sickening, and salads have not been in his mouth for months.

Now I can put my thumb and forefinger around his shoulder bone and all that separates them is skin. How can this dear vigorous, outgoing man have been reduced to a skeletal figure who sleeps so much of the time?

It's cancer, that's what it is. And I really know what we're waiting for, but I won't say it. Not to him or to myself.

While we're waiting, we will keep holding hands and talking about the good times we've had, and the sad times, and the times of sheer happiness. And heaven.

Excitement Building

2008-05-28T21:27:00.002-05:00

I haven't traveled much lately. Our five children are scattered from Arizona to Arkansas to Maryland to Massachusetts with grandchildren in Iowa and Alabama. If you go see one, how do you choose?? So big events have been the criterion for visiting our children. And this has been the season of big events. One grandson born in Massachusetts and granddaughters graduating from high school in Tennessee, Maryland and Massachusetts. Good excuses to take the trip we always said we would to see as many as possible.

It won't be easy. My husband's cancer has weakened him to the point that we are not going to set a travel schedule. And we're taking along a new adult granddaughter to help drive and just be someone we might need. It'll be lovely to spend so much time with just her. There are so many of us we seldom have time to do one-on-one; it's usually at least five or six in the same room.

We're awfully proud of our grandchildren. Scholarships abound for these bright one women, including a National Merit Scholarship. That would be an excuse for pride, but it really is more than that. They are beautiful young women, each of them kind and thoughtful and funny and loving and full of faith. The are women such as the world needs. They will be a doctor and a teacher and a museum curator, at least as they plan now. And if they find something that interests them more, they will do well at whatever it is.

I love that my children have built such strong, nourishing families--better than the one they grew up in. I love that they have purpose and goals that aren't measured in $$. I love that they take care of babies and animals and grass and each other. And their children are ready to launch out into the world, strong and vital.

God has blessed me even more abundantly than I knew to ask.

Appointed Once

2008-05-14T15:14:00.002-05:00

I'm trying to get my head around the fact that my beloved husband has a cancerous tumor around his aorta. And that the biopsy left doubts about whether it is a metastatic tumor from his prostate cancer, which would be slow growing, or a different kind altogether. If it's not PC, it's in a place which would not be safely operable, nor would it respond to the hormonal therapy he's been on for years. He won't have chemo. He's losing weight at about 3 pounds a week. He has no energy and sleeps a lot. I wish I could make this look like a passing illness. I wish I could just fix it. I don't think we can and the doctor looks grim when he talks. My husband holds onto me so tightly, but it feels temporary, and I never want it to end.

One Coming, Two Gone

2008-04-22T21:19:00.005-05:00

Today my son called to tell me his son will probably be born tomorrow. I am so looking forward to his next phone call! Every birth is exciting. They have thought so long about a good name for him, I can hardly wait to hear who is he. His nearly 3-year-old brother and nearly 5-year-old sister must be very excited by now.

And my son-in-love's grandfather died today. He was about 94 and had lived a long, healthy, loving life, so his death is not really tragic, just sad.
His family has decades of good memories for comfort.

On the other hand, my granddaughter's friend and classmate died too. He was about to graduate from high school, the track team captain, and had just finished a big race when he collapsed on the field. A nurse and the coach tried CPR, but he never came back. Possibly a heart defect they didn't know about. But that is tragic as well as sad. He will never become an engineer, never wear uncomfortable clothes to give away his daughter at his wedding, never have a grandchild. I don't have to know his family to feel sad for them. And my 18-year-old granddaughter, who has lost a second high school friend to unexpected death within a year or so, grieves.

Life is joyful and painful. I am so thankful that this is not all there is.

The Great Dogwood Trail

2008-04-21T16:56:00.002-05:00

Today we went to Lowe's to get some new slats for the swing and some paint for the woodwork, etc., just springtime chores.

Just before that we were visited by some ladies who live a mile or so from us who wanted to know what we knew about the pit bull people (who now have no trespassing signs nailed on the house) because one of them had a small dog killed by them about the same time Zipper was attacked.

When we came back from Lowes, we cut through the road where one of the women lived, just to see her place. Then I asked about the other one, and when we got to our road, Don turned left to see which house was hers. Then we kept going and going and going, driving slowly along toward the other end of our road. The dogwoods along this trail are absolutely beautiful. I've never see it like this, hills and ravines full of beautiful white trees. I thought it was really sweet of Don to take me on this little five-mile drive. I even thought he might be taking me to lunch at the Take-Me-Back cafe.

Alas, then he said, "Well, where's our house?"

My absolutely un-pigeon brained husband had forgotten that he made a left turn instead of the right turn that would have brought us home in half a mile.

I made him look at the beautiful hills and valleys anyway.

Good Day

2008-04-18T20:22:00.002-05:00

What kind of day is it when you are just really thankful that someone you love ate half a chopped steak and a cup of potato soup and didn't have to run from the table because it came through so fast? A good day, that's what.

It's a good day when your 92yo mother decides that if the shingles are going to be with her for longer than she expected, maybe even the rest of her life, she's going to keep living in spite of shingles and get her hair done. Even if she has to take pain pills. Even if her wardrobe is limited to whatever is loosest. She's aiming to go to church!

It's a good day when the dogwood and the redbud bloom at the same time. And when the early azaleas start coloring up a month before mine will.

Lots of reasons for a good day. One of my favorite scriptures: This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.

Two Other Sisters

2008-04-04T23:01:00.002-05:00

Today Bobbie came to see Mama. She is, of course, more like my older sister than an aunt, and it was easy to see the mother/daughter relationship between the two of them. Tomorrow is the 72nd anniversary of the storm that cemented it, and they talked a little about it. Both of them have very vivid memories of that awful night. While Mama was having her toenails cut, I took Bobbie to see about Raye and she told me some story about the storm I hadn't heard from Mama. What a thing to look back on! I guess we never forget the big tragedies, or the big blessings.

Mama will be in the hospital until Monday. Dr. Harrison wanted her to have some therapy, but the PT came in today and performed some "push me, pull me" exercises and took her for a walk in the hall, and said she is remarkably strong and balanced for a 92-year-old. She'll be back tomorrow with a HEP for her. Mama wanted to go home today so she could go by the funeral home to see her friend Geri Rumft's family. Not that she could have anyway. But she will miss Geri.

She is breathing noticeably better, but she does want the oxygen. She said she knew she was in the hospital when they put that thing in her nose. She said, "I'm afraid I'm getting addicted to it." I told her that people can't "get addicted" to oxygen because we're born needing it pretty badly. She said well, she felt like she could. I told her to go ahead, we'd see that she got all she needed. The nurse, who had been trying very hard not to laugh, went ahead and giggled and said, "Well, Ms. Cate, I'm going to leave a note for your doctor that you think you need oxygen. I bet he lets you have it." Mama is eating well and still getting rid of a lot of fluid. We're going to buy her a hospital gown or two because it's so easy for her to go to the bathroom. Don't know why I hadn't already thought of that. She says her shingles are much better, but forgets that they are shooting her with painkillers.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to get Don to go with me. He can visit with her during Geri's funeral at 10:00. Then we'll come back to Murray for his friend Murelle's funeral at 2:00. I sang a funeral this morning: that's 3 in 2 days, all for people who were 90+. Makes me realize how blessed I am to still have Mama and Daddy.

Stress Happens

2008-03-20T20:51:00.002-05:00

1. My 92yo Mother has shingles. She hurts.
2. My 90yo Dad asks the same questions 30 times.
3. My husband has cancer.
4. My neighbors have bad dogs and may be drug dealers.
5. The only thing I miss from my job is my paycheck, but I do miss that.
6. I have three granddaughters graduating from high school and a baby grandson due to be born, all within a few weeks.
7. Along with my brother, I will have POA for two childless aunts who are precious dotty old ladies, a la Arsenic and Old Lace, although they don't practice murder.
8. I have to update my husband's daughter, my good friend, about her father.
9. Gas is so expensive, I would feel guilty about taking the drives that used to calm my soul. I may do it anyway, especially when the dogwoods bloom. What price peace?
10. I realize that I have retired without many of the things I meant to do, and there is too much going on with my family now to do them.

Oh, well. This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.

Bad Dog!

2008-03-19T14:15:00.002-05:00

We've had a problem with some new neighbors, or at least with their dogs. They had four pit bulls, although they have now gotten rid of the two pups. Max, the adult male, seems friendly enough, but the bitch, Lady, has shown nothing but nastiness. Last weekend, they pushed aside our doghouse and got into the pen and attacked our small Zipper. We were eating breakfast when I heard the three of them barking, but we knew Zipper was safely penned up. Wrong! By the time we heard him scream and ran out there, Lady had him on his back. Max was excited but didn't seem to be participating. We got the gate open and Max ran out, then with Lady distracted Zipper got away and ran out. Two stupid adult in a pen with an excited pitbull--not a good scene! But Max kept barking and Lady ran out and he led her home. We got Zipper and he seemed okay physically, just terrified. We kept him in the rest of the day and he started getting worse, trembling and groaning and seeming to have trouble breathing. When my husband reached down to pet him on the backside, he screamed, so we called the vet and took him in. She kept him for two days, having found a couple of small punctures. She said he was probably getting infected, so she put him on antibiotics and pain killers.

The next stage of this is that we told another neighbor, who told his son, who told the sheriff. I told the deputy we were not filing a complaint, yet, but somebody did, and he came out to serve some papers. The dogs would not let him get out of the car, although Lady is chained.

We don't know these neighbors. I met the woman earlier, and she seemed very nice. We met the man after the incident, and he was also nice and kept assuring us "this won't happen again!" But we don't know their history, except for some rumors which don't build any confidence in us. I don't understand why someone with small children would keep two such dogs. We live out in the country where there are no leash laws, and she said they were happy to find this house because their dogs needed some room.

I've always felt safe here, but now I don't even want to walk to the mailbox. Another neighbor has fixed me a spiked crutch with instructions to "let them bite on that," as if they would prefer the spiked stick to me. I let Zipper out this morning to do what I knew he must need to do, and the pitbulls started barking. Of couse he headed that way. I ran after him in my robe and socks, through the rain and mud, and the neighbor came out and helped me get him back home. This afternoon I took him out on a leash, which he does not like at all and which has not been necessary in the four years we've had him.

Life changes. Zipper doesn't understand. He cried to go outside and dig up some moles. I do understand, but I don't like it.

That Cancer Creature

2008-03-14T11:08:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we got some news. His PSA is up, way past the cancer markers. Nine years of hot flashes and nausea, and that time they told us would come has. The hormones aren't working, the chemo pills haven't helped. Now what do we do? It's another 9 days until time to talk with the oncologist, who will probably call for more tests, more scans, more trials. The side effects may be worse than the cancer. Who knows? What do I say to my beloved if he says, "I don't want to do this anymore." I understand, but I just can't let him go. Not yet. I want to go out and fight this hard-to-find enemy with everything science as to offer. I pray, but it's really hard to say "Thy Will be done." I don't doubt, not much anyway, but the Scriptures that keep coming when I pray say things like "It is appointed unto man . . ." and "No temptation has come upon you . . . prepared a way." That has been proved often enough that I believe it.

So what do I say? How do I act? Bright and hopeful? Sympathetic? Sad? Resigned? Strong? Weak? I just don't know. I just love him. Maybe nothing else really matters.

TO SEE HER SUFFER

2008-02-28T13:36:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, for the first time in nine days, I visited my 92-year-old mother. We have all had some kind of illness, and I have stayed home, first with my own illness, then with my husband's. But Mama's has been complicated with a bad case of shingles. She is in incredible pain and the medicine the doctor gave her hasn't kicked in yet. Her skin, from her breast to her spine, is mottled red and black and she cannot stand for more than the merest whisper of fabric to touch her. I went to the health store and got something called Shingles Rescue, and she finally trusted her own fingers to apply some of it. She even took some of those tiny beads from a blue bottle that specifies relief for "intercostal pain" under her tongue. She never wants any pain relief because pain reminds her that she is still alive.

She doesn't talk much now--this wonderfully alert woman who last week wrote her weekly article for the newspaper--but she said this: "When I wake up, I always say, 'Thank you, Lord, for this day, and I think I'd like another,' but now I just say, 'Your will be done.'"

Having had a much milder case of shingles, I sympathize. I am asking for relief for her. Amen.

2008-02-20T15:56:00.000-06:00

I LOVE YOU, AL
It has been a hard lesson. At my age, it should have been easier. I have studied it, taught it, believed it, defended it. But sometimes I didn’t practice it. Now I think I will.
Al would turn 91 years old on April 1. He came into the family late, marrying my aunt Raye when they were both widowed and close to retirement. I lived hundreds of miles away for several years, and really didn’t know him very well. But when I moved closer 15 years ago, I saw what the rest of the family saw: a crotchety old fellow who talked about health foods and exercise and didn’t hear well enough to let anybody else contribute to the conversation. Signs of Alzheimer’s were appearing, and it became harder and harder to converse with him. Mostly, we just didn’t bother. Raye said he didn’t make many friends, so we just let him be. We tolerated. As someone said, “Well, he’s Raye’s husband so I won’t be rude to him…” With a stride of about 2 inches, whenever we had a family dinner, we had to wait for him to get there, then just mostly forget his presence.
I went over there a few times, but he never seemed to know who I was or that I had been there before. He was still hard to talk to, hard to understand, and he kept a loaded gun under his pillow and worried that somebody would break into his house. So I visited Raye and tolerated Al.
My sister-in-love and I told them that we needed keys to the house in case we or EMTs had to get in there to help. We made copies, but Al just kept putting his keys back in the locks on the inside, making our copies useless. We put up a key hook by the door, explained this was for their safety, and he said he understood and put the keys right back in the lock.
Raye recently had knee surgery, so I took my turn going over to help out. I stayed at the house with him during the surgery, doing some housework while he sat at the table reading tabloids and going over decade-old bank statements. At one point I passed by and saw a headline: “My Wife’s Family Is Driving Me Crazy!” I laughed and asked, “Al, did you write that?” He paused and said, “No, my wife’s family is all the family I’ve got.” I passed on by with the laundry basket and tried to forget what he had said. Later I sat down with him and urged him to tell me about his family. He said he was the last of his family left alive, seven siblings already dead. He talked about growing up in Cairo, Illinois, where his father supported his family by working in a grain elevator. Life was pretty good in Cairo.
Al also said he was afraid somebody would break into his house, but probably not, because nobody would want him. He said nobody loved him and he wished he could just go on and not be a bother to anybody. I put my arms around that frail old body and said, “Well, I love you, Al, because you’re my uncle and you love my Aunt Raye.” Still conditional.
The next day or two when I was there, he was happy to see Raye getting up and walking to the bathroom. He said, “This will give her some confidence.” Then he pretty much stayed in his room, mostly sleeping in the lounge chair by his bed. I looked at him a time or two, but he seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and I never went in to look at him more closely. I didn’t touch him.

If I had, I might have felt a fever, or noticed his shallow breathing. But later my brother went over to find him half undressed, frozen in position, and still alive but not responsive. The ambulance took him to the emergency room, where they found he had both bronchitis and pneumonia. That’s a lot for a 90-year-old man to overcome, especially when he feels useless and unloved.
I’m sorry, Al. If you make it back from this, I am going to be sure you know that you are loved. And I’m going to be sure that others who feel as you do stop feeling that way. Because I’m going to stop mouthing the words and feeling the duties, and I’m going to love you. Not because you love my Aunt, or because someone else goes to church with me, or I feel like I ought to. I’m just going to stop closing myself off to people who are troubled and thinking that I’ll get around to loving soon.
Thank you, Al. I’ve discovered that my heart breaks for you. And maybe only a broken heart can truly love.

2008-02-12T13:17:00.000-06:00

On Boredom....

What is it like?

Not to have
dreams to dream on
plans to realize
ideas to work out
paths to follow
roads to travel

hidden things to seek
found things to treasure

funny things to laugh about
sad things to cry about
joy to sing about

It must be the foretaste
of death.

2008-02-10T13:02:00.001-06:00

Friday was absolutely beautiful. Temperature close to 60, sunshine, blue skies, perfect day to work in the yard. Daffodils are up about 6 inches and the peach tree's buds are swelling and fuzzy. But it's still early February.

ODE TO A PEACH TREE

Fuzzy buds are swelling but
Peach tree, don't you know
The winter's hardly over--
We'll still have ice and snow.

Last year, too, you hurried
and bloomed before 'twas time.
Blackened buds, miscarried fruit,
no summer taste sublime.

Oh, please ignore the sunshine
and recognize the date--
Summer's fruits are lovely,
So, peach tree, please, please wait!

2008-02-02T12:00:00.000-06:00

I am staring at a blank screen, well sort of blank, wondering how you start a blog. I don't have anything to gripe about, except maybe my foot hurts, and that doesn't seem interesting to anybody but my doctor and me. And my husband has been fighting cancer for nearly 9 years, but he is handling it so well and loves me so much, I feel ungrateful for complaining about that. My children live too far away, but thanks to email and telephone their busy lives still allow time to communicate with me. The house--too big for the two of us--is paid for and we are ready to sell it and move in to town where social and medical lives would be more convenient. I have thrown away most of the food I amassed after 9/11, so even with this horribly long campaigning I must have found more faith in our political system. I have quit my job because I was tired of it and felt like my 65th birthday was possibly a signal that I should do something new, or nothing. So guess what! I'm going to write. I've always known I could and have had a bit of success at it.

So if anybody responds to this, we can exchange ideas.