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and the “Bizarre Doctor Award” goes to….

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image:silverdoctors

image:silverdoctors

Have you seen the British show “Doc Martin”?  It airs on public television and Mother and I watch it without fail, even though we’ve seen all five seasons several times.  We keep hoping that just maybe this Thursday night will be the night they’ll tell us when we can expect to see season six.  It’s set in rural England and is about a surgeon who because of his new aversion to blood becomes a general practitioner.  He’s uptight, tactless, socially challenged and doesn’t necessarily set out to torture his patients but he never fails to offend several people per episode.  While miraculously solving several health problems, of course.

It’s fun to watch the mayhem that occurs in the small town as the big city surgeon tries to fit his superior skills to the need of the local common folk.  And it’s harmless because we are the viewers are not affected by Doc Martin’s behavior.

What’s not as much fun are doctors in real life who are tactless or less than efficient or caring; or just plain bizarre.  I bet you’ve met one or two.  Am I right?

There was the ophthalmologist who tried to talk me out of contact lenses when I was twenty-seven and was fed up with glasses.  He was sure I was too old to make the change.  In the thirty-five years since, my contacts and I have been best friends.

How about the gynecologist who wanted to know if I was a nervous person?

“Only when I have to come here and put my feet up in stirrups.”  I answered.

Then there was the allergist who needed to draw some of my blood and the only way I could bare my arm was to pull my dress over my head because the sleeves were too tight to pull up my arm.  He went beet red in the face.  What was the big deal?  He was a doctor after all.  I wondered when I heard later than he committed suicide by jumping off a building what had really been going on inside his head.

image:bps-research-digest

image:bps-research-digest

And of course, the one that takes the cake (or at least is in the running for first prize) occurred on my first visit to a new gynecologist.  In the year or so prior to my visit I’d had a small patch of very painful shingles on the back of my upper thigh.  I got treatment and was told the scar would take a long time, if ever, to fade.  So there I was in the new doctor’s exam room, up on the table, and he has me lie back and put my feet in the stirrups.  I get in position and he and the nurse move to the end of the exam table and he says, LOUDLY, with shock in his voice,

“What is that?”

As I was younger in those days and had a brain that worked lightning fast, I immediately ran through all the possibilities of what he could possibly be seeing, as well as the idiocy of a medical professional asking a rude question at such a delicate time and decided to not panic or be rude back.

“You mean my shingles scar?”  I said.

Those are all harmless incidences that make good party stories but the ones that are not so funny are the ones that border on the incompetent.  Two of my favorite doctors who were taking good care of me decided to rearrange their practices and so I had to find a new endocrinologist to manage the challenges that I have with the triangle of health that is the endocrine system: thyroid, hormones and adrenals.  In balance with each other, they function wonderfully and I enjoy health.  Let one get out of balance and the whole triangle falls apart and misery ensues.

image:paulsjourneytolife

image:paulsjourneytolife

My new endocrinologist took one look at my medications (that had been working just fine for me) and kept saying,

“A normal person does not need all this medication.”

So, of course, he would only write prescriptions as he saw fit and did not take into account how the changes would affect that delicate balance that allowed me to enjoy life.  When my system crashed and I was distraught, his advice was that I seek out a counselor to help me with my mental and emotional issues.  I found help, all right.  From another medical professional who understood how to treat all my physical issues, not just one.

But the strangest doctor I’ve come across just might be the Urologist who treated Daddy for his prostate cancer.  The man never came closer than three feet to Daddy in the exam room.  He knew his stuff and gave responsible advice and care, but he asked me to help Daddy get on the table and to loosen his clothes.  He sent his nurse in to check Daddy’s catheter and on another visit, to remove the catheter.  The doctor never touched Daddy.  Never shook his hand.  Never came close to either of us physically.  Come to think of it, he fits the Doc Martin mold pretty well.

So, ladies and gentlemen, the Bizarre Doctor Award goes to….?   Which one would you choose?  Or, perhaps you have a better candidate?

Vacation! Pack the headstone and burial plots

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image:practicalmoneymastery

image:practicalmoney mastery

We’re planning a vacation!  Exciting, even if it does involves headstones and burial plots.  And, arrangements to make for travel to New Mexico to the cemetery.

It all takes me back to that night three years and eleven months ago.

Did I hear Daddy’s last breath?  I’d walked into the living room to close the front door against the evening air that had cooled down the stuffiness of the day’s warmth inside the house and realized that for the first time in nearly three days, Daddy’s loud, raspy breathing had calmed.

Was he breathing?  I concentrated to tune out the sounds of Mother clattering dishes in the kitchen as well as the sound of the TV in the dining room and tried to focus on the sounds right where I stood.

The lamps on the sofa end table and on the old sewing machine cabinet next to Daddy’s recliner usually cast a soft, warm glow across the red carpeting and made the brown of the room’s wood trim, the brown of the recliner and the gold, beige and brown of the sofa look comfortable and cozy.  Tonight the room they lit was changed as Daddy’s hospital bed, squeezed into the space between the recliner and the sofa, sucked all normality from the room.  He lay there just as he had for the last four days.  He looked unchanged, his withered, translucent skin pulled tight against shrunken bones, covered by a sheet, he was mostly unmoving, either sleeping or out of it due to the morphine and Ativan that hospice provided for comfort in his last days.  The nose plugs of the oxygen tubing were still in place, his mouth open slightly, his eyes closed, his skin color still the slightly yellow pallor it had been for weeks.  One thin, stick of an arm was outside the sheet, propped up on one of the pillows that had been placed along his side to keep him from wounding himself on the bed rails.  His skin was so fragile, it didn’t take much pressure to cause bruising and bleeding.

It had been four days since he’d wanted any water or food.  The last time he tried, it just wouldn’t go down.  The only thing that had been easy about his care since then was using the medicine dropper to put the drugs in his mouth to keep him comfortable.

In the few weeks that he was failing and able to do less and less for himself, we’d talked about the future and how he’d always planned to be there for Mother to the very end and how he would have to leave her now, when he didn’t want to leave her alone.  We talked about the things I would need to do to keep the house running and Mother able to stay in her home.  We talked about when he needed medication, what I could do to help him get from the bed to the wheelchair to the recliner to the wheelchair to the table.  He was responsive and mostly clear headed.  One of the effects of liver cancer is its effect on the brain and every now and then he would seem confused but for the most part he was lucid and knew who he was and who we were and what the daily issues were.

He was six weeks away from his eighty-ninth birthday and I would be surprised if there was a time in all those years that he was unmotivated.  Even as he got weaker, he got up every morning with a purpose.  That habit was hard to break.  It had just been five days earlier that he woke and sat up in the hospital bed in the morning and tried to get up.  I helped him dress and then said,

“Daddy, this is all further you have to get up.  Why don’t you just lie back down?”

“Oh.”  He said.  “All right.”

That was the last morning he spoke clearly and the last time he tried to follow his normal morning routine.  There was no fear on his part that he was leaving, no anxious grasping on to life.  There was never any regret on his part for the life he’d lived, because he lived it honestly and fully, every day.  He had nothing to confess, nothing to make right.  He’d done that along the way.  He’d invested himself fully in serving the God that he knew loved him and there was no doubt that God was waiting for him, as soon as his last breath in this life was expended.

image: google images

image: google images

Was this his last breath?  His chest seemed to contract and there was a slight hissing sound from him mouth, then he was still.  I moved closer to the bed and laid my hand on his skin.  Warm.  His chest did not move again.  There was no sound of air moving.

In the couple of hours that followed, Mother and I sat down to eat the dinner she’d been preparing.  We knew we had to have food to get us through.  Then I called all the family and Hospice.  Hospice sent a nurse who verified he had died and she called Loma Linda University where he had donated his body to science.

It was a hard night and the next day was torture.  Mother and I were exhausted and emotionally spent, yet the phone didn’t stop ringing, one niece came over and people from the church came.  Mother and I have said since, that if we could have, we would have taken that day away from everyone and everything.  The next day, we were back to normal and able to go on with plans.

image:digginitinc

image:digginitinc

Plans were fairly simple because it would be about two years before Daddy’s cremated remains would be released from the teaching hospital.  It was Daddy’s idea to donate their bodies to science, both because it was such an inexpensive way to take care of remains and because he liked the idea that even after his soul was bounding across heaven in a new heavenly body, his old body here just might do someone, somewhere, some good.

His remains were released last year and they wait patiently on a shelf at the funeral home.  We know he is not there.  He has begun eternity with Jesus in heaven and is unbothered that a few ashes are yet to be buried.  Mother has not felt physically able to make the eight hundred mile trip, but now she says it’s time, so we will choose headstones and go to see his remains interred in the plot in the small country cemetery where so many other Deans and Jones remains lay.

Daddy’s children, my brothers and my sister, will come from Texas and Tennessee and northern California to join us there and we’ll reminisce and laugh and play together and have a vacation away from our daily lives and Mother will bask in the attention of being surrounded by her children.  And I’ll have a vacation from being her sole caregiver.

image: the3dstudio

image:the3dstudio

We’ll need each other as we stand by that cemetery plot and see the headstone set and are reminded again of our loss and finality of what life comes to in this world.  Ashes.  Buried in a plot of ground.  And we’ll joy at the thought that one day we will all be together again, our souls unfettered by any loss or pain.  We’ll go on from there to continue life, living out the legacy our loving, faithful, funny, intelligent, caring Daddy gave us:  love God, love each other and live life fully.

Stretching Roots

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I sit at the computer desk with its gauzy view out of the windows through the white sheers that hang there.  The world looks softer and maybe the sheers will hide all the tasks that need doing.  I can block them out and just think, and try to write.image:fiskars.org

Not that I can really forget them, because Mother keeps a list and she never forgets.  She forgets, at 85 that I did buy sugar and filled the large canister at the back of the counter.  In fact, when I got home from the writing workshop last night, she looked at me with that piercing look and said,

“I thought you were going to buy sugar?”

“I did.”  I said, “Remember, you stood right there when I filled the large canister?”

“Oh.”  That look of puzzled defiance she gets when she’s sure of something and I’m sure of just the opposite, “Well,” she said, “I used the sugar in the small Sugar canister.  I had to ration how much I put in the apples I cooked to put up in the freezer.”

The apples arrived on the front porch yesterday morning in a plastic grocery bag.  From one of the neighbors across the street?  Probably.  We take them some of our excess and they share their’s with us.

The cooked apples were still in the pan.  Sitting on top of the stove.  I taste them and say, “They’re perfect.  The ones you made last time were too sweet for me.”

image: justhungry.orgThat gets Mother out of her padded chair in the dining room, in front of the TV, and she heads for the kitchen.  Her footed cane is where she left in the kitchen.  She probably had something in both hands when she left the kitchen for the dining room.

I meet her halfway with the cane and she comes to taste the apples, too.  We agree they are delicious and I tell her that it’s nice living with someone who cooks these tasty things.

So, now she’s happy.  I’m back home and appreciating her hard labor.  And it is hard labor for her.  It’s hard for her to stand with her scoliosis and she tires easily.

But does she forget the things she wants done?  Of course not.  And that list just doesn’t ever seem to get any smaller.

Wash the windows.  Prune the grape vines.  Soak the vegetable garden.  Weed the vegetable garden.  Water the newly planted apple tree.  And why is that round spot in the back yard looking dead when everything else looks green?  Did you find some chives seeds?  Did you water that new flower that you planted?

And on, and on, and on.

She loved working in the gardens.  So did Daddy.  He did all the big tasks and even collected up the weeds she picked out of the gardens.  They took pride in their yard and loved growing fruits and vegetables and flowers.  With her curved back she really can’t do that anymore.  Oh, she tries and then is in pain and we head off to the chiropractor.

I never thought I’d be Farmer Dean.  Dirt on my hands?  No way.  But, I came back because they were both sick and when Daddy was dying, I told him I’d be here for Mother.  He always said he would live forever and bury all of us so it was hard on him to let go when Mother was still here.  But, I think he took comfort knowing I would be here.  I could see him relax at the end when I said I’d stay.

Of course, at that point I had no idea I’d take his place in doing the outside work, but Mother and her lists!  The only way to keep her somewhat mollified is to work on the items on the list.  And which is more important?  All the inside tasks or the outside tasks?  It’s the stress of juggling of all the things that have to fit into each day’s schedule that threatens to take me to the brink of losing it.

There’s a lot to do outside.  Grapefruit, peaches, nectarines, apricots, squash, cucumbers, strawberries, grapes.  All I can say, is, thank you, God, that the apricot tree is huge and getting old and the crop is far less than it was in the last thirty years that Mother and Daddy picked and froze and canned and gave away and ate until they thought they might pop.  image: google images

A small crop from any of the trees or grapevines or the vegetable garden is just fine with me, because I get to do all the heavy lifting; which actually isn’t nearly as hard as listening to Mother worry about what she will do with all the fruit and how disappointed she is that the crop is so small and why did we only get a few squash on the vine, and on, and on, and on.

This year she wanted herbs, so of to the nursery we went and I had to find time to get all the plants and seeds in the gardens.  Now, each evening before dinner, we’re picking lettuce, arugula, chives, dill, cilantro and nasturtiums for the table.

And the flowers.  The California Poppies, the Evening Primrose and the Bougainvillea, I love those.  The huge camellia outside my bedroom window covered with perfect pink blooms.  And the geraniums and the Gerbera daisies and the chocolate mint that I just found at the nursery and planted.  Yum!

I guess the joke’s on me, because after three plus years of working in the gardens, watering, convincing Mother she really could afford and should get, a sprinkler system, I find myself enjoying the digging and the work and the fruits of the labor.

So, yes, the joke is on me, God.  I thought I was just here to ease Mother’s last years and I’m the one whose roots are getting stretched and planted in new soil.  Thank you that I’m here, God, and that you can give me ears to listen to the lists and not go mad.  I feel you smiling, God.

Hair Wars

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“I need a haircut.”  I announced to no one in particular.  “My hair is looking scraggly around the edges, plus it’s lying too flat, which means I need to trim it up.  Tonight, maybe, before I get in the shower.”source:7beautytips

Mother looked up and rolled her eyes at me.  She and I rarely agree over my hair.  But, that’s nothing new, in fact, that disagreement goes back five decades.

Back to when I was thirteen and got my first glasses.  As I walked home from the Doctor’s office wearing my new glasses, I was so excited that I could actually see.  The individual leaves on the trees; the colors and shapes of flowers across the street and the street signs.  Had our house always been that bright a pink?  That day, I ran inside and headed directly for the bathroom and the mirror.

“Let me see your glasses.”  Mother called from the kitchen.  I closed the bathroom door.  Finally.  I would be able to really see myself.   What I saw horrified me.  I was thirteen, not ten years old, and I didn’t sing and dance, so why did I have Shirley Temple curls?

I had no idea that Mother had bobby pinned curls into place along the top of my head.  There were long curls that hung down to frame my face and more curls that went all around the back of my head.

How could she have done this to me?  There was a pimple on my chin.  Why hadn’t she told me or done something about it?  How could she treat me like a little girl?

I had been betrayed by the one person who was supposed to be on my side; the one who was supposed to prepare me for life out in the world.  I stood there in shock.  Never again would I trust her with my hair.

I found her in the kitchen fixing dinner.  The smell of pinto beans that had been simmering all day mingled with the heat of hot cornbread and made my stomach growl.

“Set the table.”  She said.  “Dinner’s nearly ready.”

I moved around her to get to the silverware drawer.  Her brown hair was combed into brushed out curls that framed her head and ended just below her ears.  She was thirty-six and slim and trim in a sleeveless shirt and petal pushers.  Her skin was tanned from spending afternoons in the vegetable garden out back.  She had the record player on and “The Girl From Ipanema” fit the moment perfectly.

“Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking.”

Why hadn’t she seen how ridiculous I looked?  Wasn’t it part of her job to get me ready to be the girl from Ipanema?  Instead I felt ugly and hopeless.

I had to take charge of my looks.  And, I had to tread softly because her feelings were fragile.  Plus, Daddy was her biggest supporter, so this had to be handled carefully.

“I’m going to do my own hair tonight.”  I said.  She turned to look at me, her face flushed from the heat that poured off the brewed tea she was pouring into the pitcher to make sweetened tea.

“Really?”  She looked at me and at my hair critically.  “You brushed out your curls.”

“Mother.  I’m thirteen.  Don’t you think I should start doing my own hair?”

She looked a little taken back by that but frazzled enough with getting dinner on the table that she didn’t argue.  The back door slammed and the light green kitchen and dining room with their cream and brown colored vinyl floors were filled with my Dad, my sister and my two brothers.

“Got your glasses, didn’t you, Sugar?”  Daddy smiled at me through his glasses, the look of total love and support in his eyes.  I was still his little girl, but somehow that was different.  I smiled back at him and moved on to the table and laid out the silverware.  It was noisy with all the bustling around, hands were washed, food was put on the table and finally, everyone took a seat.  The subject of hair didn’t come up.  I breathed a sigh of relief.

Four years after the Shirley Temple curls, Mother had been asking me the same question for months, “Why don’t we put a perm in your hair?”  My straight, fine hair took a lot of coaxing, teasing and spraying every day to get it to look like the First Lady, Jackie’s, hair.  Mother was sure a home perm was the answer.  I must have forgotten my pledge to never trust her with my hair, because I finally agreed.

“Oh, honey.  I’m sorry.”  She said as she unwound the rollers.  My stomach was in knots as I made my way to bathroom mirror.  She had done it to me again.  Ruined me for public life.  “Serves you right,” I whispered to myself in the mirror, “you shouldn’t have listened to her.”  The last of my Afro (ten years before that style was popular) was trimmed off a full year later.

Then during summer vacation in my college years, I came home and the first thing Mother said to me was, “We need to do something with your hair, honey.”  She fussed and worried about my hair all that summer.  Had she forgotten the perm?  I hadn’t.  Nor had I forgotten those Shirley Temple curls.

“No, thank you.  I’m fine, Mother.  I’ll take care of my own hair.”  Through the years, she was always ready with a solution.  I stayed on the offensive.  She never touched my hair again.  I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t trust her.  It made me tired to always be on the offensive.  I didn’t want to be the adult to my own Mother.  It would be so nice for someone to take care of me, to let me give up the burden of doing it all myself.  I didn’t see that I had any choice, though, so I stayed strong in my resolve to take care of my own hair and little by little I learned to like who I was, even with my fine, limp hair.

Now, I leave the bathroom, fresh from a shower, my hair trimmed up.  In the dining room Mother sits dozing in her spot at the dining room table.  At 85 years old, she’s wrapped in a sweater and a lap blanket to help keep her warm, even in the heat of summer.

She looks up at me, groggy, and says, “You cut your hair again?  It was just starting to look nice.”

There was a time when I argued with her or tried to make her understand my choices, but I like me and I’ve finally learned we won’t ever agree on this subject.  I smile and don’t even feel irritated.

“Yes, Mother, I just cut it and I like it.”

Chocolate Gravy and Legacies

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Mother is sleeping in her padded chair in the dining room while on the TV in front of her, a cooking show goes on and on about how to whip potatoes.  Funny, all those years I thought we were having mashed potatoes they were really whipped potatoes because Mother always did them just like the TV show says to do them if you want them whipped.  The test cook chef is amazed at this new recipe she has found and how good they are.  They should have been at Mother’s house for the last seven decades and they could have already had them.image source:cookscountry

I suppose that means we never really had mashed potatoes.  One thing we had that I bet most people didn’t, was chocolate gravy.  Over fresh, hot biscuits.  Wow.  I wanted to get my face down close to the plate and just shovel it in while savoring every bite and lick of the spoon.  It’s the consistency of gravy, but it’s chocolate.  Milk chocolate.  Not a glace, not a mousse, it’s gravy; chocolate gravy that runs down the side of the hot Bisquick biscuits straight out of the oven.  Man, it’s good.  Melts in your mouth.  Hits that chocolate itch perfectly.

I’ve only met two other people outside the family who knew what chocolate gravy was.  And they were clients I had in Nashville, a young woman who moved to town from a little country town in Oklahoma or Arkansas.  Her mother was in town to help her find a condo to buy and we had a good time visiting as we rode around looking at condos.  Turns out the mom made chocolate gravy!  I couldn’t believe someone else knew what that was.  And, of, course, they put it over hot biscuits.  Although, I think she made her biscuits from scratch.  Mother could too, but usually was too busy.

Mother always made yeast rolls for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.  They were made from scratch and were fabulous.  Yum.  One of those things that brings back memories the moment you smell that yeast in the oven.  Mother hasn’t made them in years because it’s a big job but my sister used the same recipe to make them all the years her girls were growing up.  Now my sister’s girls and grandchildren always ask for them at the holidays so she’s built the same memories in her family that we had growing up.

Lemon meringue and chocolate cream pies.  Mother made those from scratch too.  And in the summer, Daddy would buy a lug of peaches and Mother would make peach ice cream or sometimes, banana or fresh strawberry.  Once in a while, chocolate, but usually a fresh fruit ice cream.  Daddy would sit out on the back stoop, cranking the ice maker, filling the sides of the ice cream maker with rock salt and ice and talking to whoever would sit out there with him.

Someone was usually playing the piano, one of us kids running in and out the back door.  Or sitting on the couch, noses buried in a book.  My sister used to say that if I was reading she could never get my attention.  But what I remember are all the sounds of the house swirling around like background music to whatever I was reading.

About the time I moved to Nashville to sell houses, I gave my sister a big bag of books that I wasn’t taking with me and her husband said,image source:shereads.org

“We’ve lost her now.  She’d be buried in books for weeks.”

It runs in the family, this immersion in books.

When Daddy died, we donated over 1100 of his books to his favorite university.  I can now go online and search their library catalog and see his name there.  Such a nice feeling.  He left a quite a legacy.

Speaking of legacies, I remember being concerned when I was a girl that since I only had two brothers, the Dean name might not carry on.  I’ve since learned that there are millions of Deans, but most of them are in the Eastern United States or in Great Britain and European countries.  In my life, I have only personally met two, maybe three other families named Dean.

Turns out, I needn’t have worried.  My oldest brother has three sons to carry on the name and two grandsons, so far.  My other brother has four sons carrying on the name and they are all at marrying age and beginning their families.

Legacies are interesting.  It started with two, Mom and Dad.  Sixty four years later there are forty-six of us now, plus three deceased and another seven that left the family through divorce.  We stretch from the youngest who is about five months to Mother, the oldest at 85 with every age in between.

One year, there were four or five great-grand kids graduating high school the same year.  In the last year, four of the great-grand kids brought spouses or significant others into the family and started having babies.  Two more got engaged this year.

image source:mcmnetworkIt’s good being here so that Mother can stay in her home but it feels different from what I thought these years of my life would feel.  I miss being free to travel to my sister’s or my brothers’ houses.  Laughing with the kids and their kids.  I always thought I’d be there to support my nieces and nephews and their children.  I didn’t imagine that I would not be able to travel to their graduations or weddings.  But here I am, so that Mother can stay in her house.  That’s a good thing.  I’m happy to be here for her.  I just didn’t expect the limitations it would mean for me.

But then, I’m not sure you can really understand what your legacy will be.  A warm, safe home, with lights shining out the windows in the twilight and the smell of Mother’s cooking are what I remember.  That and Daddy’s peace and calm.  I guess I have to just trust that I built some legacy with my nieces and nephews and their children and that this part, this being stuck in one place, that’s part of the legacy as well.

Disclosure: this may gross you out

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image source:medicinenet

image source:medicinenet

Dear God, I don’t know what else to do to help her?  I’ve cut back Mother’s heart medicine and it seems to help but only until the half-life of the meds wears off and then the sluggish valves in her legs are again overwhelmed and huge with edema.  I researched herbs for heart function and sluggish circulation.  We’ve bought herbs and even got Dr. Costello’s approval.  They help but we can’t get her totally off the Rx drugs that reduce her blood pressure so that the sluggish valves in her legs work easier.

So she suffers from side effects of those meds.  On the day of the worst I’d seen in a long time, I no longer knew what to do. She’d only been on minimal doses of her meds.  But she couldn’t swallow much, was coughing, had chest pain, what felt like a knot in the middle of her chest, spitting up saliva, sore throat, croaky voice, hiccups when she tried to eat.  After an hour of back patting, she was finally able to get some hot tea down, her system seemed to calm and she was able to eat her dinner.

There has to be a cause of this and a solution, God.  What am I missing?  All I knew to do was go back to the computer for more research.  I decided to search a list of her symptoms to see what might come up.  There it was: Gastroesophageal Disease (GERD).

Mother has GERD?  No wonder the look of doubt on Dr. Costello’s face when we would describe some of her symptoms and I’d say they were a side effect of her meds.  They weren’t.  Oh, sure, there are some stomach distress and diarrhea side effects to those meds but that doesn’t explain all the other things going on.  GERD does. image source:haverfordlibrary.org

It occurs as stomach acid backs up into the esophagus.  It can be life threatening if the sufferer aspirates in their sleep.  Causes?  Spicy foods, high fat foods, caffeine, raw onions, tomatoes, citrus juices, French fries, ice cream.  Mother loves all of these things.  And eats them with regularity.

Well, hit me upside the head with an “a-ha” moment.  I know what caused that worst flare-up.  Jessica and Juan, the young couple renting Sarita’s house next door, brought us a thank you gift of Christmas jelly because I went over and to give their old bull-dog, Sugar, water and food and let her in and out in the evenings while they visited family for Christmas.

One of the gifted jars of jelly was Jalapeno jelly.  Mother had never had it before and I was excited because I enjoyed it in the South with cheese and crackers.  We opened it immediately and was it good!  Hot!  Best on cheese, but I’d been off dairy for nearly a year, so eating it with gluten-free crackers seem the next best thing.  So good you can’t just have just one, so believe me we didn’t stop there.  Three days we had some for breakfast, both Mother and I.  And then that night, she tried to eat dinner and the episode was the worst I had seen.

Thank you, God!  At last I knew what’s going on and that there was something we could do about it; not only for Mother’s sake but for mine as well.  Truth be told, I too had started having that chest pain and times when things won’t go down easily.

And all the times we’ve had to leave a restaurant or Mother has had to retreat to the bathroom because she’s spitting up her food.  And then the rest of her meal sits untouched on her plate.  Or, the times when she couldn’t make it to the restroom and there’s a napkin across her plate covering up spit-up food and saliva.  Lots of saliva.  She was embarrassed.  I was grossed out.image source:google images

I printed out all the GERD info and took it to Mother in the dining room to explain what I’d found.  I started talking and she muted the TV so that she could hear.  She was not happy with this information.

“I’m 85 years old and I will eat what I want!”  She declared forcefully.

“Fine.”  I’d anticipated a fight over this and was prepared.  “Do whatever you want.  Just go in the other room and do your spitting and coughing and hiccuping away from me.”

“Humph!”

“In the last year I’ve had that same pain and there are times when I can’t swallow.”  I try to reason with her, but rational thought is not her strong point these days.  “I’m only 62 and I don’t want to have this the rest of my life and get as bad as you are.”

She turns the TV sound back up.

“We at least need to cut the spices WAY back and not make every dish we eat spicy hot.”

“Humph.”  Her attention is purposely glued to the TV.

Over the next few days I casually repeated the list of foods to avoid and I try to be on hand when she’s adding spices to the pot of beans (which turned out very spicy) and with the cheese soup, we used gluten-free four and Almond Milk and I followed the recipe instead of tripling the chili pepper as Mother usually does.  I thought the soup was good.  She didn’t.  She still says she will eat what she wants but I see her softening when it comes to my health.  She’s not hard-hearted, just stubborn.  Good thing I’m affected as well or she’d never moderate what she does!

My research indicated taking Licorice tablets, Ginger and Silymarin to help the sphincter that has been damaged by all the reflux acid so I added those to her daily pills.  My hope was that she would moderate her diet and with the extra herbs, she would eventually heal.

In the last month since I made the GERD discovery, Mother has (somewhat) graciously moderated how she cooks and I’m doing better.  For herself, however, she is determined to eat the way she likes to eat.  Milk, spices, butter on everything, tomato sauces, citrus – whatever is on the list to avoid – she goes all out to eat.

“I’m eighty-five and I’ll eat the way I want to eat!”  She repeats every so often.

I had bought the over the counter acid reducers with the hope that she wouldn’t rely on them, however, it appears she isn’t changing her diet – although she did admit she had continued for another week to eat the Jalapeño Jelly but was stopping as she was having more trouble getting food down.  I’m concerned she could aspirate at night, so she started taking the acid reducer.  Of course, she thinks that means she can eat whatever she wants without consequence, but even that isn’t a magic cure.

“I don’t want to hear about it anymore!”  She said last night when she was hiccuping too much to get anything down.  But I know at last she is hearing me.  And that is the biggest part of the battle.  Nothing changes for her until she lets go of her believe it’s all just sinus drainage and admits that she has a problem with what she is eating.  It’s like any addiction or habit that any of us has, WE have to be the one who wants to change.  No one can change for us.

However, I’m relying on one of her most basic instincts, she’s a mother.  When she sees her daughter suffer, she wants to do something different.  Oh, she fusses that she doesn’t know how to cook without gluten and dairy and high fat foods, but I see her make the effort for me and I’m grateful and hopeful that one day she’ll make that same effort for herself.

Dreams

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highrise city scape

image source: fineartamerica.com

In the dream, I’m in the middle of towering steel and glass highrises in a large, downtown city, the sky’s blue reflected from building to building.  I’m not aware of any particular sounds or smells but street traffic is heavy and sidewalks are crowded with busy, rushing people.

I’m anxious.  I’m to start a new job in one of these highrises.  Will I be able to deal with the new work environment?  Will I succeed?  Where will I live?  What part of town?  Will I be able to support myself?  How much style will I have to sacrifice to find a place that is affordable?  Will I be able to build a retirement income?

I vacillate in the dream from being energized at the prospect of a new challenge to feeling out-of-place and aware that I no longer belong in this busy, downtown world.

The dream never seems to go beyond that point and when I wake, I’m surprised that I dreamed of a new city and a corporate job.  Is it San Francisco, Downtown Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Nashville, or perhaps, Dallas?  I can’t pinpoint the city.  I’ve worked in highrises in all those places but it’s been thirty-three years since the first day I walked into a job in a highrise and eighteen years since I left the corporate world for self-employment.

Strange that I never had the dream until after I’d retired from selling Real Estate and moved back home to care for my elderly parents.  Perhaps that’s the point.  I left the outside work world of highrises and busy downtown streets and took on a job that is primarily contained within the four walls of this suburban house.

I’d had the dream a time or two before I realized it was a stress dream.  It typically came the night before I had some task to which I had committed myself but about which I was uncertain.  The times of the dream that stand out in my memory are the nights before Daddy’s Memorial Service; before I drove to UCLA the first year I went to the Los Angeles Times Book Fair; the night before singing a solo, also the night before I started my first writing class in West L.A. with the highly regarded writer and teacher, Jack Grapes.

Dream - beach scene

image source: google images

A few nights ago, I had the dream again.  This time, there were people at my new job in the highrise.  They weren’t faceless, but I couldn’t tell you much about them.  Again, the city was unknown, but everything was bright, shiny, modern and exciting.  I asked a thirty-something man where he lived and what the housing options were in town.  He told me about the trendy, beautiful, large and upscale apartment he rented in a building with all the amenities: pool, spa, exercise rooms, doorman, cleaners, restaurant, WiFi, grocery, roof gardens.  He said it was downtown in walking distance to my new job.  Wow.  Sounded wonderful.  And expensive.  Probably far more than I could afford.

“How much do you pay, if you don’t mind me asking?”  I asked.

“Three Hundred and Forty-Eight Dollars.”  He said cheerfully.

“What?”  Surely, I’d heard wrong.  “Three thousand, Three Hundred and Forty-Eight?”

“No.  Three Hundred Forty-Eight.”

I was ecstatic.  I was starting a great new job and I’d have a wonderful place to live.  This was thrilling!

When I woke later, I was amazed at the change of my stress dream to a dream of possibility and excitement of great things to come, things of challenge as well as enjoyment and ease and comfort; things bright and shiny and new, surrounded by blue sky.  But why had it changed?

I’d gone to bed in the wee hours of the night, tired but happy after posting to my blog and getting positive feedback from family and friends and even strangers with blogs of their own.  The dream hadn’t changed because I had learned all I needed to know about writing well; nor because I’d crossed the goal line of maximum impact with my writing footprint on the big, wide, world.

Rather, I had begun.  I had pushed against the fears of not being good enough, of having nothing to say, the fear of saying something offensive or politically incorrect that would end any chance of being considered a successful writer.

Jeremiah 29:11

image source: Photobucket

As I thought about the dream, positive as it was, the unknowns lurking there were clear.  Will there be enough income to take me through retirement?  Enough for some of life’s finer things, like travel or a lovely place to live?  Was there significance to the age of the man who told me about the apartment?  I was successful in the corporate world in my thirties and forties.  Am I now too old to accomplish anything of worth or value?  By the time Mother’s days on earth are finished, will it be too late for me to travel and to embrace once again, the outside world?

Yet, when you boil it all down, is there anything new here?  Don’t we all have the same needs for significance, safety and security?  None of us can see the future and a dream of stress or a dream of promise won’t change what happens, but my dream reminds me that I’m to push forward against the fears, all the while resting firm in what I know to be true:

“I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.  Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  Plans to give you a hope and a future.”  Jeremiah 29:11.

God will be there to walk with me into that waiting future.  What else could I need?

To value or not to value….

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image source:google images

     image source:google images

Monday night TV at our house is PBS and Antiques Roadshow.  First, the      original show that is recorded in Great Britain, which is especially fun because those antiques are really old.  Next is the American version with relatively newer antiques, followed by a new show this season, Market Warriors, which is about four buyers who hit flea markets and sale houses to find treasures that are then auctioned off, hopefully for a greater price than what the buyers spent to purchase the items.

The fun in watching these shows is to see if that stuff around the house that you thought was junk is just junk, or if that loved item that some ancestor was sure was valuable, really is valuable.  I like to test my knowledge and see if I can recognize the item before the expert tells us what it is.  I know what I like, but I also know that most of the ‘tells’ that indicate value or worthlessness are mostly Greek to me.  If I can learn by watching and guess the designer or manufacturer then maybe I can move beyond my ignorance. That isn’t the real reason though, because ignorance isn’t that big a deal; everyone is ignorant about something.  To change that, you just have to learn.

But can I move beyond an upbringing that was filled with cast-offs, cheap, mass-produced functionally adequate furniture, clothing, housewares – all devoid of any real beauty or value?  Can I move out of the cookie-cutter suburbs and into something that actually has some class?  We had no money, no class and no fine culture.  Can I cover up that basic beginning with a coat of sophistication like you’d cover over a cheap, pressed cardboard backed dresser with a new finish?  Will I then feel valuable?  Will I then BE valuable?

And what is real value?  Mother grew up with even less that we had when I was a child and she loves these shows as well.  Is that because she sees the beauty in things, whether of value or not?  Like the three-quarters finished paint by number canvases we found when going through stored boxes looking for the oil paintings she did years ago.  We hung her oil paintings in the house and I sat the paint by number canvases in the box for Goodwill.  Mother took them out of the box and keeps saying she is going to get some double stick tape and put them, unframed, up on the walls of her bedroom; walls that already have hanging on them the original oil paintings that she did as well as oils done by friends; walls that also have outdated calendars with pretty pictures but which can’t be thrown away because they’re pretty.

Why would she even care about the old paint by number paintings?  Is she able to see some beauty that I can’t?  Doesn’t she know how tacky they will look on the walls?  Actually, I can see the beauty of the scene, if you stand far enough back that you don’t key in on the paint by number aspect, but there’s no monetary or resell value to it.  So, why keep it?  Why clutter up the full walls with one more thing that is cheap and mass-produced?

The clutter that covers every space in the house drowns out all beauty for me.  It’s too much.  It threatens to close in on me, so my mind’s eye tries to shut it out and it becomes some dark, busy background that drives out the air and leaves me feeling stifled and I find myself breathing shallowly, barely existing.

And then, some person on Antiques Roadshow brings out their treasured tchotchke and the appraiser tells them it’s worth hundreds or maybe thousands and as I look at it my childhood memory is jogged.  Mother turns me and says that the one she has, that is just like the one on TV is in the cedar chest, and “don’t forget to keep it, don’t send it to Goodwill.”

image source: google images

image source: google images

My breathing expands, I take in more air.  There is value, right here in all the clutter.  Right here in my classless childhood.  Not really because there’s something here that’s worth some monetary amount, but because Mother, whose family survived the Dust Bowl, the depression and years as itinerant workers, recognized value and held on to it.  And I see that she has a classiness that I had missed before.  A classiness that has nothing to do with things and everything to do with the intrinsic value we each have.  We’re God’s creation.  We are the thing of value.  All the stuff that fills up life, whether it’s sophisticated and expensive or classless and cheap is just that, stuff.  Once again I see that I do have value, and with that reminder, I have hope that I can look beyond the things and recognize the true beauty around me and the real value within.

Some days are like that…

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image source: www.mindpluming.com.au

image source: mindpluming.com.au

Some days my ears just can’t take it.  The sound of Mother’s voice hitting them feels like a loud, clanging gong that reverberates through my brain, threatening to blow the top off of my head.  Today is one of those days.

I try to have some time alone at the start of the day.  Time to take the supplements that help balance my endocrine system, time to talk to God and breathe in His rest for my spirit and soul; time to get to the computer to write in my Journal before the sound of the TV or the radio or Mother herself.

If I wake and she isn’t up, I listen for a few minutes to see if she’s stirring and about to head for her bathroom.  If I hear anything, I lie still, eyes closed, playing possum until she’s come down the hall, adjusted the thermostat on the Heat/Air unit and gone into her bathroom.  Once she’s done that, I have anywhere from one to two alone hours before she emerges, fully dressed, hair combed and sprayed, her diary writing done, her Bible readings done.

I mistimed it this morning.  I’d been dozing and thinking about getting out of bed for about forty minutes, the house still totally silent when I decided to get up and get into the home office and on the computer, usually another good way to avoid first thing in the day contact.  I’d done stretches and taken supplements and was turning up the heat when her bedroom door opened.

She emerged in her pale lavender robe, her hair mussed, her insulated cup in one hand, the other hand on her footed cane.

“You’re up?”  She began as she walked down the hall toward me, the sound of the clunk of her cane on the floor in front of her with each step.  “Did you turn the heat up?”  Clunk.  “Is the sun already on that side of the house?”  Clunk.  “Did you sleep cold?”  Clunk.  “That heater blower fan just doesn’t work right.”

“Uh huh.”  I answer to each thing she says, my brain reacting to each of her comments by zooming off in a dozen directions, leaving me irritated, frazzled and angry.  I’d lost a pill under the bed, so I lean over and pull up the bed dust ruffle, but still I know she’s coming closer.  She’s moved into my open bedroom door.  I keep looking for that pill, not talking; anything to discourage interaction; anything to keep me from saying something rude or caustic.

Fortunately, the house is cool enough at 68 degrees that she can’t stand there long and she goes into her bathroom, turns on the ceiling heater and closes the door.

I breathe deeply, my ears and mind immediately less stimulated, I move around the room, making the bed, tidying up.  The easier days when I lived by myself and had all the alone time in the mornings that I wanted are gone.  I used the time in the same way I try to do now, spending time with God, listening to the Bible on tape or to Christian music.  By the time I left the house for work, I had been reminded of who I was: a child of God.  Loved by Him and with His grace and power, I could tackle the day.  I was ready.  Not that my days were simple or easy but by spending time with God first, I went out prepared.  Those days with the luxury of being alone and making choices that suited me best have changed.  Now all decisions are shared and I find myself in the pressure cooker of most of my waking hours in the same space as the person who gave me birth.  Most adult children know what a challenge can be.

Tuning her out nags at me.  I need distance from her but I’m torn by needing time to be myself, time to develop a writing skill to prepare for the future I will have once she is gone versus the need to be available to her as her caregiver along with the need to give her respect.  Help me, God, is my thought as I breathe in and out.

“It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn your statutes,” pops into my brain.

image source: GodVine

image source: GodVine

Ah, yes, Proverbs 119:71.  Yes, it is good for me to be here with Mother, good for me to have to learn to deal with the differences in our personalities, good for me to learn to react in love, in graciousness.  Good for me to have to throw myself back into God’s arms, to drink in His love and strength, to depend upon Him for this challenge.  Good for me to know that I can’t do this on my own.  Good for me to know that depending upon myself only leads to semi-solutions like tuning her out or playing possum.  Those drain me of energy and vitality.  They do nothing to ease the irritations.

“It is good for me, God, to lean on your strength, to rely on you.”  Good for me to be reminded, Victoria, God knows the journey you need to take before you do.  I breathe deeply and feel the love and peace of God float across my frazzled nerves and fractured thoughts.

As Mother emerges from the bathroom some time later, I turn to her and smile, “How are you today, Mother?”

Friend through the Unknown

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image by Marlene

image by Marlene

My friend, Marlene, was in town this week for the first time since she moved back to Ohio about six months ago.  We met at the little and funky Peach Café in Monrovia (try it, you’ll like it) and had a happy three and a half hour visit.

I’ve missed her.  She was one of the few friends close enough to Pomona that we could get together once in a while in the five years since I moved back.  Initially, when I was so busy taking care of both Daddy and Mother, she and I met about every six months, but in the last two years before she left, we’d upped our times out to several times a year, which made it hard when she said the job interview in Columbus had worked out and she was headed to Ohio.

For our last lunch together last summer, we met at our favorite Sunday lunch-after-church-meeting-place, Macaroni Grill.  She was all ready to leave town and this was our farewell.  She came bearing gifts, which is so like Marlene.  She’s gracious and giving.

“Since your friends in California are losing you to Ohio, we should be sending you off with gifts, not the other way around.”  I said as I opened the greeting card.

“Oh,” she replied in typical modest, Marlene fashion, with a smile on her face, “that’s so sweet.”

She even picked up the bill, which was very generous and made the parting even tougher.  It was sad knowing that one of my links to the outside world was going and our Sunday lunches ending.

A few months before she left, we’d gone into Hollywood to the Pantages Theatre to see “Wicked” and then out dinner at one of her favorite Italian restaurants, Villa Italiana in Duarte  (another good place to try if you’re in the area).  It was a fun and stimulating evening.

Sometime after that, Marlene, her roommate, three of their friends and I caught the commuter bus that took us to the Hollywood Bowl one night for the L.A. taping of “Prairie Home Companion.”  What a fun time that was sitting in the cool evening breeze as the sun set and the lights of the Bowl stage came on.

I felt young and alive and engulfed in one of life’s things of beauty.  It was a peaceful enjoyment of a carefree night, so far away from my world of an elderly Mother, our church with its mostly elderly people and the several elderly neighbors who live on our street.  That night I felt like I had been struggling underwater but at last had come up for air and was able to drink deeply of its life-giving force.

Meeting Marlene for lunch this week on her short visit to get her furniture packed up in the truck her brother and sister in law would drive back to Ohio, was another one of those breaks from the world of caregiving and the elderly.

As we left, we hugged each other goodbye and got into our cars to drive in opposite directions, the early afternoon sun shining and warming up the winter day to nearly 80 degrees after several weeks of freezing temps at night and cool days.  I once again felt alive and hopeful that life most likely held much more for me than living with my elderly mother.

It’s often a tug of war.  On the one hand, I can’t imagine being anywhere else than here with Mother.  How could I possibly go, knowing that would mean she would be forced to leave her home?  I’m not sure her days would continue very long if that were the case.

On the other hand, there are limits to what I can do with my days because she needs me here.  Times of escape for a meal out with a friend are rare.  Yet in the middle of that tug of war, I am amazed at what God has done by putting me here.  He’s handed me the financial means and the time to learn a new craft and to develop a new skill: writing.  Somehow in the middle of that new skill is the knowledge that my world doesn’t end where these walls end.  Writing transcends these boundaries.  I’m grateful to know that.  But even that knowledge pales in comparison to the other thing God is doing.  He’s teaching me much in the day to day living and caring for my elderly Mother.   He’s teaching me again, in this new situation, that He is the solution for every worry, every care and every unknown.

Who of us truly knows where our lives will go next or how long those lives will last?  We don’t.  But, what I do know is that God is the giver of life and life isn’t just bright moments of release from caregiving, it’s a bigger purpose and a greater design than I could possibly imagine.  I’m in His hands, just as my dear friend, Marlene, is in His hands.  Because of that, both of us can go freely, wherever life takes us next. See you in the unknown future, Marlene!