fabrisse | Entries tagged with family

I have five cousins on my father's side of the family; the three around my age are by Uncle's first wife. His only daughter is a year older than Sis and just lost her elder son. My oldest cousin, whom I will call Sonny, died this morning never having left the hospital after his admission for extremely low sodium, pneumonia, strep, and flu.

Cousine barely made it from the west coast in time to say goodbye. The brother between her and Sonny will get there tonight.

Sonny went into the navy at 18. He was discharged for mental health by the time he was 20. Schizophrenia runs on his mother's side of the family. Ships in the 1970s were easy to find drugs on. I knew about "drug-induced schizophrenia" (I'm pretty sure it would be called something else these days) from the time I was 13.

Sonny has been in and out of V.A. and charity facilities since he was released from the military. Uncle and, later, Cousine have looked after his finances so that it was virtually impossible for him to score drugs -- other than cigarettes -- and so that, unlike many of his contemporaries, he always had a roof over his head.

We can say that he smoked himself to death. It's true. We can say that he might have been treated differently if schizophrenia were better understood or if his family had realized he was prodromal when he enlisted. That's also true.

I saw him three years ago, for about five minutes, when we went to Blacksburg for Thanksgiving. The last I saw him prior to that was 1972.

This post brought to you by bronchitis! I stopped coughing two days ago, but my ribs hurt. The doctor has put me on three drugs, plus two shots and a nebulizer before I leave her office. If I'd waited until next week to be seen, it would have been pneumonia no matter how many preventive jabs I've had.

ETA: The memorial service is on Friday. Sis has midterms, so I'll drive up Thursday, hopefully with a cell phone.

My Cousine is not doing well. Her father and I have gotten her out of the house twice, once to a park and once to a small museum. Other than that and a trip to the ER because her husband scratched his cornea, she hasn't left her home. Her younger son -- half-brother to the one who died -- is supposed to go back to his university on Monday, but he's hesitant because Cousine is still so out of it.

I've become the main line of communication for my generation (per family tree not age).

In the meantime, the eldest of my Uncle's children is in a V.A. hospital. He was admitted for extreme hyponatremia but also has pneumonia, strep, and flu. The notification came to Cousine because we were in the air when he was admitted.

Sis is with Mom right now. I've come home for the fortnightly family Zoom call. Mom's there at least one more day, which means Sis will be teaching tomorrow and I'll be the one in the hospital with her.

The nurse tried to tell me, essentially, that it was our fault that we hadn't spoken to Mom's doctors. They'd apparently come by around 8:30 this morning. I pointed out that we'd been there for seven hours yesterday, constantly told the hospitalist and the doctors would be coming by and they never did. We were told that someone would call us with an update after the doctors had seen her and no one did. I could have stayed another half hour with them, but my temper was getting the better of me.

A close friend of my sister's suggested we talk to the social worker to see what Mom is eligible for in the way of personal attention from Medicare. I just need someone to check on her while I'm teaching next week. Seriously, someone coming by for an hour is it. If we can get a student to do it, that's fine.

The biggest problem may be dietary adjustments. I can cook to any diet. No question. Getting Mom to actually eat a low sodium, low cholesterol diet is another matter. She makes faces when I suggest green vegetables. She won't eat any kind of bread without butter, ditto potatoes. Like me, she abhors margarine. Unlike me, she doesn't think that olive oil tastes great and works as well.

I like to cook. I don't mind adapting recipes. But being told things don't taste right because there's not enough salt -- which has already happened -- in not conducive to my blood pressure staying steady.

I may need a rah-rah week next week. The goal is to meditate for at least 10 minutes and take one twenty minute walk a day, with or without dogs. My sanity and good health have to stay intact.

Urgent care sent us to the ER because Mom's in Afib. We haven't been seen other than to have another EKG done in the triage area. Can this day be over?

UPDATE: It's about 1 a.m. Sis and I were allowed to leave around 11. We stopped and got fast food and brought it home, made sure the dogs went out, etc.

Mom was waiting on a CAT scan with contrast. She hasn't been admitted to the hospital, but is in a single room in the ER. The chances seem good that she'll have an angioplasty before they let her come home.

Giving her oxygen improved some things.

That's about as much as I can handle right now. I'm going to go crash in my bed with a dog (I hope).

Current Mood: tired

I am very angry at my sister right now. It'll pass, but for the moment, it exists.

As you know, I'm substitute teaching. I try to do once a week, more if Mom doesn't have too many doctor's appointments, and I only take the days when Sis has office hours. Why? Because she can come home after she finishes teaching and do office hours via zoom. She rushes back to be here by 2. I get home around 4, usually having picked up a coffee at Starbucks for Mom and/or ingredients for dinner. Since Mom rarely wakes before 10, she's really only alone for 4 hours.

( Long rant ensues under the cut. )

Cold means something different here. It's been in the upper 20s Fahrenheit in the mornings this week and hasn't gotten much above 50F which would be a balmy day in early spring in Boston, but is fricking cold down here.

I hadn't understood that even if we have electricity (Thank the developers for buried powered lines!), our internet service would cut out continually. It's messed with my access all week, including our phone service and cable tv. I just can't wait for this week to be over.

UPDATE: I'm at Urgent Care with Mom because she has chest pain and can't catch her breath.

Current Mood: frustrated

Sis has the virus, probably caught from either a student or a colleague. When I asked her a couple of weeks ago, she said, "I don't really need a mask." She did get boosted last Friday, but, at that point, she already had it.

Mom now has it.

I don't have a fever, so it's unlikely that I have it, but I still feel poorly (sore throat, sinus). I just had my vaccination for COVID last Friday, along with Sis. I hope it's working.

And COVID? Haven't you looked at a calendar, you're 2019, not 2023.

Mom is home from the hospital.

She had a stroke on Monday. We were fortunate to catch it as it was happening and get her to the hospital quite quickly.

Because I'm in the benighted state of Georgia (vaccination rate went up to 41% having had at least their first shot), we're back, as of yesterday, under COVID rules at hospitals -- only one family member and that person can't return after leaving. I got her for most of the first day. I was asked to talk to her as the nurses didn't know what her usual speech patterns and vocabulary are like. I asked her some random questions and from left field said, "What are the names of our dogs?" The look she shot me could have melted titanium.

There was a little bit of evasion and stammering, plus complaints about people putting things on her being a distraction (ECG leads) before she said, "N-n-nick and ... No-ra," which was correct. If I asked her things that followed in a logical order, she was mostly okay by that point, but anything that came out of left field, like the sudden question about the dogs, was too confusing.

It was still better than when we left the house. I had to help her dress. For once we were able to convince her to use her walker, but she couldn't fasten her own seat belt (and still couldn't today). Since we'd forgotten her list of medications, I went home and got it (then revised it when three months proved to be too out of date) while Sis was with her. Had it happened a day later, that couldn't have been done.

Sis got to see the neurologist who showed her the imaging of Mom's brain. There was a bright spot on the left side of her brain showing the current stroke and another slightly fainter bright spot showing an earlier stroke. Whether it was concurrent with her heart attack in December or came a bit later, the doctor seems relatively certain that it was a year or less since that first one happened. There were also some tiny -- Sis described them as a pattern of holes -- indicating a history of transient ischemic attacks. All of them were where the neurologist expected her stroke to be based on her symptoms, especially the loss of language.

Mom is stubborn. She no longer terrifies me, but she still scares me a bit. I do my best to treat her like the adult she is. This is to preface that I didn't just pick her up and throw her into the car on Saturday night. She hates going to the ER (and with COVID again, I worry about having to take her), so she refused to go when her evening blood pressure on Saturday was 235/119. No, there are no typos in those numbers. Her current cardiologist, who may soon be dropped from a great height into a deep river, berated her for going to the emergency room earlier this year when her blood pressure was 205/105. The hospital cardiologist flat out stated that we should bring her to the ER (or at least Urgent care) if the top number is over 160 or if the bottom one breaks 100.

Could I have prevented this by out stubborning her on Saturday? I don't know.

Her right thumb doesn't work right and her right hand grip is weaker than her left hand grip. She has balance issues and kept listing left. She couldn't remember the word "doctor" yesterday, but I worked out what she meant when she asked about "white coats." We're trying to find out if we can get her into PT and OT. The hospital didn't think she needed speech therapy. She's also under the impression that she doesn't have to use a cane around the house. Sis and I will gang up on her tomorrow and explain that, yes, she does.

Warning: somewhat graphic description in the second sentence.

Tonight's my sister's turn. Vomiting, diarrhea, blood. There had been a car accident, so she's just being seen after a 4+ hour wait. Mom wanted to come, but -- since she can't drive until she's been seen by her doctor next week, and will probably be banned until she's had the next angioplasty, AND, due to COVID, only one person can be with a patient at a time -- I convinced her to stay home.

Sis is in atrial fibrillation at the moment. First time for everything.

BTW, have I mentioned that I ran out of antidepressants and couldn't get them filled for over a week?

I'm so glad I'm here to help, but things are getting stressful.

ETA: Sis will be spending two nights in the hospital on IV antibiotics for colitis.

Her chest hurt tonight. So did her jaw. She didn't want to go to the emergency room, some figurative arm twisting got her there. Sis stayed in the car, since only one family member could be with her. This was about 8 p.m.

They gave her an EKG when she first came in, then took her to a treatment area to check her vitals and have a more thorough exam. The doctor promised her something to help her pain and alleviate her symptoms. They took her for an X-Ray. The medication didn't arrive after she returned, and, about 40 minutes later, Mom said the pain was worse. I found a nurse and explained the situation. Mom got baby aspirin and nitroglycerin. Then she had to use the restroom.

Standing nauseated her and once I got her back to bed, I went to find an emesis bag. That alarmed the nurse. The doctor decided to admit her and they were going to schedule an angioplasty probably Christmas Eve, but maybe next week. He ordered a second EKG. Five minutes after it had been taken for review, the nurse returned with several other nurses. Lots of things happened at once and I went to call Sis to let her know. When I got back in the room with Mom, her lips were blue and they were prepping her for an immediate angioplasty.

Mom sent us home. 30 minutes ago we got a call from the cardiologist who performed the angioplasty. Mom had a heart attack between the second EKG and the procedure. Her artery was totally blocked. They put in another stent, her tenth, and she will have to have at least one more angioplasty before she can come home, probably on Christmas Eve.

Sis has surgery on her wrist on Wednesday. I'm glad I'm here to help with the situation.

First bit: Please go read

ladyofastolat's post titled Of the Rings of PowerPoint and the Third Age. Everyone has been to the type of meeting she describes at the beginning.

Second bit and/or bob: As always, I like to commemorate an anniversary on this day. This is the date my father got back from his last tour in Vietnam. He swears he'll get over the jet lag soon. I'm lucky that he's still with us, but after 40 years, I still remember greeting him at the airport with "We just heard that Da Nang fell." His answer was, "Then that's the end." By the end of April, he was right.

Article which prompted everything below is here.

I'll start by saying that I don't have children. However, like most of us, I was a child at one point, and I remember growing up.

When I was 5 I went to kindergarten. The school, Ashlawn, was three or eight blocks away depending upon the route. My mother walked the three block version, which included a short trip through some public greenery on the edge of the playground, for about a week before school was due to begin. The night before the first day of school, she asked me if I wanted her to come with me. I replied that I was a big girl, and I walked to school by myself.

Part of me regrets not having her walk me to school the first day, mostly because she never offered again. But I also remember how proud of myself I was for being "a big girl."

Mom made certain I knew all the smart things: never get in a car with an adult you don't know, never tell anyone where you live (other than a policeman if you're lost), come straight home. I took these to heart. In late October or early November, it began to rain while I was at school. I had my rain coat, boots, and umbrella, so I was prepared, but no one realized how windy it was going to be or how much the temperature would drop. I began to walk home. My umbrella blew inside out as soon as I got out of the trees and the wind felt like it was going right through me. At the first of two street crossings, a woman stopped and asked if I wanted a lift home. She knew my name, but I didn't recognize her -- not for sure -- so I told her that I didn't take rides from strangers. I completed my route home.

The woman, whose name I don't think I ever knew, had called Mom as soon as she got home. Praised her for training me so well, and warned her that I was still over a block away and very cold and wet. Mom says she debated whether to come get me. She didn't. Instead, when I got home, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup were waiting to warm me from the inside out. Mom was never big on praise, but that day I got a lot of it -- especially for turning down the ride.

We moved to London just before first grade. Because the bus stop was on a busy street near a three lane roundabout, Dad walked me to the bus stop every morning and Mom picked me up from it every afternoon. But there were still things I did on my own, ranging from walking two blocks to the pillar box to post letters to deciding what books I wanted to read. (I attribute being able to read at a 10th grade level at age 7 to the fact that neither parent tried to censor my reading.) Third grade, I was in small town America and walked my little sister to kindergarten every morning. We walked to the bus stop in 4th and 1st grades. We walked to and from school -- a mile each way -- from my 5th - 8th grades. We also had a paper route, went to summer camp for 10 weeks every year, and were allowed to go to the movies by ourselves. With my paper route money, I bought theater tickets. I saw the Mormon Tabernacle Choir standing room only when I was 12. I went to see plays, too.

At 15 I went to boarding school. I found out much later that my parents had signed the permission slip for me to smoke. They figured I might try it some time and didn't want me to get in trouble for it. Beyond that, I was shocked when I wasn't allowed to attend an evening movie or go to a restaurant on my own in downtown Richmond. I found a friend who was willing to see the Olivier Wuthering Heights with me, fortunately, and I had to fight to be allowed to attend the Nutcracker on my own at the Richmond Mosque (theater name, not religious establishment).

In Belgium, at 17, I discovered the Musee du Cinema. I saw Il Trovatore standing room only. Hell, I went to Paris for the day by myself (six hours each way by train which left me about seven hours to explore the city). Not one thing I did there was something I'd done before. But I was trusted to figure out public transportation on my own, trusted to call if I had a problem (pre-cellphone: I think we used tin cans and string back in the Dark ages), and trusted to stick to the schedule I'd discussed.

One of my fellow alumni came up to me at the reunion I attended and said, "I didn't appreciate you enough. You were the only one of us to go out and have adventures." He also thanked me for introducing him to Gilbert & Sullivan which became a lifelong love of his.

The thing that I want to emphasize most out of all this: the crime rate was much, much higher back then. Washington DC was the murder capital of the country when I was going to the theater on my own at age 12. If it was an evening performance, my parents would pick me up afterward, but if it was a matinee, I was trusted to find my way home. I was trusted to buy ingredients for the dinner I was cooking from the time I was 10, even though it involved crossing a major street with no cross walk. That's what I remember most, being trusted. And that's what I worry the kids today aren't getting.

On Sunday, I spent the day in New York. Mostly, I just walked around mid-town, but I had a good vegan brunch at Blossom and dinner after the movie at Patsy's Pizza, although I actually ate pasta.

In the meantime, I met several great people as I was waiting in line (*waves at Sharon, Danielle, Joan, and Susan*). I also figured out a New York apartment for Rachel, Finn, Kurt, and Blaine in the neighborhood for a story.

As for the movie, I thought it was funny, touching, and well-written and acted. There will be spoilers under the cut -- and it's not really a review, more a reflection on my family from events in the movie.
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