Sandwiched In

The Apple Tree Wins

2011-09-01T16:48:00.001-04:00

My husband and daughters and I have been joking for yearsthat we were closely linked with three living entities that were far beyondtheir natural life spans: my mother, our 15-year-old corgi dog, and the appletree in our back yard. We regret that we never took a posed photo of my elderlymother and Frisky seated in the shade of this ancient tree.

We did celebrate my parents’ 45^th weddinganniversary beneath its leafy bower in 2001. We festooned it with streamers.

The very old apple tree is the only one of the three that remains, and only onecrumbling trunk of it. I was out there with the camera yesterday trying tocapture the feelings of loss it produces in me, but I don’t know if Isucceeded.

Of course, people and pets move on, children grow up, youngparents become middle aged empty nesters, old people die, the middle agedpeople prepare to become old people, and so on. I know this. I don’t run awayfrom these truths.

Since 2001, our four parents have died, along with myhusband’s only sibling, his brother. Other friends and relatives have alsopassed away. Dana presented with bipolar disorder in 2003, became a crack addictin 2008, began her recovery in 2009. Marcy is a senior in college, preferringto date girls for the present time.

I am fresh out of dying people and dying dogs. For thisminute in time, my immediate family is in good shape. My 12-step program tellsme to keep the focus on myself, and here’s my chance!

Since my mother died on May 14, here’s what I’ve been doing:

Marcy came home from college three days before my motherpassed. All of her stuff got dumped in the dining room where it stayed until after the funeral. She was home for aboutsix weeks before leaving July 2 for a seven-week art history internship inFrance. She was nervous and excited and spent her time tanning and seeingfriends. Phil spent ten days away from home, teaching in a writing program.

Dana had a cat crisis going on just as my mother died. Shehad taken in a friend’s two young female sister cats—both un-spayed, one ofthem pregnant. This did not sit well with her established cat, Shadow, and itbecame a disturbing problem Dana could not solve on her own. We called everyshelter in the state to no avail, as apparently late May is “kitten season.”Ultimately we placed them in a Rhode Island shelter (for a $100 donation) wherea family friend volunteers. Marcy, Dana, two wailing cats, and I drove threehours to RI. That was a hoot.

Phil and I drove to Cape Cod for a long weekend in June,which was lovely. We had terrific weather. We ate seafood and walked many miles.

I gave away a lot of the remaining supplies from my mother’scare—adult diapers, wound bandages, bed pads—to our hospice agency. I movedMarcy’s college stuff to thebasement. I had a cleaning service come and do a “deep cleaning” of all thewalls and floors and windows.

I still have bags and bags of mom’s clothes to give away. Ihaven’t been able to face that yet.

The month of July was, by comparison, peaceful. We took somenice drives, went out to shows and dinner with friends, ate lots of local farmproduce. Then the weather turned very hot, and we stayed in the house to hidefrom the heat. I worked on filling out the probate paperwork for my mother’sestate.

Phil had a book come out in mid-July to appreciative but very quiet response, so there was disappointment in the air. The novel tells adifficult story set in a time in American history that is painful to recall,and unless it gets tapped for an award, people are not going to be standing inline to get a copy. And so the promotion was tentative, and reviews weresubtle. The discontented author licked his wounds and soldiered on with new and ongoing projects.

August 10 we flew to France to visit Marcy for seven days.The weather was delightfully cool there. We saw many lovely sights. I had really balkedat going, not being in the mood to plan a trip, but with the help of a travelagent friend, we booked it and went and are glad we did. We rented a car andenjoyed driving around the Picardie region. We ate lots of delicious food andsaw ancient villages and cathedrals, went into Paris twice. We had the pleasureof seeing Marcy in her element, giving English language tours of an impressiveart collection, functioning with grace and charm so far from home. Marcy’sFrench came back to her and she was speaking like a native when we got there;people often complimented her accent. She made good friends and lots ofimportant career connections.

Phil and I returned on Aug 17. Before she left, Marcy gotsick with some nasty lower intestine bug. She moaned at me via Skype for threedays, but she came home as planned on Aug 20. We got her rested up, doctored up,antibiotics, Gatorade, haircut, dentist, psychiatrist check-in, dermatologist,re-packed and off she went back to school on Aug 24!

Hurricane Irene kept us indoors and on edge all lastweekend. Our property fared well, but Dana lost power and came to stay with us.Friends in town without power came to our house to shower, eat, and chargeelectronics.

Dana regained power last night and slept at home. Her stay withus was no trouble, but only today has true peace come back to our house!

All the while, in between the comings and going andcatastrophes and fun, I have been grieving. I am surprised by how involuntarythe grief process is. I thought I would mostly feel relief once my motherpassed away. Instead, I have been struck off and on with a heavy feeling in mychest, almost as if the wind has been knocked out of me. I often wish I couldjust have a good cry and get it all out. I feel almost sleepy or foggy headed.

A friend who lost her dad as a teenager said that little by little, she feltherself “wake up” as time went on, and I find that to be a useful way ofthinking of it. Every week I feel a little more “awake,” and now I feel that Iam past a good part of it. But at the same time, now that events have finallysettled down a bit, I have more time to sit and think about my mother andponder her life and death, as well as our relationship and my role in the lastyears of her life. This leads to more grieving. It will take time. I am notsurprised.

Today is the two-year anniversary of my mother-in-law’spassing. You may wish to go back and read the account. (I must figure out howto link back to previous blog posts.) We found her a year ago tomorrow.

As you may recall, I have been transcribing a collection ofletters and documents my mother saved that tell her life story. I will takeanother six months to continue gathering, annotating, and interpreting thisstory. I am seeking a way to bear witness to it, as well as a way to lay it torest. My sense is that by understanding her story I am provided clues tounderstanding myself and my place in my family tree, so to speak. Thanks for reading.

May a Choir of Angels Receive You

2011-05-14T17:06:00.002-04:00

My mom died this morning at about 3:15, just a few hours past her 94th birthday, which was yesterday.

In paradisum deducant te Angeli:

in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres,

et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem.

Chorus Angelorum te suscipiat,

et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.

May Angels lead you into paradise;

may the Martyrs receive you at your coming

and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem.

May a choir of Angels receive you,

and with Lazarus, who once was poor, may you have eternal rest.

Sail On!

2011-05-07T17:39:00.007-04:00

They almost sent Mom back home to us from the hospice hospital. She had stabilized and we had two discharge planning meetings. Equipment was slated to be brought back to my house. And then she destabilized and began to fail a bit, and they could justify keeping her.

She has been there for 8 weeks now, and the end of this long journey is in sight. She is taking almost nothing by mouth any more. They are keeping her very calm and comfortable--you may remember that her agitation was the biggest challenge to keeping her home. And even as she has been getting increasingly weak, she would still become very agitated. They have been giving her Haldol to control her mood.

I saw her yesterday and fed her a tiny bit of chocolate ice cream that I brought from home. Even though she keeps her eyes closed and looks to be asleep, she does respond appropriately. "Delicious," she said, and then "that's enough."

I spoke into her good ear, telling her that the dogwood is in bloom and everything is in flower and so green. I told her that moving to the town where I grew up was "a really good idea." "That was a very smart thing to do," I told her in the hope of validating her impulse of self preservation way back in 1933 when she left home as a 16 year old. She got away from her dysfunctional family, and by so doing, she recreated herself, gained financial footing, and finally at the age of 40 had me, her first and only child, and gave me a beautiful life of books and music and education and an appreciation of the natural world and family security.

I'll be writing her obituary soon, along with some words to be read at her funeral. I've been piecing together her life story from a trove of letters, diaries, and documents that she has carefully preserved all these years. Her precious life story, waiting for someone to comprehend and appreciate it: what she went through, what she overcame, how she triumphed through her iron will. Talk about forcing solutions! Her entire existence was one big forced solution to the problems she left behind when she went to live in with another family as a "house girl" and never lived home with her family again--a family that was in chaos and crisis due to pressures brought on by the Great Depression and a mentally unbalanced mother, who was soon to be institutionalized and live the rest of her life--over 25 years--in a state mental hospital.

From 16 on my mother figured it out as she went along, worked with what she had, took things as they came, and never gave up or surrendered to circumstances.

I am struggling to know what to say as a eulogy. She wouldn't want her long difficult history exposed for everyone to see. Maybe the final picture that she owned fair and square: of a stable home, marriage in the Church, a well cared for, legitimate child, financial security--that's what she fought for and won. That's what she would want celebrated.

One evening, before she went to the hospice, I was reviewing her many successes for her and reviewing her all she had accomplished financially. She was addled and in and out of touch with reality, but I think I was clear. As a way of summing up, I knew she would like it, so I said something like, "that's a lot of berries to pick!" and she smiled a big, wry smile. There were times during her childhood when the family lived on the pennies she and her sisters earned by picking and selling berries.

It's quiet here at my house. Dana is still doing very well, living alone in the house of my late mother-in-law. She has, with her doctor's knowledge, gone off her Lithium and Topomax and is on just Celexa (having switched off the Lexapro about a month ago). She seems to be okay. I am encouraged that she has taken this step on her own, taking charge of her health in this way. We don't see her or hear from her every day, and at times we have seen her somewhat agitated with a frustrating situation, but she seems to figure it out. We all take it one day at a time and don't look too far down the road, because there's no telling what's ahead.

Marcy finishes up her college year on Wednesday--then she will be a senior! One of us will go up and help move her things home. She'll be home for the rest of May and all of June and then she will go to France for 8 weeks on a fellowship she received through her college. We'll figure that all out next week; she is in charge of the details.

Phil is very busy writing and revising books he has contracted. A book he has coming out this summer and was apprehensive about has garnered some nice pre-publication praise, so he is encouraged.

I have been transcribing this archive of my mother's letters and putting them in chronological order, watching the story unfold. There are so many dramatic and salacious elements! I'm also researching the various characters on a well-know family research site that I have joined for a year--you know the one (I don't want to draw links to my blog, so I won't say their name out loud). It is worth it; I have found all sorts of missing pieces. It will lead me where it wants to go.

I also have had what are to me an earth-shattering, life changing health discoveries. If you've been reading for a while you know I've been suffering with all-over aches and pains, stiff joints, numb arms, etc., and last year I spent a fortune on MRIs and neurologists. The other day I saw my doctor and showed him my knuckles, which are getting weirdly lumpy and painful now. He tells me to take 3 ibuprofen at once, per day and says he'll check my uric acid levels. I know uric acid implies GOUT! an old fat, drunk man's disease of the big toe. I go home, I take the ibuprofen (he says 3 tablets is "prescription strength"), and my pain melts away so significantly that I feel as though I've had a drink. Euphoric, I look up uric acid on WebMD. Almost everything I am taking in terms of supplements--FISH OIL, EXTRA NIACIN in a B vitamin complex, and DAILY ASPIRIN THERAPY--plus my medical chronic condition of HYPOTHYROIDISM all cause retention of uric acid! Also OATMEAL, which I eat by the bushel because I believe it to be good for me, which it would normally be, except for all these other factors! Unbelievable! Have I been giving myself gout? I cannot wait to get the results of the blood work, let me tell you. Holy Kamoly. Freaking gout. If that is what has been making me miserable for all this time, wow. Sardines, mackerel, and anchovies are the fish to avoid if you have a uric acid problem. Guess what's in the fish oil capsules I take 2 or 3 times every day? Exactly. If changing around a few things helps me feel better, I'm all for it--but how do things get this far without somebody noticing that if I'm hypothyroid I probably shouldn't be pounding fish oil and B vitamins?????

Mom will probably make it to her 94th birthday on Friday, May 13. That tough old heart, beating since 1917. She is my Ship of State!

2011-03-28T11:09:00.001-04:00

Everybody Limbo!

2011-03-25T14:35:00.005-04:00

Hi. We went to Cape Cod last week. We rented a condo from a friend of a friend. Stayed last Wednesday through Saturday. Kip came too. Phil and I are both out of sorts, so it was not as fun as it might have been under different circumstances. The weather on St Patrick's day, however, was unusually pleasant. We were in P-town, and most everything was closed, but we had some nice walks. Saw some beautiful seashore.

It's still difficult for me to relax or think clearly. I have the feeling that the Hospice folks are going to call any minute and say my mother is going to be returned to our house. However, they are not talking about discharge, and so I have stopped talking about discharge. I am happy to let them keep her as long as it is appropriate. Georgia, the Hospice nurse who was coming to us weekly here, advises me to stop asking about it.

The hospital nurse just called, actually, to give me an update. She said mom was having some trouble breathing, so they used the nebulizer and they wanted to keep me informed. I guess I could go see her, but I'm trying to reclaim my life here. She is very well cared for and very comfortable. I wonder how her pressure sores are doing. She didn't know me at all the last time I was there.

The equipment we had here at the house--provided by Hospice--was picked up today by the supplier: the hospital bed, oxygen, nebulizer, and wheelchair. They can always bring it back if she is sent home. We're not bringing the dining room furniture out of storage right away. We still have a tall chest of drawers in the room for her clothes and supplies, and that would have to be relocated. One thing at a time.

I spoke about Purgatory a couple of weeks ago. Now we seem to be in Limbo.

Limbo [lim-boh]
--noun, plural -bos
1. (often initial capital letter) Roman Catholic Theology. a region on the border of hell or heaven, serving as the abode after death of unbaptized infants (limbo of infants) and of the righteous who died before the coming of christ (limbo of the fathers or limbo of the patriarchs).
2. a place or state of oblivion to which persons or things are regarded as being relegated when cast aside, forgotten, past, or out of date: My youthful hopes are in the limbo of lost dreams.
3. an intermediate, transitional, or midway state or place.
4. a place or state of imprisonment or confinement.

It's difficult to look too far ahead or make plans, because we don't know what will happen with mom. We had some happy news on Monday that Marcy has been chosen for a funded summer internship at a museum in France. We are all ecstatic. But can we say for sure that we will go visit her while she's there? I guess it would be possible to line up whatever help we would need if my mother were returned to us by summer and we wanted to go away. It's tricky, however, to have any real sense of what we will be able to do beyond tomorrow.

Side Effects

2011-03-13T11:44:00.005-04:00

What are your experiences with the side effects of Risperidone?

SOMETIMES Risperidone can cause edema of the face, lips, and hands. This is what I learned this past week when mom was transported to the local hospice hospital.

My mother's face had become distended with edema on the side she slept on. She was waking up with her right eye lids swollen shut, looking like a hamburger bun. This in addition to a pouch of water that had formed under her chin on that side. Her left hand was also a balloon of water. I gave her Lasix for three days and called my hospice nurse to express my frustration.

I feel I have handled a lot of very unpleasant/upsetting situations and symptoms, muscle strain, less than adequate sleep, loss of personal space in taking care of mom at home. Seeing her face deformed by edema, however, was deeply disturbing to me. I felt like I might faint or weep or both.

My hospice nurse spoke with her supervisor and brought about a stay in the hospice hospital. They all believed the edema was related to kidney failure or something that indicated a terminal condition.

They came and took her on Tuesday afternoon. I went with her in the ambulance. I recounted her history with the medical professional, and it became clear that the edema coincided with the increase of Risperidone, which we were giving her for psychosis.

Long story made short, they stopped the Risperidone and the Celebrex, and ALL the edema went away within twelve hours. All of it. They gave her Chloral Hydrate for sleep, and she slept flat on her back, no groaning, no agitation of any kind. I learned a new word: flexion. She had been curled forward, unable to straighten her spine--I did not know this was also a side effect of the medication.

A day or so later, when she woke up from the Chloral Hydrate, she began her usual behaviors of groaning, exaggerated panic breathing, tearing at her clothing and bedding. They gave her Haldol, and she seems to be tolerating it well. The nurse just called with an update, and mom has been talking and asking questions. Tomorrow the physical therapist will evaluate her for walking.

We're thinking they may be sending her home at some point because there is no active disease, and she needs only maintenance care. If they adjust her meds so that she will sleep at night without side effects, we can handle that. We don't want to, but we can.

There was a suggestion of a noise in one of her lungs that might indicate that she had aspirated some food on her second night there, when she was still quiet and they could clearly listen to her breathing. Now that she's groaning again, it's difficult to hear. If there was a noise and it should lead to infection, we would let it progress and let it lead to her death.

But today she's awake and asking questions.

If they do decide she is no longer appropriate for terminal hospitalization, there will be a meeting with all the doctors and social workers and all, so it won't be a quick call to "come pick her up!" We will have a day or two of notice.

We are hoping to run up to the Cape for a few days while we have the freedom. I don't know if that will be possible, however, because Phil has to travel for business tonight through Tuesday. It would be nice if we could go today, but that seems unlikely. I hope they keep her long enough for us to leave on Wednesday and stay until next Sunday.

Marcy is home on spring break and could go with us for a few days. We would bring the dog. We're hoping to stay in a condo in owned and rented by friends, but I haven't called them yet.

It has been nice to have time to ourselves, to sleep, to read, to relax. Slightly warmer weather and some signs of spring--robins, disappearing snow, sprouting bulbs--give me hope. Kip got his first run on the beach on Friday. I have moved my "office" to Marcy's former room (she now sleeps in Dana's former room when she's not at school), and am approaching some personal writing projects. Today we'll be moving the twin bed out of my office to "Dana's house," my late m-i-l's house, so that Marcy can stay there when she wants (until we find Dana a rent-paying housemate). Dana continues to do very well with her recovery and adaptation to independence. Bulbs are sprouting there, too.

Glory Be

2011-02-22T09:54:00.004-05:00

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

You don't hear much about Purgatory anymore. As I recall, I was taught in Catholic school that saying this prayer released one soul from Purgatory. Or is it that a certain number of repetitions could free one particular person? I don't remember if the petitioner can specify a deceased loved one or not.

According to Roman Catholic doctrine, purgatory is a place or condition of temporary punishment meant to cleanse those destined for heaven but not quite ready for it. According to this doctrine, faith in Christ and acceptance of his saving grace gains one forgiveness for their sins, but not release from the punishment due for them. Thus in purgatory one is purged of their imperfections, much as silver in the fire sheds its impurities.

I'm thinking about Purgatory these days, because I feel this best describes my current situation of caring for my almost 94-year old mother in my home. I feel very trapped, in that I can't make any plans to go anywhere for more than a couple of hours, and my time at home is encumbered by the constant awareness of being responsible for a helpless human, so that I am continually distracted and am unable to focus on anything else, especially myself. And she groans all day.

It builds character, I keep telling myself. I am not doing a good job of not whining. Lots of people do this, but not people in my immediate culture and age cohort. Most people depend on nursing homes to care for their aging family members, and my mother was in a home until Dec 1 2010.

But it feels like punishment. In many ways, I am happy to be punished: for my shortcomings as a parent and a person. In many ways, I am happy to provide this care to my mother who deserves it, having suffered herself for much of her life. And she wants to be cared for. My mother-in-law would never have wanted me and Phil doing the personal care we do for my mother. She expressed her desire to die before anyone had to help her in this way--family or stranger.

So that's where I am now, to my mind. In Purgatory with a capital P. I'm loving the picture up top here. One day and angel will lift me out as they lift my mother out of her situation. See, this is how selfish I am. My mother is dying, and it's all about me and my suffering. Anyhow, there it is. Maybe it will give another caregiver permission to vent.

I'm thinking of doing a number of short blog posts about the various aspects of caregiving. For example, you haven't lived until you've brushed your mother's teeth for her. Perhaps because I'm focused on her face as I do it, and it is a slow, meditative process, it has more meaning for me than cleaning her lower regions. (Her bedsores are all healed, by the way, thanks to careful cleaning and Desitin barrier cream.)

My blogging time is coming to a close, so I'll have to sign off, but I hope to follow with some short posts in the next few days. Perhaps you'll pray a "Glory Be" for me, to help get me and mom out of purgatory.

Perchance to Dream

2011-01-29T13:52:00.006-05:00

Mom is chugging along. She is better than she was when she came home to us (12/1/2010). But she is still failing, and we don’t know what the future holds. After two months with live-in help, Phil and I have decided we can handle it ourselves with the help of a part-time hospice aide. So our live-in aide, Esther, left Thursday (1/27). We are happy to have our house to ourselves (even if my mother is in it, too). Her care is very basic and routine, and she is too out of it to cause too much trouble--although nights are tricky.

Here are her regular meds: levothyroxin; .5 mg Risperidone at 7 am and 12 pm and 1 mg at 5:30pm with 1/2 Lunesta tablet; cymbalta; celebrex.

PRN meds are: lasix, glycopyrrolate, morphine solution.

Nights: She slept quietly last night, but the night before she was agitated and loudly groaning and gasping all night long. Honestly, I don't know how a body can keep that up for ten hours. I try adjusting pillows and rubbing her back, sometimes I give her her tiny dose of morphine. When she is calm, she breathes perfectly. Her agitation is mental, she is responding to a dream world of unhappy situations. I can't predict how it will go from one night to the next. I don't know what was different about yesterday that led to a good night's sleep as opposed to the previous night's misery. It is mental torture for her when she is miserable, and of course it is emotionally draining for us to listen to her suffer.

Dana is coming to sit with her tonight when we go to dinner at the home of friends. I don't know if Mom will be quiet or crazy, so it makes it difficult to make plans.

Our Hospice agency offers a 5-day stay in their hospital facility, and we are going to take advantage of that mid-Feb, if space permits. They will actually come and take Mom away for five days. Phil and I will have a little get-away to a B&B in Massachusetts that we enjoy, and then have some quiet time at home before they bring her back. Something to look forward to (the time away).

Marcy will be 21 on 2/10! I just can’t believe it. She is thriving up there at college, despite the weather. Singing, learning, having fun being a young adult. Good grades from first semester.

Dana continues to thrive in her new home with her kitty, Shadow. She is feeling really well lately and is talking about looking for a full-time job. It’s wonderful to see her healthy and enjoying life.

Phil enjoyed his ten days away teaching as part of a university masters of fine arts writing program. He made lots of friends and honed his teaching skills. He’s hoping to be asked back and to find opportunities in other MFA programs.

Snow continues to be part of our lives. Kip can't run freely. Every time we get it cleaned up, another storm comes through. There is no where left to pile what we shovel, and so on. Friends are coping with ice dams in their house gutters that result in water leaking into the houses. Phil actually slipped and fell in the driveway last week, hitting his head. He is okay, nothing broken, no bleeding on the brain. I'm trying very hard not to fall and break a hip or arm, and so on and so on. More snow predicted for this evening! It's so unusual for us to get this much snow; we're breaking all the records for the area. Blah blah blah!

A Fine Time!

2011-01-15T11:21:00.005-05:00

It's no wonder the song "You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille!" keeps playing in my head! Phil is away on business, and I am visited by TWO BLIZZARDS! Not one, but two. These atop the existing snow from the day-after-Christmas blizzard. I chuckled and began my first solo stint as shoveler, but I was not at all amused when we were hit again with a full two feet of snow this past Wednesday!

Clever me, I had left the shovel alongside the driveway, about 20 feet from the door. ALL the doors were blocked with snow! I had to go out through the garage--thank goodness it is attached to the house--and bring out our tiny, electric snow-blower to get to the shovel!

Long story short, it took me over an hour to clear one door and step and make a path to the all-important garbage can! I did not want to be snow-bound in a house with an elderly parent who uses adult diapers! Dear me!

Then to dig some pathways for poor Kip to find a bit of earth to bless. It took him a while to get used to it, but all went as hoped.

Too much snow! Not enough husband! Luckily, a neighbor with a gargantuan snow-blower took pity on me and cleared my entire driveway, gratis. Such a relief.

I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if my mother decided to go on to her heavenly reward and the undertaker couldn't get to the house to collect her mortal remains? Really, any ideas? I suppose the town would come plow us out or someone would come do something to make access. The good thing about this stage of caregiving is that we are not concerned about receiving emergency medical technicians--at least not for mother.

Well, I got rather antsy and had a bit of cabin fever, being snowed in with my mother, who cannot converse, and our live-in aide, who does not speak sufficient English to converse (although I have been doing a bit of ESL tutoring with her, and I am learning a few Swahili phrases). Kip is of limited entertainment value. So I ventured out on Thursday with my 4-wheel drive. Dana was not working, so I picked her up and we went for lunch and then to the craft store. She is doing so well. She is taking a hard look at the big picture and attempting to set goals for herself. I am working hard to let her be in charge of her various recoveries: from mental illness, from crack addiction, from Hep-C, and (one day) from her marijuana addiction. Al-Anon is invaluable in these affairs, as no one can recover for someone else. One must want to recover and want it for one's self in order for it to last.

Our six-month hiatus from dealing with her Hep-C came to an end last week. We saw the liver specialist and she had blood drawn. The doctor must consult with her psychiatrist to determine if she can begin the six-month course of Interferon injections and an oral med. The side effect of the treatment is severe psychological distress that makes stable people want to kill themselves, so Dana must proceed with caution. She has settled into her new home and is taking her psych meds as directed. She was feeling depressed, so the psychiatrist raised her Lexapro, which made her a little edgy, but she caught up to it and is feeling better.

Dana's weight is still a problem, and she has put on even more weight since her last liver appointment. The doctor looked dismayed and said it would have an adverse effect on her condition; he urged her to try to not gain any more. She heard this as, "try to not get any fatter." As you will recall, this weight gain began in rehab at the end of 2009, when 5'6" Dana went from a healthy 135 pounds to 195ish over the course of last year. Getting back to normal weight is one of her goals, but this is easier said than done.

Marcy and the girl she was dating since August broke up at the beginning of the new year. I have been unable to address this here, which you know if you follow me. It seemed so inauthentic and such a grab for attention. I feel awful not being more supportive, but it just seemed completely false to me. The women's college she attends is, to put it mildly, very supportive of alternative lifestyles, and so it was "no big deal" to Marcy. It was inevitable, I suppose, that she would try this out over the course of her four years there. We'll have to see what happens next. She seems relieved that it has ended, not at all sad.

I think we may (knock on wood) have mom's meds in the right place now in terms of allowing her to go quietly to sleep in the evening and stay that way all night--sometimes on her side, which is terrific for her pressure sores.

Every evening she would go into an irrational panic when we got her into bed, and she would begin exaggerated breathing and work herself into a frenzy that is emotionally painful for her, and it upset the entire household. Waiting until the panic began was our first mistake. Nothing, not morphine, not Lunesta, not Xanax, nothing could bring her down once it started. We had been ramping up Risperidone (.5 mg 3x day), but that was not doing it either.

What we do now is 1 mg of Risperidone plus 1/2 of one 1 mg Lunesta tablet AT 5pm, before she gets anywhere near the bed. Then she has a little supper, we wash her up, and she is sagging and ready to fall asleep by 6:45.

The full Lunesta tablet was knocking her out for the entire next day. She would just start to perk up around 4, and it was time to start thinking about putting her to bed again. So I tried the half tablet, and it is just enough.

My aide is with us for the entire month of January, and it is a great comfort to have her, especially while Phil is gone for these ten days. We think, however, that we will forego live-in help beginning in February and have an agency send us someone a few hours per day.

On the few evenings we have had gaps in overnight help, the feeling of having our house to ourselves was so freeing, that we would rather do a little more to have that freedom all the time. Phil and I can transfer mom from chair to bed to commode, etc., and I am over the unpleasantness of the toileting tasks. It was great to have the security of professional help for the first couple of months, but we think we are ready to do it with minimal help now.

This will ease expenses, as well, and we can use some of mom's income to have some housecleaning done and to pay for diapers, etc., and the additional electric and heating costs. Fingers crossed.

Hospice help continues to be invaluable. Our weekly nurse visits are a lifeline for me in terms of gaining confidence and learning how to tweak meds and treat pressure sores, and so on. Having the social worker sit and listen to my woes and encourage me to continue on is a wonderful source of comfort in the midst of a very stressful time.

Thanks for reading. All the best to you and yours,

Sandy

Dec 29, 2010

2010-12-29T11:07:00.005-05:00

Here’s photogenic Mom, sitting in her wheelchair near the Christmas tree in the living room. Phil set up the card table to hold magazines or cards for her to look at; her eyesight is very limited, so she can’t do much with reading material, unfortunately. She did spend some time on Monday sorting through the Christmas cards and making little notations on them with a pen. A life-long journal keeper, Mom must miss her daily paperwork and summing up of the day’s events.

Marcy has been nursing a cold since she arrived home from college for Christmas break, but because she has been careful, the rest of us have avoided contagion. She’s beginning her applications for summer internships at a number of museums throughout the country. Interested in the education aspect of museums, Marcy is pursing a double major in art history and English. Shoes are what she wanted most for Christmas! Santa was happy to oblige with two pairs.

Yesterday we celebrated Dana’s 25th birthday! In the afternoon, she and I went shopping and boots and a warm winter top were purchased for her. In the evening, the family plus Eric dined in Japanese tradition at a local restaurant, where the birthday girl indulged in sushi and a California roll followed by chocolate lava cake and cappuccino??!! The world is our culinary village, it seems!

Mom's gone back to bed to rest her back. We have her lay on her side to take the pressure off her bottom, where the skin is broken again. I dress the breaks twice a day with an antiseptic spray wash, a prescription ointment call Solocite, and adhesive gauze pads. She has an air mattress, but we are having a difficult time getting this one area to heal.

She is also having trouble with excess mucus, and I give her the occasional Glycopyrrolate for that when she sounds overly gurgly in her breathing. Since her difficulty swallowing last week, we have discontinued the Lasix diuretic, because we didn't want her to become dehydrated. The increased gurgling may be fluids building up again? Is that fluid mucus? I thought it was more watery. In any event, we are keeping an eye on her ankles and hands for swelling, and thus far there isn't any.

Gotta go. She's calling for "Mother," although when I checked two minutes ago she said she wanted to be left alone. This is how quickly it changes. I took this photo about 15 minutes ago. She used the commode and we put her in bed and covered her up. Now she's gurgling and calling for someone who is not here, confused. I will sit with her for a while and see if she can doze off.

Best wishes to all for health and happiness in 2011.

A Very Hospice Christmas!

2010-12-27T10:20:00.002-05:00

Dana and Mom on Christmas Eve 2010

Here's a happy scene! My two "qualifiers"! Dana, the former crack addict, and Mom, the former nursing home patient! Happy, clean, and safely eating pierogies on Christmas eve! We dined in the kitchen because, as you will recall, the dining room has been transformed to a hospice bedroom for Mom.

We had a very good Christmas. We did have our weekend helper, Lindi, with us, but she arrived in late afternoon on Friday and our weekday helper, Esther, had left us at 9:30 that morning. So Phil and I managed to manage very well with Mom all by ourselves! Including two (count 'em, 2) BMs! We did so well that when Esther texted me to say she wouldn't be able to come back to us until Monday, we let Lindi go home on Sunday and took care of Mom by ourselves over night and got her up successfully this morning. We're beginning to think we could do weekends on our own. All this after 25 days of having Mom home with us.

I've got to run, but know that we had a happy weekend and are set for the blizzard that has arrived. Presents were enjoyed on Christmas morning. Dana called to say she has gotten her car into the garage at her new place and is ready for the snow. She and her kitty woke up together for Christmas morning and then she came home here for breakfast and gifts.

Thanks for thinking of us. The universe is providing for us all.

She's Back!

2010-12-18T16:27:00.003-05:00

On Thursday I didn't think mom would make it to Christmas. On Friday she was quite perky. All the swelling in her mouth is gone. Georgia, our Hospice nurse, was dumbfounded. Mother can swallow again. My aide and I got her cleaned up, put her in the wheelchair, and I fed her a scramble egg at the kitchen table. I sat her in the living room with me and attempted to look at my computer. I hear the sound of soft cloth moving and turn around and she was working her legs off the foot holder and thinking about getting up. She's also very persnickety and full of snippy retorts to everything.

She is, however, not herself. I do think she had a stroke when she had an allergic reaction to the trazadone I was told to give her when she got hysterical in the evening. This was the pattern: she would start working up into agitation about 3pm, vocalizing through her exhalations. By 7pm she would be pulling at her clothing and saying "help me, help me," in a panic about her breathing.

Lunesta did nothing at all to her. She began a course of increased Risperdal dosage last weekend--.5 mg four times a day, and it helped, but we would still leave her in an agitated state each night after we had done all we could for her.

So on Tuesday night I tried the Trazadone, and it did nothing except cause an allergic reaction. Wednesday at noon, Phil and I popped over to the mall to do a bit of Christmas shopping. When we came back, her lips were enormous and she couldn't swallow. The doctor advised Benadryl, but the lips and mouth stayed the same.

Thursday she still had the swollen lips and ate and drank nothing all day. I continued the Benadryl every six hours.

Friday morning her face was back to normal. But her mind is essentially gone. She is awake and very busy, but she is not in touch with reality. She will respond to questions, but not always appropriately. We can't leave her alone in the wheelchair for a minute, because she tries to get up on her own, and she hasn't been able to stand unaided for almost two years.

Today she has not napped at all. We had her up in the wheelchair until 1 and then put her in the bed for a nap, but she has been busy pulling the sheets and blankets off the mattress and I just saw her biting the sheet like it was something to eat.

I got two scrambled eggs and some coffee into her this morning, but she refused lunch. Thank goodness she will take her pills with applesauce, because that's all she'll eat, and a little water and juice, but not much.

Of course, we take this day by day. I guess she can go quite a while on an egg and some applesauce. Having had a good appetite up until Tuesday, she is not thin--maybe 150 lbs.

So that's the update. The bed is serving as a playpen at present, because she can't get out of it and there's nothing in it to hurt her. So we can leave the room and know she's safe.

I've taken on the care of the bed sores. It was a very fast conversion for me to go from thinking the home health aide would take care of all the diapering to getting up close and personal with my mother's rump, carefully cleaning the sores, applying Solocite ointment and Duoderm skin patches. It is a lot like caring for an infant and for some reason I don't mind doing it. Even though my mother and I always had a strained relationship and I have no fond memories of a wonderful, loving mother. She's still my mother, and she is helpless, and I am her only child.

Mom at Home

2010-12-16T16:33:00.002-05:00

Mom in 1995

It was all going so swimmingly. Mom was moved to my home on Dec 1. We made her very comfortable, sang to her, fed her yummy foods. Now it has all changed. Something has changed inside her. She can no longer control her face, mouth and throat. She can't really swallow. Food stays in her mouth and then comes out again. Today she has eaten about two tablespoons full of baby food and almost no water. She was able to take a couple of key pills, but not all she is prescribed. She responds in a very limited way to questions, nodding or saying yes or no in a choked, munchkin voice.

Our dog, Kip, seems extra worried around her. I wonder if he senses something.

Monday night she dined on broiled lamb chops, brussel sprouts, and potatoes. Today she has had essentially nothing and is not asking for food.

Hospice and doctor are aware. Our Hospice nurse, Georgia, came this morning and helped us toilet her and change the skin patches on her bedsores. It's not going so well anymore. I really don't want to watch her starve.

Activities for Elders with Limited Abilities

2010-12-12T16:53:00.003-05:00

Anyone out there have ideas for an activity for my bedridden mother? She is 93 1/2 years old and her eyesight is very limited. Her hands shake too much for drawing or painting and she has moderate dementia. Right now I have her sorting playing cards into suits; she's only somewhat involved. We have some wooden blocks I will go dig out when I get a chance. I tried letter tiles, but she wasn't having it. We sing sometimes. We watched/listened some old Lawrence Welk videos on YouTube, but she tired after two. Ideas?

Caring for Mom at Home

2010-12-07T10:24:00.001-05:00

Lindi, Mom, Me, and Kip! Leading experts in home hospice care!

Caring for Mom at Home

2010-12-03T20:18:00.006-05:00

I've shown you my dining room before. Here it is the day after Thanksgiving.

Then we dismantled the table and put it away with the chairs. We moved the buffet into the living room.

On Nov. 30, equipment for my mom was delivered.

This is for lifting her.

We made a cozy little room for her.

On Dec. 1, mom was transported via wheelchair car from the nursing home to my home.

It's a little like bringing a baby home from the hospital, only I have live-in help. And the baby weighs 150 lbs. Hospice has been a great help in coaching us, and they sent a nurse right away last night when mom was having a bit of respiratory distress. She called the doctor and he tweaked the meds a bit and it helped. This morning the Hospice social worker came and listened to me tell my tales of woe, and it was very comforting to be heard and validated. Then another nurse came to re-check mom. It's wonderful to know that they are a phone call away.

Caring for a bedridden 93 1/2 year old is a lot of work. It takes two people to get her cleaned and changed--she has to be rolled from side to side to remove the old brief and slide the new one under her.

Her oxygen pump is loud, and it is on almost continually. There are a lot of medications to keep track of and administer. I make little meals for her and help her eat them. She needs lots of liquids, mixed with a thickener to aid swallowing.

Esther, who helps me, is very good. She is well trained and very energetic, knows what to do and how to keep everything very clean. She is from Tanzania and a Swahili speaker! I am going to help her a little with her English, as I used to be an ESL volunteer tutor. She is working out very well.

Lindi, from Botswana, is here now for the weekend. She is less expert than Esther, but she knows what to do. I am taking everything one day at a time.

Sunday is our wedding anniversary. Once Esther gets back, I think we will be able to go out for dinner to celebrate.

I am very tired! And my arm and back muscles are talking to me. No injuries yet, thank goodness. And I have been able to sleep well these past two nights since mom arrived. I am hopeful that we will get into a routine next week and I'll be able to return to my usual routine of Al-Anon meetings and Yogalates.

We put up the Christmas tree Thanksgiving weekend, because Marcy and Sabine were here. It looks nice. Dana is nesting in her new home and enjoying her little cat, Shadow. Poor Kip has been very shaken up by the changes in the house and all the new people coming and going. He actually snapped a the mail carrier today! It's a lot for a confused little dog.

So that's where I am today. Tired but blogging. I am content. It's a lot of work, but I'm glad to have the chance to do it. Thanks in advance for any prayers you might send my way.

Thank You

2010-11-26T19:19:00.006-05:00

Indian Corn on my kitchen door just makes me smile.

Thank you, everyone, for the good holiday wishes. We are SO MUCH better than we were a year ago! Dana is really doing well with her recovery and in her new home (my late mother-in-law's house); she has a little cat, Shadow, on whom she dotes. Boyfriend, Eric, is still proving a very good influence and helps her out of mood dips, as she helps him in many ways. She is having fun nesting and is stepping up to the challenge of living on her own. Eric visits but does not live there, and we are actively searching for a rent-paying housemate for Dana.

I did cook yesterday, and it was scrumptious. Marcy's former roommate, Sabine (both have single rooms now), whose home is San Francisco, is staying with us for the break, and Eric joined us for dinner, as well. So we were six. Very nice. I found a nice recipe for vegetarian gravy for Marcy.

Fiddling with a new setting on my camera, I made my buffet look

like a magazine! Isn't this pretty?

Marcy is having a good year. She's doing a lot of growing up this year and I can feel her separating from us in a healthy way. She still loves us and home, but increasingly she functions as an independent being. She will be interning at an art licensing firm in Manhattan for three weeks in January during the winter break. She's looking for a week-night place to stay, if you know anyone on the upper West Side with an available couch and a welcoming nature, please let us know.

Phil has secured a teaching position for the spring semester in an MFA program, where he will share his knowledge of writing for children. He is very excited and hopes it will lead to more of this type of teaching, feeling it would make a nice complement to writing. It is a low-residency program, and he will live there for nine days or so in January and then follow three students and their writing via email.

On the home front, we are bracing for our new tenant(s): my mother (and a live-in caregiver). Now that Dana has moved out and become somewhat stable [please cross fingers here], I want to give my mother the personal care she deserves at 93 1/2. As you can imagine, life in a nursing home is often unpleasant. I'll be happy to make her more comfortable and content here. This begins next Wednesday, Dec. 1. I started her on Hospice care in September, and they are facilitating the move by providing all the equipment we'll need, etc. Her condition has deteriorated to the point that she is bedridden, but she has a strong will, so we have no way of knowing how much longer she will live--it could be a year or more. Her mind plays some tricks on her, but she is cognizant for the most part.

My dining room on the morning after Thanksgiving Day!

Next Wednesday, this becomes my mother's room.

Pray for us.

Thank you all for following me. Loving friends are such a comfort and joy--hallmarks of the season.

Much love to you from all of us,

Sandy

Great Rejoicing!

2010-11-12T13:14:00.003-05:00

This is Dana's facebook status for today:

"Dana D. was, in the past, bound to the evils and immoralities of this world as is a slave. today marks the one year anniversary of her freedom from that torment. she could not have achieved all she has in this year without all the love and support she has received from her friends and most unwaveringly of all, her beloved family. Thank you everyone! My life is wonderful today!"

Yes, one year ago today, Dana went into rehab for dual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and substance abuse.

Imagine my joy today.

A New Chapter Begins

2010-09-08T11:09:00.004-04:00

Mom and I on Sept. 22 (I'm trying to show her photos on my phone.)

Hello! Summer is over. Lots going on here.

Hospice begins today for my mom. Her breathing has worsened in the past few weeks since we returned from vacation; she has fluid in her lungs, and she has swelling in her arms and legs—these symptoms indicate congestive heart failure. She is being given oxygen and occasionally they have her use a nebulizer; these are considered comfort measures, or palliative care. The goal is not to cure her, but to make her comfortable.

Hospice care is for people who are deemed by a physician to be in their last six months of life. People outlive hospice if their condition improves, and can go on it again if they become critical again.

Mom is uncomfortable and afraid. When she has an episode of extreme shortness of breath, she is very frightened. Her thinking is very clear, which is sort of unfortunate, in that she knows enough to be upset. expect the hospice worker will help us both with the emotions of the situation. In addition to visiting the patient daily to provide emotional support and liaison with medical staff, the hospice worker counsels family members on end-of-life questions and concerns.

Vacation was lovely, by and large. The house we rented in Cape Cod was surprisingly large and comfortable, with a lush garden and numerous bird feeders that brought an assortment of colorful birds into view all day long. Our first week was just me and Phil and Kip, and it was very serene. The kids came on the second Saturday, and a couple of adult friends from home came up for two nights the following week.

Kip and I in Cape Cod

It was lively, and we did many nice things. The best part was all the walking we did. My knees and legs complained for the first four days or so, but they improved and got stronger the more I walked. I think I may have dropped a couple of pounds; I haven’t checked the scale but my clothes were a bit looser. We ate so much seafood I thought we would grow gills, but it was so fresh and delicious. We went to the Cape Playhouse and saw Grey Gardens, which is an astoundingly odd show, but it was fun to be there with all the kids. We went KAYAKING, which Phil and I had not done before! It was such fun. Some of Marcy’s college friends were in the area, one stayed with us, and they had fun together.

Dana was magnificent. She and Eric had just spent a week with his family in New Hampshire, where they mountain climbed, biked, and kayaked. She kept regular hours, took her meds on time every day, participated in everything and felt so very well. They got to the Cape in fine form. She slacked off and slept a little more with us, but she continued in good humor and was very active the whole week. It was a wonderful thing to witness.

Dana and Eric in Cape Cod

We had hoped to come home to a finished paint job at my mother-in-law’s house, but it was not to be. The painters started there on July 19, and they are still not done. It is not a big house. We have started final cleaning, room by room as much as is possible. Dana and I lined the kitchen cabinets and started putting in dishes yesterday.

Dana is feeling daunted by the prospect of moving on with her life. We had to give her a pep talk the other day, because she was feeling overwhelmed and consumed by self-doubt. I reminded her of how far she has come since she got out of rehab on December 9, 2009. She had a mountain of community service hours to complete, several STDs to be treated for, and Hepatitis C to address. She took care of all of those things. Hep C treatment ha been addressed and put on hold until next year.

I know that the thought of doing something more and different than what she has been doing up to this point is demanding and she feels inadequate. This is where 12-step program principles come in handy. One day at a time. Baby steps. Keep it simple. Do the next right thing. Breathe. I think the pep talk helped.

She also admitted that she is tormented by horrible memories of the things she did during her time on crack. As difficult as that is for her, I am relieved to hear that she is confronting all this reality. I believe it’s the right combination of meds that is allowing the light of reason to shine in on her thought processes. It’s normal to be intimidated by new challenges. It’s normal to regret past mistakes. Normal is something Dana has not done for a long time, if ever. It gives me hope that she will able to live independently and achieve success in the things that matter to her.

She tearfully acknowledged that she may never be able to the demands of parenthood. This is a topic that brings a lot of fear for me as a potential grandparent. Today she can barely take care of herself. Perhaps she will build on the progress she has made and one day will be able to consider taking care of children, but for her to realize her limitations and maybe even attempt to overcome them? This line of thinking is very encouraging to me in light of the years of regression we have witnessed.

Thank you for stopping by. Send us good vibes if you can. I will send them your way, as well. Peace.

Phil and Kip relaxing in Cape Cod

The Luckiest

2010-08-05T09:41:00.006-04:00

We are less than two days away from our Cape Cod vacation! Phil and Kip and I are heading up on Saturday. We're renting a house in Chatham, which is the elbow of the Cape, for two weeks. Marcy will drive up by herself for the second week, after her museum internship ends. Dana and Eric are taking two weeks of paid vacation (go union) and driving first to New Hampshire to vacation with Eric's family, then to the Cape to stay with us. A few of Marcy's college friends will also visit, and we're expecting friends from home to come for two nights that second week.

So the first week will be quiet and the second week will be lively! The house has four bedrooms, so there will be room for all. I'm bringing reading and knitting and plan to walk a lot. We're close to the fish pier, so I intend to cook fresh seafood and make at least one bouillabaisse!

Fingers crossed that everyone will be happy for the entire two weeks. Too much to ask? Dana is the happiest she has been in a very long time, possibly ever. Marcy is still down about her break-up with Ben, but her girlfriends make her happy, and they'll be with us. Phil will work some, but he's very excited about visiting our favorite seacoast village. I am looking forward to leaving behind our renovations of my m-i-l's house and seeing that lovely seacoast.

Phil and I ran up to the Cape in June for a long weekend, and had a refresher course in what's so great about it. The light is so different, I'm told it's because it's a peninsula sticking out into the ocean; the morning and evening light and shadows so beautifully captured in the paintings of Edward Hopper stir my soul. I drink in the charming architecture of the homes, the clear blue-green water, the seals in the harbor, the flowers that robustly pour forth from the cottage gardens, the color of the marsh grass, the birds and wildlife, the gently rolling terrain and ocean views, steamed clams so large and white, cod fish cheeks and chips, our favorite outdoor bar, the chocolate shop, cranberry bogs, sandy soil, and scrubby pines that croon, "Yes! You have fallen in love with Old Cape Cod!"

Marcy went up a couple of weeks ago to visit a school friend, and heard that some stars were vacationing there, as well. George Clooney, Johnny Depp, and Harry Connick Jr. are all said to have been in town that weekend! Who needs the Hamptons!

We have been dealing with some strong emotions in our project of cleaning out Phil's mom's house and approaching the one-year anniversary of her passing on September 1. We chopped down overgrown bushes last week. The painting is almost done, and a new half bath is almost installed. It's not the same place it was six months ago. We had hoped to move Dana into it before vacation, but it's just as well to wait until after.

Dana's doctor has added Topomax to her meds (Lithium and Lexapro), and she now seems more awake than she has been. She is out of bed more than she had been--usually, she's either sleeping or running out the door to work or she's at Eric's house, or they're here when we're sleeping. Now she actually comes down to the kitchen to eat and visit hours before she's due at work.

I read on WebMd about clinical trials using Topomax to treat alcoholism, and I wonder if her doctor is prescribing it in an attempt to decrease Dana's marijuana use. I had sent him a note describing her irrational devotion to it, asking if it might be psychotic thinking. He's kind of hard to get on the phone to discuss things like this, so sometimes it's easier to drop him a succinct note.

Marcy started on Effexor yesterday. They had tried her on Lexapro, but she got too sleepy and slightly more depressed. Treatment is for anxiety, anyhow, not depression. So she has started Effexor, and we'll see what it does. I'm a little leery about leaving her alone for four nights when she has just started a new antidepressant. I think I'll line up someone to help her if she sounds unusually depressed when I check in on her by telephone. (But I WILL NOT let this take away from my vacation fun!)

I've gone back on my Welbutrin. (What a bunch of pill poppers we are!) My depression has been creeping back in response to the renovations, Marcy's break-up angst, and the impending doom of Title 19 for my mom. Sometimes I just don't have the oomph to do what needs to be done, I feel so overwhelmed.

I just paid out the last of mom's liquid cash to the nursing home for August. When we get back, I'll cash in her last CD, which is approximately $17K, and that will see her to the end of the year, and then it will be decision time.

As I've probably said before, we picked a heck of a time to pay for private college. We're half-way through, but the recession has decreased our income, and if we weren't paying for college, we might be able to supplement mom's income and pay for the nursing home without having her go on Title 19. She has a house that is rented, and it would have to be put on the market. We are hoping to keep that house. The cash she has been living on is the last of her savings, which were substantial, $250K.

In retrospect, I might have assumed Power of Attorney back when she started to show signs of paranoia and dementia, but I didn't recognize them as such. I wanted her to retain her "dignity" and leave her in charge of her assets, and now it's too late to save anything, because there's a five-year lookback. You can't wait until it looks like you're going to need nursing care to transfer your assets to your children. You have to do it while you're still well.

So, the cash is gone, and we'd like to hang onto the house. We'd have to supplement her income with about $48K a year of our own money. Given her age (93), you'd think she might not last all that much longer, but that tough old heart just keeps pumping. And why would I want it not to? Why would I begrudge my mother her life so I can keep a house? Am I a bad person?

But we will set all this aside for two weeks and walk in the Cape Cod sunlight with our happy pooch and beautiful, brilliant daughters. I'm going to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and knit something simple. And have cocktails every afternoon and eat steamed clams and lobster. How lucky am I?

Sharing the Wealth

2010-07-14T10:24:00.003-04:00

Here is the facebook message exchange I started as I sought help in dealing with Marcy's terrible anxiety due to her recent relationship break-up. I know such smart people, and they are so generous in sharing their related experiences regarding breaking up with a boyfriend, daughters, and kids who need psych meds and dealing with the mental health system. I hope someone else out there will benefit from the wisdom shared here.

Me July 12, 2010

Dear, Wise Friends,

I'm seeking pros and cons of having Marcy (20) see a mental health professional for situational depression medication. Her boyfriend dumped her unceremoniously last Tuesday, and she is sick with depression: eating very little, upset stomach, dry heaves, diarrhea, difficulty sleeping, anhedonia, etc.

Given our family's difficult mental health history, I think it might be prudent to treat her temporarily. One the other hand, it seems wrong to turn to medication for a normal reaction to a difficult situation.

Respond only if you have time. We have been through worse, so please don't worry, we are on top of it and will all be okay eventually. Prayers will help. I have a call in to the psychiatrist and am waiting to hear from him.

Thank you,

Sandy

From Michelle July 12, 2010

Hi Sandy, I'm sorry to hear about Marcy. I'm sure she's devastated about her boyfriend. That just stinks, even if you are healthy.

It took us a year to find a brilliant psychiatrist for Todd. We had one for a year prior that we were not happy with. The man we currently see is absolutely smart as a whip, extremely personable, and encourages hearing all sides of Todd's situation. He has made some excellent med adjustments, and he is not the slightest bit pushy or assuming. We see him on our own terms, and at our own pace. His name is [xxx] and his credentials are fantastic. You can google him to do some research.

From Donna July 12, 2010

Hi Sandy, You either asked the right person or the wrong person. I have been on antidepressants for 17 years. My family has a very bad mental health history and I only wish I had realized that I needed counseling and meds sooner. Lest you think I'm a total psycho--I did have Grave’s disease, which threw a lot of brain chemicals out of sync. Get her to a good counselor now!! The suicide instance in young adults that you hear about is mainly because there are 2 parts to ssri--one acts before the other and in a few cases can cause suicidal tendencies, but if you have a good therapist, she would be aware of that. Once, the other part kicks in, the depression is lifted, as are the suicidal thoughts. My advice is go for it. Even if it is not temporary, all you are doing is correcting a chemical in her brain that is off a little. If you want to talk more, just call me. Hope this helps.

From Liz July 12, 2010

I’m so sorry to hear about this, Sandy. They just did that trip together to New Orleans. Do you know what went wrong? What reason did he give for breaking it off? I'm asking because Lindsay just went through a similar thing with Josh. One day he was here having dinner with us and everything seemed fine, and the next day he broke up with her on the phone. This was at the end of June. He has a lot of family dysfunction issues and felt he was "dragging her down, " etc. This was Lindsay's first love and she was devastated; he was supposed to go to Maine with us, but that didn't happen. She's gone through emotional hell, but is a strong person and a survivor. Last night he came over and apologized to her and to me, thanked us for all the support and we had a good conversation, albeit with a lot of tears. He says he still loves her, but he needs to work on his issues and they are going to try to be friends for a while then see what happens. Sandy, Marcy's reaction is totally understandable, especially when a relationship comes to an abrupt end. She is probably blaming herself, as Lindsay did. I don't know what kind of relationship they had, but perhaps there were warning signs (such as a lot of arguing, as in the case of Josh and Lindsay). She is going to need time to mourn and to heal. I think it would be good if she could talk to a professional, and you are going to need to be willing to listen to her talk about him and their issues probably for weeks to come. But I would be very careful about going the medication route, as you don't know how Marcy will react to that. It could make things better or worse. The most important thing is that she does not blame herself and that she knows that she is not alone. Best of luck.

From Al July 12, 2010

I second Liz's view. About 15 years ago, after an unceremoniously ended relationship, I was a total mess for about half a year. But with a lot of talking, mostly with one special friend, it got better. Now I'm happier than ever.

For most of us, the shock and emptiness of a sudden breakup is the worst pain we've ever felt. Her immediate physical reactions sound about right, sadly... Does she have close friends who can listen endlessly as she talks through this?

Fannie July 12, 2010

I actually am going through a similar thing. It's just the worst feeling in the world and not having control is completely overwhelming. I was just put on Prozac and I think that medication can do wonders for so many people. I haven't felt a big change in my happiness yet, but I'm sure something will come of it. I just know exactly how Marcy is feeling and I wish there was more I could do. I want to figure out a way to see her. The male gender can cause so many problems!

Me July 12, 2010

Thank you, wise friends.

Yes, Marcy’s girlfriends have been taking good care of her, and we are handling her very delicately, as we would if she had a broken limb or an actual stab wound. She is gob smacked, crestfallen, and blindsided, and it would be great if Ben were to apologize and show the good character that Josh did to Lindsay. But he just bailed, ripped off the Band-Aid, so to speak.

She has an appointment with Dana's psychiatrist tomorrow, and we'll let him decide about medication. Marcy is anxious on a good day, so this is worrisome.

Elaine July 12

Oh no!!! I can't believe that Ben broke up with her! No wonder she is upset. Antidepressants take awhile to work and sometimes you have to try different ones before you find the one that helps to lift the depression. It's good she will see Dana's psychiatrist; he can give you good information. On the other hand, he is a psychiatrist, and psychiatrists prescribe medication. So if you were looking for a non-medication route, then it would be good to also explore other resources.

Elizabeth July 12 at 6:10pm

A broken heart is awful, just awful; the first broken heart is the worst. All the symptoms you mention seem (sadly) "normal" for that state.

That said, if Marcy is "anxious on a good day," perhaps that is an underlying issue that needs to be dealt with.

Elaine July 12 at 6:12pm

Antidepressants take awhile to work, but anti-anxiety meds work right away.

"Birdwings," by Rumi

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting to see the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in ever small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

[Loosen the grip. Let yourself open and close. Contract and expand. Sing out the grief and anguish. xoElaine]

Ellen July 13 at 8:15pm

Effexor XR is one of the best drugs on the market for anxiety.

Al July 13 at 8:19pm

Thinking of you all. . .

Elizabeth July 13 at 8:25pm

How did it go today?

Me July 14 at 8:31am

Thank you, everybody,

The doctor felt that Marcy's issue is more anxiety than depression, and he gave her three weeks' worth of Lexipro (10 mg). She took one yesterday and said she didn't feel any different, but my observation is that she ate a normal amount of dinner and did some laughing and smiling in the evening. She was feeling extra sleepy, so she's going to wait to take her next pill tonight at bedtime.

He also prescribed talk therapy, so I'm going to set that up today with a referral from a friend (he suggested she not see my therapist). He observed that Marcy is an "intense" person, which she appreciated, and he made other on-target comments that helped her understand herself a little better and gave her a framework for moving forward.

Her stomach was still upset this morning, but I am hopeful that that will improve. She is getting a haircut this afternoon (always a mood booster) and has plans to visit a girlfriend in Massachusetts over the weekend.

We went to see Eclipse last night and had fun talking about what a dreadful movie/story it is.

We will keep a close eye on her as she begins this medication, but, as I say, we are hopeful that her mood will improve. She needs to be in good mental shape by the end of August so she can rally to the challenging school year she has coming up, where she will be a resident assistant as well as co-director of her a cappella group.

Good gravy do I ever appreciate the support you all have given me. I am blessed to have you all in my life!

Sincerely,

Innkeeper of Heartbreak Hotel

2010-07-07T11:00:00.004-04:00

The Dynamic Duo, Marcy and Ben on their build

in New Orleans four weeks ago.

Last night around midnight, through the sound of the air conditioner and my earplugs, I heard screaming coming from somewhere. I looked out the window and saw that Dana was not yet home, and then Phil and I went and checked Marcy's room.

Marcy was sitting on the floor with her cell phone to her ear screaming and sobbing, "I can't believe this is happening! Why are you doing this to me?" Ben is breaking up with her. She hangs up and screams and cries some more, "Oh my god, oh my god, this can't be happening." She calls him again and goes into another room. More receiving of information, he needs time to be himself. He doesn't want to be on a break, just to break up altogether. He still loves her, but he wants to break up. None of this is helpful to her. She returns to her room, where I comfort her. We get her a drink of water. I advise her to turn off her phone and let it rest until morning, not to look at facebook.

Marcy vomits into her wastepaper basket. Phil takes it away and replaces the bag. She is panting and exasperated. Kip comes in and noses around, wagging his tail, he's happy that we all are together.

She doesn't want to call her roommate in San Francisco, even though it's still a reasonable hour there. She says it will make it seem more real if she seeks outside consolation. "My heart is breaking, what if I die of a broken heart?" she asks. I have her lie down and I hold her hand and encourage her to take deeper breaths. Maybe he'll miss her and change his mind, maybe he won't.

We talk about how the honeymoon phase of the six-month-old relationship has clearly been over. Lately, they have not seemed all that happy to me, but I offer no such observations.

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way," says Mark Twain.

I'm going to let Marcy figure out what to do and how to feel and what lessons might be learned as she carries this cat by the tail.

When she had calmed down a bit, I left her in bed and turned out her light. She got to sleep eventually and came and got in bed with me this morning after Phil had gotten up to make coffee and get the papers.

Still dejected, she had to get herself together this morning to go to her museum internship, where she's leading two group activities that she designed today. She ate about six Cheerios for breakfast and took a yogurt for lunch. "Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and do the next right thing," was the only advice I offered.

After she left, I finished the newspapers and my coffee, prayed, read my Al-Anon materials, and called an Al-Anon friend. Now I'm putting one foot in front of the other and doing the next right thing--laundry, kitchen clean-up, blogging, and soon I'll go visit my mom in the nursing home. Easy does it. One day at a time. Breathe.

Tolstoy on My Back!

2010-06-29T15:43:00.005-04:00

"I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means--except by getting off his back." --Leo Tolstoy, as quoted in One Day at a Time, p. 250

This quote gave me a chuckle today as I was preparing to lead my Al-Anon group discussion on the topic of detachment. Isn't it rich? I can just picture that poor man with Tolstoy on his back. Political oppression may have been the actual intent of the metaphor, but it works for me as a controlling parent who needs to detach from my children's lives.

I learned a lot by going through the indexes of the Al-Anon literature and reading all the entries on detachment. Ordinarily, detachment is discussed in terms of family members giving up their tendency to try to make their alcoholic (or addict) refrain from drinking (or using). Clearly, a person cannot be nagged into sobriety. "I can only make the situation worse by treating him like an irresponsible naughty child.... I pray for detachment from the situation, but not from the suffering drinker who may be helped to find the way to sobriety through the change in my attitude and the love and compassion I am able to express" (One Day at a Time, p. 3).

My experience with the effort to detach is more about not letting myself get enmeshed in the emotional dramas of my family and being over-involved in the fine points of their lives. I have been obsessive in my interest in their personal affairs, and Marcy, at least, has come to depend on my involvement. Once she comes home from college, my life is swept up in her whirlwind. It's not healthy for either of us. I don't know how to best navigate her issues, and she is deprived of the opportunity to figure it out on her own and create her own life. Making my daughters the focus of my life is not love, it's obsession. "When we cease to live our own lives because we are so preoccupied with the lives of others, our behavior is motivated by fear" (How Al-Anon Works, p. 83).

What I've learned is that while I'm focused on solving my family's problems, I am neglecting my own personal growth. Ideally, establishing boundaries will give me time to make level-headed decisions about actual activities in which I am involved, to re-educate my thinking toward happier behavior patterns, to nurture my own spirit and discover what I want out of life! Doesn't that sound great?! It's a goal toward which I am working.

Even though Marcy is not a substance user or abuser, her unhealthy behaviors and mine are symptoms of the disease of alcoholism in our family. This is the tricky thing to understand about how the Al-Anon program helps people. It is to recognize that we as a family have inherited unhealthy behaviors from the alcoholics in our past (my maternal grandfather, my mother [not a drinker, but suffering the symptoms], my father, my husband's paternal grandfather, his father [same as my mom], his brother). Those behaviors take the form of worrying and controlling, because we have grown up in fear of uncertain outcomes.

These unhealthy behaviors are passed down from generation to generation, because we have learned them from our parents without realizing they were detrimental. In some cases the legacy of alcoholism results in a new family member becoming an alcoholic or addict, like Phil's brother and our daughter, Dana. In other cases, it results in the exercise of controlling behaviors that make relationships difficult at best. Examining our lives and changing our behaviors is the only way to break the cycle. Al-Anon helps people break the cycle. Detachment is one tool the program provides.

Here's some ways to detach that I came up with from my reading of Al-Anon literature.

Step back from the craziness. "If we can learn to step back from alcoholism's symptoms and effects just as we would from the sneezing of a person with a cold, we will no longer have to take those effects to heart" (How Al-Anon Works, p. 84).
Have a phrase ready for times you feel someone wants to drag you into their drama, such as "I'm sure you'll find a creative solution," and then walk away.
Limit your face-to-face time with the person who sets you off.
Refrain from reacting. "There is a time to act, of course. But the action should be based on careful thinking out of the factors. It should not be triggered by every wind that blows" (One Day at a Time, p. 259).
Live in the present, don't complicate it with what has happened in the past or what might happen in the future. Breathe and, if it helps, repeat to yourself the task at hand, such as, "I am making the bed," or "I am walking the dog."
Focus on self. "When you are offended at anyone's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. By attending to them, you will forget your anger and learn to live wisely" (Marcus Aurelius, as quoted in One Day at a Time, p. 151).
Review your personal progress every day and prepare for tomorrow's challenges.

This is what I'm going to do, anyhow. One day at a time.

The Journey

2010-06-05T14:51:00.022-04:00

Hi! I can't believe June is here already! And it has been unseasonably warm in Connecticut. There a storm moving in right now and Kip and I have come out into the backyard to catch the last few breezes before the rain starts. Sticky, sticky!

I am very excited to tell you that this blog, Sandwiched In, is now on Twitter. It's an experiment to see if I can reach more readers. It will keep me more connected to my blog; and, if you're really interested in my story, you can get the blow-by-blow account of what's really going on.

So much is going on right now, I don't know where to start! Everyone is fairly stable [knock knock knock on wood!]. All the humans, that is. For us, anyhow.

We had to let Frisky, our 15-year-old Corgi, go on to greener lawns a week ago, as his old bag of bones just was too debilitated for him to continue as a happy dog. He had been sick back in January, and he rallied after we started feeding him a home-made diet. But a couple of weeks ago he began struggling with various ailments, and it became clear that we had to make the call. We brought him to the vet. He went peacefully. Phil and Dana were holding him. he was soft and warm afterwards, and we caressed him and stroked his soft ears one last time. He was a happy, beautiful animal to the last. He had a big smile and a little pep in this step as he walked into the vet's office. Our much-loved and adored puppy boy. We are so grateful to have had him in our lives. A good idea from first to last. Kip is now an only dog.

In May Dana celebrated her six month anniversary in recovery from crack addiction. She is still religiously devoted to marijuana, and she has her mood ups and downs, as well as all the various health problems she acquired during her "year of living dangerously" as I have come to think of the approximately 18 months she spent harming herself with hard drugs and dangerous sexual behavior. We have been following up with the liver specialist for her Hepatitis C. She had a liver biopsy last week. The good news is that the RNA of her particular form of Hepatitis has a very good cure rate. The venereal diseases she acquired are not all that easy to eradicate, but they are not life threatening. "I don't have AIDS!" she told me when she called from rehab to say she had Hep C, as if I would be tickled pink.

Dana's relationship with her current boyfriend, Eric, is proving to be very healing for her. My observation is that he loves her completely and unconditionally. He is a heroin addict in recovery for over a year, and they go to meetings together. Eric works full time at the same grocery store as Dana, and he is in school full time. Same age. She is delighted by him. They find joy in one another. Dana is happy for the first time in a long time. Despite all the health challenges she faces, she is happy.

We are still in the process of clearing out my late mother-in-law's house. An estate purchaser/auctioneer is due this week to pick up the more valuable items. Clothes and bedding and toiletries are going to a rescue mission. Once it's empty, we will take up the rugs and perhaps have the floors refinished, then paint it all. It is a damp house and there is a strong mildew smell we hope to eliminate. Then my fingers are crossed for moving Dana into the house and gaining some independence.

Moving Dana into the house is complicated by the fact that the interferon treatment for Hep C causes psychological side effects, such as severe depression. Dana has been adequately medicated for Bipolar disorder for only six months now. It would not be prudent to move her out on her own for the first time and then start her on a liver treatment course that will increase her depression. One step at a time, we and the doctors will figure it out. The liver biopsy will tell us the condition of her live and how fast we need to move with treatment. Maybe it can be put off for a while.

The plan is for the house to be a shared rental. We would advertise, or otherwise find another woman to share the house with Dana and pay rent to cover the tax and utilities. I am optimistic that this can happen. We have begun talking it up with other families with daughters of similar age. The house is well located and in a nice neighborhood.

Marcy and her boyfriend, Ben, are currently on their way to New Orleans, by car, Marcy's car, where they will help with a Habitat for Humanity build. They are taking three days to drive the 1,200 mile journey. About an hour ago, Marcy called to say she had been pulled over and ticketed for speeding. Her first ticket. Ah, well. These things happen. They camped in Virginia last night! Marcy has never camped before, but Ben has, and they survived! Tonight they will find a motel in Tennessee. They are tweeting all along the way and have a trip blog going, so we can follow them.

Funny scene Wednesday night. Ben's parents drove him to our house after work, so I had them stay for supper. This was our first time meeting them. Nice people. They love Marcy and are very kind to her. Dana determines that she will join us and that Eric is also available to dine. So, I send Phil to the market to get more chicken, and we have a Wednesday night dinner party for eight people on the patio--luckily, the weather was delightful.

What a bunch we were! As much as we love Eric and Dana as a couple, they are not neat, preppy-type people! Kind of bohemian looking and very thin, Eric's in baggy army fatigue-type clothing with a kind of a Bolshevik cap that he doesn't remove at the dinner table. But he's very polite and friendly and open, and I am very appreciative of him. Not terribly aware of her opulent sexuality, Dana wears clingy clothing that's kind of too revealing and her mop of naturally blonde hair is sort of all over the place. She, too, is pleasant and polite and they make quite the pair for us to introduce to Ben's parents.

It's all going well enough, and I'm in the kitchen tending dinner when Ben's mom comes in and tells me how great Marcy is and implies to me that she will be "safe" on the trip because they don't believe in premarital sex. Well, I know full well that they have LOTS of sex whenever they can, and I ignorantly open my big mouth and blurt out "Oh, I think that shipped has sailed with these two!" She looks taken aback, and I realize I have put my foot in it. It try to back pedal saying that Marcy is in charge of Marcy, so we have no concerns about this aspect of their relationship (she has been on the pill for three years and they use condoms--yes, we discuss this). She says she understands that Marcy is in charge of Marcy, but that Ben (who is 21) knows their beliefs on this and she is confident that he respects their beliefs. I assure her that my impression is that he has a great deal of respect for them as parents and I ask her to carry out a dish to the patio for me.

Eek! I relayed to Ben and Marcy this conversation later that evening, after the parents had left. I don't think he knew that we know and are okay with this business, so that was put out in the open. I ratted him out to his mother! Of course, I'M not the one misleading my mother. And he is 21. Pleh. I'm still reeling from that bit!

Al-Anon continues to be a source of comfort, support, and learning for me. My mom turned 93 on May 13! She is doing pretty well and is as stable as she has been in a while, although she had a breathing problem the day before her birthday and they wanted to take her to the hospital and called for authorization. Now, I have already given them instructions to NOT transport her, NOT resuscitate, NOT give antibiotics, and to give palliative care only. These instructions are clearly indicated all over her chart. And yet, repeatedly they call for me to reiterate these difficult decisions.

They had her use a nebulizer and gave her some oxygen and she was sitting up in bed eating pancakes by the time I got there. They would have put her in the hospital if I had allowed it. This was the doctor and not the nursing staff that had them call me. The staff at the facility is good and the care is personal. Such an emotional upheaval every time I get a call like this.

Phil and I are sneaking off to the Cape for a couple of days while Marcy is away. It will be a quiet time to contemplate Frisky's passing. Phil is feeling the loss deeply. Follow me on Twitter, if you like. I'm going to try to post to the blog more frequently.

I Have Had Singing

2010-04-22T15:46:00.006-04:00

Hope springs eternal!

Hello. Dear me, I would have sworn I had posted in March! And here we are almost at the end of April! Let's not put it off any longer.

I have been struggling with weird pain in my right arm. It started back in November, and I think I blogged about it back in February. Well, it made me miserable enough to see a neurologist, who sent me for physical therapy, which I finished today. The pain is due to nerve compression in my neck. Therapy loosened up the frozen muscles and Aleve has been helping with inflamation, and I feel much better. There are still a few odd sensations that the physical therapist feels may warrant an MRI, so we'll see if that happens. Being self-employed, our insurance deductible is very high ($5,000) and this is all getting very expensive. I have felt a lot of improvement, so I think I'll just wait and see if that continues. I have exercises to do to strengthen this and that.

Kip and Frisky visit the nursing home

Mom is still doing pretty well in the new place. The mental health consultants there have been weaning her off the Abilify, however, and on the last two visits she seemed glum and paranoid again. I mentioned it to the head nurse, and we'll have to see if they will adjust that.

I am dragging my feet on applying for Medicaid for her. She's down to about $25,000 in savings, and her monthly income isn't enough to foot the nursing home bill entirely. I'm thinking I may ask the facility director if some sort of adjustment might be made to our fee, considering that we might be able to pay more than Medicaid would pay them. Maybe the balance could be spaced out after mom passes, if mom passes. She'll be 93 on May 13.

Dana is not that great. She is heavily back into the marijuana and passionately devoted to her right to smoke it all day every day. She is working and going to the occasional meeting with Eric, the new boyfriend. She still sees Mike as a friend and pot dealer once a week, to smoke and pick up her weed for the week. Eric is a recovering heroin addict. He's in school full time and works full time and adores Dana. She says he does not object to her pot use. He smokes cigarettes, but otherwise uses no substances.

Marcy is finishing up sophomore year at college. She has declared a double major of English and Art History. She is happily dating the new boyfriend, Ben. They are so much alike, it's funny. He's up to visit her often and she goes to his house occasionally and stays there; his parents like her. They are a cute couple. At the end of May they are going to DRIVE to New Orleans to spend a few days working for Habitat for Humanity. I can't picture it, but it is to be an adventure, they tell me. Driving to New Orleans from Connecticut. In Marcy's (our) car. At 20 and 21, this is what they should be doing, right? Feedback, please.

We are slowly getting my m-i-l's house in shape for renting. It's being painted next week. There was some carpentry to be done, and that has been completed. The chimney is crumbling, so I'll have to get someone there to fix that. We found an art appraiser to look at the paintings--there are ten or so oil paintings by two or three Hungarian-American artists from the 1950s and 60s. M-i-l always said they were valuable, so we will find out.

It is our tentative intention to move Dana into the house and rent it as a shared house. This plan seems less and less likely as she becomes less and less responsible. She had another car accident last week and got a ticket as well as a smashed right front bumper. She is still driving it. The other car is being repaired by our insurance company, and so on. It's very discouraging.

Phil's spirits have perked up with spring and new writing projects. We took a car trip at the beginning of the month, from Cleveland (we flew and rented a car) through Kentucky and Tennessee to Atlanta. It was a drive Phil took in 1959 with his mother, grandmother, and brother. The original trip features in a new book he has coming out next year, and this was research. We had a good time and were glad to see the beautiful countryside. I haven't traveled much outside of New England except for Florida, California, Canada, and then some in Europe. But I haven't seen the middle of the U.S., and this trip was wonderful for that reason. We were blessed with good weather and no traffic jams, and we got along very well, which we usually do. Now we know we can take long drives and survive!

Frisky has made a full recovery. He will most likely see his 15th birthday on May 16. He can go on long walks with us once again. I don't know when this dog will quit! He's on the spot looking for treats and handouts, jockeying to get out the door for a walk, giving Kip a hard time when food is being doled out. We're coming up on Kip's one-year anniversary as our dog in June. What a good boy he is. My darling.

The backyard and garden are all green and blooming with spring flowers. The birds are singing their little birdie hearts out. I am still attending two Al-Anon meetings a week. Phil goes to one by himself. We both find it enormously helpful in so many ways. I am still working with a sponsor, and it helps keep me focused. I am reading more and trying to stay organized. I let my cleaning lady go in March! I was not pleased with her work, and yet it was so hard to tell her we didn't want her any more! She was with us for nine years. So, now I have to clean my own house! Not as easy as I thought, especially with me being nine years older than when I last did it! But, Phil does the vacuuming, so that's a big part of it. And I strive to keep up with everything else with the help of the Fly Lady, the Internet cleaning guru who is such an inspiration to me and thousands of others.

That's what's been going on. Mom being stable and well cared for has changed my life. Dana, despite her devotion to pot, is also somewhat stable, in that she isn't going out looking for crack in the middle of the night anymore. She's home and safe and dating a nice young man. She is appropriately medicated (lithium and lexipro) and sees her therapist every other week. As much as we'd like her to stop smoking, she is better than she was before going into rehab back in November. And it's only four months since she has been out. Day by day, baby step by baby step.

My chamber choir has a concert coming up on May 2. We're doing a number of folksongs as well as some sacred music. A wonderful cycle of Shaker songs, two Robert Frost poems set to music (The Road Less Traveled, and Choose Something Like a Star), four Robert Burns texts. Choral singers will know all of theses, as many are standards. I hope we can pull it all together in the rehearsal time we have left! Pitch in some of the acappella pieces is really sagging! Fingers crossed. One uplifting piece we're doing is called "I Have Had Singing," and its text is taken from Ronald Blythe's "Akenfield, Portrait of an English Village," which quotes an elderly ploughman, who recalls his difficult childhood and how it was enriched by singing. "I have had pleasure enough," he recalls, "I have had singing." I think we can go ahead and write this on my tombstone, it is true. There are a couple videos of other groups singing it on YouTube. I'm going to see if I can include a link here. Thanks for following me.

My chamber choir

Learning to Take Care of Myself

2010-02-25T16:53:00.005-05:00

This is a box I commissioned Dana to make for friends we visited earlier in the month. Keep these beautiful ideas in mind as you read about her, please. She is a beautiful soul with a delicate sensibility. Paper box covered with beads and decoupage.

Time for an update! Things are going relatively well here. Progress is being made, I’m very happy to say.

Dana is plugging along, going to Narcotics Anonymous and AA meetings, resisting the urge to use crack cocaine. In addition, she has made progress in terms of making an appointment with a liver specialist to begin treatment for her Hepatitis C; I’ll go with her next Tuesday, March 2.

She has begun her community service hours, better late than never, at a Good Will Industries store in a neighboring town—she needs to complete 67 hours by April 1 and has had a year to accomplish this, but it’s a start.

She has an appointment with her ob/gyn to continue treatment for HPV lesion removal; that will require an additional appointment with the hospital’s outpatient treatment department. Her weight is still 30 pounds more than it was when she went into rehab on November 11, but she is beginning to address it by walking, going to the gym once in a while, and making healthy eating choices.

Dana's relationship with Mike is over for the most part, as she has struck up a romance with Eric, a young man from the grocery store where she works. Eric is a recovering heroin addict, and they go to meetings together, as well as out to eat and to movies. For Valentine’s Day they took the train to NYC for sightseeing, going to an NA meeting, and having dinner at Ruby Foo’s in Times Square. Besides the fact that he is a nice boy (24, same as Dana) and in school full time in addition to working, the good thing about Eric is that he does no substances whatsoever, and therefore Dana is smoking much less pot than she used to, especially when she was with Mike, who is a heavy smoker. It is my impression that she goes entire days without smoking, whereas she used to smoke 4-5 times each day. Who would have thought that one’s daughter dating a recovering heroin addict would be good news!

Interesting, isn’t it? What “progress” has come to mean to me? Thank God for Al-Anon! I accept the things I can’t change, change the things I can, and strive to know the difference.

I’m regularly attending two Al-Anon meetings each week, and I’m going to check out another tomorrow. Daytime meetings suit me best, but there are lots of meetings everywhere, all the time. I don’t go for Dana’s sake; I go for my own well-being. So much of my anxiety and difficulty is text book typical for the family member of an alcoholic! The people who have been attending Al-Anon for years and years know how to comfort and support me, and from their shared stories I am learning how to see the world in a different light.

I’m working with a sponsor now! A lovely woman from one of my weekly meetings, she has been a member of Al-Anon for a long time, 13 years or more. Both her mother and her husband were problem drinkers. Her husband has been sober for a long time, and he goes to meetings and sponsors people. Well she knows the desperate desire to control everything in the effort to control the substance abuser. Little by little we will work our way through the twelve steps and the Al-Anon literature, and I will change the way I approach my family and my life.

My sponsor and I meet before or after a meeting and discuss program principles specific to me. We talk by phone another day, or email. She shares her experience and we examine mine. The way I have been doing things all my life has not worked; it has led to chaos. With Al-Anon I feel I have a chance to change by behaviors for the better and create a healthier life for myself and my family. Not that I’ve knowingly been doing unhealthy things! Goodness, I have been doing my very best. But I never had the chance to learn healthy behaviors from my parents because they were themselves damaged people—my father was a problem drinker, my mother was the daughter of a brutal alcoholic. Dana is actually the least of my “qualifiers.” It was my maternal grandfather who hurt my mother whose unhealthy behaviors led to my unhealthy behaviors of controlling and anger that led to Dana’s substance issues.

True, personality disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder contributed to the troubled side of my family history, but these realities have been complicated by the alcoholism of past generations.

So, I am hoping to change the family pattern of self defeat by changing myself and learning new ways.

In other news, Frisky is feeling a little better. Every time we resign ourselves to his imminent demise, he rallies. Increasingly frail and terribly cranky in recent weeks, he actually smiled last night, something I thought we had seen the last of. We’ve been feeding him a home-made chicken, rice, and sweet potato mixture. He gobbles it up, yet he is still so skinny. So, we’ve started giving him an extra portion at noon, and I’m giving him a little Pedialyte for dehydration. And now he’s feeling a little more comfortable, I 'm guessing, because he has a little more spring in his step and because of that sweet smile.

This is good, because Phil has been down in the dumps lately, and the dog is a great source of happiness and comfort for him. Grieving, albeit subconsciously, for his mother, and dealing with significant career changes, Phil has not been himself for a few months now. Spring will come, and we will be glad, because it is sure to lift everyone’s spirits.

Marcy’s having a good semester. She is working hard, and she is on the approach to mid-terms, so it’s not exactly fun. Her boyfriend has been there more often than we would like, and her roommate could be complaining about the intrusion, but she is not. Their honeymoon period should be over soon (they started going out in December), and things should become less frenetic.

I’m rehearsing for my chamber choir’s May concert. We’re doing a bunch of individual songs by modern composers using familiar texts: folk songs, poems, psalms. It’s a little slow-going to learn to many different pieces, I don’t love all of them, but it should be an interesting concert.

I’ve also started knitting a pair of socks. I’ve had to start over a couple of times, but I’m getting better at it each time. It is very relaxing for me to sit quietly and knit.

My physical well-being has been a little off lately. I’m still achey all over and have been since mid-November. I was seeing my chiropractor and getting therapeutic massage (which was excruciating because of my tender muscles), but without much improvement. So, I saw my general practitioner and had bloodwork, but no obvious reason for my pain. I know Kip did something to my right shoulder back in late November when he yanked the leash, and that has caused a lot of numbness and tingling in my arm and hand. It is finally getting a little better, but I have to be very careful with it.

But I still have such trouble getting in and out of a car. I move so stiffly! Just a matter of weeks ago I was a lithe, flexible person and now I hobble around like an old crone. I cannot accept that this is “just aging” and that I’m going to be like this for the duration! I do stretch and bend and try to get limber, but it hurts and I don’t see the improvement I would like. Thank goodness I walk without pain and can take Kip for long walks on our town rail trail and around the neighborhood—in between snow storms, that is! What a lot of snow we have had this year. More is coming tonight, I understand.

We are not making much progress on clearing out Phil’s mom’s house, but we hope to get going with that soon. I had the idea of moving Dana in there and renting half of it out as a furnished, shared house rental. That’s our current thinking. It would provide Dana some independence without us having to help her with rent out of pocket. I asked her again about it yesterday, and she has significant apprehension, but she said, “I guess I have to learn to take care of myself someday.” So we approach the concept with care and sensitivity, as well as with hope that Dana will, one day, be able to take care of herself. One day at a time.

Happy New Year

2010-01-13T10:22:00.006-05:00

"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves." Here’s to 2010! ~ Bill Vaughan

Our New Year’s Eve party went well. It was a convivial bunch of friends. The food was good, and the New Year came on schedule. I had printed out a number of toasts I found online and put them under each person’s dinner plate, so we gave a lot of toasts—some funny, some poignant. Here's another one:

"Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith." Here’s to tomorrow! ~Henry Ward Beecher

Marcy and her boyfriend went into NYC by train to celebrate, meeting up with some of her college girlfriends. They all returned intact and happy.

George Burns once said, “It only takes one drink to get me loaded. Trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or fourteenth." Here’s to George Burns!

We are plugging along here. Dana is doing well with her recovery in that she is not using and is going to meetings. She seems to be in control of her emotions and, from what I can tell, and I am working hard to stay out of it, is handling her relationship with Mike well. Here's picture of her getting a hug from her dad on New Years Day.

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day." Here’s to the New Year! ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Alanon continues to be a tremendous source of strength and healing for Phil and me. We go to separate, weekly meetings; I go to two if weather permits. I’ve begun “working the program,” as they say, which means following the twelve steps from AA, as adapted for families of alcoholics/addicts. At present, I am working on understanding a higher power and giving myself over to it.

The unfortunate side effect of taking Lithium for Dana this time, is that she has put on a tremendous amount of weight—say, 30 pounds in two months. She feels awful about it, and she rejoined the gym this week and is going regularly. Every day she is a little more relaxed and regulated. I’m hopeful she will soon get the weight issue under control. She saw her psychiatrist yesterday, and he is slightly lowering her Lithium as well as the Seroquel she takes at bedtime to sleep (a lot of her eating is nocturnal), which is said to increase appetite.

Marcy is having fun with her new romantic relationship. He lives about an hour and a half away, out in the very rural part of our state, so they visit on the weekends—either she goes there or he comes here and stays over night. In between, they Skype, text, and talk on the phone. They sure like to talk. Marcy is home until the 23^rd, and she is working for a nonprofit agency, providing after-school care for special needs children until then. She came with me to my Alanon meeting last week and liked it and understood why we are so enthusiastic about it. She has a lot of emotional healing to do, too.

Everyone, including new boyfriend, came to my chamber choir concert on Sunday afternoon. We had a packed house! Almost 500 people came! The publicity committee did an excellent job and had managed a feature article and a radio interview with the conductor. It was exciting to sing for such a large, receptive audience. We sang the Vivaldi Gloria and Mozart’s Missa Brevis as well as Ave Verum Corpus, and our accompanist played a Bach organ concerto on the magnificent organ they have at the church where we performed. We were accompanied by strings, organ, trumpet, and oboe. It was a wonderful bit of music making, and I feel so fortunate to be able to be part of such an ensemble.

I’m not sure why, but I have been experiencing significant muscle pain and carpal tunnel syndrome for about a month and a half now. WebMD suggests fibromyalgia and/or depression, but I’m wondering if it is the result of the sudden drop of estrogen I had when I discontinued my birth control pills. I read something recently that said carpal tunnel syndrome can be exacerbated by hormone shifts like pregnancy or menopause. All this achiness came on around the time I stopped the pills. Anyhow, I saw my chiropractor last week and he thinks it’s from stress. The massage I had there helped a lot, and I’m going again tomorrow for another massage and adjustment. I also started taking a soy estrogen supplement, so we’ll have to see if that makes a difference. Tylenol Arthritis helps me sleep.

Phil’s spirits are dragging these days. He is working on the last book in a series that has been going for over ten years and over 40 books. It has been our main source of income during that time. He has many other irons in the fire, but the uncertainty is disconcerting, especially with Marcy’s college tuition payments. Also, now that the hubbub of the holidays is over, there is more time to appreciate the fact that his mother is gone. And his constant companion, our 14-year-old corgi Frisky, is getting frail and eating less and less. Thank goodness Dana is doing better.

Phil and I have a few short trips planned. He’s speaking in the Boston area at the end of the month, so I’ll go with him. Then we’re going back to Vermont to visit another author we met when we were there in October; that will be fun. In March we’re planning to take a driving tour of some Civil War battlefields in conjunction with a new book he’s writing. I hope the trips will take his mind off depressing things.

My mom is doing well at the nursing home. She knows enough to be somewhat dejected about being in the nursing home and realizing that it is probably where she will live out her last days. She’ll be 93 in May. One of her roommates will be 93 in April. They both seem to have a number of years left in them. I’m going to let my Higher Power take care of them and me. She is well cared for and fed. She has lots of people around all the time. I see her once a week and take care of her financial and health affairs.

Even though Frisky is in fragile health, the dogs are still a source of delight for everyone. Kip is very affectionate, cute, and playful. Together, they make a cute pair.

Desperately Seeking Serenity

2009-12-27T17:33:00.006-05:00

A blizzard arrived on the Sunday before Christmas,

and it was gorgeous!

I would have blogged sooner, but my life has been so rapidly changing that I haven’t been able to catch my breath long enough to know what to say.

Dana did her 28 days in rehab and worked very hard at it. She is determined to stay away from crack, which she began using about a year and a half ago during a particularly bleak period of her life, attributable to untreated bipolar and borderline personality disorders.

While she was there, she attended three 12-step meetings a day, had individual psychotherapy, was closely followed by a psychiatrist who adjusted and monitored her medications and engaged in daily group therapy. We visited her every other day and had a family meeting with her treatment coordinator. She came home on a day pass for Thanksgiving.

She has gone to a Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous meeting almost every day since she came home. She went back to work last week. She has been spending family time with us.

Our dining room chandelier, decorated by Dana

Unfortunately, Dana came out of rehab determined to continue smoking marijuana. It was so nice to have her completely sober while she was in the hospital. Now she has that particular drug back in her system, and she is just not herself a lot of the time.

Here’s what has changed about my life and Phil’s. Toward the end of Dana’s hospitalization, Phil and I attended a four-day (9am-4pm) family forum about how best to help our loved one recover from her addiction. Much to our surprise, we learned that in order for Dana to change, it is important for us to attend Al-anon meetings and pursue the 12 Steps. We learned all about addiction and the different drugs and their effects, family dynamics and codependent behavior, and we came to understand that our personal behavior needs to change in order for Dana to move on with her life in a positive way.

So we have been going to meetings! And let me tell you, this is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I believe Phil would tell you the same. Everyone should go to Al-anon meetings! Whose life has NOT been affected by drugs or alcohol?

Some Santas in our collection

Phil and I now understand that parents who were alcoholics or had been victims of alcoholic parents raised us. Our role models for parenting were damaged people with disordered behavior patterns, and we inherited those disordered behaviors.

Through Al-anon, we have come to understand that we must let go of Dana and give her control of her own life. I am noticing my urge to be in control, and I am fighting to let that go. I am having a difficult time with letting go, and I am terrified of what will happen as a result of my letting go, and yet I must. She must take responsibility for her self.

Dana, making Christmas cookies

Two horribly sad bits of information came to us since my last post. Around two weeks into her hospitalization, blood tests revealed that Dana has hepatitis C. She got this from sharing a needle to shoot heroine.

When the crack use was out in the open, back in October, I had asked her if she had ever tried heroine. She admitted she had, but not regularly and she said she had only inhaled it in powder form (or however it’s done). She told me by telephone that she contracted hepatitis C from “the one time I let Naomi shoot me up.” Naomi being her one female friend and a heroine addict, in and out of rehab. This information brought me to the rock bottom of my heart.

The other revelation came on Christmas day when we were visiting my mother in the nursing home. Naomi texted Dana to wish her Merry Christmas as we were sitting there sharing our homemade Christmas cookies with grandma. Speaking in a volume below what my mother can hear, I asked Dana if Naomi had been tested for the disease and if she, in fact, had it. “Oh, she knows she has it. She knew then. I knew she had it.”

Visiting Grandma on Christmas Day

When I tell you that Dana hates herself and wants to die—or did before recent medication and psychotherapy—this is what I mean. She not only lowered herself to use this dangerous drug, she knowingly allowed herself to be infected with a life-threatening disease.

This is where Al-anon comes to my personal rescue. In one of the two weekly meetings I attend, two of the attendees have adult children in prison for drug-related crimes and the son of one has been dead from an overdose for 13 years. Most of the attendees have been going to meetings for over 15 years, some over 20 years. For me, it is better than therapy, in that I can hear the details of what works for people with loved ones in the same kind of trouble my family is dealing with.

I’m hoping that Marcy will come to a meeting with me while she’s home in January. The anger and negativity that she has been experiencing in recent months is typical of young people with a substance abuser in the family. But even that decision must be hers and hers alone to be successful.

It has been difficult for her to come home after a grueling session of final exams and papers and have mom and dad all hyped up with a new “religion.” It’s so new for me and Phil, that we talk about it all the time, and I can see her eyes begin to roll. But it has brought us such a peaceful feeling, even in the midst of this horror. I hope and pray that she will take advantage of this amazing source of serenity.

Marcy had a good semester; she worked hard and has a B+ average. She is soloing with her a capella group and enjoys the celebrity—big fish in a small pond, though she is! Can’t believe sophomore year is half over.

She has started up an online relationship with a boy she met last year through her ex-boyfriend, Andrew. He lives some distance away, but he came to visit last Tuesday for the day. He is a sweet boy, easy to talk to, and, most importantly to Marcy, he is TALL! All of her 5’9” looks tiny next to his 6’4”! He plays in a band and is studying video and recording production at a technical college. She is having fun. They Skype every night. I think it’s almost old fashioned that they spent a number of weeks getting to know one another before they spent time with one another in person. They make a cute couple. They plan to go to NYC for New Year's Eve.

Nana's pretty winter-scene china, now at our house

This was our first Christmas without Phil’s mom, and it is strangely quiet. Not one to express his feelings, Phil is missing her in his own way. We replicated the Sunday-before-Christmas brunch Nana always had for us. It was the core of our holiday celebrations. After, we all went to a church ceremony of lessons and carols; the music was truly transporting.

Phil has finished his estate filings and the house has transferred to him. I think we’ll really dig into cleaning it out once the holidays are over. We hope to get some painting done and rent it out in the spring or early summer. We’d like to keep it as an investment. Of course, there is SO MUCH stuff to get rid of, including some good items I’d like to keep for the girls. Oy. One step at a time!

In spite of all this misery, I’ve invited eight people over for New Year’s Eve! Crazy? Me? Everyone’s bringing something, and I’m making boeuf bourguignon, which I can do the day before. It’s most of the people on my blog list of who’s who (Greens, Albrechts, Corbins) plus another musical couple from our old church, whom we have known for about 20 years now. Should be a fun bunch. We plan to make some music as well as dine and toast the New Year.

I will be happy to dump this decade in a hole and bury it. Besides Dana’s downfall, we lost six loved ones, including three parents and a brother, in ten years. Tell me if this is average for a family in ten years, or if this is more than our share. Watching Dana’s mental illness develop and not knowing how to handle it, and then having her so depressed and desperate that she risked her life and became an addict—I don’t know how much lower we can go. I hope we’re not in for more in 2010. I hope we’re due for some brighter times.

The dogs are asleep at my feet as I key in my thoughts. Kip had a good walk this afternoon and he’s tired. Phil is dozing in a comfy chair, and the Christmas tree is glowing before us. Dana has gone to work, Marcy is upstairs resting and fighting a cold. Next week she’ll start a job for the month of January providing after-school care at an agency that helps special needs children. Thank you for sending us healing vibes. We need them. Peace to you and yours.

This Is It

2009-11-14T10:45:00.005-05:00

Dana in Paris, 2006.

My daughter Dana (almost 24) was admitted to a private psychiatric hospital Wednesday night (11/11/09). It's a 28 day program for dual diagnosis, so they'll deal w both her psychiatric stuff and her drug abuse stuff. It cost about the same as an entire semester at a private college. Dana's using some of the college fund she has not yet used.

Since she told us of her decision to go into treatment last Friday morning (11/6), Dana spoke to hospital staff by phone a number of times. There's another psychiatric hospital closer to us, where she previously has been treated (2003 and 2004), and she thought she would go there, but her new doctor likes this facility better. She saw him Tuesday to discuss it in depth. He raised her lithium to 600 mg.

She made the admission appointment for 4 pm so she could get her nail extensions removed and buy her toiletries (required to be all new, unopened containers). I think she bought some crack while she was out and used it. She presented at the hospital with a temp of 101 and no symptoms of illness, which can indicate crack use bc it makes the system race. Her pupils were very dilated, but the psych meds can do that, too, so it's hard to tell what that indicates. Otherwise she seemed normal, although she was not hungry even though she had not eaten all day, another sign of crack use.

I think she is in deeper with the crack than we know. I hope they can get through to her and make a difference. I'm actually afraid to hope for anything. Her treatment coordinator got me on the cell phone yesterday when I was at the grocery store. It was funny to sit there and discuss my daughter's psychiatric history and treatment, but there was the usual grocery store bustling noises, so no one overheard. I expressed my several concerns, chief of which is that Dana may have entered treatment as a way to demonstrate her love to Mike. The coordinator said that lots of people go in for less than ideal reasons–their parents make them, they have been ordered by the court–but they derive benefits from the program no matter what the impetus. I'm sure she isn't the first difficult case they've had.

We visited Dana last night. We brought her a one-piece swim suit (there is a pool and a gym) and her earrings (she had misunderstood the website in regard to piercings, which she has in her ears and nose). The group house where she is assigned is very cozy and welcoming. She is the youngest of the women–this group is all women–and they all greeted us and said how nice Dana is. We visited in her room, which has its own bath, a bed, two dressers and a closet. There is another twin bed in the room, but at present she has no roommate. She has no phone or computer of her own there, so she spend free time reading. There is a computer lab, but facebook is blocked, so she hasn't been on it much. There is a phone from which she can call anyone she likes. She has called here a couple of times, and she says she has spoken with Mike, who may visit on Tuesday.

Her mood is positive, pleasant and calm. She seems still unwilling to admit that the marijuana use is detrimental to her health, but the group sessions on self image seem to be helpful to her. She hates herself, and that's the basis for all her self harm. I would like to know why she hates herself.

I feel that for the most part I am responsible for her negative self image. I was terribly ill with Graves disease when Dana was born (12/28/85). It wasn't until she was 8 1/2 months old that I was diagnosed. That was the beginning of my long struggle with thyroid disease. My heartbeat was 136 when I was diagnosed and my weight was 118 pounds (I am 5'8"), I was extremely irritable--irritable doesn't begin to describe it, actually. I was treated with blood pressure meds to bring down my heart rate, and propylthiouricil (PTU) to block the thyroid production,

but every time I was weaned off of it, my thyroid would gradually become overactive again. In 1997, the year I turned 40, my thyroid was destroyed by radioactive iodine treatment, and I have been underactive ever since. It took a good five years to regulate my underactive thyroid.

When I was overactive and had my first small child, Dana, I swung between being a very good, loving mother and a monster with a short fuse. Along with singing to her and nursing her, I screamed at her and was rough in handling her when I became enraged. This is an infant we're talking about. A tiny infant. A chubby, smiling cherub. Who screams at an infant????? Why would I expect a baby to change behavior as a result of being screamed at and handled roughly? How is it not my fault that Dana is mentally ill now? It has to be because of the way I treated her. I was ill myself, but how does that make me not responsible?

This haunts me every day. What a monster I was and how I hurt that poor defenseless baby. I don't want to make myself feel better; I don't deserve it, but how can I help Dana love herself? I have talked to her about this, but she has no recollection of it and doesn't know how to respond to my guilt. If anyone out there has any insight to resolving this sort of situation, please chime in.

I also did many good things with Dana. She was read to and had much good attention. I breast fed her for those 8 1/2 months until my weight and strength got so low I stopped breast feeding because I thought it was the cause of my decline. By the time I was diagnosed, it was too late to restart my milk and I was on the meds. We did lots of crafts and gardening, creative play and dance, singing and laughing.

I was never harsh with Marcy, who came along four years and a month after Dana (2/10/90). I was on PTU all during my pregnancy with her, and I was mellow throughout her toddler years. I breast fed Marcy for a full year; she went right to a cup, never had a bottle. Marcy is a sunny, even-tempered person who loves life.

Last Friday night, when Phil was out of town and it was clear Dana was not going to be immediately admitted to a hospital, she and I and Marcy went out for sushi and to see 'This Is It,' the Michael Jackson film. Marcy expressed optimism for Dana to get into treatment and get back to her old self so she could move forward and maybe get into the program they have at her school for women of 'nontraditional college age' and finish school. Dana nodded in agreement, trying to be positive. It's such a nice dream. Poor Michael Jackson. Such a sweet soul, raised in such a bizarre world of entertainment venues and exploitation, he was never held on a lap and read to and allowed to play like a child should. Of course his adult life is a reflection of his upbringing.

The Autumn Leaves Drift by My Window

2009-11-06T15:17:00.007-05:00

How was your Halloween? It was rainy and balmy here, and we didn't get many trick-or-treaters, which was disappointing. A couple of blocks away they reportedly had hundreds of kids. Some years we have run out of candy. It's hard to tell how it's going to go.

It's also difficult to discern whether or not one's daughter has truly given up smoking crack or if she is still using it on the sly. It has been almost a month since the big revelation that in addition to smoking pot 4-5 times a day, my daughter, Dana, has also been smoking crack for about a year. Her therapist and psychiatrist wanted to give her the chance to stop on her own; she believed she could stop; she did and does want to stop. Naive optimist as I am, I thought maybe she was doing well and was abstaining. As per her therapist's suggestion, we started charging her rent so she would have less money to spend on drugs. She seems to have cut down on the pot use. She has been shopping for clothes. Things were looking up.

And then this morning, just after coming down to say goodbye to Phil as he headed out on a business trip--really, he was probably still at the end of the driveway waiting to pull out into traffic--she said she thinks she needs to go to the rehab hospital because she has been using again.

I say, swell, good idea, give Dr. L a call and get the wheels in motion for an admission. I had discussed hospitals with him, so I told her his preference. She put in a call and is waiting for a call back. She has gone over to the fast food place where Mike works to have lunch with him; she has her phone with her.

I suggested she Mapquest the hospital so we will know where we're going, it being a couple of towns away, about 45 minutes. She looks at their website and gets annoyed that they don't allow jewelry, so she will have to remove her nose ring and the hole will close up. Okay, well, maybe she shouldn't have started smoking crack and then she wouldn't have to go to the place where no nose rings are allowed.

She went to the store where she works and picked up forms for a medical leave of absence. She's thinking she will be going in tomorrow, which is Saturday. I'll let her work that out with the doctor. I know from her past hospitalizations that nothing happens on weekends, and she'll be admitted and then wait for Monday.

The good news is that Marcy is home from college for a day. Her a capella group is singing on Long Island this weekend, so she came home for a quick visit and the rest of the girls will pick her up tomorrow morning on their way. It is nice to have her here. When she was here Columbus Day weekend, her roommate was with her and they were busy sightseeing and all. We love her roommate, but it's nice to have Marcy all to ourselves, too.

I had not told Marcy about Dana's crack use. She is still having a tough time getting over her Nana's death and is feeling somewhat low in spirits. I didn't want to give her another depressing bit of info, but today I felt I should tell her. She was shocked, amazed and disgusted. I agree, it is difficult to take it all in.

Phil is on his was to Ohio for a book fair. I haven't spoken to him yet. He called here from the airport when I was out with Marcy, and Dana spoke with him but didn't tell him her news! So I'm waiting for him to land and call from Ohio.

He is finishing up the business for his mother's estate. Her bills are paid. He has just gotten the house appraised, and he's preparing the asset list for probate. We're still not sure what to do with the house. I think we should clean it up and rent it and keep it for one of the girls or just as an income stream. We spent an afternoon bagging things for Goodwill last week. It's going to be another enormous task, as was cleaning out my mother's house. It's still impossible to understand that she is no longer in this world. We're wondering what Thanksgiving will be like without her.

My mother is settling into the new nursing home. Care there is so-so. They leave her sitting for extended periods and it's tiring for her. I go and advocate for her as much as possible, I help them understand her needs and I visit twice a week for a couple of hours. I usually do her nails, and the other day we tried to play dominoes. Her eyesight isn't great, so she can't do crafts or needlework. idk

The cleaning bug has bitten me--it has been years since I have had one buzzing around--and I have been cleaning and organizing like a Stepford wife. It's great. I found a website called www.flylady.net, 'fly' stands for 'finally loving yourself,' and it's about uncluttering your life so you can relax and live an effective life. Once you get on her email list, you get daily digests of organizing tips and game plans for attacking particular parts of the house. Doing it in bits--like setting a timer and sprint-cleaning for 15 minutes a day--makes even the most cluttered house easy to tackle. I'm finding it very liberating to clean out junk that has been lingering and gathering dust for years. This morning, on the spur of the moment, I took a bag and began weeding my lingerie drawer. Now it contains only things that fit me and are in good condition! What a concept! No more sifting through wads of useless lycra.

Wish us luck. Dana will likely be going into a hospital in the next day or so. I don't know how long such hospitalizations last--two weeks? six weeks? Phil will be back around noon on Sunday. My house is neat and my windows are shiny.

Maintaining Enthusiasm

2009-10-16T09:54:00.010-04:00

Me and my m-i-l, enjoying dinner on the patio, June 2009

Grilled Shrimp, Pork, Vegetables and Pineapple

I don't even know how to begin to review the events of the past month and a half! Prepare yourself, get out the tissues, but don't worry about us too much, as we are surviving and building our steadfastness in adversity. I recently went looking for quotes to bolster our spirits and found this one from Sir Winston:

"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."
Sir Winston Churchill

September 2, a Wednesday, started out beautifully. It was a perfect early autumn day--no humidity, bright blue sky and mild temperature. I met Janet for a walk on the rail trail with Kip and we went 5 miles without blinking an eye because we had so much to talk about.

It was such a mild, sunny day that I didn't want to go back in the house for long. I talked Phil into quitting work early and going to the beach. We made some sandwiches and headed to the shore, where we lolled and basked, moving our chairs as the tide came up, walking and wading, posting blissful statuses to facebook from my cell phone in an attempt to make my friends jealous of all the fun and relaxation I was having on a Wednesday at the beach. Around 4 pm we dragged ourselves away and went home.

"There's a message on the machine from Nana's neighbor saying that she hasn't taken in her mail in two days."

This is what Marcy told us as we entered the house; she had just listened to the message. Neither daughter answers the house phone, all their calls go to their cell phones.

Shock, dread, a vacuum of silence. Phil got his wallet and keys and prepared to go to his mother's house. I watched him for a couple of seconds before it occurred to me that I had to go, too. In our shorts and sandals, fragrant with sunscreen, we made the short drive. I began to envision a trip to the hospital, wonder where she might have her insurance card, where does she keep her purse? Then it occurs to me that if she hasn't gotten her mail in two days, we're probably not going to need the hospital.

Everything at the house is locked. Phil tears the screen door from its lock. He has a key for the front door, but the chain is on inside. He calls to his mother through the slim opening and then pounds it open with his shoulder. He searches the first floor, calling, the house is shadowy and cold. He goes up the stairs, calling for her. I go out on the step and dial 911. He finds her, says her name and gasps. I run up to see. She is clearly no longer alive, I tell the dispatcher. Emergency vehicles and police arrive. We have lost her.

At 81, Nana was our lively, fun-loving parent, always out and about, a snappy dresser, engaged in life. We had just taken her to lunch on the Saturday before and had a nice visit. She had a cocktail, we ate mozzarella sticks. We went back to her house, where she had a back-to-school gift for Marcy. At Mass the next day she chatted with her church friends, as usual, lively as can be. Poof. It was probably a massive heart attack; there had been no warning. She had taken her trash bin out to the curb in the morning but did not bring it back as usual. Pauline, her neighbor lady, also a widow, noticed the neglected bin and started watching and calling, knocking on windows and doors, thinking that perhaps her neighbor had gone along to take Marcy back to college. She called us when the mail hadn't been taken in the second day. There's still a message from Pauline on the answering machine:

"Mary, are you okay? Are you sick or dead? Please call me, I'm worried about you."

Mary, Nana, my mother-in-law seems to have died mid-morning on September 1. We had our lovely day and lolled at the beach on September 2 while she sat waiting for us to find her.

Sitting up in a chair at her dressing table, Mary was all dressed, with makeup, jewelry, wristwatch, glasses, pocketbook and keys, shopping list and shopping bag--ready to go. It must have been fast and painless, as there was no grimace or look of discomfort or fear.

The police looked around and asked questions. Another officer opened a laptop and filed a report for the coroner, recording all her medications and asking about recent illnesses, of which there were none. I called the church rectory and the undertaker.

When all the EMTs and police had left, men from the funeral parlor came in a black Chevy Tahoe and took her away in a black plastic body bag.

We had a wake Friday, September 4, and the funeral Saturday, September 5. Mary had told us in the past year that she did not want to be buried in Arlington with my f-i-l, but she wanted to be cremated and buried locally with Phil's brother, who also died suddenly of a heart attack just before Christmas in 2006. Judy, the woman in charge of plot sales at the cemetery, reported that Mary had even gone to the cemetery to check on a plot space.

Her accounts have been closed and Phil has paid her bills with life insurance money. She was carrying something in the neighborhood of $40K in credit card debt and just making the minimum payments. We did not know. We're still deciding what to do with the house. There is no mortgage on it.

All my friends thought my mother had passed away when I send them the email with "sad news" in the subject line. But no! At 92, my mom is settling into a nursing home as a private pay patient. We're watching her cash go away, wondering how to salvage her house. My m-i-l's passing is a gift in that sense. I was resigned to watching both houses spent for long-term care, and now it will be only one. My mom is our last parent. We're down to a five-person family.

Phil has now buried his entire family. They all passed away suddenly and alone, even his mother's parents.

Marcy went back to school the Monday after the funeral. There was not sufficient time to process the loss of her Nana, and it took her a few weeks to get up to speed in her studies. She is still feeling sad, as they had a lot in common and were close.

Little by little we are growing accustomed to our loss. Phil has a heavy heart. She was a good mother, who suffered much in her life, and was intensely proud of Phil and his accomplishments. She was a good mother-in-law. She always praised me, my cooking, our daughters, my performance as a wife. She made it clear that she was pleased that her son was happy and had a good life and that I deserved credit for much of it. She loved Dana and Marcy; she encouraged them and never criticized. I'm glad we appreciated her and included her in family events as much as we did.

Since the funeral we experienced other challenges.

Mom

I moved my mother from a very expensive nursing home into one at half the price. She is well cared for, but it is much less plush and further away. I have had to make adjustments to her health insurance to comply with the new system. I just got her Medicare Part D squared away yesterday, after doing it incorrectly the first time. She is more clear headed than she has been for a number of years, and so she is realizing that this is a permanent placement, and that has been difficult for her. She is enjoying interacting with other residents in their recreation room, which offers more socializing than she has had in years. The food is good. Her heart and lungs are strong. It seems to be a good place for her, and some of the worry has lessened for me, but it is sad to see her grapple with her life as it is now.

Dana

Dana has not been improving as I thought she would under the care of her new pyschiatrist and on her new medications. She has been looking ragged and puffy-faced. She has been becoming more frequently enraged and causing public disturbances. One night in August Mike called to let us know that she had left a party in a dangerously emotional mood and he was concerned for her safety.

This past Monday night, at bedtime, Mike brought Dana home in an agitated state. She had become upset because he was spending time with other friends and not including her because she does not get along with those friends. She had gone to the bar where they were meeting and become enraged and began shouting, cursing and threatening to kill people.

Dana went directly to bed when he got her home. Mike stayed and tearfully told us that Dana has been smoking crack for about a year. This is in addition to the strong form of marijuana she uses 4-5 times per day. She does it by herself and has her own suppliers. She has told him that she wants to stop using it, but she keeps returning to it. She has told him that she wants to speak about it with her therapist but has not yet had the nerve.

The next day she happened to have appointments with both her therapist and her psychiatrist. I had contacted them both before they saw Dana. She was overwhelmed with shame when she realized that everyone knew of her crack use. The doctors want to give her the chance to stop on her own before there is any move toward hospitalization for detoxification and rehabilitation. She has said she does not want to stop smoking pot. I asked her to cut down to once a day.

That was Tuesday, today is Friday. It seems as though she is trying. She is getting out of bed earlier than five minutes before she is to be at work. She is eating three meals a day and getting to bed before midnight. She paid us rent yesterday. We have talked about her applying for a job at a new bank that is opening in town.

I am trying to heed Sir Winston's suggestion and not lose enthusiasm, even though we go from failure to failure. I had assumed one's life would come to a halt upon hearing that one's daughter was smoking crack. Just before this revelation, I had heard the story of how an acquaintance's daughter broke her back cheerleading--another experience I assumed would be the end of happiness for a parent. But that child has repaired and continued and so has her family. So will we, I'm assuming.

Our New Puppy, Kip

2009-08-18T10:25:00.007-04:00

I wonder how many stagnating bloggers have become re-invigorated by the movie Julie and Julia? Of course, the number of blogs when the story took place in 2002 was a fraction of the number of blogs out there now, and so readers are less likely to find and latch onto one's blog today. But I suspect this is especially true when the topic is as depressing, as mine is : (

My neighbor writes a candy blog, and she has tons of readers, gets boxes of free candy samples sent to her home, and makes actual money on ads. Candy is a fun topic.

Thinking about this, I'm wondering if focusing on the fun aspects of my life--and I do have them--might be both more interesting to readers and more healthy for me. I also miss the discipline of writing several times a week.

What the hay. I'll give it a try!

First fun topic: our new puppy, Kip! Here he is being checked out by our old corgi, Frisky.

We got Kip in late June at the local Humane Society. He's an Australian Shepherd and Welsh Corgi mix. Just a couple of weeks short of his first birthday, Kip is one of nine puppies born to his shepherd mom at the Humane Society. He was adopted by a family but they returned him! supposedly because he jumped up too much and wouldn't listen to anyone but the man in the family.

Well, as you can see, he is a beautiful dog.

He was VERY skittish the first few weeks, but after almost two months with us he is calming down nicely. The word "no" still has very little meaning for him, and pushing him away only feeds his hunger to be touched. Last week I crinkled a piece of newspaper in his general direction--did not hit him, just fingered it so it made noise--and he calmly retreated. He is now learning that he will get his petting on our schedule and not whenever he decides to jump up and ask for it. He is not food-motivated, cares not a whit about treats, so he is proving difficult to train, but as he relaxes into our home routine, he is more receptive to commands.

Full of cute puppy antics, Kip romps like a storybook dog, chases butterflies, and loves his toys. He and Frisky enjoy each other's company, and it has been a real tonic for the old guy to have the pup around. They rough house and Kip runs big circles around Frisk as he barks, and then they lie down side by side in the shade and relax together.

My decision to take on a new dog was very impromptu. I had been thinking that this might be a good time to introduce a new one. We were planning to stay home for the summer for a number of reasons. Daughter Dana is on a new regimen of psych meds, and I did not want to leave her alone; daughter Marcy got a steady M-F internship working with special needs children at a day camp and had a part in the town summer teen musical; I was getting my elderly mom settled into a nursing home; and finances are not what we'd like them to be with the fallen investments combined with our first year of paying for Marcy's private college tuition.

I thought a new dog might be a nice, positive focus for Dana and fun for Marcy, who was embroiled in a long, drawn-out break-up with boyfriend, Andrew. Every time the break-up seemed to be final, they would re-unite, fight and then do it all over again--it was driving me NUTS.

So I went to have a talk with my therapist, Mary, wanting to know how to stop obsessively caring about this stupid teen drama. Her impression was that Marcy was holding onto this relationship as a form of rebellion against me. That because of Dana's mental health issues, she was limited in how she could rebel (drugs and alcohol being anathema to her), and this miasma surfaced as a preoccupation. Could I focus on work or something else, Mary asked me. Work is difficult with the amount of time I spend dealing with my mom's affairs, but I was thinking of maybe getting a new dog, I said. Perfect! she exclaimed.

I drove directly from my therapist's office to the Humane Society and found Kip. We visited, I learned his history. Heck, I would get a new dog FOR ME! Not for the children! Someone to take long walks with! Someone with a happy response to my every move! A happy, healthy, growing pup!

Before they would allow the adoption to go through, I was required to drive home and pick up Frisky and bring him to meet Kip to be sure they'd get along. They also called Phil to make sure he was on board (he was not enthusiastic, but he did not object). Marcy came back with me, too, to meet Kip and introduce the two dogs and help me wrangle them both homeward.

Well, don't you know, one week to the day of our bringing home Kip, Marcy broke up with Andrew for good--a nice, noisy, "I hate you, you're a jerk" break-up! As soon as I turned my attention away from it, the relationship lost its meaning for her. Like a charm. And Marcy, who never really bonded with Frisky, is in love with Kip, who gives her all the affection she needs without the hang-ups of a human boyfriend!

Having a new dog in the house has been a nice mental break from all my more serious concerns. As I remind myself time and time again, IT DOES NOT HELP TO OBSESS about all the unpleasant things; it doesn't make them any easier or solve any of the difficulties--it just gives them more power over me.

So, I don't know if this post with it's "new puppy" heading will attract new readers, but I'll give the blog another, more cheerful, try. I could use tips on handling an emotionally needy pup, so please send them along if you have them! Share your puppy stories. How has your dog helped you cope with life's challenges? Have you ever noticed that sweet puppy smell they seem to be able to emit as will that makes them all the more endearing?

And a special salute to Julia Child for continuing to inspire me and Julie Powell for prompting me to start blogging again. The movie, although not perfect, gave me the opportunity to spend quality time with the woman I consider to be my spiritual mother. Thank you, Meryl Streep, for your insightful portrayal of Julia. More about my Julia devotion next time!

June, Off to a Cool Start

2009-06-11T09:59:00.007-04:00

See the yummy Salade Nicoise we had on one of the first patio-dining days in May? Since then, we've had a streak of cold, rainy weather punctuated with a few gorgeous days. I hope you're enjoying your spring and early summer. Once it warms up, we'll be wishing for the cool again!

Here's an update. My mom fell and broke her left hip about three weeks ago and has been in short-term rehab at a local nursing home since then. Because of her age (92), they did not operate, they are just letting it heal and doing physical therapy. The good news is that she is already walking well on it, and they are pleased with her progress. It’s the best nursing home in the area, and she is receiving excellent care and is very comfortable.

I think of my mother as a little bag of broken bones. She has almost no quality of life, etc. I guess in some ways I’m glad I don’t have to negotiate with siblings on how to handle her situation. It is such a heavy burden for those of us dealing with this sort of responsibility.
I don’t know if my mom will be able to return to where she was in assisted living. I have her on the waiting list for long-term care at the present facility and will sign her up at a couple of other homes this week. She really needs a lot of help with everything. It’s all very expensive ($12K/mo) so moving her into a nursing facility will mean losing the house by the beach along with her savings, which is a situation I was struggling to avoid. She worked hard all her life to save, so she deserves to be comfortable and well cared for now. I had hoped to save the house, but this is the way it is.

Everyone else is well here. Marcy finished her first year of college with flying colors and now is in San Francisco visiting her roommate for ten days. Later she'll be volunteering to buddy a mentally challenged child at a local day camp; she'll also appear in the town musical theater production of Seussical the Musical as the Sour Kangaroo. She just broke up (again) with the diminutive Andrew and is feeling sad about that, esp since he posted a bunch of new facebook photos of himself having fun in NYC with some friends including a new girl (more his size, a cute couple, actually). Unfortunately, it's taking away from her fun as she sulks around San Francisco thinking about her loss.

Good news for Dana: I finally have her situated with a new psychiatrist and he has started her on new antidepressant (Lexapro instead of Prozac) that seems to be doing her a lot of good. She'll be on this for another week and then they'll add a mood stabilizer. I have a good feeling about this new doctor. He's working with a psychologist I found who did a full psychological assessment, which we haven't had before. The diagnosis is Bipolar II with anger and a strong tendency to self harm and self defeat in place of more typical mania. There is also a finding of some ADHD, which may have complicated her college attempts. I’m excited and encouraged to have this in-depth information. Treating the depression is the first priority and then the unstable mood. After that they'll address the ADHD, but that's a ways down the road.

Dana is still working at the grocery store and has recently qualified for union benefits, including health insurance and paid sick leave, etc. It will be a help cost-wise to get her off my old former employer's Cobra at over $400/month. This whole drawn-out affair costs us thousands each month, taking the place of the college tuition we’re not paying for her. Poor people just stay crazy, I guess, and end up doing heroin and living on the street.

It's important, first, to accept the fact that mental illness exists and then educate one's self by reading and asking informed questions of one's health care professionals. Don't accept that your child's bad behavior is a "choice" that they can change at will. A person with depression--which in children (and many adults) often presents as extreme irritability--cannot simply "snap out of it" and "get with the program." If you suspect disordered thinking in your loved one, look around that person's immediate and extended family for genetic links to depression. Does the person in question have adult siblings, cousins, parents or grandparents who "just don't try" and live at the fringes of society in dead-end jobs and poverty, self medicating with substances? These are mentally ill people, whose lives might have been made more productive--might still be made more productive--with appropriate diagnosis and treatment. Report your findings to your health care professional and seek diagnosis.

To me, this demonstrates that we parents of young people with behavioral issues must be persistent, follow our instincts and not blame the victim for their unpleasant/inconvenient symptoms. Don't let your pediatrician dismiss your concerns. Demand a referral to a psychologist who does diagnostic testing. Check the web site of your nearest teaching hospital and look for affiliated professionals. This is how I found the new doctors who are helping Dana. Even though she is 23 years old, because of her disordered thinking, she does not function on an age-appropriate level and is not equipped to seek out and pursue the help she needs. It took me a while to come to this realization: that I had to take the reins and get her treatment. I hope others in my situation won't hesitate as I did.

[FYI, Here's a link to interesting new findings out of Vanderbilt University about the depression risks for children living with depressed family members: http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/news/releases/2009/06/02/cognitive-behavioral-program-may-help-teens-at-risk-for-depression.81689]

In other news, Phil continues to work hard at his writing. He's glad that the school visits are done for the summer, as the traveling is grueling and takes away from his writing time. He got a lot of local coverage regarding the national award he received in April (remember the much-anticipated black-tie affair? Well, he won! Yes, it was thrilling. Yes, I looked fabulous!) for one of his books, and at one point he appeared on the front page of the morning newspaper, which was quite an eye opener!

I'm feeling better on my increased Synthroid dose. I'm sharper mentally, less depressed and I can feel a few pounds dropping off. I have been working in the garden, and it is a terrific mental break from all my heavy concerns. Focusing on where to transplant overgrown plants and what new plants to acquire is a great treat for the mind! The bending and sweating, fresh air and exercise are perfect mood soothers as well.

p.s. If you follow my blog, please consider clicking on the icon on the right-hand side of the page to show that you follow. I know you're out there, but it would be more fun to see that I have at least one follower! Thanks!

A Bit of Advice from the Heart of the Sandwich

2009-04-08T08:45:00.003-04:00

Find your sanctuary and let yourself ask the universe for help.

Life in the middle has been a serious strain on my health, both physical and mental. If you're in the thick of such a struggle, I hope my story will help in some small way.

The best advice I have to give is, keep pursuing happiness and don't let your loved one's suffering take away your life. Fight to keep your self together. Make time for enjoyable, peaceful activity, even if it's just sitting on a stoop and enjoying the fresh air and listening to the birds. Get together with friends and laugh. Make something--a cake, a sock, a flower arrangement for yourself. Let someone hug you and hold your hand. Hold the hand of your suffering loved one. Spend time with a pet. All these things will help your soul feel better and give you strength in this challenging time of your life.

Adieu

2009-03-12T13:54:00.004-04:00

Farewell, my friends! As I mentioned in my last post, I am tired of hearing myself whine about life in the middle of a generational sandwich. Each post I might write would only be more of the same until my mom passes on; it's an ongoing cycle of her getting a little better followed by a new crisis, my daughters' dealings with life's vicissitudes, and me in the middle trying to buoy everyone else. I don't need to add more of the same to this tiring cycle, so I'm going to give this blog a rest.

I will still receive comments made here, so, if you have a question or a comment, please feel free to post it here and I will see it.

We'll all be fine. Spring is coming, I can actually hear a robin clucking outside my window right now (such silly birds). I'll be following the usual blogs, so I'll check in with those of you who have be come my blog friends. Thank you for checking in with me over the course of this past year.

This pattern of trying situations has been going on for over two years now. I fondly remember the years when the children were small and all was right with the world. We were young and pretty, the babies were cherubic, our futures were promising, it was a beautiful time. Now we must care for those who are fading from us and feel the loss of those who are gone. The children struggle with their personal challenges and we help them as much as we can and feel their hurts when they come. Our bodies are beginning to slow a bit, and we're not as cute to look at! But this is life, full circle! It is living fully, taking the bad with the good.

I'll post an update in six months or a year. Otherwise, if you're new to this blog, there's a whole year of living Sandwiched In for you to peruse. Good luck with your own situation. It's not easy, but it can be done. Remember to keep up the fun stuff in between the yucky stuff, otherwise the unfun will take over your life.

xoxo,

Sandy

I Gits Weary and Sick of Trying

2009-03-09T12:54:00.005-04:00

I'll tell you this, I am getting tired of what I have to report on this blog. My purpose is to document the so-called Sandwich Generation experience as I live it, but, believe me, it is tedious and draining and I can't imagine anyone else would want to read about it. I am so tired of all of it.

And as I keep telling you, I am one of the lucky ones in that the wolf is not at the door, we are in relatively good health, etc. I feel for those parents and caregivers who do what I do without the support of a spouse and without the financial leeway to go to the gym, eat out occasionally, see a show or a movie, meet with friends at leisure, sit and do nothing, blog.

Dana was suspended at work again yesterday. Same situation as last time, a customer walked away from the check stand without paying, but this time on the self scan aisle. Dana was in charge of watching seven self-scanners. She says they probably won't let her work with money in the store after this, and she'll get assigned to a department--I guess like deli or produce or such. So this is a disappointment, a new step backward.

Then, she came home from work after getting suspended and she and Mike broke up again. I don't know how the subject came up between them; she was happily trotting out the door to go for a walk with him (the weather was warm and beautiful yesterday), he came to pick her up, and the next thing I know they're still sitting in the driveway and she's crying. They're there for a long time. She's not "physically attracted" to him she tells me. So why did she get back with him in January? We don't know. Another nice boy of whom we have grown fond bites the dust.

I was near tears all afternoon yesterday and still feel pretty low today.

This morning I got a call from the assisted living (AL) nurse; she tells me mom is okay, but they found her on the bathroom floor this morning with stool everywhere. She had fallen and hit her head. She has a bump. She had had about of diarrhea and was trying to clean herself up. And so on. She didn't want to go to the hospital, except for the bump on the head she feels okay, is moving okay, remembers the fall, etc. So I'll be going there shortly.

She still has the private duty nurse from 7 am until noon, in addition to the AL staff, so I go visit after lunch and usually walk her to supper at 4:30. I went to the gym this morning, just finished lunch, and after I blog I'll go shower and change and go see her. I need to get some groceries, too, on my way home.

The dog had finished his Lyme disease antibiotic and was feeling chipper, but then he slowed a bit and was off his feed for a couple of days. Now he has a weird raised patch on his snout just above his nose. He doesn't like me to touch it, so I suspect it is sensitive. I can't see going to the vet for another $150 to have it looked at. We'll watch it for a few days and see what happens. He has been getting Phil up around 3:30 or 4 am lately. They come downstairs, the dog goes out, and Phil sleeps in one of his reading chairs. I don't know. The sleep disturbance makes everything else worse.

I feel emotionally pulled in so many directions, you know? Dana's good for a couple of weeks, then her work situation gets upset, then Mike is deleted from our family, then even when my mom is not in crisis I know it's just a matter of time before the next problem. To top it off with the dog looking like he's not going to last the year, looking at his food dish and turning away, growing a new mystery bump, yada yada... it makes me weary.

I have been regularly going to the gym for the past two weeks. I am still waiting for some weight loss, but I feel stronger--albeit more physically tired after a workout. I do some free weights and a half hour on the treadmill at an incline.

On Friday I'll be going to pickup Marcy and her roommate for spring break. That makes me feel a little tired, too. Marcy is a high-energy person and usually brings about several mini dramas during a visit. (Remember Christmas break with the mono, the nose and ear cartilage piercing/infections disaster, hair bleaching disaster and boyfriend breakup disaster?) So we'll have a week with the two of them here; Sabine, the roommate is a quiet girl, and I don't expect any drama from her, but you never know. Somehow I will keep up my gym routine while taking day trips and sightseeing with the college girls. I was hoping to have Marcy's ex-boyfriend John over for a visit at some point, but that may not be worth the angst. Maybe we can just go to his restaurant for pizza one night when he's working. I know, why would I even think of adding this?

Phil's schedule has lightened up a bit and we had a good day in NYC on Saturday, where he spoke at a conference on teaching and learning. It was a beautiful day, and we walked a lot, met some nice teachers. Yesterday we went out for brunch at a very nice new French place in a neighboring town. Not helping my diet, but it was delicious. Last week we took a Sunday drive up the coast and walked on one of the state beaches and ate seafood (and I wonder why I'm not seeing rapid weight loss!).

We had friends over for dinner Friday night, an older couple we enjoy--she used to work with me and he is a former corporate speech writer and an author who aspires to publication. Dana and Mike became available and dined with us, which was a delight and made me so happy. Dana knows the wife, having taken some college French classes with her, during which they became friendly. They are sort of adopted grandparents and good emotional support for Dana, and I'm always pleased to get them together. So we had a nice evening! Unfortunately, all of the good feelings dissipated by Sunday.

Tomorrow night I have choir, and the music is coming along nicely. Haydn and Handel masses, lots of fun to sing. Wednesday we're going out for dinner with another older couple; she is also a children's author and Phil's mentor. That should be fun. I'm getting my hair cut that day. We have Thursday off, and then I pick up the college girls on Friday and it's off to the races! Wish me luck!

Bloomin'

2009-02-26T14:48:00.003-05:00

Look! My "Christmas" Cactus is blooming! Isn't it exquisite? I just had to share it with you. (Can you see my reflection in the tile in the first image?) We'll have to call it a Lenten Cactus. It has been on the kitchen counter for at least three years since it was purchased for Christmas long ago. It think it bloomed one other time since we originally got it. It has nice foliage, so we enjoy it even when it's not blooming. Because it's near the sink, we can easily pour a little water on it and it's less likely to be forgotten.

Things are calming down a bit since my posting on Tuesday. Dana has been avoiding us, but I have been extending love to her in bits, by texting her goodnight when she's out and buying her a juice when she's at the cash register at work. She isn't working today, but she came downstairs a little after noon and was receptive to the idea of looking at the want ads and getting her resume together. She was feeling so guilty she couldn't face us, so she was spending time at Mike's during our waking hours.

Mom's chest cold has cleared. The nurse from the doctor's office checked her out yesterday and all the congestion had disappeared and she scored well in all other aspects, too.

So now I'm blogging to you from a coffee shop with wifi. I'm not sure I'll return to this particular shop. It's very lively here, which is okay, but there's also cooking smoke--they have a panini grill and insufficient ventilation. But it's good to be out and writing.

I tried to plot out the next week or so in terms of gym, writing, reading, housework, visiting mom, cooking, bill paying, publicity work, and evening engagements. Maybe the pinch more Synthroid I started taking on Tuesday is perking up my mind and planning ability!

I think that's all for today. Be sure to check out my Feb 24 post to get a full picture.

At the Library!

2009-02-24T14:20:00.005-05:00

Wow, am I falling behind in my blogging! It's that lousy facebook. It fills a need to communicate incidentals about myself, and it provides more immediate and copious feedback--and that from people I know. But I don't, of course, get into the nitty gritty of family life and elder woes on facebook. The blog forum provides a place for me to document the less fun parts of my life (lucky you). And this is anonymous.

I wish I knew if my blog were helping readers cope with their sandwich generation life. It is always gratifying to hear from my regular readers, Shimmy, Adrian and Corrine. Please don't be shy about saying hi if you find my postings helpful.

Anyhow, I'm posting from one of our several public libraries today! This is a first effort to get myself out of the house and write more and in different settings, with no one walking by looking over my shoulder and no laundry or dust balls calling my name. I just had a nice lunch with friends Donna and Karen (yesterday was Karen's birthday) and then I strolled across the street and found myself a library carrel. Freedom.

My other change for the better is that I have been going to the gym regularly and have developed a routine that gives me a good workout. I took advantage of the "one hour of personal training" that the gym provides when you sign up. We got my baseline weight (170, huge for me) and body mass index (not good). I described my basic goals (improve balance and core strength, strengthen bones, increase stamina and lung capacity) and challenges (stiff neck and shoulders from too much facebooking, old rotator cuff injury). The trainer gave me some simple exercises to do with free weights in addition to what I have been doing on the treadmill (walking uphill at a good clip for 30 minutes). I have done this five times now, and I am past the stiff muscle part and have lost maybe a couple of pounds. I am eating less maniacally, as well (I am a stress eater). So I am happy about the promise of this new activity.

After my gym workouts, I go home to shower and eat lunch and then I go visit mom at the assisted living place. I am ready to relax by then, so I do it with her. This way she gets three visits a week and I can help her with whatever she needs while I'm there.

Not so good stuff that has been happening:

Mom has had a bad chest cold, and I always worry it will go into pneumonia--she seemed slightly improved last night, had no fever and was coughing less, but still had some delirious thinking and noisy breathing
Marcy got mad at me for objecting to a four-day visit her boyfriend is planning to her college dorm room
Dana got arrested for possession of marijuana last night

It makes me very tired to think about each of these things. The most pressing, or recent one, Dana's arrest, happened around 9 pm last night. She called to say she was at the police station in a neighboring town and needed to be picked up, released on a promise to appear in court next week. The story is that someone reported her as driving erratically and the police spotted her parked at a 7 Eleven. Luckily she was not under the influence of anything. Her car smells like pot and I guess they asked her about having anything with her and she volunteered that she had pot in her handbag, so they arrested her. It was a tiny amount. I don't know what the repercussions will be.

She had been doing so well. Back on the Prozac over six weeks now, she has been in good spirits and getting a few things done. Some of the lights on her car were out, her front bumper was still off, she had physically lost her license and was taking too long to replace it, yada yada. These things had finally all been taken care of (with our intervention and prompting and dragging her off to the DMV).

Then she got suspended at work. She had finished checking groceries for a woman with a young child and had indicated the total due. Dana looked away to say hello to a friend (clearly, she should not have done this) while the woman was to be getting out her money or sliding her credit card, and when Dana looked back the next customer was in front of her and the woman with the child had left without paying. So Dana was suspended for four days and went back to work with the assistance of a union representative.

We were all relieved to have that over with. She saw the ob/gyn and got back on birth control because she's back with Mike. Her car is all fixed up. She got a replacement license. And then she goes and gets herself arrested. And she blames the state for making possession illegal and doesn't concede that this is a big deal. Help me, Rhonda. That's as much as I can deal with this right now, excuse me as I change subjects.

In other news, I got back blood test results last week (I get my thyroid level checked every six months) and my doctor upped my Synthroid a little; I started the new dose today. An increased Synthroid dose is always exciting for me. I'm hoping it will give me a little more oomph, etc. I don't want it to make me nervous or shaky. We'll see. I'm to try it and do the blood work again in six weeks. I asked to doctor to bump it up. My TSH has gone from .86 to 3.54 in that last year and a half. He indulges my suggestions. I realize there is a bone-loss risk from too much replacement thyroid and I do have osteoporosis already. I don't know. If you have a bone loss horror story as a result of thyroid therapy, please share it with me. (The short version of my story is that I was over active most of my life but undiagnosed, was diagnosed after having my first baby and my thyroid surged, treated medically off and on for years, and then at 40 I had my thyroid destroyed with radioactive iodine in 1997, making me dependent on replacement thyroid. As it turns out, several of my extended family members have had the same experience; hyperthyroidism is genetic.)

Phil is enjoying a slightly lighter work load. We may take a day off and go to a museum on Friday. Yesterday we got the invitation to the banquet where they will present the award for which he has been nominated. It is a black tie event in NYC, which is exciting, but we have to pay to attend! $175 each! Doesn't that seem like a scam? Nominate a bunch of people and then ask them to pay to go to the party? We aren't required to be present to win, but it sounds like fun and he has a good chance of winning. The initial publicity has been good for Phil, the nomination is significant. So I'm hoping I'll fit into one of my formal concert outfits by then and I won't have to buy anything new to wear! Or I can borrow something. All black is always best in the city!

We were thinking of taking in a new dog until last night's trip to the jailhouse. A friend of Mike's has this cute little girl dog he doesn't want to keep, looks like a white terrier of some kind. Three years old, neutered, house trained, not yappy; Dana has bonded with her. I said we could have her visit and see how old Frisky (13) does with her. She was going to come today. Now I don't know if that's still going to happen. Phil was leery about it to begin with. I want to see if she will be a torment for the old dog or if she can settle in and relax into a new place. Her name is Zoe.

The next big event, apart from court proceedings next week, is spring break, March 13-22. Marcy's roommate, Sabine, is coming home with her for the week instead of flying home to San Francisco. I have bought tickets for the new Broadway production of Guys and Dolls, so we'll do that and tour the city a bit. We'll see some New England-y sights, hope for good weather. Maybe go to Mystic or Sturbridge Village. Should be fun.

Tomorrow night we're meeting with our accountant to do the taxes early, hoping to get some money back--ha. We had a good year, but cash flow is tight. Authors get paid only twice a year when royalties are released in April and October. And we're paying the big college bills in cash. We're watching our retirement funds evaporate as part of the financial crisis. We can't be fired, but people can stop buying books and hiring speakers. We have always lived within our means, so our mortgage is manageable--thus far. What scary times. I hope everyone reading this is holding things together.

Tonight I've got choir, tomorrow the accountant, Thursday I'm going to the university rep theater with Janet, Friday we're home, Saturday the Corbets are having us over for dinner with the Albrechts. In between I'll be continuing with the gym and monitoring mom's cold. I will also try to get out to a coffee shop and blog and write and organize my thoughts a bit more.

Be well. Drop me a line.

Looking towards Spring

2009-02-10T12:44:00.005-05:00

The snows are starting to melt here this week. On Sunday we were able to take a quick spin around the block with the pooch wearing polar fleece instead of jackets. We saw large flocks of robins hopping all around and filling the trees. Soon it will be time to go looking for snowdrops.

I'm so glad I have come full circle in the time I have been blogging. Snows to buds to full-blown flowers to falling leaves back to snow and now on to new buds. I love the seasonal cycle. I miss not singing my way through it with the church-year music--it's the only thing I miss about church. It's nice to anticipate the seasons by preparing the appointed hymns.

Today is Marcy's 19th birthday. She is away at college. However, she was here last weekend and she will be here next weekend, so we're not too lonesome for her! Her a capella group had a local engagement Sunday afternoon, so Phil went up and got her Saturday morning and she stayed over night. She had only been back to school two weeks. And I'll go get her for a planned visit this coming Friday afternoon and she'll stay through Sunday--a birthday/Valentines visit (mostly to see the boyfriend).

She is a remarkable girl, and we are proud and happy that school is going along as planned for her. Recall that things fell apart for our older daughter, Dana, in November of freshman year 2003 and have yet to get back on track. So part of our joy for Marcy is that she is on her own track and that track is taking her somewhere we had envisioned it might.

Dana and Mike have gotten back together. I had been thinking they might but not wanting to suggest anything. Recall she had started up with him about a year ago and then broke up with him in July ostensibly to date the many tempting boys who work with her at the grocery store, where she became employed last April. They have continued their friendship and "hanging out" since the breakup, and he has been here to comfort her through all the heartbreak brought on by the jerky boys. Now, five weeks into a new round of Prozac, she has "realized" that Mike, who is now 25, is her "soul mate" and recognizes that he cares for her as a person. As I have mentioned, he has a nice, even temper and is very patient. Whether or not he turns out to be "the one" for Dana, he has the type of personality with whom she best functions. I don't know if I had mentioned that Mike has done some self improvement since the break-up: he lost over 15 lbs, stopped smoking, and has started taking courses towards the completion of his business degree. He is very cute when he isn't carrying the extra weight, and i think he demonstrates tremendous personal control and good sense to improve his health through sheer willpower.

It's too soon to say that her living habits--eating, sleeping, spending time with her family--are becoming more healthful, but I can see a glimmer of potential. I will keep you informed.

Mom has been pretty good since her last trip to the ER. I bought a case of water bottles and left instructions for the aides to keep encouraging her to drink, drink, drink. Having it in bottles helps us measure her intake. She did have some unreal stories for me about staff behavior yesterday--as the stories become more far-fetched, I know she is getting dehydrated--but she wasn't too emphatic about them.

I had a nice day in one of our local small cities last week with Janet, who is newly at home without employment (by design)--we went to lunch and an art museum. She is struggling to adjust. I stopped in with her briefly yesterday and her spirits were low (even though she was in the middle of packing the family for a vacation in the Bahamas next week!). She has been employed for so long in a responsible position as a corporate attorney, that the shift to full-time home mom is trying for her. I will keep encouraging her and checking in. We are in fairly constant email communication.

Phil is finishing up the last few weeks of a densely packed writing schedule that has lasted for over a year. We're wondering if a lightening of the load will actually happen or if it is a dream. One of his books was recently nominated for a prestigious award, and he has received some good publicity and well wishes as a result. We'll find out this spring at an awards banquet if he wins it.

Mending

2009-01-30T12:12:00.003-05:00

Here's a piece of my soul I'd like to share with you. These are some items I salvaged from a sewing chest as I cleaned out my mother's house this summer. I have opened that chest and looked at these same items off and on for 51 years, except for the pink velveteen, which is a scrap from a Cinderella-style formal gown I made for myself when I was 16.

As you can see, many of the items are from the '50s or earlier. The scene depicted on the green fabric, which is a piece of a valance, feels like a scene from my life, although I never rode in a carriage or lived in a Southern mansion. The buttons, the snaps from Grants for 15 cents--for me they are infused with mystery and magic.

I mended the strap on a camisole for myself this morning. I had put these objects into my own sewing kit, and when I went for a needle and black thread, I picked up the spool you see in the photograph. There was a pre-threaded needle in it, and I used that to complete my task. I felt it an eery thing to use a needle threaded by my mother at least 20 years ago--it has been at least that long since she was able to see a needle--and to use antique thread.

What an odd, primal thing it is to take a sharp, fine tool and use it to weave thread in and out of fabric to hold pieces together. Imagine how long this has been going on and the human beings who have done it and the objects they have made or mended.

It's a Snow Day, My Mind Runs Wild!

2009-01-28T11:04:00.003-05:00

Two posts in one day?!! I am so impressed with myself, I have to share this email exchange with Donna:

[Donna's email to me this morning:]

...Ken finally told Mark about dropping pre-calc, so I got the litany this morning about all his concerns... He didn't blow up, but he is worried and depressed. Says we have failed him (typical of Mark). He said he doesn't care about the math course, it's just about the implications of him not working at it, etc. I am like, that course is really hard and he is working at his other courses. He never should have taken it to begin with really, and it will be the only F on his report card in 4 years. I hope colleges will see him working at the other stuff.

I agree that Ken should have recognized that he was in trouble and gone for extra help. But he just never cared about the subject and didn't want to put in the time (which Mark sees as a big problem). I know he isn't there yet. It just bothers me that Mark sees all these negatives. He was insistent that Ken will flunk out of college the first semester, that he doesn't follow through, that he puts things off that he doesn't want to do. That if it's unpleasant, he just doesn't do it... I could go on. I think alot of it has to do with maturity though and Ken will grow up alot in college.

Anyway... I process and respond to these things over time, and will to Mark's concerns. I didn't tell him I knew a couple of weeks beforehand that this was happening, as I insisted that Ken be the one to tell Mark. It bothered me more that Ken put off telling him and that was his responsibility. It had me in knots which could have been avoided.

Looking forward to Friday night. I'm staying in today... the snow has already turned over to sleet.
hugs
Donna

[my reply to Donna]
...It’s very worrisome to launch a child into the world, and worrying or not worrying have the same result—you never know. Especially when it’s your first child and you have no tried and true pathways to success. Personality is such a big influence on a person’s success; at some point parents have no more to say about it and they’re on their own. We can voice our hopes and paint a picture of what we think success might look like for the child, but they are the final determiners of what actually happens.

Maybe be specific with Ken about what your basic expectations are and set clear limits on what education spending will be in relation to academic productivity, and then let him decide what he will do? Such as: we expect you will go to college and develop your talents by doing coursework and pursuing opportunities. We will pay for the college as long as you are taking full advantage of its offerings. If college doesn’t seem to work for you in the way we imagine it will, we will invest only x number of dollars in other career training until you are 21 and then you are on your own.

It’s good for all parents (this is the voice of experience) to realize the fact that college doesn’t work for everyone, even if they are brilliant, because to think otherwise leaves you open to huge emotional devastation, as has been our experience. We never in our wildest dreams expected Dana would come home in the middle of her first semester and never go back. She was top of her class, National Honor Society, good student, etc. There were warning signs we did not recognize: she was in a dangerous emotional relationship with a boy, we had controlled her activities up until that point because she was prone to lay on the couch and do nothing if not prodded, she was not self directed. When she got out on her own, she fell apart. She had some basic mental health issues, but we always compensated for them by doing her logistical thinking for her.

Now Ken is not Dana, obviously. But he has his own challenges plus plenty of talents. He is more self directed, and when he self directs, he is highly successful in the areas about which he is passionate. He may only do well in a school like Hampshire where he can proceed in this manner. He may not do well where he has to exert a lot of effort on core requirements that bore him. He is brilliant, and he has passion. I think he will be okay whatever he does, but it’s hard to tell what he’ll do when he’s cut loose. I think the onus has to be put squarely on his shoulders, and you may go ahead and use Dana as a horrible example of how wrong things can go for brilliant people.

That’s my 2 cents. Mark is not wrong to worry. You are not wrong to try to not worry. It’s a worrisome thing and so much is at stake and we have so little influence. It’s one of the awful things about being a parent. And this part goes on for a long time and gets worse not better. Sorry. It’s the not-fun part.

But, hey, you all have legs. You have bellies full of good food, warm beds to sleep in at night. No one is pregnant or on drugs or in jail. No one is in physical danger. You are financially secure. You are an attractive family. You can laugh and play music. You are all highly educated already. You have scads of friends. You all love each other and haven’t given up. You are all very lucky people with much more than most people have. It is a wonderful springboard from which to launch children, and that counts a lot toward their eventual success. We have all that, too, so it gives me hope that things will eventually work out for Dana, even though it won’t be in a way we had envisioned.

Love you!
S.

So, how did I do?

Ventilliation

2009-01-28T09:42:00.006-05:00

Instead of going shopping and lunching with Janet yesterday I spent the day in the ER with mom. Her morning aide called me early and said she had suddenly slumped over the breakfast table. They got her into a wheelchair and brought her back to her room where she continued to be too lethargic to move into a chair or bed. When the staff nurse got to her about half an hour later, she became unresponsive and the called for an ambulance. She was on her way to the hospital just as I got there, so I got back in the car and followed them there.

We were all assuming it was a new UTI, and I was ready to refuse treatment and have her set up in a hospice program to receive palliative care and die. I asked to speak to a social worker to get that going. But it was just dehydration again. They gave her a bag of fluids and discharged her. This time they are calling it "acute renal failure" which sounds really bad to me but is apparently fixed with a bag of fluids.

If I were in my mom's situation, I would have been looking for a way out a long time ago. Every time she gets a little infection of any kind, we fix her up with antibiotics. She said point blank to the orthopedist on Monday that she didn't want to be fixed up anymore, she is ready to go. Not that the orthopedist can do anything to affect her survival, and not that she is of sound mind, but I am and if this were me I would want out.

I think that when my age cohort gets near this stage/condition of existence, we will have an easy, legal way to end our own suffering, besides going to Wisconsin where assisted suicide is legal. I do not want to be a little broken bag of bones depending on others to move me around and feed me at tremendous financial expense and significant emotional strain on my family.

Short of doing myself in, I plan to try to be happy no matter my circumstances. If my eyesight is no good, I'll listen to something pleasant. I'll sit in a place where I can watch or hear people coming and going for at least an hour a day. I'll believe my children when they tell me what's what and what's important for me to do, like drinking sufficient fluids.

Obviously, I am frustrated. Mom is not happy at present. She told me she wouldn't watch TV because she had no one to watch it with. No one there has anyone to watch TV with, that's why you watch TV, because you're alone and it gives you someone else to look at and listen to. The other ladies who live there have their little routines of meals and naps and group exercise and crafts and TV. Why can't she do the same? She has a private duty nurse there for five hours a day every day to get her up, washed, dressed and take her to activities. For the rest of the day she has two meals, the occasional bingo (which she is now refusing to attend), a parlor with other people, and TV. But she has to fuss and fume that she has "no one to help her" even though she is on the schedule to be helped with toileting, dressing for bed, meds, and visual checks. She is accompanied to community meals in the dining room where she dines with the same little group of conversant ladies. I could work with this situation. Why can't she? "I'm a dog in a cage," she tells me.

If she goes to a nursing home where she will have more regular attention, she will be kept in a wheelchair and not allowed to get up without assistance. She was in that situation for seven weeks in Oct-Nov and she became incontinent and very depressed.

My house is not spacious. If she were to come here, it would be the end of life as we know it for the duration of her life. I would have to convert my dining room into space for her and a caregiver. My husband and I both work at home. Mom is not a sweet, easy-going person. She is very demanding and never content, always looking for the next problem, always stewing and brewing.

Another option I have considered would be to rent a small condo or in-law apartment and put her in it with a live-in caregiver. That option is looking better and better to me. Of course, there's the danger of the aid being abusive because I wouldn't be there continually to monitor the situation. And I'd have to be buying and delivering groceries and arranging for cleaning and checking up on everything.

I vent, therefore I am.

Late January 2009--One Year of Blogging!

2009-01-26T16:57:00.003-05:00

You know you're not in New England anymore when you see stuff like this. Here are a few images I brought back from the Scottsdale, Arizona, area. What a nice change of scenery it was for me, my daughter and husband. Lovely temperatures. No snow. No jackets or boots. Just sunscreen and short sleeves. The buildings are part of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, a beautiful colony for him and his apprentices. Very serene and inspirational.

Now we're back in the ice and snow, shivering and carrying on with reality. I've completely one year of blogging! That's something! I must spend some time looking back and remembering that eventful year. Thank you if you've visited and returned to take another look.

We brought Marcy back to school yesterday, we had a sunny, clear day for driving. She was happy to be going back, even though she was sad to leave home and boyfriend Andrew, with whom she has resumed.

Dana is feeling more alive now that she has been on the Prozac for three weeks. I realized we're going to have to slow down on or stop her therapy session, as they're costing me $800 per month and her psychiatrist, whom she will have to see once a month to continue on the Prozac is $230 per session. At least the Prozac is cheap. She has been seeing this therapist once a week for a year now and in addition, she completed the 16-week DBT class. She gets a half-hour talk session with her psych visit, so she should be okay dropping the other. She needs to get a real job and think about moving on with her life.

Mom was doing so well mentally for a while there, it was like having someone else's mother instead of mine. But her hallucinations and crazy thinking started coming back about ten days ago, and I'm having her checked for a new UTI. We saw the orthopedist today, and he said the bone is not healed (it has been 5 weeks since she broke her clavicle), but he doesn't want to do surgery on her because it would be a big deal, she's old (91 1/2) and the outcome wouldn't be much different than just letting it heal badly, as it is doing. The swelling and discoloration are gone, and she is using the arm and getting around rather well. She's in and out of a chair with more ease than she had a month ago.

I borrow a wheelchair for her from the assisted living place where she lives when I take her to the doctor. It's a big production to get her in and out of the car, and the chair make is less fatiguing for her to cover the requisite distances down hallways, etc. Still, it is an ordeal. Today she had to have a bowel movement while we were at the doctor's office, so that took a while and involved me getting plastic gloves and using wet paper towels to clean her off. My back is tired by the time I get home.

My doggie boy was feeling very poorly last week and just getting worse and worse, so i called the vet and we started him on doxycycline again for a new case of Lyme. He must have picked up another tick as soon as he recovered from his last case of Lyme in October. As usual, he perked right up and continues to be peppier every day. I thought he was on his way out last week, this week he's nosing me to play and go for walks.

I'm trying a new recipe for "Spanish Beef Stew with Olives" with tomatoes, potatoes, and green olives tonight. If we like it, I'll make it for a dinner I'm having on Feb 6 for some local library folks who are friends and promoters of Phil's work. A stew is an easy, tasty thing for a dinner party, because you can make most of it ahead of time and just finish it off when you're ready to serve.

Tomorrow Janet and I are going shopping for a couch (for her) and then having lunch! She is newly free of her job and still adjusting to the at-home-mom life, so I have to hold her hand a bit for the first month or so. Friday Phil and I are having dinner out with Donna and Mark, and Saturday we're going to an anniversary party for another couple in town we've been friends with for a long time. So, it's a busy social week.

Wednesday I need to get blood tested to see if I've stopped ovulating, so we can eventually cut out the bc pills. That'll be new. Me without estrogen. Watch out world!

Marcy wants to come home Valentine weekend, mostly to see Andrew; I will pick her up the Friday morning before and bring her back on Sunday. She turns 19 on Feb 10; it will be her first birthday away from home! My baby! I'm thinking I'll mail a birthday cake so she can have a little party with her friends in the dorm.

That's about all that's going on right now. Did I tell you that my boy John was not only destroyed by my daughter over Christmas break (she got back with him for about three weeks and then just threw him under a truck, breaking it off without warning to get back with the short boy), but that his dad has decided he doesn't want to pay for college and so he had to move out of his dorm and tell his track coach that he wouldn't be with the team this spring? The poor thing was devastated, this was before she stomped on his heart three days before Christmas. It just kills me. That's obviously never going to happen, so I have stopped obsessing about it, but I'm still sad.

I finally got all the Christmas things put away--dishes, knick knacks, wreaths, linens--there's just so many little things! I've put up a Valentine door decoration, but I don't want to drag out too much stuff. It was okay when the kids were little, but most of it is silly now. More snow tomorrow night! We've had more than usual this year! ttyl

Home Again!

2009-01-18T20:20:00.004-05:00

We're feeling some cabin fever here today, snowed in to an extent, continuing a little bit too much togetherness we had in Arizona last week. Boy, did we enjoy the weather there! 74 degrees, shirtsleeves, sunscreen, palm trees, desert vistas. We flew out in a snowstorm on 1/10, changing our flight last minute to beat the storm predicted for Sunday, but the snow caught us anyhow. Our flight left close to on time, de-icing took some time, and we had to change planes in Las Vegas, so the trip took longer.

Marcy and I did some sight seeing and some shopping. We went to the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. On Thursday afternoon, we all drove up to Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural design colony in north Scottsdale, Taliesin, which was awe inspiring.

We came home on US Air the day after their plane landed in the Hudson! Our trip, thank goodness, went very smoothly and we got home in good time with no disasters.

Weather on this end is not so pleasant! Minus 3, more snow today, ice everywhere! Un-shoveled driveway, because Dana was not so inclined. Morose dog, believing we had left for ever. He is still quite depressed. He seems to not be feeling terribly well.

I came home to a sad phone message from the son of old friends and former childhood next-door neighbors. His dad, a second father to me, passed away last week. They had relocated to South Carolina almost two years ago, and so he died and was cremated there. The family does intend to come north and hold a memorial service in their old home town, so I will attend that and possibly bring my mother. He was 89, due to turn 90 in May. He was an amazingly active, vital man who enjoyed tennis and motorcycles, gardening, beaches. He and my dad were buddies, and they had many years of fishing, clamming, and golfing together, horsing around and acting like teenagers. He died rather suddenly. He was being treated for lower back pain as well as seeing a cardiologist. He had a number of old injuries from motorcycle spills (some of them when he was well into his 80s), and he was not one to complain and religiously avoided doctors. But the pain got intense on Sunday and he allowed his family to take him to the hospital. His son tells me he was on the phone with the doctor being assured that it was nothing serious when his dad slipped away. So they don't have an actual cause of death, and they don't know what was causing the back pain. I'm thankful he didn't linger, but if it were my father, I'd like a clearer idea of what actually took him. Wouldn't you?

I visited with mom at the assisted living residence yesterday. She was sitting alone in the silent apartment; this doesn't seem to trouble her, she doesn't want the television on. Her color was very good and all the discoloration from her broken clavicle is gone. She is moving well. She took the news of our friend's passing well. She did wonder when it would be her turn. We watched five deer on the hill outside her window; she spotted them right away and followed their every move until they had moved out of sight. We wrote a note of condolence and got it in the mail, wondering how his wife and daughter would deal with the loss. His daughter, my friend Lisa, has Downs' Syndrome; she was one of my bride's maids and is like a sister to me. She is 42 and was very close to her father.

So, my spirits are a little low today. Marcy and I made a nice pot of boef bourguinon, and we just ate it for supper with mashed potatoes and haricots vert, red wine and bread. Very tasty. Phil and I watched the football game between the Cardinals and Eagles, rooting for the Cards because of our recent travel experience, glad to see them win. Arizona was in a tizzy about it all last week; they must be ecstatic now that they're going to the Super Bowl!

I realize mom's got an ortho appointment Tuesday at 2. I think I will change that so as not to miss all of the inauguration. I am trying to think of a good way to celebrate the day, but I have choir that night--I wonder if I could skip it or if they'll cancel. I want to be out on the front lawn with fireworks or something! Let me know if you have any good, not too complicated way to express the special joy of this event.

Okay, we're going to watch Wuthering Heights on PBS now. I will step up the blogging this week. I'll have photos of our trip to post as well. Be well.

Looking Forward

2009-01-07T11:35:00.007-05:00

It's all over! Ooh! Aah! I do not enjoy "the holidays." I endure them and celebrate when they have passed. This year marked a new low for us, or maybe it tied with 2006 when Phil's brother dropped dead ten days before Christmas and Phil had to fly out to California on Dec. 23 to clean out his apartment and deal with the affairs. Okay, that was a worse year. No one died this year.

I don't want to dwell on the things that made this season difficult, but they included Mom falling on Dec. 23 and breaking her left clavicle, Marcy heartlessly dumping John on the same day and starting up with Andrew again, Dana crying ALL DAY Christmas day (rescued by ex-boyfriend Mike even though the "rescue" involved his bringing over pot for her to smoke in her room on that same day), surviving a beer pong garage birthday party on Dec. 26 for Dana that lasted until 2 a.m. (and resulted in one girl's family being angry with us because their under-age daughter drank at our house, she had lied about her whereabouts), our concert being well attended but weakly executed, and our favorite local restaurant closing abruptly on Jan 5 due to a lease dispute. Plus Marcy's lingering mono.

Now, mind you, everyone here is warm and dry, sleeps in a comfortable bed, has a stomach full of food, and is in no danger of any kind. We all got nice presents for Christmas. We enjoyed many a hearth fire, a couple of decent holiday meals. We had pretty snow for Christmas and New Year's eve. We are not out of work or in jail. There is no rocket fire aimed at us.

Now to move on to the new year and pursue a peaceful path being a help to others and doing the work I have been given to do.

Looking forward, Marcy and Phil and I are preparing for a six-day trip to Arizona, where Phil will visit schools and Marcy and I will sight-see. I cannot fathom a desert right now, but I will believe it when I see it. We are having an ice storm today; I hope the weather is clear when we fly out of NYC on Sunday.

Good news includes: Marcy got her grades on Monday, and she did very well for her first semester at a very selective school, all As and Bs, only one B-. Dana started back on Prozac yesterday after seeing a new-ish psychiatrist. Dr. Q has moved out of state, so his associate is taking on his patients. Dana had her first visit with him yesterday and asked for an antidepressant. Please cross fingers for us. She has been seeing a lot of Mike again, who has lost about 15 pounds and stopped smoking and is looking very cute. He is still "not her type" but he is also her "best friend in the world," so who knows what will transpire there. He stayed for Christmas dinner and made the second half of the day livable for everyone by keeping Dana's spirits up. We are all looking forward to Mr. Obama's inauguration day!

That's about it right now. I'm doing laundry today and I plan to make an apple pie and beef barley soup, as we'll be shut in with the ice for most of the day. Marcy is feeling better because she has been resting. Dana is scheduled to work today, so I'll go start her car and get the ice melting off her windshield.

I hope you enjoy the pics of the snow-powdered canine. He looks winsome because he doesn't like the camera in his face.

Tis the Season to be Low Key

2008-12-10T09:22:00.007-05:00

Hi. Things have been relatively low key these past few weeks. Marcy is finishing up her first semester away at college despite mononucleosis. We went into NYC to hear her choral group sing last Friday and celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary at the same time. We went out for dinner at a very fancy and expensive restaurant, The Capital Grille, on 42nd just east of Grand Central (we took the train in), my cousin Amanda, who lives in the city, met us there and then walked with us to the concert at a church on Park Avenue. It was a nice night, cold but not windy, and the city is very pretty all decked out in holiday splendor.

Dana almost came with us. She has had it on her calendar for over a month, arranged to take the entire day off, and yet she could not cope with the 2 pm departure deadline. She got up around noon, had a little half tuna sandwich, then went back upstairs and delayed getting into the shower and ended up rushing and getting herself upset. We missed the first departure time, but there was a later train available. She got into the car sobbing and about 25 yards down the street begged not to go. So we turned around and left her at home.

Phil met his literary agent, Charles, at the bar of the restaurant when we got there, and I took a cab to fetch Marcy at the church where the groups were rehearsing. She was having a difficult mono day and was exhausted and her throat was hurting, but as usual her spirits were good. We sat and visited a little with Charles, a family associate now for about 15 years, and it was interesting for all of us, but especially Marcy, to hear the latest publishing banter from a real New York agent, who looks almost a caricature with rumpled raincoat, overstuffed briefcase, and novel round-frame eyeglasses. Book publishing is bracing for bad times, as publishers are laying off in record numbers, sales are down, and booksellers are facing empty stores. Phil has made a good living as a children's author for the past 15 years, and we will be okay due to living within our means, but we expect things to get tight this coming year, especially with the hefty college tuition we are paying entirely out of pocket.

My mom slowly is re-adjusting to life back at the assisted living facility, after having been in a convalescent home for over seven weeks. We started with 24-hour private care, and I shortened it to 14 hours, cutting the overnight care the Monday after Thanksgiving. She is refusing to stay in bed until help arrives in the morning or to use the pull chord to call for assistance with the toilet, putting herself at risk of falling and another stay in the hospital. I don't know what else I can do to persuade her. Today is the day where I take a good long look at the finances and figure out how long her money will last at this rate of spending. She is in relatively good condition, walking with a walker, feeding herself. She is increasingly incontinent, however, and her hands are shakier than they were a couple of months ago. The doctor lowered her Cymbalta dosage from 30 to 15 milligrams to see if it would reduce the tremor and relieve some diarrhea she has been experiencing. That lower dose started on Sunday, Dec. 7. When I saw her yesterday, she seemed a little more lively and slightly less shaky. She has gotten sharper on the increased Synthroid dose. Her mood is considerably improved due to the Cymbalta-- she is much more relaxed and does not continually look for problems to resolve; recrimination has ceased. Where was this drug when I was growing up?

Phil finally came to a less-than-crazy point in his writing schedule and was able to take the weekend off, which actually seemed odd after so many crunch months. He is at the doctor for his check-up today, and he is nervous about it. He has a number of irrational fears about his health, but then his brother and father are dead from heart issues, so he's entitled. He was way too thin this time last year. People would gasp when they saw him. At 6'4" he should weigh more than 168, which is way too close for comfort to my weight (162 at 5'7"), and he stresses about his sugar, which is always normal. Okay, so he has come home from the doctor's office in better spirits; everything checked out, weight (175) is not an issue, bp very good, sugar low. Whew! The mood in the house has lightened already!

Christmas is so much more relaxed without all the school-related hubbub of concerts and activities! The concert my group has coming up is schedule for January 4, so we are in rehearsal mode, but the big event will be when the holidays have calmed down. Our family had always enjoyed the craziness when the girls were growing up--church pageant, class parties, going to see The Nutcracker, fairs, toy stores, etc.--but we're ready to have calm now! Phil used to write and direct the children's pageant every year, so we were in the thick of it making scenery and herding toddlers dressed as sheep. They were fun times.

We've even got an artificial tree for the first time ever in our 27 years, and I am surprised to find that I prefer it! The way our heating systems works, our house is very dry once the heat goes on, and a live tree dries out and looks dead very quickly no matter how much we water it. This year we don't have to sit here and watch a living thing die! We have a pretty tree-like display that we bought for Phil's office a number of years ago, and we can use it again next year! All of our ornaments look beautiful on it, and it doesn't droop and threaten to cause any of them to drop to the floor! A balsam-scented candle supplies the fragrance!

Soon I will begin wrapping gifts and writing cards. I really have to be in the mood for both of these tasks. Once I get started, I can keep going, but starting is a struggle. Soon. The spirit will strike. It always does.

Nana, Phil's mom traditionally has us over for a Christmas lunch on the Sunday before. It is getting to be a bit much for her, now that she's 81, but she has invited us again. One of the things we're doing for her for Christmas is replacing the lamppost she has on her front lawn. The wiring is old and the electrician can't get it to work without re-wiring, so we're having that done for her. She makes ends meet on Social Security and a little bit of stock her parents left her, but there are a lot of expenses associated with a house, and it is a strain for her. She has not put into place any plans to transfer the house or anything to us so they will not be consumed should she need long-term care, as my mother does. It's a conversation that is difficult to broach. My mom didn't transfer anything either, although we did manage to take my dad's name off the deed when he was first diagnosed with Alzheimer's. That worked well when he died, because we didn't need to probate the house and his cash had been spent away on seven months of nursing home care.

So that's about it. We are in a tense but quiet place for Christmas. We will go to the high school concert next week when Marcy gets home, and the Corbets are having their annual party, which is always fun. Tonight Janet and I have our theater subscription date, so we got two extra tickets and Phil and Ron are going to join us. We'll have dinner out with them first, and it will be our holiday celebration together. Janet is at a big threshold! She had been thinking of leaving her job as a corporate attorney for a large publishing firm to be home with her 14-year-old daughter, and then her division got sold and she is being laid off! Which is better than quitting, because she will get severance pay. Her last day is coming up (probably Dec. 23), and she is apprehensive about becoming officially unemployed, although she has plenty to do at home. I have put together a package of retirement things for her that we will give tonight: a leopard-print silky bathrobe and slippers, an eye mask, a nail file, bonbons, and magazines including Soap Opera Digest. Time will tell if she happily will be able to join the land of the at-home moms after being a powerful professional for so many years! I fully expect to do some hand-holding to get her acclimated.

I hope you are all enjoying the season, whatever your climate or tradition. I'm coming up on the last month of a full year of blogging about my life! I wonder if anyone has read the entire thing!

First Snowfall of the Season

2008-12-08T09:03:00.000-05:00

Sandwiched Turkey

2008-11-29T08:43:00.004-05:00

What a day! What a week! I had the perfect example of the Sandwich Generation Thanksgiving! I'm not complaining, mind you, just flabbergasted at how much can go on without causing me to lose my mind!

It all started last Saturday when my friend Donna and I drove up to hear college daughter Marcy sing in concert with her a cappella group. She was burning up with fever when we got there at 5 pm to take her out to dinner, even though she was full of ibuprofen. I gave her Tylenol, and she rallied enough to go to dinner and sing her concert, including a solo that was awesome. We resolved that she would come home early, missing two days of classes, because it looked like mono. She came home the next day, we saw the doctor Monday morning, and, sure enough, it's mono. It was all down hill from there. The throat swelled, intense pain ensued, ibu and Tylenol ceased to cover the pain and the throat threatened to close up altogether. Two more trips to the doctor, and yesterday she started a steroid, which helped considerably, but only so long as she was taking it, as she awoke in pain again this morning before she could take it again. She did manage to eat turkey and lay on the couch to visit with Grandma and Nana on Thanksgiving day.

Last Sunday night, just after Marcy had come home moaning and groaning, I went to bed with a funny feeling in my stomach. I thought that maybe it was nervousness about all I had to do in the coming week. Nope. Stomach bug. I was up a number of times in the night and unwell the next day and into Tuesday! Still, I managed to set the table, take Marcy to the doctor, grocery shop, etc. I even did laundry. And I laid around and moaned with Marcy and watched movies and old episodes of The OC in between moans, which was a nice way to spend time with her.

This was also the week my mom was adjusting to 24-hour care back at assisted living, having just come home from seven weeks in the convalescent hospital. So far the people have been very good, albeit expensive. I'm thinking of it as a vacation, as it has given me the peace of mind to cope with the other stuff during this trying week. She is having great difficulty walking and toileting. Her hands are shaking more than usual, so self-feeding is a challenge.

So, of course, I arranged for the caregiver to be off on Thanksgiving Day so mom could come to my house 11-7. She had her hair washed and set Tuesday afternoon, and I had set out an outfit for her to wear. After I took Marcy to the doctor and picked up her prescription, I went back to get mom. I brought with us the chair I bought for her, which is a good, sturdy boardroom-type chair from Staples that has a metal frame, arms, and a vinyl covered seat and back. I also brought her walker, of course, and a bag of "supplies" (diapers, wipes, plastic gloves, paper towels, disinfectant spray). These last items came in handy when she had a bout of the runs, and I was with her in the bathroom during the pre-meal festivities for twenty minutes. If you find yourself in this situation, do plan ahead and be sure to include plastic bags for waste removal.

Phil was a great help. This was his first day off in a long time, as he is still working non-stop on the mountain of books he agreed to write this year and into next year. He was up early, as always, and did all the peeling and chopping, groomed the dog and brought in firewood, made one of the side dishes (very good, from Epicurious, brussels sprout hash), got mom in and out of the house and car, ran to the store to buy a second turkey when it was discovered that the first had frozen solid in the basement refrigerator (no joke).

Older daughter Dana had ironed the napkins, which was a help. She was off from work that day, and was showered and dressed by 1, which was the time we had planned officially to start. She was in a good mood and ate a full dinner--her stomach is unaccustomed to eating to much in one sitting, as ours all are, I suppose, but her usual daily consumption is a diet coke. Anyhow, as you can see from the photo, she was a pleasant addition to the party.

My m-i-l, Nana, was in a snit of some sort, not sure why. She wouldn't eat any appetizers, even though we had a longer than expected wait for the turkey because it went in late, the first one having been frozen and all. She seemed uncomfortable with all the to-do of me helping my mom in the bathroom. Trying to not embarrass my mother, I refused to meet her gaze to roll my eyes and express exasperation once the task was completed. She didn't like that her seat was slightly different than where she believes she usually sits--we're talking six people here, she was still next to Phil. She complained that the onions on her green bean casserole were browned in the process of reheating the dish. And she noted that the creamed onions had been omitted from the usual side dishes (mashed potatoes, mashed turnips, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, gravy, cranberry sauce, biscuits, green bean casserole)--the only dish that I decided to skip, I had baked biscuits from scratch, but there were no onions. My bad.

We had a beautiful fire in the fireplace all afternoon, and everything was delicious, esp the turkey. The pies, which are always overkill, were yummy--pumpkin, pecan, and mince. Phil whipped the cream without adding sugar, and it was really good--a nice balance to the super-sweet pies.

So there you have it--infectious teen on one side of me and poopy mom on the other with a dash of mother-in-law attitude and a frozen turkey thrown in for good measure. Social scientists take note, this is what is referred to as life in the Sandwich Generation!

Guess who was here visiting the sick girl last night? The former ex-boyfriend John, whom I frequently have mentioned here. They had planned a date, but Marcy could not go anywhere, so they sat in the living room for a couple of hours. It was his first time here since September of 2007. I'm wondering if I now owe God or the devil something for this course of events, if I promised to do something in exchange for Johnny's return. I was not expecting they would get back together, and it's not clear that they will, but it was like old times having him here again. Although he has been lifting weights at college in training for track and field (he throws javelin), and he is all muscle bound and large (275 lbs, I hear tell). Quite the change from Andrew at 5' 3 1/2" and 120 pounds. He is coming back tonight to watch a movie with her in the basement rec room. She is contagious with mono now for the next six months.

I hope your turkey days went well. If you have a Sandwich Generation experience that will add to the knowledge of others in the same situation, or at least make them feel less alone, please share it in a comment message!

Carry On!

2008-11-20T20:02:00.006-05:00

Well, the novel is not happening. I have too much on my plate right now to invent people and places and situations! I'll give it another try another time when I haven't got so much going on. So here's what's going on.

I finally, after six weeks, moved mom out of the convalescent home and back into assisted living. They were done with the physical therapy they were giving her, so insurance was probably getting ready to stop paying and she was not happy there. In a hospital situation, patients who can walk but are at risk of falling are kept in wheelchairs with motion alarms to alert staff if they should get out of the chair. Because they must call staff to assist them with toileting, they often become incontinent while they are in the nursing home. Depression is also common for people in this situation, which is not surprising.

So, she's back at the assisted living apartment with 24-hour personal care, which is very expensive but necessary at this point. I'm hoping we can decrease the number of hours of the extra care givers, but they will be there through the weekend and into next week. Things looked copacetic when I left there yesterday around 3:30. I had poured her meds and left directions for the aides. Stocked them up with extra beverages and snacks. Today I must restock the disposable undergarments, even though we will be trying to retrain her for continence. She is walking with the walker, but she quickly tires. Am interested to see how she is today.

Phil is away at a conference in the Ozarks, of all places. It took him all kinds of connecting flights and rental car to get there. And it's just for one day, today, when he will present two workshops. He's be home late tomorrow night. I miss him, and I know he's not happy when he's away from home. The poor dog is morose and doesn't understand why his daddy's not here!

Guess what! Marcy and Andrew broke up last weekend! On Thursday last week, she reported that they were "on a break" because they had been bickering a lot and it was getting tiresome. Then she was away in New Jersey on an exchange concert, flirted with some of the boys there, and Monday morning she said they were not getting back together! It is such a relief for us, as that relationship just never seemed comfortable for either of them. His facebook page reveals that he is not happy, but a number of girls are offering him words of comfort, so I am hopeful that he will recover. But in the tradition of "be careful what you wish for," Marcy tells me now that she has a date with greatly favored ex-boyfriend John over Thanksgiving break! Now we're worried that she'll jump into a rebound relationship yada yada yada!

Tomorrow my friend Donna and I are driving up to Marcy's college to hear her a cappella group in concert (Phil's away, remember). I'm talking to a couple of kids to go with us, but so far everyone's busy with SATs and college apps and such. I hope there's no snow! It has been very cold here and there is a chance of scattered flurries in the forecast. This has been a very stressful academic week for Marcy, and I sent her a care package on Monday that she appreciated very much (brownies, cheese sticks, lipstick, socks, a little xmas tree, a Zach Ephron pen, caramel popcorn, stuff like that). I've also started writing letters to her, for posterity!

So, a visiting nurse agency just called to say the insurance is paying for them to go out and assess and monitor my mom for a few weeks. I'm going to meet a nurse there at 1 to admit her and sign papers, etc. They are also going to do some more physical therapy and some occupational therapy with her. I think the occupational therapy is to get her to socialize more with the other residents, to converse. She is accustomed to her hearing aid now, so it is more likely that she will be able to interact more.

I have signed on with the gym that Phil and Dana go to, and I hope to go today. Maybe after I meet with the nurse, it will be a good release to move my bones. I am sitting way too much and am struggling with a facebook addiction. I have decided to try to restrict the time I spend on it. With the weather turning bitter, it's not as easy to pop outside for a walk on the trail, so I will attempt to get to the machines at the gym regularly. I'm so out of shape now, I am not looking forward to the initial pain! But I will do it! I wish we had a dance class nearby, I'd much rather do that. Will check the Y.

Dana is living an odd, nocturnal life. Have I mentioned this new boy she's seeing? Jon? He's her age and lives in town, but she has no knowledge of his having a job of any kind. He lives at home and has parents and several sisters, but I have no other info. Am checking with my bookgroup network to see if anyone knows the family. They see each other only late at night, usually after we have gone to bed. He comes over and they hang out in the basement tv room. He leaves around 3 or 4, or so it seems to my far-away ears. He has passed through the house a couple of times while we have been awake, and he's polite and responsive. Not a bad looking boy, kinda skinny, regular mall kid clothes, no obvious tatoos or piercings, clean. Drives an older Jeep Wrangler. Don't know what to make of him. Dana is either asleep or on her way out to work when we see her. She's off the new med and on nothing. Her mood seems good. She's not eating much in my presence, but she's not wasting away, so she must be eating something somewhere. She'll have one or two meals at home per week. We told her we were going to begin charging her some of her expenses in December, and she has pouted and fumed a bit but not asked how much or allowed a discussion of any kind. She gets sullen and withdraws when we try to talk about it.

I am reading a P. D. James mystery for book group: Devices and Desires. It's okay so far. I would like to finish that enormous Lincoln by Gore Vidal, but it's over a thousand pages and slow going.

Went to the local symphony orchestra concert last Saturday and enjoyed it. The high school choir teacher and her husband joined us and we had dinner beforehand. They're such a nice couple, and our musical paths cross quite often, so we've always wanted to get together. It was a delightful evening. [Shimmy Mom, my blog friend, told me about a song she had heard a boys choral group do and I suggested it to our choir teacher, and she told me Saturday that she loved it and the boys are doing it for the spring concert! Isn't that wild!? It's "Carry on My Wayward Son" by Kansas! I can't wait to hear it! I will try to remember to video it and maybe I can put it up on Youtube! Shout out to Shimmy!]

Speaking of getting up off the computer chair... it's time! Have a terrific day. Wish me luck at the gym!

Transitioning

2008-11-11T14:57:00.000-05:00

President-Elect Obama is hard at work getting this country back on track, but he’s counting on all of us to get involved.

I just signed up to learn more about the presidential transition, and I thought you might want to do the same.

Just visit http://www.change.gov, and enter your e-mail address in the top right corner.

There's also a facebook group called Change.gov you can join. Or do both.

I Am Proud to Be an American

2008-11-05T09:06:00.004-05:00

What a wonderful demonstration of the good hearts of the American people! To produce a landslide victory for a worthy candidate whose election means a new course for America on this continent and abroad, voters excited for the first time in decades exercised their right to have a say in the future because they felt it would have meaning--and boy did it! It is a glorious moment for every person, but especially for the children who have seen our founding principles made manifest. The system works when everyone participates!

A Novel November!

2008-11-02T11:47:00.003-05:00

Here are some pics of my house a-glow on Halloween night and Frisky checking out a couple of neighbor children.

We didn't have too many trick-or-treaters--only a handful from the neighborhood and maybe 20 driven in from the neighboring city where it's no fun to go door to door. It was still fun. Little Louis from next door was especially cute as a dragon. He's two now, and he told us a big story about the moon and the stars, pointing up at the sky--we were delighted.

Things are going well thus far with the new renters in my mom's house. We went there yesterday, and the house looks nice with their things and curtains and two nice cats. They decided they were prefer to have the dining room set removed, so I'm giving that away through Freecycling. A lucky family will have a beautiful dining room set in time for Thanksgiving.

I have started writing my National Novel Writing Month novel, so for the month of November, I will be blogging less frequently.

Things are fairly calm. My biggest challenge right now is dealing with transitioning my mom out of the convalescent home back into her assisted living apartment. The AL people are requiring that she return only with 24-hour assistance in addition to their services. This is a very expensive proposition, so I am inclined to leave her in the convalescent home as long as her insurance company will pay for it. It is not a terrific situation for her, but we're talking an extra $2,000 a week in extra care to transition her back to assisted living where I am already paying $4,000+ a month. I am not in a hurry for her to incur that expense.

I'm taking that situation day by day. I have thought of all sorts of variations, such as renting a condo and hiring a live-in, clearing out my dining room and moving her in here, putting her on a list to stay long-term at the convalescent home or one of the others in the area. I don't know. She has money, but it will run out quickly if I'm not careful. And we would like to preserve the house, which would be taken if she goes on Title 19. Blech. Not fun.

And there's poor little mom, being kept in a wheelchair with no independence whatsoever, like a goldfish in a bowl. They tell me she has become incontinent, but I think she has just given up in protest over their control over her. She has to call for help to use the toilet, so she just goes in the disposable undergarment. If she were up and around, I think she would use the toilet.

Can you imagine your kids having to consider these sorts of problems on your behalf? Anyhow, this is all in my novel!

Scary Stuff!

2008-10-28T10:23:00.005-04:00

Many thanks to my blog friend "Shimmy Mom" (she shimmies through life with her adorable family and sends me frequent encouragement and moral support) for send me a "You've Been Boo-ed" treat. I found a cute Halloween greeting and posted it on my side-bar. Now you've been boo-ed, too.

Here's how it works, according to Shimmy:

Saturday, we got "Boo-ed." Someone in our neighborhood left a cute bag stuffed full of goodies (along with a ghost that says that we've already been boo-ed) on our porch and ran before we could see who they were. Now, to play along, we are supposed to choose two other people and deliver goodies to them, with a ghost telling every one they've already been hit and instructions.

...All weekend I kept thinking, "I wish that there were some way to 'Boo' my blogging friends." But how do you send treats through the computer? Well, I can't send tasty treats, but I can give you a treat for the eyes. (Thanks to my friend Merrianne who made this great Halloween pic.)

So here is how the Blogging Boo will go. Go to as many friends as you want and tell them they've been "B00-ed." Have them link back to your blog to pick up their Halloween Treat (picture) and tell them to Boo their friends. (Then put the pic in your side bar so everyone knows that you've already been "boo-ed" and to send the pic to someone else.)

We had fun with Marcy at Parents Weekend at her college this past weekend. We had a mix of nice and rainy weather. Dana joined us on Saturday at the exact time she had said she would be there, and that meant a lot to Marcy. Phil and I brought Andrew up with us--although it would have been a better family visit without him. We all attended a bunch of concerts--Marcy sang in two of them--and there was an opportunity for family to participate in one piece, so Andrew and I rehearsed and performed, too.

Marcy's groups (she sings in three) were really top-notch. There was a fun, raucous, student a cappella concert on Saturday night, and her group was really good. She was exhausted, however, after so much singing and excitement, and it sounds as though she's coming down with something now. She called yesterday feeling feverish and run down. I hope she can hold her schoolwork schedule together and nurse herself through whatever she's got.

Mom is still at the convalescent hospital. I started talking to the social worker there about moving her back into assisted living (for which I am still paying), but they say when she goes back she will require 24-hour care in addition to the services she gets there because she should not attempt to walk without supervision. So I've got to choose an agency that can provide this care and have them evaluate her at the convalescent home and then sign them on to be there when she returns to her AL apartment. Because I had nothing else to do.

The psychiatrist who evaluated her last week suggested she start on an anti-depressant, so I asked that they get that started and they did. When I saw her yesterday after the weekend away, she was less morose and was even smiling--although it was an odd drunken sort of smile. She liked her food better and had fewer complaints. I know that euphoria usually accompanies the start of a new anti-depressant, and I suspect that is what I was seeing. The nurses say she's more talkative. We will continue to evaluate the situation, but if she has to stay in that facility for any length of time, she will need the med to buoy her spirits.

What a mess it is to reach the stage of life my poor mother is in right now. And the other patients are in worse condition, some just sitting in wheelchairs or lying in beds waiting to die. There should be some way to avoid this. Sorry to be a downer for you, but it is frustrating.

In happier news, neighbor Ian bought a cord of wood to share with us, and Phil and I spent an hour moving it from Ian's driveway to some new wood-holding devices Phil bought at Home Depot yesterday. My back is talking to me a little bit this morning--will take some Tylenol soon. So it looks like we're going to be wood burners this winter! We aren't usually big fire-place people, but with the price of oil, we're going to give it a try.

Frisky the Corgi is feeling much better, thank you. I guess he had an infection of some sort, because he has perked right up on the antibiotic. It's so nice to see him smile and ask to play. And that vet was talking about "making choices" if the meds didn't work! That's my one-joy sweetie-pie puppy were talking about! Our little house fairy of happiness!

I haven't spoken with the new house tenant since last week. I need to call and cancel our utilities accounts today; he should have signed up for them by now. Also need to call the homeowner's insurance and switch that policy to whatever it was they suggested.

I'm meeting some former colleagues for lunch today. I haven't seen any of them since their office closing was announced, but I've been talking to them online. It will be interesting to hear their plans.

Tomorrow we've got a film crew from Phil's publisher coming to shoot a promotional video for some new books he has coming out. That should be interesting. I think they'll go to the spooky swamp we located last week. It's nice that they intend to promote the books; publishers don't always do that to the extent that an author would hope (and it's the main cause of author grousing!).

It's pouring rain right now. Not really looking forward to going out in it. There are two female vocalists doing concerts in our immediate area tonight and Friday night, and I was hoping to go hear them, but no one is really interested in going with me and now it's icky weather. We'll see if my spirits rally and I work up the gumption to see at least one of them, both major talents.

Go check out Shimmy Mom's blog. You've been boo-ed for Halloween week (yay!).

I'm a Landlady!

2008-10-24T09:53:00.004-04:00

All of a sudden! I've got a renter! I have to be brief today because we're headed up for Parents Weekend at Marcy's college this afternoon, but I have to share this story with you.

Wednesday my realtor called to say she had someone interested in the house. I was at the vet when I received the call because the pooch had not been doing well at all and by that morning he seemed very sick indeed, so they squeezed him in for a check up. Kelly, my realtor, calls while we're in the waiting room. She's got someone, but they have terrible credit. She's trying to decipher the offer, which they have already submitted. The other realtor has a thick foreign accent, so Kelly couldn't really catch all the details when they spoke. They have lost their house to foreclosure. They have a lot of credit card bills. But when she reads me the name and former address, I recognize it as a guy who was in high school homeroom with me! One hundred years ago!

So the short version of the story is that this 51 year old guy had been living in his parents' homestead with his wife, two daughters (18 and 22, just like mine) and elderly mother. He had taken a mortgage on the house to start a business, which was doing very well until the building he was in was sold and he lost his lease there. Relocating the business killed it, and he lost everything. He's now working for a sandwich franchise location as a manager, and his boss vouches for him 100% as being a wonderful person and hard worker in a sad situation that is really everyone's worst nightmare.

I have a distant memory of this guy, Pat, in homeroom--a short guy with long blond hair and braces. I have a general impression of him being a decent guy, and I remember him as having a good sense of humor -- I can recall laughing at his funny remarks. This is in, say, 1973.

However, because he has this terrible credit right now, he is a risky prospect as a tenant. Kelly described him to me as "a desperate man." But because he was a good guy who said funny things to me in 1973, I am giving him a break. We signed leases and Pat got the keys yesterday. He and his family have been living in the local motor inn since his house was foreclosed on a couple of weeks ago. My house is in his daughter's school district, so she can continue there. It is a delightful house in a family neighborhood within a decent commute of his job. He called me yesterday and was so grateful. I am so happy! Can you believe it?

My head is really spinning with this fast turnaround of events. And the thought of another family living in my childhood home is very strange. Fingers crossed for a good rental experience!

Now to do a few errands, write instructions for the dog sitter (pooch is feeling much better on an antibiotic and anti-inflammatory--he had a bit of a fever, don't know why), check in with mom (still in convalescent home for rehab), pick up Andrew and head up to Marcy's college!

"Why Would Anyone Choose to Behave Badly?"

2008-10-21T14:38:00.006-04:00

There is a disturbingly interesting article in today's New York Times. I'm going to paste it in here, but you can also read it on the nytimes.com site. (I hope I'm not violating copyright laws.)

I immediately clipped the article and gave it to Dana to read, because she is having her last appointment with Dr. Q today and I want her to realize that some people with problems like hers DO get better. I wanted her to feel hopeful. I want to feel hopeful.

Maybe it's just a new combination of meds that will put Dana back on track. This article shows how some doctors sometimes give up on patients. Sometimes I feel as though I have given up on Dana and that she has given up on herself.

When we were first getting to know Dr. Q, on one of Dana's first hospitalizations, I asked if what we were seeing in the then 17 year-old was just bad behavior. He answered with this remarkable concept, one that has stayed with me for these nearly six years: "Why would anyone choose to behave badly?" It's so easy to slip into thinking that Dana is just a weak, undisciplined person who likes to coast along at the fringe of society. But why would she prefer that? It is certainly not easy for her. It makes her absolutely miserable that she is in the situation she currently occupies. She is struggling with something that is bigger than she is, and this is where she is right now.

Anyhow, read the article. The author demonstrates this point very well.

When All Else Fails, Blaming the Patient Often Comes Next

By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D
Published: October 20, 2008

Doctors and psychotherapists generally don’t like it when their patients don’t get better. But the fact is that lots of patients elude our clinical skill and therapeutic cleverness. That’s often when the trouble starts.

I met one such patient not long ago, a man in his early 30s, who had suffered from depression since his teenage years. In six years of psychotherapy, he had been given nearly every antidepressant under the sun, but his mood hadn’t budged.

Weeping in my office one day, he explained that he was depressed because he was a failure and a whiner. “Even my therapist agreed with me,” he said. “She said that maybe I don’t want to get better.”

I could well imagine his therapist’s frustration. She had been working with him for nearly three years without significant progress, and she was now doing what many clinicians do when the chips are down: blame the patient for failing to improve.

“I think he has an unconscious desire to remain sick,” she told me.

About a month later, I saw this patient respond remarkably well to a novel treatment. Free of depression at last, he was joyful and relieved — an odd reaction, you must admit, from someone who secretly wished to be ill.

Not just that, but he no longer felt like a failure and was much more upbeat about his future prospects.

I decided to challenge him. “How come you’re feeling so much better despite the fact that nothing in your life has really changed in the past few weeks?”

“Well, I guess I just think like that when I’m down.”

Exactly. His sense of worthlessness was a result of his depression, not a cause of it. It’s easy to understand why the patient couldn’t see this: depression itself distorts thinking and lowers self-esteem. But why did his therapist collude with the patient’s depressive symptoms and tell him, in effect, that he didn’t want to get better?

For an all too human reason, I think. Chronically ill, treatment-resistant patients can challenge the confidence of therapists themselves, who may be reluctant to question their treatment; it’s easier — and less painful — to view the patient as intentionally or unconsciously resistant.

I recall an elderly woman who was referred by a colleague for intractable depression, in which I have a special interest. I was eager to help her.several months and many treatments later, I began to get frustrated that she was no better and noticed that my thinking about her shifted. I wondered whether there was something about the sick role that she found rewarding.

After all, she had constant visits from friends and family members, not to mention an army of medical experts who were all trying, in vain, to cure her. If she got better, she might lose all that care and attention.

Then one morning, shortly after starting a new combination of antidepressants, she called. I did not recognize the cheerful voice. “I’m feeling really good,” she told me. “Not depressed at all.”

My delight aside, I felt chagrined that I had begun to write her off as a help-rejecting crank.

Of course, it makes good medical sense for therapists to rethink the diagnosis and treatment of any patient who fails to improve. But this is a double-edged sword.

Another patient, a young woman with unstable moods, was recently hospitalized with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. When she failed to respond to two mood stabilizers, the staff began to entertain a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, which involves emotionally chaotic relationships and impaired ability to function in the world.

“She’s pretty aggressive and demeaning, and we think she has some serious character pathology,” one of the residents told me.

But partly treated bipolar disorder can mimic borderline personality disorder, and after she received a third mood stabilizer, her “personality disorder” melted away, along with her provocative behavior.

This patient had frustrated her clinicians with her lack of response to treatment. In turn, her doctors reacted by changing her diagnosis to a personality disorder. The change in thinking shifted the blame from the clinicians to the patient herself, who was now viewed more as bad than sick.

To be sure, some patients really do want to be sick. People with Munchausen syndrome, for example, deliberately produce physical or psychological symptoms for the express purpose of assuming the sick role. And they will go to extraordinary means to defeat doctors who try to “treat” them.

But a vast majority of patients want to feel better, and for them the burden of illness is painful enough. Let’s keep the blame on the disease, not the patient.

Richard A. Friedman is a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College.

[A version of this article appeared in print on October 21, 2008, on page D6 of the New York edition.]

No One Is Alone

2008-10-19T14:50:00.009-04:00

I want to share with you an interesting exchange I had with Corinne, a reader of my blog. It demonstrates that there are so many stories out there that are similar to one's own. Because our immediate circumstances may not provide us a sounding board and validation is hard to come by, here is Corinne's story.

Sandy - I stumbled upon your blogspot when i googled "boomer burden," the [title of a] book on dealing with aging parents and cleaning out their stuff (apparently you had referenced it in your blog). I've been reading your archives and must tell you, you are not alone in your situations. I'm about 8 years ahead of you. We seem to be very similar in a lot of ways, educated, upper middle class, lived on the east coast, in a book group, sing in a choral group, like to cook, drink wine, have aging mother & m-i-l , two daughters, one with personality/mental behavior disorders, etc.

I can relate to all that is happening to you and following your blog makes me feel like I know you. ...

Hang in there with the personality disorder daughter. Our daughter is 32 and has depression, ADD, and migraines and has a pharmacy in her bag. She goes to a therapist, a psychiatrist, neurologist, and pulmonologist. She has a BFA but is working as a day care assistant for mentally handicap patients and can't seem to get her actively looking for a career related job that will pay enough for her to support herself. Her therapist also says she is an adult adolescent and exhibits emotional behavior of a 14 year old and somehow skipped that maturation.

We are struggling where the line is between helping and enabling. We are now down to tough love and are cutting her off financially. The therapist says we'll see if she sinks or swims--but what if she sinks?? It's very frustrating.

Anyway, keep blogging - it's an online support. Corinne

My response:

Hi Corinne, thanks for your thoughts. We do have a lot in common.

BPD daughter just left for her grocery store job. This is a girl with an IQ of 132. Little by little I believe I'm seeing improvement in her maturity and the promise of "moving on" with her life, but I worry that I'm making it up. I'm so hoping we won't still be doing this 8 years from now.

Thanks for validating that I am not alone in my situations. I suspect this, but I am the only one I know who speaks openly about my daughter's illness. I am a one-woman awareness-raising project for mental illness. It happens, it's confusing, people need to share what they know. I know people are shocked by what I reveal in a casual conversation, but I refuse to be embarrassed or ashamed by something that is nobody's fault. I detest mysteriousness. I have to keep reminding myself and others that Dana is a good, kind, smart, hard-working person, not a lazy lout mooching off her parents. Through no fault of her own, she just has disordered thinking and has to work with what she has been dealt.

Would you mind if I put excerpts from your email on my blog? I like to remind people that there are others out there sharing.

Thanks,

Sandy

Hi Sandy, Thanks for responding...it took me several days to decide if I should email you or not, but I felt some kindred spirit here.

Here’s a little about the top side of our sandwich: Leah

When our daughter was in high school, she always walked to her own beat. In retrospect I believe she was showing classic signs of depression and ADD but we didn’t identify this as a diagnosable problem, we just chalked it up to being "Leah." We managed to get her through by developing our own "assignment," we read text books out loud because, etc. Life was a chore living with her.

I believe the only reason she got through University of Michigan (no slouch school) with decent grades (she is smart), is because as an art major she only had art classes and freshman english as requirements, and all her other credits were electives (yes, classes she really wanted to take). Again, we never diagnosed the ADD because of her particular curriculum.

Everything started spiralling downward when she took a job in rural Nevada on an navy air base. The work was ok, but the distance from family, desolate landscape and unexpected "rancher - mormon" culture did her in, and she really became depressed. She started taking antidepressants, but things didn't improve much. About 5 years ago, I decided it was intervention time and suggested she quit her job and move back to the midwest to live with my mother, who at 84 needed assistance. I thought great, kill 2 birds with one stone. Well, it was sort of like oil and water. I won't go into the details, but it was not a good scenario for either of them, although I do think that this step did help Leah feel more connected again. After 2 years of not being able to find a job, and my mom wanting her house back the way she had it, Leah moved in with us in Tennessee.

Well, it's very easy to fall back into me being the mom and her being the child. That did not help either of us. Give an inch and she'd take a mile. Your comment about reminding yourself that your daughter has good qualities and isn't just a moocher is good for me to remember. Sometimes you get lost in the day to day, but her mental health issues always keep us frustrated.

Anyway, a year ago, after attending many therapy sessions with her and trying everything, we decided it was time for her to move out. Our taking care of everything was only enabling her to remain a protected dependent person. We set up a decreasing support program, paying her rent for 6 months. She moved into a rented room about 3 miles away. Then she moved into a mother-in-law suite, and then into an apartment 17 miles away. I think that this is a good place for her: she's having to learn again how to be independent and can't just come over to our house at the drop of a hat. We'll see how this all works out.

Here are some lessons we've learned:

1. paying her bills won't solve her problems, she's got to feel a little personal pain to change her way. (She’s always spending money--money therapy, it makes her feel in control.)
2. Doing things for her that she should be doing herself (under the misguided idea of taking the stress off of her)--like paying bills, sending out resumes, throwing out the trash, laundry etc.--only enabled her more.
3. Her meds are probably helping her, but I feel that they are also a crutch. She takes about 6 different things.
4. She needs to learn to pay attention to her own well being. We can see how she is hurting herself both physically and financially, but she is the only one who can change this.
5. If I'm upset, she's in control, if she's upset, I'm in control
6. What she tells her therapist is not alway the true picture. No one wants to be repremanded for not doing the assignments, so she doesn't tell her everything.

Bottom line: She is the one who has to put in the effort and initiative to make changes happen in her life. We have come to the conclusion that maybe all of our help was just enabling her to go on acting the role of a dependent child instead of a 33 year old adult. But it is very hard to become emancipated from the role of parent.

I also hope that in 8 years your daughter is a productive adult and has gotten over her problems. With Leah, I think that this is going to be an ongoing rollercoaster. She has good times and bad times, most of which are a result of her own doing.

And the bottom side:

My husband and I both have mothers in their 80s with failing health. One is 5 hours away and the other is 13 hours away. Both live at home, but are pretty mentally stable, which is great. My m-i-l has been in the hospital for the last month with congestive heart failure and other issues, and it is now time to decide what the next step is – nursing home or assisted living, both of which are not attractive options to her. So my husband has been there off and on over the last several weeks and probably will continue to have to do that for a while. My mother is 89 and has osteoporosis and arthritis and is home bound. I have a few cousins around to help, but my sister and I can not respond quickly if anything happens, so we worry about that. Fortunately, mom is pretty forward thinking and already has divested herself of clutter and has everything organized.

I know we will get through all of this and we look forward to some great retirement years, but I think Leah will always make our lives a agitated. Our other daughter is married with 2 careers, 2 children, a dog, a house and a beautiful life. They are as stable as can be so there is always hope that it’s not just a bad gene pool.

Thanks for listening to me vent. I hope there’s something encouraging in there. And yes, you may use some excerpts if you want. I, too, am very open about our situation and I cannot tell you how many people have a family member with issues, whether mental health, alcoholism, failure to launch issues or what, but we all have someone. It makes me feel like I can cope better knowing that I’m not the only one in this situation.

Corinne

Gladness

2008-10-19T11:31:00.003-04:00

Hi! I'm falling behind in my blogging! Probably because things are moving at a slower pace since Marcy went off to college! Here's a re-cap of my week.

Phil drove Marcy back to school Tuesday night. I was teary to let her go; it was a nice visit. I had choir that night, so I didn't go with them. My chamber choir is in about week five of its winter season. The new director is working well thus far. My friend Fiona, with whom I car pool to rehearsals, is not thrilled; she isn't happy that our winter concert will be in early January instead of at Christmas time, she misses singing a lot of Christmas music. I like the mix of sacred and secular music--we have some pieces that are prayers for the new year and a number of Epiphany-oriented songs. In general, I think the conductor and program have been well received. We are in need of tenors, but the other parts are fairly well balanced.

Mom is still in the convalescent facility. As you will recall, she fell again two weeks ago, didn’t break but wrenched things and is now in convalescent hospital until she can walk more soundly, then will return to asst living—I hope early this week. She was dehydrated, which may have led to the increased flakiness and falling. They gave her IV fluids for 4 days and she was the best I’ve seen her in years for about two days. Off the IV, she’s slipping back to weird ideation, hearing kids crying and singing, etc. Once the elderly start down the dehydration path, they seem to be unable to keep up with fluids taken by mouth. This is how it went with my father as well, until he died. And so on.

Dana has been a little fragile this week. She had a cold at the beginning of the week that she caught from Mike, her exboyfriend (not sure how that was transmitted, they have been 'hanging out' off and on). The appointment with the new psychiatrist did not work out for this past Friday. She told me on Tuesday that she could not work her schedule to accommodate it, so I called to cancel it and the doctor called Dana on her cell phone and was a little snippy with her. As a result, Dana was put off by the new doctor and doesn't want to see her. This disappoints me. I suppose we'll continue with the associate to whom Dr. Q is leaving his patients as he moves out of state.

Andrew is visiting Marcy AGAIN this weekend. At first I was livid--he has seen her four weekends in a row, and she was set to attend a big social event without him this weekend and then decided to skip it. Very immature and self-centered, he’s not our favorite person (although, he is clearly not evil). Talking to her, however, I have altered my view of her motivation. I now believe that she has latched onto him as a security blanket and his visits to her at school help her filter out the activities with which she is uncomfortable. She seems to need him as a buffer to the bad college behavior that scares her—drinking and hooking up with random guys. Next weekend is Family weekend, so Phil and I and this Andrew boy are going up Friday night; Dana will join us on Saturday. We’re hoping Marcy eventually meets some urbane college boy. Her singing groups are doing some co-ed exchange singing in November, so maybe someone will catch her eye and Andrew's value as a foil will fade away.

I walked a number of times this week. The weather has been gorgeous and the colors are breath taking. I went to a personal development workshop on Thursday with a new friend who does a lot of writing. A small group, it was led by one of these "life coach" people looking for new victims, but it was a good two hours of examining what I and the other seven women in the group are passionate about and how to make our ideas happen. From there I went to my mom's house and realized that I can work there in silence and solitude for free until it is rented. I got a lot of good thinking done, and I plan to go there a couple of times a week.

Friday night Janet and Ron had us over for dinner. It was a celebration of my past birthday and Phil's, which is upcoming next week. We had so much fun, before we knew it five hours had gone by! She served filet mignons on puff pastry with minced mushrooms, sort of a free-form beef wellington--yummy. After dinner we sat out on their gorgeous patio and enjoyed a wood fire under the stars. Fun folks.

Saturday Phil and I went out looking for spooky locations for a little book-promotion video one of his publishers will shoot at the end of the month. We had a lovely walk on a trail in town I didn't know existed. We found an eery swamp in a neighboring town that will serve well as a backdrop. At night we went to the local symphony concert, to which we subscribe--this was the season opener. It's always feels like such a nuisance to get spruced up and head out in the cold at night when we'd rather be settling in front of the tv, but the music is always our reward. It was a very nice concert of Brahms, Mozart and Paganini. We were glad we went!