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One Last Update
Snookums has made the rounds of specialists now, and all we can do now is wait. She still is improving day by day, but there will be a three-year hole in her memory, and her short-term memory is still a problem. The mind is a mysterious and complex thing, and I don’t know how those who study it can conclude there is no such thing as intelligent design. I don’t know how many coincidences it took for brain development in intelligent animals, but I am convinced that it is statistically improbable for it to be an accident.
Regardless, the damage has ceased and the long road to recovery has begun. We are having wonderful conversations on aging and death with our coffee. It sounds like morbid talk to outsiders, but for us it is preparation. We shan’t escape death, at least in this age. On the other side of it, there is hope, if not actual belief.
She is still wondering why this had to happen to her, and I don’t tell her how relieved I am that she is asking why. It tells me she understands her predicament, and we can start moving on to face this challenging part of life. It is a path we can’t share with others, and at the end, it is a path we can’t share with each other. Oddly, we are at peace with that.
I am thinking this will be the last of the updates, though I will comment on her recovery from time to time in my other postings. We move forward by millimeters instead of miles, now. Each day is a day that we are called to activity. The future doesn’t exist. The past doesn’t matter. And that is enough.
I used to spend time chronicling the excesses of politics, but now I don’t want to talk about it. The bell has struck. The door has slammed shut. What will be, will be. I can’t stop it. I can’t change it. But know this, it isn’t going to be good.
So on this autumn morning with a weak sun shining out my window, I turn my thoughts to more pleasant things. My own little selfish world.
I have a new PC sitting in a box that I need to install, but it doesn’t seem to be a proper activity on the Shabbat. I am excited about it, though. It is powerful enough to do all the things I wish. I sit here and imagine how I am going to arrange things.
However, for today I muse. I write. I pray. I read.
Good morning!
Rehab! (long, unedited version)
I don’t know why it is that physical trainers think they must be chirpy, but one met me at the double doors of the cardiac rehab section of the hospital. I was still puffing hard from my walk from the parking lot. The hospital is also a teaching campus and is a huge facility. I was feeling smug because I have handicapped plates on the car, and I can park in those spaces with impunity. But not at this hospital. They have many handicapped spots, and they are quickly filled.
But today I was fortunate find a spot that was closer to my door than the stickered spaces, and I took that as proof that God indeed does love me. Not that it was so unbearable today. Autumn has arrived in the Texas pampas, and you can feel the chill in the air. Yeah. A true Texan feels a bit chilly at 72°.
But back to the cardiac torture chamber.
The first thing that happens is one of the ever-perky rehab people meets you at the door, gets your name, pull your wireless cardiac monitor and marches you back to the nurses station to take your vitals and wire you up. She assured me that in time I would know how to do that myself. Then you get the twenty questions. I lied a little about a couple.
“Has it been two hours since your last cup of coffee?” she asked.
“Yes”, I lied.
“Did you eat breakfast?”
Well, I did have a slice of coffee cake with my coffee, so I said, “Yes.”
“Did you get a fasting glucose reading?”
For once I didn’t have to fib. “Yes”
“Is this your first visit to a cardiac rehab unit?”
“Yes” I lied again. I had been in the same facility 15 years earlier and left before I completed the regimen. It was extremely painful experience because the doctors still hadn’t found the precise point of the heart pain I was having. I was starting to think that I was a slacker.
But now that the pain has been taken care of, my only remaining concern is the COPD. Most of my life I could power past fatigue, but now, when I reach that point, I am done. There are no reserves to call on, so I approach this phase of recovery with great tepidity.
They then sat me on what is called a recumbent cross trainer. It exercises the arms and legs, and you can vary the effort between your arms or legs. My left leg is very weak, and I would work it until it started shaking, then use my arms to give the leg a break.
The trainer told me to do 15 minutes on it. So, I started peddling. I did stop often to get my breath, then continued past the 15 minutes until I reached half an hour. The trainer stopped me at half an hour and asked me how I was feeling.
“I am just SO ecstatic!” I replied, trying not to overdo the sarcasm. I think I failed.
“I am going to have to watch you a bit closer” she retorted.
Then it was back to the nurses’ station to get the vitals and remove the heart monitor.
“You’re done for the day!” she chirped.
“I guess you failed to kill me today” I quipped.
“We get another two chances at you this week” she shot back …
Remembering Aspens and Big Love
I don’t know how many of you have had the privilege of standing in a quaking aspen glade when they are in full color, but it is both mystical and magical.
It feels like even the air is flooded with golden light in the hushed Autumn. The birds have flown south, the grasshoppers, crickets and cicadas have all burrowed in for the winter.
The only sound you hear is the clapping of the leaves as the mountain breezes set the leaves to quaking. It sounds like soft applause.
I was on a spiritual retreat in the foothills of the front range of the Colorado Rockies one golden autumn when I first laid eyes on Snookums. I was stunned. Unfortunately, she was there with her boyfriend, and surprising to some, I do actually have ethics. One does not hit on another man’s woman.
Most of the attendees were couples, and just three or four of us weren’t. So after meals and seminars, I spent most of my time alone, absorbing the golden hues and silence, and drinking camp coffee that one of the other solo attendees kept hot and ready on his campfire. I really don’t mind coffee grounds in my teeth, and there is something about coffee made cowboy style that makes it taste like heaven. I sipped his coffee while I sat on a log by a creek than meandered through the glade, and pushed away thoughts of Snooks.
I worked for her boyfriend from time to time, so I sat with them through many of meals and lectures, but I kept the conversation banal. Still, I wasn’t able to stop myself from furtive glances in her direction from time to time. So a few weeks later, her boyfriend called me to help him sneak out of their house so he could pursue a torch singer. I knew the singer, and knew where her heart was. And it wasn’t with the boyfriend. But I willingly helped him load his truck with his tools and belongings, and waved bye bye as he drove off.
I never pursued a woman until I met Snookums. I wasted no time calling her that evening and consoling her. Frankly, she didn’t need much consoling, but that is another issue entirely. We began attending lectures together, and I made sure that I called her every night before she fell asleep. I wanted my voice to be the last thing she heard that evening.
It wasn’t long before moved the friendship up a notch. It was a mere two months since the retreat in the aspens that I moved in, and we got a rent-a-preacher to make a house call for the simple wedding. It wasn’t always bliss, I brought quite a bit of baggage into the marriage that needed to be left somewhere. She even had to get some counseling. But in time, we grew together. I don’t know when that happened, but one day years later I woke to the realization that we had indeed become one.
I am writing much of this post from a Starbucks inside huge medical school complex. Pretty odd, when you think of it. The CEO of Starbucks said publicly that he would be happy if no one like me came into one of his stores, and I willingly obliged.
But today I put all that aside as I waited for Snook to finish her cognitive testing at the neurological clinic. I could be with her the first hour or so while the psychologist got the background material, and I was glad for that. She has forgotten all of the period between her two strokes, and has no recollection of her stay in the hospital. Then I was shooed away while they did their testing.
So I sit here and remember the girl that I married. She still peeks out at me from mirthful eyes. I hear the young girl in her quick but subtle humor. We have become one flesh.
Re-awakening
The political silly season is upon us again, and partisans on both sides are getting more strident in their posts and comments. I have resigned from the discourse. My mind is made up and I need no further rhetoric. With me, it is easier to thread a camel through a needle than it is to refrain from politics, and comment on religion, to use a religious metaphor.
Well, there is the weather. In Texas, we have gone from an unbearably hot summer to a miserably hot Autumn. But recent rains have broken the drought, and the verdant weeds on my one acre of paradise are mocking me, daring me to mow them down. They will soon be abused of that insolence. No, really. Soon. Maybe in the next day or two. Maybe three.
Ill health is another. Quite frankly, I am feeling much better than I did for the preceding five years. So good that the cardiologist is sending me to cardiac rehab, where they put you on an exercise machine and try to kill you. If they fail to do that, the next time they speed the machine up.
Snookums had both mini-strokes and a major stroke and is on the long road to recovery. A speech therapist has been working with her, and now she is reading some, and seems to be much better at complex tasks. Monday, she goes in for a full cognitive assessment that will take four hours. I am anxious about that.
But her recovery from the point she left the hospital until now has been remarkable. I admit that the day I brought her home, I was so discouraged. She constantly inquired about things that she asked just moments earlier. She could only hold about five words in her mind. I wasn’t sure that she was going to improve. The speech therapist got her to reading her Kindle again, and how to enlarge the type and turn it to landscape mode. Snooks hates the work she must do, but I see small improvement after each session. So perhaps she will be moved back from senility to functioning.
This week I think my niece and her are going to try and make challah bread for Shabbat. Snooks was doing that when she had her stroke and ended up crying with burned fingers and burned bread. She went to the hospital later. If this works, it will be a milestone in her recovery.
And the days go by in my geezerhood. Once you earn the title of geezer, there is only one title left to earn. RIP.
So as I consider my lack of better alternatives and relearn to write again, I bid you a pleasant good morning.
Burial is an odious chore
My youngest brother who recently lost his wife posted this. Most of these are clever inventions of writers writing little sermonettes, and this one may well be one of those. It is a little too pat for me. I note that it is unsourced, so I feel free to re-post it. It illustrates a bitter truth to me.
When I have lost someone dear to me, I start wondering if I am on another planet as others laud their memory. My soul goes flat, and effusive comments, while well-meaning ones, grate on me.
I prefer to do my grieving in silence and alone. Death is not something we should love. We should hate it. Burial is an odious chore. I long for a time when death does not exist.
What true love is:
“My parents were married for 55 years. One morning, my mom was going downstairs to make dad breakfast, she had a heart attack and fell. My father picked her up as best he could and almost dragged her into the truck. At full speed, without respecting traffic lights, he drove her to the hospital.
When he arrived, unfortunately she was no longer with us.
During the funeral, my father did not speak; his gaze was lost. He hardly cried.
That night, his children joined him. In an atmosphere of pain and nostalgia, we remembered beautiful anecdotes and he asked my brother, a theologian, to tell him where Mom would be at that moment. My brother began to talk about life after death, and guesses as to how and where she would be.
My father listened carefully. Suddenly he asked us to take him to the cemetery.
“Dad!” we replied, “it’s 11 at night, we can’t go to the cemetery right now!”
He raised his voice, and with a glazed look he said:
“Don’t argue with me, please don’t argue with the man who just lost his wife of 55 years.”
There was a moment of respectful silence, we didn’t argue anymore. We went to the cemetery, and we asked the night watchman for permission. With a flashlight, we reached the tomb. My father caressed her, prayed, and told his children, who watched the scene, moved:
“It was 55 years… you know? No one can talk about true love if they have no idea what it’s like to share life with a woman.”
He paused and wiped his face. “She and I, we were together in that crisis. I changed jobs …” he continued. “We packed up when we sold the house and moved out of town. We shared the joy of seeing our children finish their careers, we mourned the departure of loved ones side by side, we prayed together in the waiting room of some hospitals, we support each other in pain, we hug each Christmas, and we forgive our mistakes… Children, now it’s gone, and I’m happy, do you know why?
Because she left before me. She didn’t have to go through the agony and pain of burying me, of being left alone after my departure. I will be the one to go through that, and I thank God. I love her so much that I wouldn’t have liked her to suffer…”
When my father finished speaking, my brothers and I had tears streaming down our faces. We hugged him, and he comforted us, “It’s okay, we can go home, it’s been a good day.”
That night I understood what true love is; It is far from romanticism, it does not have much to do with eroticism, or with sex, rather it is linked to work, to complement, to care, and, above all, to the true love that two really committed people profess.”
Peace in your hearts.
Autumn is here, winter is coming
Shabbat morning dawns quietly. The songbirds are finished for the year, and only the infrequent cooing of the pigeons and mourning doves are in the air. Snookums had the coffee brewing by the time I arose, changed out the tubing in my body, put on hearing aids, bumped the thermostat up a little, and padded into the kitchen for coffee, vitals, pills, and muted conversation.
Snook continues her recovery, albeit at a much reduced rate. Experts tell me that it will be at least a year. She continues with the speech therapist, but now it is only once a week. Some days it is a little discouraging, and other days she is near normal.
I can usually tell what kind of day we are going to have by her remembering her morning chores. On Shabbat morning, she puts the dishes from the Shabbat meal away, folds the special tablecloth and launders the napkins. This morning she went looking for the napkins that Amber, my niece, had already done. She double checked to make sure, then remembered to feed the animals. So I am thinking this will be a good day.
Her Shabbat morning ritual is to have coffee and cake with me, let me do her vitals, take her pills, feed the animals, and occasionally empty the dishwasher and dryer. Then she sits at her computer and listens to services at our former congregation in Denver. That routine was the first thing she remembered to do after her stroke. The way she logs on is particularly complicated, but she remembers how to do it. Other things like her log-on password are a bit harder for her to remember. Today is a day when she didn’t have to ask me what the password was.
It has been two weeks since my last update. Things are changing slowly now, but she is at least out of the woods. Now it is time for the doctors to figure out a regimen that will prevent or lessen the likelihood of another stroke. I still panic when she gets tired and lays down or goes to bed early, but I also believe that rest is necessary for her recovery. So when she lays down or retires, I ask her the usual questions. Are you feeling dizzy? Nauseous? Unstable? Is your vision blurry? I call it 20 Questions time. Old people know that saying. Young people probably don’t. But she laughs, answers the questions, and lays down.
And goes the Autumn of our years. Winter is coming, to quote a more recent media event that young people will understand, and old people won’t.
Good morning!
Updates and Critiques
I missed the usual weekend update. To blame? Laziness and sloth I should think.
But it has been a good week, mostly. Snook had two ‘bad’ days where she couldn’t remember the simplest of tasks, but the rest of the days were better. And Sunday she forgot that Amber fixed the evening meal, so she started frying up ‘burgers. I was a little leery of her working at the stove because she was baking when she had her stroke, so we carefully watched her. Amber was able to prepare dinner Monday because it was a holiday.
I am looking out my window at the ground cover that is mocking me by waving in the gentle breeze of the morning. Odd how we can instantly go from dry and crunchy to verdant green after soaking rains. So, mowing looms large in my future. Snook said she thought she could run the mower, but I am not as confident as she is and don’t want to put her on a device that can seriously injure her.
Snooks is going in for an MRI Thursday. She has a baseline to compare now, and we can see if the damage is continuing or not. Just from carefully watching her, though, I think that the damage has run its course.
The news today is the usual stream of outrage and horror, and I suspect that you are just as confused as I am by it. So, no further comment.
The new Lord of the Rings is out, but I am not so sure I am up to Hollywood sermonizing right now. I’ll wait for a few more movie critiques of it before I decide whether to watch it or not. It sounds like it is another extravaganza to quietly dismiss, however. The harder they hype something, the more likely it is to be a dud.
And the heat has broken, finally. This morning it was a pleasant 74° at sunup. Now that I have a new laptop, I may go back to porch sitting. I will have to reclaim the porch from the feral cats that have made it their private property, though. It will be nice to sit out there with my coffee and computer again. But Chromebook’s have a weird keyboard and I will have to master it before posting anything serious.
The day comes and goes. The sun rises 15°. And I must get on with my loafing.
Good morning!
The Four Horsemen Ride!
Well, here it is. My newest addition. A Samsung Chromebook.
I really wasn’t paying attention when I bought it through AT&T, and I was thinking it would be half the size that it is. I intend to use it merely to record our vitals in the morning, but now I might try using it as a laptop.
I am also using google docs to write it. I can add MSWord to it, but I think I will try to keep this computer clean. But I have to relearn everything, both on the computer and the word processor. It should be an interesting experiment.
Snookums is having a bad day today. It is an up and down thing with her, and nothing that I can see triggers it. It is like her mind comes and goes at whim.
The next visit with the neurologist is a month away. We will then go over the MRI and do a cognitive test that will give us a benchmark to work from. I am still optimistic that she will continue to improve as time goes on.
Today is an overcast day that seems to fit my mood. I admit to being a bit pessimistic. I am sure that like most moods, it will go the same way it came.
Other that that, the day goes on like every other day, and I handle the woes and joys as they arrive and depart. This week I get a respite from doctor visits and bill paying. Perhaps the decompression is what I am feeling.
Of course, there is the news. It is hard to browse over the offerings without getting a sense of impending doom. Stupid decisions are made. Rosey promises are given. Prices go up faster than income. Both sides are screaming at each other. It can’t continue on like this, and when the break comes, neither side is going to like the results. The years of peace at home have ended.
Yeah. I am a prophet of doom. It does not matter which side prevails. The four horsemen ride, yet few see them.
So dawns the day here in the dry pampas of Texas. Soon the rains will arrive, dragging the hurricanes behind them. The grass will green, the frogs will croak, and the mourning doves will change their lonesome wooing to a more pigeon-like coo.
Good morning!!
Rusty's Armory 