Take 2

I've been avoiding you.  Not necessarily that I didn't have time, there were plenty of hours of me so sick and tired I sat and stared at the wall, I just knew I was in so deep nothing I could say would be worth your time.  It's like when you are on a diet and you

Like the plague.  Like an off the horse addict. The past 8 weeks have been so busy, old Laurie wonder woman busy and for me that means bad bad bad.  I had known for quite some time it would be crazy, but thought, 'oh well, work comes when work comes.'  And then it came.  And I got even sicker - scary sick when blood pressure goes 60/40 and there are many times in the day when I swore I was about to pass out.  I know better.  I thought I had come so far.  One step ahead and two steps back.

It's over though.  The whole time I kept thinking, 'just make it through and you can rest all you want in San Jose.' And here I am, in California, house sitting for a month - yet too sick to really enjoy it.  I just woke up after an 18 hour sleep coma.  Didn't even get up to use the bathroom.  Almost beat my record of 19.5 - almost, and no - I'm not proud of this one bit.

Yet time to start over, again.  I am in a beautiful valley south of the city covered in gold hill that absolutely glow in the late afternoon.  There are honeysuckle bushes at every turn that take me back to my happy childhood here.  And I have a Fin.  A 92 year old Finnish man, the father of the lady I am house sitting for, that 'takes me out' in his golf cart to the country club down the road.

Take 2.


Are there meetings for this?      

An hour too late

 



I was an hour late.  That next morning, I just couldn't not be there any more.  I got on the road and only an hour from his house, I got the call.  And he had been alone - that's what makes me so sad.  Okay, so he had a nurse there, one he had never met, but that doesn't count, in my mind.  No one holding his hand, telling him that it is okay to go, etc.  I still kept driving and by the time I got there, still had a good hour to sit with him until they came to take him away.  I was able to say goodbye and get closure and I think that helped alot. 

The previous day I had been so sad, crying my eyes out.  This day I didn't shed a tear; I felt very much at peace with the whole thing, it can't be easy living in a 95 year old's body.  After he was wheeled away (he donated his body to science with no service of any kind - so Sam), Charlie and I went to our favorite dog park.  It had rained that day and there was such a gorgeous sunset in the sky. I knew he was on your way.

(taken on one of our last visits together - I didn't want to forget this)



Thank you sweet Sam for being my buddy these past three years.  Whenever I felt my worst, I would make it a point to come visit you, and it always helped so much to put things in perspective.  We would sit on your couch and I would lean my head on your shoulder and you would rub my hand.  "What a pair we are!,' you would smile and say. We were both suffering in our own way and you would always make me feel so much better.  You truly taught me what long suffering is about and how to do it so gracefully.

Thank you for telling me all of your stories over and over again. You knew I didn't know what to say and you would always pipe up with one of your best, pretending you hadn't told it to me two weeks back.  Thank you for buying me an extra yogurt at the grocery store every week, it was all you had to give and in my mind, better than gold.  When you could no longer shop, that extra ensure you gave me tasted just as good.  Thank you for loving my family. I'm sorry yours was too selfish and my sisters and mother and father were honored to have our pictures framed on your coffee table.  I sure do love you over and over again and you will not be forgotten.



                               Sam and his most loyal defender - of the squirrels around his apartment, at least.

 

Sam adored my dad.  He always said he was the most wonderful man he had ever met.  I get a lot of comfort knowing my dad had been over to visit just a few days before he died.  This was taken we took Sam sailing and Sam insisted on framing this picture and putting it on his coffee table.

 



For the past three years I had mentioned in every prayer, 'Father, please bless Sam.'  The night he died I smiled as prayed, 'Father, please say hi to Sam.'




ps - there are SOOO many elderly that sit for months without a single visitor (boo bad families).  There are so many nursing homes and hospices that would love nothing more than an hour of your week.  As you can see here, the payoffs are immense.

one foot in and one foot out

I received a phone call today while I was glamourosly shopping at Walmart in well, yeah, my pajamas that don't exactly look like pajamas.  It was the hospice.  It is never a good thing to receive a phone call from a hospice.  'Well, I've got some bad news,' was the first sentence. Then click.  Line dead.  I called back, 'sorry this is the after hour answering service.' riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. That wasn't going to work.  Luckily, the lady called me back from her cell phone and I abandoned my cart, grabbed my purse and headed to the front of the store for better reception.

'Sam is bleeding out.'  Sam, my dear sweet Sam whom I was assigned to visit nearly three years prior, was found unresponsive in his bed, his catheter so full of blood that it had overflowed and soaked his entire mattress, as well.  That is a picture I can barely handle - how long he must have laid there in his favorite green robe, soaked in his own blood.  Hospice people talk about death like they are telling you what's for lunch, by the way.  'He is in renal failure and will not recover,' was the further explanation, 'just thought you should know.'

One of the biggest (and only, really) drawbacks to moving to Austin was leaving Sam behind back in Dallas.  I still called every week and visited every time I was in town, but still, our visits were far less frequent.  I told him just three days ago on the phone, 'Sam, Austin is great but it would be perfect if you were here, too.'  I promised him that I would be back in Dallas in two weeks, would drop by and luckily ended with my usual, 'I sure do love you, Sam.'  'Honey, I love you too.' 

My first reaction upon hearing this news about Sam was to get in the car and head north on 35.  Three hours and I could be there.  Wait, it's rush hour, 4 hours I could be there.  Could I actually do it? It is no coincidence that today, even after 14 hours of sleep, I felt worse than I had in months.  Nope, couldn't do it.  Old Laurie would have grabbed a Jolt Cola and been on the road.  New Laurie is desperatley trying to learn these new lessons of moderation.  He is unresponsive, body shutting down, would never know I was there, yet I just wanted to be there and hold his hand.  I hate that he is there with only a strange nurse that is getting paid to sit there with him.  I hate that no one is holding his hand as he hovers in both worlds and telling him how much he is loved.  I hate that his two sons only call once a year and have no plan of coming down.  Sam deserves more than this.  If he is still with us in the morning, I will try and get up there.

I know he is ready, has been ready.  It is torture to live in a 95 year old's body and it was hard for me to watch.  He lived in a little apartment, no A/C, no TV (didn't want one), and basically just waited to die.  His wife of 63 years (and two weeks exactly), had passed a few years before and he was entirely alone. Or so he thought.  Sam I am with you tonight in every way I can. And I sure do love you.



perspective

Finally! Something showed up!

From my nerve pain that is.. the time is not right for the big answer yet, I guess. I think I still have some more humbling to do - oh man, too much humbling to do.

I got an email from the neurologists a few weeks ago.  Since when do your MRI results get emailed to you at 2am, by the way?  Just the report, no explanation, no 'call me to discuss.' I was so in shock not to see, 'scan unremarkable' like I have for the last, oh, 10 previous MRIs.  There was a paragraph, there was sentence after sentence there!  I've been waiting for these sentences for so long! As strange as it sounds, the sooner I learn what the problem is, and trust me, after nearly 7 years, I'm quite ready to know what the problem is, then I can either fix it or officially accept that it can't be fixed and move on.

Anyway, the results were a little, um, prentiously verbosed.  A big peeve of mine is when people use huge words when perfectly simple words would do just fine.  Seriously, radiologists - we get it - you are smart, but why can't you just say it like it is.  So I did what any normal person would do, I googled them: trigeminal neuralgia.  AKA, pain is so severe it is often called the suicide disease.  Treatment: more surgery. brain surgery: cutting through the skull to access the trigeminal nerve with lots of risks of facial paralysis, etc.  We are not going down that road; this thing had better fix itself.



I guess ('often seen with people with autoimmune disorders'...oh, I loathe that mysterious phrase) my trigeminal nerve is sticking to blood vessels on each side of my face and each time the blood pumps through those vessels my face becomes on FIRE.  I had never ever had a problem with this kind of pain until the day after my jaw surgery I woke up and thought someone was holding a curling iron to my temple.  Now, any person with common sense would think that something went wrong with the surgery. I don't know, maybe it is the fact that my eyes won't close, half of my face is frozen, my lips don't meet up right, people keep asking me if I've had a stroke, etc.  Gettting a doctor to admit that something went wrong to me is a whole different story. Surgery has risks, I get it, just be honest with me!

The jaw doctor says nerve pain is permanent and has absolutely nothing to do with surgery, over and over and over we have had this discussion. The neurologist says, well, haven't been able to get him to call me back since the MRI results came in.  The neurosurgeon that I have been referred to, well, can't get into him for six weeks.  Thus how modern medicine works, lot of waiting, lots of being passed around. 

So, here i sit, 4am with an ice pack to my face, wondering what it is I am to learn from this.  I could get really mad and really bitter and wonder why on Earth I am adding yet another notch in the headboard of stange diseases but instead, I have other plans.  I have this hunch that this development will lead to further answers and so, I will try and sit tight and wait for those to come.  Thus the absence from my writing, I'm really just out of things to say about overcoming pain and fighting the good fight and all of that.  This hurts, I'm in pain, I want it gone. that's about it. 

I will be right back

I know, I know. I'm just not up to letting every one in this little post 'get your face chopped up & re-arranged' world of mine yet. Oh where to even begin. It's definitely not the all that horrible, it's just there have been some complications and I can't really get any answers out of the ole md's just yet. Looks like some more surgeries are in the midst to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.


Again, learning a bunch.

Again, humbled a bunch.

I think I am being prepared for childbirth in the wilderness or something.

Check out my awesome new tats!

getting there



Sorry for the absence, friends - still under it.  Every day is getting better, though! I just need my face to get all back together again. And my eyes to close again.  Baby steps!