Of toasts and goodbyes

Last month we did the official Goodbye to The Wild Granny.  Mom had always wanted a wake and while this wasn’t quite a wake it was close enough.

Mom was The Keeper of the Rum for the Polly Dodger.  As such, our 3rd in command and Mistress of the Lists (as well as one who loved The Wild Granny dearly) held a grand toast at The Wharf Rat during The Fells Point Pirate Invasion in April.  We visited.  We traded stories.  We laughed.  We cried.

We ended with a rum toast to a fallen comrade.  One who - like the toast said - lived life by her rules without apology or regret.

Sometimes, the conventional isn’t the most appropriate.  Mom elected creamation without funeral services.  She asked not to be buried yet neglected to state what she wanted done with her ashes.  Combining a great many thoughts about Mom and who she was (party animal extraordinairre) and what she liked to do (dress in garb and flirt and drink at renaissance festivals and pirate events), led to two things: 1)  her old room in our house is now the garb room and she has a place of honor on the garb dresser (with a few of her items with her) and 2) A toast at Fells Point Pirate Invasion amongst the crew she loved so as well as toasts this weekend at Virginia Renaissance Faire and in August at Maryland Renaissance Festival - two places she loved best with friends she saw far too infrequently.

While this isn’t the most common way to send one on, for her it’s really the only way.

For her - for me - it’s the best way to say goodbye.

****

The photo above is The Wharf Rat in Fells Point (Baltimore) MD taken on April 19, 2008 — the day of The Fells Point Pirate Invasion.

Better living through pharmaceuticals?

Mirapex you are an ugly drug aren’t you?

Of course for an ugly disease like Parkinson’s I guess the ugly drugs are in order but still ….

The balancing act continues.  I hate how this drug affects my husband’s personality and yet … and yet … it seems to help him so much.  After the dosage is adjusted in any way or form we go back through the personality changes.

Sometimes he’s distant.  Sometimes he’s secretive.  Often he’s moody.  Mostly - for the first few weeks to a month - he’s just not my husband. 

He’s this strange man who lives in my home and for whom I will eventually need to provide care.  This distant sullen stranger.  Then again he’s distant and sullen without it due to the pain and spasms.  Which to choose?  What choice in truth?

I try hard to remind myself he’s the same person to whom I joyfully promised ‘in sickness and in health’ not quite 5 years ago.

Some days I try very hard indeed.

*****

I took that photo at the Baltimore Aquarium.  Depending on who you ask it’s either a lovely frog or a very ugly frog.  I guess beauty truly can be a matter of perception.

Blogs? what blogs?

I’m finding myself in the position of having too many blogs. 

Yet which ones do I abandon?

Which do I keep?

Which do I use just for certain things?

It’s difficult.  I truly do like this platform but blogger seems to be easy for me to use for creativity purposes.  I only use Live Journal to keep up with the rennie community.  Y!360 is all but dead in the water (with promises of a universal profile sometime in the latter half of 08.  Multiply just never grew on me — neither did Xanga or Facebook.

I’m not interested in a social blogging site but I find I miss Yahoo because it was rather an all-in-one for me.  I did reviews and thoughts and silly things.  I find silly is hard to achieve on Blogger.  I find depth of content is hard to achieve (for me) on Multiply.

Am I back to the ‘to blog or not to blog’?  Or is my muse simply hiding again?

****

I took that photo a few weeks ago @ The Fairie Festival @ Spoutwood Farms in PA.  The mist made the farm seem nearly etheral.

Moving on

Doesn’t that just *sound* tacky?  Moving on.  As in what right to *I* have to move on?

However, I must so ….

I’ve also read through this poor journal/blog to find that so many things are about other persons and their effect on me.  I think this is a time for me to focus more on me. 

Late January this year I joined a gym.  Granted with the things February brought, going rather fell by the wayside.  However I am going back to it.  Getting back on that horse is taking more effort than falling off it did I can sure tell ya

Beginning this month I joined weight watchers online.  I’m not a meeting or social type person and my online live journal friends and I motivate ourselves quite nicely. 

Part of me wants to run back to the low carb because losing weight was so.very.easy.  However I know — for me anyway — it just wasn’t healthy.

I feel better now than I have in a long time — well I feel better physically.  Emotionally?  That a whole ‘nuther ball-o-wax.

For now I trudge ahead taking solice in doing small things for me in hopes that soon emotionally I’ll be better than I am at the moment.

**the picture above is of the Severn River Bridge on the Severn River in Annapolis MD.  It was taken last summer.

Life’s Little Ironies Part Deux

I hadn’t written this here yet — partially because this is where I put my no holds barred posts.

My mother died Tuesday 2/26.  I had to make the decision to let her go with dignity.

Trust me it wasn’t dignified nor peaceful.  It was her wishes though.

Monday night I received a phone call (at 11:30 p.m.) that she had been rushed to our local hospital in respiratory distress.  By the time they allowed me into the emergency room to see her I found out she had been placed on a respirator.

She had advance directives.  She shouldn’t have been intubated.  The paperwork we worked on the previous week should have been in her chart and should have transported with her.

It didn’t.  It wasn’t.  I had copies but that left the rather ugly decision to me:  remove the tube or not.  Without the respirator she would die — 2 physicians agreed wholeheartedly on that.  With the respirator she would survive for a while but all it would do would be to sustain life — no chance of recovery.

They both agreed to that as well.  Since she was unconscious and (at least according to one physician) had been since arrival (the other thought she got some response at first — it was debateable though) and I couldn’t ask her I had to make that fateful decision.

Regardless of what they show in movies and television, it’s not as easy or a rapid progression.  The tube was removed in the very early morning hours Tuesday.  She didn’t take her last breath until around 2 p.m. Tuesday.  She was pronounced at 2:30 p.m.

That’s 15 hours of struggle.  15 hours of nothing but the body automatically doing what it does - attempt survival.  Attempted against all odds in this case.

Other physicians checked her and all agreed this was the right decision.  They didn’t have to sit with her throughout that long night and even longer day.

They don’t wake up at night wondering if it really was the right thing to do. 

They don’t have the guilt.

They don’t have the lingering questions.

They go on about their business of saving lives — or pronouncing lives ended without the horrible emotional baggage that comes with actually watching a life end.

For them it’s all in a days work. 

For me it was Mom.

Life’s Little Ironies

 

The gods are too fond of a joke — Aristotle

I’m currently circumnavigating the uneasy seas of medical assistance, hospice and/or palliative care due to an unexpected turn of events.

Then again if you’ve read along you realize my life is nothing more than a series of unexpected turns of events - life’s little ironies.

All of our long term decisions regarding mother changed last week in the blink of an eye.  Typical to her she had no symptoms for what was really killing her (yes brutal but true) and the symptoms she was feigning/exaggerating were actually masking the issue:

Advanced primary lung cancer with mestatis to the lymph nodes and probably other areas.  Originally a PET scan was ordered but we all looked around like why?

She may have months.  or it may be weeks.

or even days. 

Now I’m in the unenviable position of possibly being primary caregiver to my mother during her last hours.  I’m more than qualified … way more than qualified.  It’s just not something easy — something I’ve mentioned before in regards to my husband’s Parkinson’s diagnosis:  I can provide direct care easily - skills wise.  Emotionally is a completely different turn.

 Currently we’re in limbo as she’s not been dismissed and nobody is really certain if that would be best or not.  It’s literally day to day…and in an added twist, only after the diagnosis did she start exhibiting the traditional symptoms of lung cancer.

We now have advance directives.  We now have a living will.  I’m currently attempting the long road toward state sponsored medical assistance.  I’m wondering just where to go in search of durable power of attorney papers.

….yet through all of this I’m wondering if this is a subsegment of society that isn’t being represented.  Professional navigator of the seas to the end — the endless miles of red tape involved with the last few hours — or years.

Sadly if such help exists I haven’t found it yet so I don my diving suit and jump back in knowing it all has to be done ….

Edit:  she passed 2 days after I wrote this entry.

**the photo above is from The Baltimore Aquarium taken in July 2006.  Hopefully the creatures I endure navigating the waters of medical assistance and end stage care are as friendly as those depicted……

Ch Ch Ch Changes ….

 

Wow it’s been a bit since I updated hasn’t it?

That’s quite easy to explain.  This is what happens when your disabled mother lives with you.

Currently she’s in the hospital and we’re facing some difficult decisions:  she wants to come home but as we live in a multi-level home (not split level — we have a 2 story townhouse with a sunken livingroom) her inability to negotiate the stairs is proving an issue.  At this point in my life, we are unable to sell it to provide a single level home even if that was a choice my husband or I wanted. 

It isn’t.

This is where it gets tough:  where does my responsibility to my aged parent end?  It is through her own fault she is in this situation - she bragged endlessly during her 30s and 40s (and yes 50s even) that she was spending my inheritance.

No - she was spending her own retirement.  Now she has none and poor health.

As more of us from my generation are finding our parents - who lived the highlife at no regard to us when we were kids - forced to live with us, we have to decide just how much sacrifice we are will — or even able — to accept.

How far will we go?  How much will we give up?

Our decision is this:  unless she is able to negotiate the stairs easily as well as pre-hospital, she will go to a managed care facility.  Since she literally has no retirement and very little social security (and no assets - frittered away before) then it will probably be a nursing home that accepts medicaid.

Not an easy decision — but one that must be made.

***the picture above is from 2006 MDRF - it is the stairs from The Dragon’s Lair to The Dragon Inn.

Redesign the exterior//refurbish the interior

 Hopefully that’s how it will work.

I decided to go for a little body work - I joined a gym.

This isn’t a small thing.  A big of a tightwad as I am, spending money to go excercise somewhere when - if I wasn’t as sedentary - I wouldn’t need to excercise … well it tends to grate.  Why don’t I just go walk around the block a few times.

Then I look out my front door and think oh yeah That would be why.

I’m a firm believer in redoing, refurbishing, realigning things every so often.  It’s been a couple of years (ok more than a couple) since I did that with me.

It’s time.

I need to be around for Jon for a while.  Not that it’s not something I”ve consciously avoided (hey the kids are grown who cares if I’m here or not) - however - now it’s more important.  Eating healthy - check.  Not smoking - check (6 years this march).

Excercise.

OK - so I plonked down my $$$$ and it just didn’t seem that bad.  Maybe I’m more convinced I should do this than I thought.

…and trust me — if I am paying for it I will use it cheapo that I am.

**The photo above is one I took in summer 2007.  The squirrels in and around DC are notorious for their bravery.  Never ever attempt to feed one.  They do however pose for photo ops like true native DCers.

Intellectual property

 

For the most part - nearly 99% of the time  in fact - I use my own photos for my blogs.  I have a large number of digital photographs saved in various locations online taken over a number of years.  When I do not use my own I’m quite careful about where I get them (usually from a public domain) and always always credit.

See I’ve been the victim of intellectual property theft.  It sounds so pompous when put that way doesn’t it?  It was just a few of my photos — just a few I had taken over the space of a few weeks during a festival — nothing really that important is it?

Except

Except the person doing the theiving incorporated them into a video he made, titled, took full credit for, and copyrighted at the end.

Would it have been less wrong without the copyright?  or without specifically alluding to the fact he took all the photos when in fact he didn’t?  Or was it the lack of credit that was wrong.

Another friend of mine recently had her personal professional artwork show up - altered but it’s still very recognizable as hers — on a craft website.  She’s a professional tattoo artist.  The person from the craft website got a bit miffed but she had right on her side (as the person who found the *duplicate* just happens to have the custom tattoo on her person — applied by my friend) but agreed to take it down.

This is becoming a larger problem when certain search engines default photo searches to sites that store personal photographs.  I’ve seen mine here and there and I never object unless my photos are either 1) altered or 2) taken credit for.  If it’s “blah blah blah about Baltimore here’s the inner harbor” and my photo is being used I don’t worry about it — providing they aren’t taking credit for the photograph itself.

However, it still should be credited where possible. 

…so on that note, I will only use my own photos unless it’s a review of something where I really need their image for the review.

**the photo above was one that was *appropriated.  it was taken by me October 2006 at MDRF

A movie review — of sorts

 We Are Marshall.

Is it a football film?  well yes it is.  It *has* to be because it centers around the 1970 plane crash that killed 37 members of the Marshall University football team (called the Thundering Herd), 8 members of the coaching staff, and 25 members of the community who had went to the game in North Carolina.

It’s more than just a football film though.  It is a film about how a community comes back from such a devastating loss.

I spent the better part of an hour trying to explain to my husband what it’s like to live in an area where everthing revolves around football (which explains even more how the entire town was affected not only by the crash but by the choices after — do we continue on or eliminate the football program?) but he just didn’t quite get it.  I’m from rural Oklahoma.  I remember the Wichita State University plane crash (which shockingly happened a month prior to Marshall’s plane crash) and the effects on the community and the region.  I remember the discussions about whether teams should fly or not.

Mostly I remember listening to the games on the radio.  It is just what you did.  You talked about the games before they happened.  You listened to the games.  You rooted for the teams (go Sooners go Cowboys).  You talked about the games after.

All in all I found this a touching film.  A little goofy in spots but what small town isn’t a bit goofy?  Mostly it’s a good chronicle of how rural areas rally when faced with adversity.

I’d see it again.  In fact I have.

the photo above is of Marshall University from their alumni website