Monday, February 16, 2004
You know you're in "The Old Zone" when...
...I know. Sounds like the start of a bad joke. To my mother, it is. This morning I arose at 0330, one of my favorite times of day. She arose soon after, three layers of paper underwear full and leaking, bed and bottom of pajamas soaked, dripping her way into the bathroom. I wasn't surprised at the water shed, just that it happened so early. We didn't get to bed until relatively late last night after the news, at least, and I think we channel surfed for awhile, although I only vaguely remember that. Mostly we talked about what a wonderful Valentine's weekend we had. Nothing spoiled it not even a prophesied accident induced by chocolate overload soon after some much needed, much appreciated, much loved company left. She went to bed well hydrated last night, not overly so, with a vigorous leg rub under her belt, so to speak, which I'm sure stimulated her kidneys to self-dialyze (which is what they are supposed to do). I performed a quick bed change and mother clean-up and change, surprising us both that I was that spry at 0355. Although she clearly is not a morning person, has been, historically, only under protest and a grave sense of responsibility, she decided to remain awake for awhile, smoke a few cigarettes and "visit", which was fine with me. It was obvious while I cleaned her that I needed to get at least a good pint of liquid back into her before she headed for bed.
It takes a good half hour for her sudden water losses to trigger thirst. Such is the lot of the ancient body at this time in the field of genetic manipulation, anyway. Her initial reaction, when I begin offering her water after a shed, is to wave it away. I'll coax her to "wet your whistle", to which she always sees some sense since she, being of typically low blood oxygen, often mouth breathes. Once the water rushes over her tongue she'll stay on the glass for awhile. I always point this out to her; that even though her body's wisdom is a bit slow, these days, it's available.
"It seems like I'm always drinking water," she protests, mildly, lucky for me.
"You are," I confirm. "We haven't cracked that problem of aging, yet. That's The Old Zone for you, Mom. And, besides. I'm always drinking water. Everyone is. You only notice how annoying it can become when you're in The Old Zone."
She responds wordlessly in a surge of wry direct eye contact.
"I know you don't want me to remind you," I said, "but if I let either of us forget this we could, in very little time, make a very big mistake. Figure that your body's sub-wisdom led you out here on the pretext of having a cigarette in order to keep you up long enough so that your daughter's water wisdom kicked in."
She glances at me, one brow cocked. She's always had trouble believing me and, yes, it is true, when I was young, I often guessed at knowledge and guessed wrong. She doesn't remember, though, that I often guessed, and knew, right.
"Never mind. Just trust me."
"Oh, I trust you all right," as if to say, "I know you intimately and trust you to be yourself. Which is why I'm gripping the arm of this rocking chair and leaning away a bit..."
It's true. We had a lovely Valentine's weekend polished with surprises. First, a bouquet delivery on Friday containing two just-this-side-of-peach roses, perfectly sized for our abbreviated dining room table. The Big Girl was thrilled that MCS "remembered". Saturday afternoon, when we had just reminded ourselves that it was Valentine's Day, a call from friends brought up very welcome company from the Valley, gifts, reddened Mom up, sprayed sparkle into our weekend, raised Mom's blood glucose to 192 [what the hell, it went right back down in the morning], gave us all an excuse to stretch our limits.
In "preparing" for an impromptu visit, the entire house stirred. We had a quickly forgotten spat over her desire to help me pull the house into a negotiable order. She stopped short when I reminded her that we are in this "health mess" because she refused to listen to me once before when I fairly yelled at her not to help me. I am not going to allow that to happen again so she'll just have to get over it, swallow this foundation for pride and find another. So there.
She never remembers the injury. She has trouble now, in fact, remembering that her back is still healing until she sits on the edge of her bed at night or becomes extraordinarily tired. Then she'll ask me, "how this happened". She's handling the ban on ibuprofen well. A new iron supplement, Floradix (ferrous gluconate) that absorbs easily and is non-constipating is heating her up in general. Although there is a touch of white still visible around the edges, especially before she is upright, every day this lessens. The test showed her iron binding capacity was normal so I'm hoping this iron, that I had to find out about from an alternative healer when Floradix. You'd think all the physicians, the ones who nodded gravely when I mentioned the constipation and the apparent lack of utility and commented that, yes, she'll become (which, in her case, at that time, meant "get worse") constipated, yes, the ferrous sulfate (three 325 mg Elemental Iron from 65 mg Ferrous Sulfate, OTC) takes "a long time" to take effect because of low absorption rates but just give her a lot, make sure she eats lots of fiber (at that time also an iffy prescription), would know about alternate sources of iron, especially completely natural sources. Mom's acupuncturist said, "This is used to raise someone's 'crit' quickly." And it looks like that's what it's doing. Why has no one in the non-alternative medical community told me about this? Does no one know?
As well, a mini-colonic was performed anti-oxidantally byThe Chocolate, with which one of our unapologetically improvident guests gifted my mother. She wolfed it down while I reminded her how chocolate affects her. I told her I'd deal with it if she would cooperate. She promised. She's been cooperative. It hasn't been too bad and I noticed last night, after a busy afternoon, that her color started to take on that peach undertone signaling a return to iron-sufficiency.
Interestingly, at Breakfast Out yesterday she ordered a "meat lover's breakfast" with 3 pancakes, devoured everything (including the hash browns) but the pancakes, dismissing them, prior to the end of the meal, as "too sweet". Angels surrounded our table and sang portions of the "Hallelujah" chorus.
All the people visiting know Mom intimately, we all consider ourselves family and they were delighted to see their visit have such a salutary affect. So was I. I believe I was also included in the "salud".
When I reminded her early this morning before she returned to bed (wrapped in three pairs of paper underwear) of our impending visit to The Valley Tuesday for her hematology appointment she expressed excitement, seemed to remember us talking about it and was undaunted by the early start to my proposed schedule for the day. As she herself admits, she sometimes does better "before she has a chance to wake up". Habit is a somatically powerful motivator in old age.
The chocolate surprised me and her. It wasn't an inordinate amount, 57 grams of Russell Stovers minus one piece one of our guests had the sense to grab. It did not spoil her appetite for "good" food [to which my mother always replies, "Chocolate's very good food"] and it certainly cleaned her out. I have, before, been fooled by her iron therapy reddened lips into thinking that she's "better", anemically speaking. Those experiences have taught me the difference between red on white and red on peach. Her color at the beginning of her hematological convalescence can shift back and forth quickly so I'm curious to see how she'll look when she reawakens since she'll be a bit dehydrated. I'm hopeful. Visits help. They are the part of healing that involves love, always the most important part.
Much has happened. Medically, I am dealing with a level of complexity approaching the level of that endured during the colonoscopy 'scandal'. I'm handling it, after having a 72 hour shock period. I didn't believe I was in shock, I believed I was self-righteously justified in my indignation; so much so I almost decided to stop taking Black Cohosh in order to fan the flames. It was time and the mundane complexity of my present caretaking role with my mother that kept me from taking action, even as yet another mistake was made which I can't correct until Tuesday at the earliest, the day we'll be traveling...damn, how does anyone get healed around here?!? Yes, bedrock confession, this is still how I feel. But, I know the ambiguities of the medical-health-industrial complex so autonomically now that I factor them in, or at least I try to, when having to weigh alternatives and manipulate timing to my mother's advantage.
Hmmm. At least this one is going to be a relatively short haul and I'm in control of myself now.
There is much I want to mention, here, some backtracking...and I want to finish posting that blood test, especially since we'll be picking up another tomorrow. I'm forcing myself to be realistic about these results. She was peripherally white, not peach, when this blood was drawn. She was not on elemental iron and we had not yet discovered Floradix. She'd been off ibuprofen for a couple of days except for one I'd administered 2.5 days prior to the blood draw, a "mercy ibuprofen". Her back was clearly giving her fits and I thought with a substantial dinner it would relax her muscles and maybe not irritate her stomach into bleeding again. The next morning, although her lips were maroon from the oxygen, her face was "a whiter shade of pale".
The Floradix kicked in quickly in a variety of ways, not the least of which was to raise her energy level, allow her to be excited as company arrived and take a few physical risks. We discovered this weekend, for instance, that with patience and some posture and movement coaching she can get in and out of a low slung sedan without pain. This is a relief to both of us, in case we need to spend enough time in Mesa, for any reason, this spring and/or summer, as to require us transferring cats and living supplies. The truck, while great for hauling, can't accommodate the cats.
I also took note this weekend, as Saturday night she "didn't want to miss anything" and was the last to retire (except for me, of course), that at 6 hours she hadn't yet "leaked out". That observation reversed, though, early this morning when she more than leaked out after 5 hours of sleep. I'd been prodigious with the liquids, though, yesterday and the iron since her bowels were self-cleansing. She had, too, felt thirst throughout the day and independently sought refreshment.
I fed her cottage cheese and reminded myself, "dairy products bind". Sometimes. She recently was "cleared" by her acupuncturist for sensitivities (loosely translated: allergies) to calcium and vitamin D. Anyone who knows my mother knows her legendary affair with dairy products of almost all kinds including 'real' butter. Lately, while her consumption of these has dropped considerably, their percentage of her diet has not. She usually gets at least two fair servings of dairy products a day. As I recall, her bowels and her awareness of bowel function, kicked in maybe a week after her "clearing" for vitamin D.
Although I may be sounding obsessive about this and have been scoffed at by a leading gastro-enterologist in The Valley for saying so (although the hematologist fervently supported my contention), I believe that bowel functions are both the symptom and the cause of one's general joie de vivre. The first time I saw the scene in The Last Emperor in which the toddler emperor's attendants pay close attention to their charges bowel movements this made perfect sense to me even as a titter rose from the audience. Years previous, when a friend "confided" to me about another friend that she examined her bowel movements before flushing (who knows how she knew this), I immediately commented, "Of course, she's a vegetarian," and, as well, the healthiest of our circle at that time. Until she went crazy, stripped down in the parking lot of the (only, at the time) McDonald's in Elmira, New York, in December in the middle of the night and danced and spent the rest of the night in a jail cell. I do remember the first friend, upon hearing this, nodding and mumbling something about "bowel habits".
I realized early that well functioning bowels allow for an invigorating day rhythm that can't be beat. My mother is noticing this again, too. I say "again" because it was my mother with whom I first shared, at a tender pre-school age, my pleasure in the acts of elimination, particularly what we (and, as MPS recently observed, only we) referred to as "grunting". I remember doing a quick, unselfconscious soliloquy to "grunting" in her presence and although her comments were clinically brief they were affirmative.
It was my father who later taught me, with on-the-spot roughness, that such pleasures ought not be discussed at the dinner table.
All of this is to say that my mother takes my open discussion of her bowel habits in stride. I believe I detect occasional blushes of pride when I crow about yet another day of a regular, controlled bowel movement. She also understands what I mean when I warn her about the purgative effect of chocolate.
I keep in mind that I have been known to enjoy a good purge.
Taking into account the two hours of somnius-interruptus early this morning and a bedtime of about 2300 last night, I'll call her at 1000 if she isn't up before then. I've heard a reconnaissance cough. That's a sign she may be shuffling out under her own steam soon.
Her bedroom window faces morning sun-flood east. I retract the shade after she turns out her light at night so the sun hits her with subdued brightness all morning long where her bed nestles behind the file cabinet. Although she doesn't like to wake up, like a cat she likes to bask in light when she sleeps. It warms her into movement. I think of it as a trick. She thinks of it as a luxury.
It takes a good half hour for her sudden water losses to trigger thirst. Such is the lot of the ancient body at this time in the field of genetic manipulation, anyway. Her initial reaction, when I begin offering her water after a shed, is to wave it away. I'll coax her to "wet your whistle", to which she always sees some sense since she, being of typically low blood oxygen, often mouth breathes. Once the water rushes over her tongue she'll stay on the glass for awhile. I always point this out to her; that even though her body's wisdom is a bit slow, these days, it's available.
"It seems like I'm always drinking water," she protests, mildly, lucky for me.
"You are," I confirm. "We haven't cracked that problem of aging, yet. That's The Old Zone for you, Mom. And, besides. I'm always drinking water. Everyone is. You only notice how annoying it can become when you're in The Old Zone."
She responds wordlessly in a surge of wry direct eye contact.
"I know you don't want me to remind you," I said, "but if I let either of us forget this we could, in very little time, make a very big mistake. Figure that your body's sub-wisdom led you out here on the pretext of having a cigarette in order to keep you up long enough so that your daughter's water wisdom kicked in."
She glances at me, one brow cocked. She's always had trouble believing me and, yes, it is true, when I was young, I often guessed at knowledge and guessed wrong. She doesn't remember, though, that I often guessed, and knew, right.
"Never mind. Just trust me."
"Oh, I trust you all right," as if to say, "I know you intimately and trust you to be yourself. Which is why I'm gripping the arm of this rocking chair and leaning away a bit..."
It's true. We had a lovely Valentine's weekend polished with surprises. First, a bouquet delivery on Friday containing two just-this-side-of-peach roses, perfectly sized for our abbreviated dining room table. The Big Girl was thrilled that MCS "remembered". Saturday afternoon, when we had just reminded ourselves that it was Valentine's Day, a call from friends brought up very welcome company from the Valley, gifts, reddened Mom up, sprayed sparkle into our weekend, raised Mom's blood glucose to 192 [what the hell, it went right back down in the morning], gave us all an excuse to stretch our limits.
In "preparing" for an impromptu visit, the entire house stirred. We had a quickly forgotten spat over her desire to help me pull the house into a negotiable order. She stopped short when I reminded her that we are in this "health mess" because she refused to listen to me once before when I fairly yelled at her not to help me. I am not going to allow that to happen again so she'll just have to get over it, swallow this foundation for pride and find another. So there.
She never remembers the injury. She has trouble now, in fact, remembering that her back is still healing until she sits on the edge of her bed at night or becomes extraordinarily tired. Then she'll ask me, "how this happened". She's handling the ban on ibuprofen well. A new iron supplement, Floradix (ferrous gluconate) that absorbs easily and is non-constipating is heating her up in general. Although there is a touch of white still visible around the edges, especially before she is upright, every day this lessens. The test showed her iron binding capacity was normal so I'm hoping this iron, that I had to find out about from an alternative healer when Floradix. You'd think all the physicians, the ones who nodded gravely when I mentioned the constipation and the apparent lack of utility and commented that, yes, she'll become (which, in her case, at that time, meant "get worse") constipated, yes, the ferrous sulfate (three 325 mg Elemental Iron from 65 mg Ferrous Sulfate, OTC) takes "a long time" to take effect because of low absorption rates but just give her a lot, make sure she eats lots of fiber (at that time also an iffy prescription), would know about alternate sources of iron, especially completely natural sources. Mom's acupuncturist said, "This is used to raise someone's 'crit' quickly." And it looks like that's what it's doing. Why has no one in the non-alternative medical community told me about this? Does no one know?
As well, a mini-colonic was performed anti-oxidantally byThe Chocolate, with which one of our unapologetically improvident guests gifted my mother. She wolfed it down while I reminded her how chocolate affects her. I told her I'd deal with it if she would cooperate. She promised. She's been cooperative. It hasn't been too bad and I noticed last night, after a busy afternoon, that her color started to take on that peach undertone signaling a return to iron-sufficiency.
Interestingly, at Breakfast Out yesterday she ordered a "meat lover's breakfast" with 3 pancakes, devoured everything (including the hash browns) but the pancakes, dismissing them, prior to the end of the meal, as "too sweet". Angels surrounded our table and sang portions of the "Hallelujah" chorus.
All the people visiting know Mom intimately, we all consider ourselves family and they were delighted to see their visit have such a salutary affect. So was I. I believe I was also included in the "salud".
When I reminded her early this morning before she returned to bed (wrapped in three pairs of paper underwear) of our impending visit to The Valley Tuesday for her hematology appointment she expressed excitement, seemed to remember us talking about it and was undaunted by the early start to my proposed schedule for the day. As she herself admits, she sometimes does better "before she has a chance to wake up". Habit is a somatically powerful motivator in old age.
The chocolate surprised me and her. It wasn't an inordinate amount, 57 grams of Russell Stovers minus one piece one of our guests had the sense to grab. It did not spoil her appetite for "good" food [to which my mother always replies, "Chocolate's very good food"] and it certainly cleaned her out. I have, before, been fooled by her iron therapy reddened lips into thinking that she's "better", anemically speaking. Those experiences have taught me the difference between red on white and red on peach. Her color at the beginning of her hematological convalescence can shift back and forth quickly so I'm curious to see how she'll look when she reawakens since she'll be a bit dehydrated. I'm hopeful. Visits help. They are the part of healing that involves love, always the most important part.
Much has happened. Medically, I am dealing with a level of complexity approaching the level of that endured during the colonoscopy 'scandal'. I'm handling it, after having a 72 hour shock period. I didn't believe I was in shock, I believed I was self-righteously justified in my indignation; so much so I almost decided to stop taking Black Cohosh in order to fan the flames. It was time and the mundane complexity of my present caretaking role with my mother that kept me from taking action, even as yet another mistake was made which I can't correct until Tuesday at the earliest, the day we'll be traveling...damn, how does anyone get healed around here?!? Yes, bedrock confession, this is still how I feel. But, I know the ambiguities of the medical-health-industrial complex so autonomically now that I factor them in, or at least I try to, when having to weigh alternatives and manipulate timing to my mother's advantage.
Hmmm. At least this one is going to be a relatively short haul and I'm in control of myself now.
There is much I want to mention, here, some backtracking...and I want to finish posting that blood test, especially since we'll be picking up another tomorrow. I'm forcing myself to be realistic about these results. She was peripherally white, not peach, when this blood was drawn. She was not on elemental iron and we had not yet discovered Floradix. She'd been off ibuprofen for a couple of days except for one I'd administered 2.5 days prior to the blood draw, a "mercy ibuprofen". Her back was clearly giving her fits and I thought with a substantial dinner it would relax her muscles and maybe not irritate her stomach into bleeding again. The next morning, although her lips were maroon from the oxygen, her face was "a whiter shade of pale".
The Floradix kicked in quickly in a variety of ways, not the least of which was to raise her energy level, allow her to be excited as company arrived and take a few physical risks. We discovered this weekend, for instance, that with patience and some posture and movement coaching she can get in and out of a low slung sedan without pain. This is a relief to both of us, in case we need to spend enough time in Mesa, for any reason, this spring and/or summer, as to require us transferring cats and living supplies. The truck, while great for hauling, can't accommodate the cats.
I also took note this weekend, as Saturday night she "didn't want to miss anything" and was the last to retire (except for me, of course), that at 6 hours she hadn't yet "leaked out". That observation reversed, though, early this morning when she more than leaked out after 5 hours of sleep. I'd been prodigious with the liquids, though, yesterday and the iron since her bowels were self-cleansing. She had, too, felt thirst throughout the day and independently sought refreshment.
I fed her cottage cheese and reminded myself, "dairy products bind". Sometimes. She recently was "cleared" by her acupuncturist for sensitivities (loosely translated: allergies) to calcium and vitamin D. Anyone who knows my mother knows her legendary affair with dairy products of almost all kinds including 'real' butter. Lately, while her consumption of these has dropped considerably, their percentage of her diet has not. She usually gets at least two fair servings of dairy products a day. As I recall, her bowels and her awareness of bowel function, kicked in maybe a week after her "clearing" for vitamin D.
Although I may be sounding obsessive about this and have been scoffed at by a leading gastro-enterologist in The Valley for saying so (although the hematologist fervently supported my contention), I believe that bowel functions are both the symptom and the cause of one's general joie de vivre. The first time I saw the scene in The Last Emperor in which the toddler emperor's attendants pay close attention to their charges bowel movements this made perfect sense to me even as a titter rose from the audience. Years previous, when a friend "confided" to me about another friend that she examined her bowel movements before flushing (who knows how she knew this), I immediately commented, "Of course, she's a vegetarian," and, as well, the healthiest of our circle at that time. Until she went crazy, stripped down in the parking lot of the (only, at the time) McDonald's in Elmira, New York, in December in the middle of the night and danced and spent the rest of the night in a jail cell. I do remember the first friend, upon hearing this, nodding and mumbling something about "bowel habits".
I realized early that well functioning bowels allow for an invigorating day rhythm that can't be beat. My mother is noticing this again, too. I say "again" because it was my mother with whom I first shared, at a tender pre-school age, my pleasure in the acts of elimination, particularly what we (and, as MPS recently observed, only we) referred to as "grunting". I remember doing a quick, unselfconscious soliloquy to "grunting" in her presence and although her comments were clinically brief they were affirmative.
It was my father who later taught me, with on-the-spot roughness, that such pleasures ought not be discussed at the dinner table.
All of this is to say that my mother takes my open discussion of her bowel habits in stride. I believe I detect occasional blushes of pride when I crow about yet another day of a regular, controlled bowel movement. She also understands what I mean when I warn her about the purgative effect of chocolate.
I keep in mind that I have been known to enjoy a good purge.
Taking into account the two hours of somnius-interruptus early this morning and a bedtime of about 2300 last night, I'll call her at 1000 if she isn't up before then. I've heard a reconnaissance cough. That's a sign she may be shuffling out under her own steam soon.
Her bedroom window faces morning sun-flood east. I retract the shade after she turns out her light at night so the sun hits her with subdued brightness all morning long where her bed nestles behind the file cabinet. Although she doesn't like to wake up, like a cat she likes to bask in light when she sleeps. It warms her into movement. I think of it as a trick. She thinks of it as a luxury.
