Sunday, June 27, 2004
One of our cats is refusing to sleep with me...
...so extreme is the restlessness caused by the level of vigilance in which I am embracing my mother right now. Because we leave all windows and a few locking Arcadia screen doors open during the night, which thrills the cats, as there is a great deal of wild activity surrounding our house during the catting hours, this morning, when I couldn't find The Cat In Question, I began a close investigation of all windows to see if she might have excitedly and accidentally scratched and fallen through one during feral communication with some Outside Being. I finally found her deep in our "stash" closet, sleeping on top of one of the uppermost boxes. Last night was not the first night she's refused to sleep with me lately. It was, however, the first night that she didn't bother to slip onto my bed to try to find a comfortable position. The Cat Who Thinks I Saved Her Life is still sleeping with me, patiently, close against my leg. But I'm sure if she didn't have that emotional attachment to me she'd be somewhere in the closet I've come to think of as The Cat House.
My vigilance during sleep includes episodes like the one last night. Sometime between 0100 and 0200 (I have only a vague recollection of the minutes) I awoke to the sound of my mother's dry-coughing and scurried into her room to check on her. During her hemoglobin plunge this coughing came to indicate that she was vomiting up hours old dinner, usually in her sleep, completely unaware she was doing this. Now it's just a sign that her bronchial passages are a bit dry from the increased oxygen hours she's been doing since 5 days previous to the blood transfusion. Last night, as I suspected, she was just unconsciously hacking away some air-abrasion irritation in her throat.
Now that I know that the vomiting habit she was developing before her transfusion was a symptom of severe anemia and, as well, that vomiting is not an activity in which my mother has been known to indulge, any vomiting from her deserves to be noted.
My vigilance this time is less directed toward detecting developing ill health and more directed toward discovering a way to encourage her body to be less anemic more often; perhaps to even allow us some time to see if her acupuncturist can address some of the blood chemistry and "pathogen" dynamics that might be having an effect on her anemia, her diabetes, her incontinence, her energy level, etc. I needed this last week without visitors, the last of which was last Saturday, and without having to go to The Valley, to concentrate on how I am now going to order our life toward this end. Rarely have I felt the need to be this focused on every aspect of my mother's existence. When I have I've slipped in and out of this acute focus flexibly and quickly. This time I made a conscious choice to observe our life, observe my observation of it and come up with a way of enhancing Mom's health while enhancing her lifestyle as well. What she enjoys is still evident even if she isn't at the moment indulging herself in these pursuits. This time I consciously set a formal goal that included working yet another type of observation into my routine, getting both Mom and me used to a more tightly run ship, checking to see how tight I can run the ship without losing hold of my mother's attention, developing the habit of observing her diet even more closely than before, as well as her blood glucose level and her blood pressure, now that I know that her blood pressure is also a good indication of an anemic episode. I was very focused when deciding how to approach all these changes.
The week, as it turned out, was only slightly hard on my mother. It was, well, not hard but stressful for me. I can often function from relaxation in the middle of stressful conditions but I'm not sorry this week was so stressful. It kept me on my toes.
An interesting observation I've made through the week: If my mother is led gently with mild but progressive changes inheat and cold through the seasons, which happened this year since we've spent most of it in Prescott, she (and I, as well) can tolerate, even seek, a higher heat in the summer up here in the mountains and a lower cold in the winter. The abundance of sunshine helps, even though sunshine isn't my favorite weather condition. It is my mother's, though. People here are beginning to complain about the heat and feeling the need to use their air conditioners. My mother and I, though, are just beginning to find it very pleasant all day and all night. When we were using both houses throughout the year, we never truly got used to the level of summer heat up here nor did we ever truly get used to the winter heat down there. I'm very pleased we won't be going back and forth anymore. I think both my mother and I can use some stability.
She continues to mourn the impending loss of our home in The Flatlands but only when she's in that house. When she's here or when she's in a car going someplace down there she prefers our Prescott home. Lately she's referred to it as her favorite home, "of all the homes [she] and [I] have ever lived in."
I'm still reluctant in dealing with my mother's business but that will be taken care of later today and tomorrow. I didn't want to deal with the demands of her business at this point and since, strictly speaking, neither of the two demans is critical, as per my definition, which counts, I closed business down for a week. I'm glad I did. My mother and I needed this week of adjustment to learn how to strengthen our combined grip on her life.
Off the record: I often imagine, with no humility, that despite the dearth of visitors (including relateds) to this journal/website about my mother's Ancient Years and my involvement in them, that at some point someone who knows the value of this meticulous documentation will discover it and trumpet its existence to the rest of my species, not leaving out my and my mother's names, of course. I know, with my usual unabashed sense of self-possession, that this is valuable to more of my species than my mother and me and some relations. I know that what I'm doing has rarely been done to this degree of detail and confession. What appears to be humanity's shortening attention span notwithstanding, I believe this body of work will honor both my mother's and my life as on of our Contributions. This, I believe, will happen aside from the fact that doing this aids me in my job and keeps me to the task of scrutinizing my mother's life as she is living it now and as she's lived it in the past for clues to how I get us from here to there in one piece.
The house is set up for Mom's arrival into the day. I've been doing chores as I write this, becoming excited about finding out how she's doing today, how she's going to react to an early rising time, what excuses she's going to give to try to get out of walkering, which we are going to do today m'am...
Later.
My vigilance during sleep includes episodes like the one last night. Sometime between 0100 and 0200 (I have only a vague recollection of the minutes) I awoke to the sound of my mother's dry-coughing and scurried into her room to check on her. During her hemoglobin plunge this coughing came to indicate that she was vomiting up hours old dinner, usually in her sleep, completely unaware she was doing this. Now it's just a sign that her bronchial passages are a bit dry from the increased oxygen hours she's been doing since 5 days previous to the blood transfusion. Last night, as I suspected, she was just unconsciously hacking away some air-abrasion irritation in her throat.
Now that I know that the vomiting habit she was developing before her transfusion was a symptom of severe anemia and, as well, that vomiting is not an activity in which my mother has been known to indulge, any vomiting from her deserves to be noted.
My vigilance this time is less directed toward detecting developing ill health and more directed toward discovering a way to encourage her body to be less anemic more often; perhaps to even allow us some time to see if her acupuncturist can address some of the blood chemistry and "pathogen" dynamics that might be having an effect on her anemia, her diabetes, her incontinence, her energy level, etc. I needed this last week without visitors, the last of which was last Saturday, and without having to go to The Valley, to concentrate on how I am now going to order our life toward this end. Rarely have I felt the need to be this focused on every aspect of my mother's existence. When I have I've slipped in and out of this acute focus flexibly and quickly. This time I made a conscious choice to observe our life, observe my observation of it and come up with a way of enhancing Mom's health while enhancing her lifestyle as well. What she enjoys is still evident even if she isn't at the moment indulging herself in these pursuits. This time I consciously set a formal goal that included working yet another type of observation into my routine, getting both Mom and me used to a more tightly run ship, checking to see how tight I can run the ship without losing hold of my mother's attention, developing the habit of observing her diet even more closely than before, as well as her blood glucose level and her blood pressure, now that I know that her blood pressure is also a good indication of an anemic episode. I was very focused when deciding how to approach all these changes.
The week, as it turned out, was only slightly hard on my mother. It was, well, not hard but stressful for me. I can often function from relaxation in the middle of stressful conditions but I'm not sorry this week was so stressful. It kept me on my toes.
An interesting observation I've made through the week: If my mother is led gently with mild but progressive changes inheat and cold through the seasons, which happened this year since we've spent most of it in Prescott, she (and I, as well) can tolerate, even seek, a higher heat in the summer up here in the mountains and a lower cold in the winter. The abundance of sunshine helps, even though sunshine isn't my favorite weather condition. It is my mother's, though. People here are beginning to complain about the heat and feeling the need to use their air conditioners. My mother and I, though, are just beginning to find it very pleasant all day and all night. When we were using both houses throughout the year, we never truly got used to the level of summer heat up here nor did we ever truly get used to the winter heat down there. I'm very pleased we won't be going back and forth anymore. I think both my mother and I can use some stability.
She continues to mourn the impending loss of our home in The Flatlands but only when she's in that house. When she's here or when she's in a car going someplace down there she prefers our Prescott home. Lately she's referred to it as her favorite home, "of all the homes [she] and [I] have ever lived in."
I'm still reluctant in dealing with my mother's business but that will be taken care of later today and tomorrow. I didn't want to deal with the demands of her business at this point and since, strictly speaking, neither of the two demans is critical, as per my definition, which counts, I closed business down for a week. I'm glad I did. My mother and I needed this week of adjustment to learn how to strengthen our combined grip on her life.
Off the record: I often imagine, with no humility, that despite the dearth of visitors (including relateds) to this journal/website about my mother's Ancient Years and my involvement in them, that at some point someone who knows the value of this meticulous documentation will discover it and trumpet its existence to the rest of my species, not leaving out my and my mother's names, of course. I know, with my usual unabashed sense of self-possession, that this is valuable to more of my species than my mother and me and some relations. I know that what I'm doing has rarely been done to this degree of detail and confession. What appears to be humanity's shortening attention span notwithstanding, I believe this body of work will honor both my mother's and my life as on of our Contributions. This, I believe, will happen aside from the fact that doing this aids me in my job and keeps me to the task of scrutinizing my mother's life as she is living it now and as she's lived it in the past for clues to how I get us from here to there in one piece.
The house is set up for Mom's arrival into the day. I've been doing chores as I write this, becoming excited about finding out how she's doing today, how she's going to react to an early rising time, what excuses she's going to give to try to get out of walkering, which we are going to do today m'am...
Later.
