Mom & Me Two Archive

    My mother is up but not for long, I think. She's smoking. I'm performing the usual after-arising water torture on her and she doesn't seem particularly interested in staying up. She's telling me that she is so tired that she may remain in bed for the night, which would be okay. She's suffering from some lung congestion. I think she may have a bit of a cold. I've got her on guaifenex, which tends to enwrap her in mental angel hair as it relieves her congestion. I've warned her that if she is up for longer than 45 minutes, she gets glipizide and must eat. We'll see what happens.
    My primary reason for checking in, though, is to record her latest blood sugar reading. Normally I wouldn't be taking it at this time, although it's not completely unheard of for me to take a reading within 2h 40min after she eats if I suspect that her blood sugar might be soaring; if, for instance, I've not given her 500 mg of metformin at lunch.
    As it turns out, without the metformin and with the 1/4 tsp of cinnamon her blood sugar 2h and 40min out from lunch is 123. Although technically high, a typical out of range blood sugar, considering what she ate and her lack of metformin, would be in the high 150's to high 160's; maybe the high 140's if she'd moved a bit. Definitely not 123 unless we'd had a wheel-chair-therapy session and then it would more likely be in the 130's.
    If Mom doesn't eat, tonight before going back to bed (which is allowed...if she's not moving much she doesn't need to eat much), I'd expect her morning blood sugar reading to be anywhere from normal into the 120's. We'll see.

...fantasy come true that is, would be for one or all of the mainstream physicians I've been dealing with in connection with Mom, her back, her anemia and her diabetes to say, "Cinnamon, huh? Terrific. Well, let's keep her under observation, keep a tight record of how much you're administering and when, how you're cutting back on the meds and let me know if she starts to slip below blah, blah, blah or above blah, blah, blah for more than a few days in a row."
    That would be grand. This is exactly the fantasy (although not always with cinnamon) I've envisioned each time I meet a new mainstream physician. I even got overly excited once with one of the newest ones when at the first appointment the PCP said maybe she could learn something from me. I immediately felt, although left unsaid, that with that attitude I knew I'd be able to learn from her in concert rather than in defense.
    But that was not to be.
    Now, sometimes, just to relieve the frustration, I invent 'psychological rape' fantasies in which I exit unscathed and the doctors exit volitionally violated. I don't really want those to happen. I feel a bit guilty having these fantasies, as I contend that fantasy, in all forms, is a very powerful activity, although not quite as simple as "from thought to deed".
    It's a pickle. Medicine is a pickle of the type I don't like: Say, sweet gherkins; you have to get through the sugar haze to appreciate the nutritional value.

    These are the stats:
Breakfast
Blood Glucose 45 minutes previous to breakfast: 127
Meal:
    1 egg, over hard, fried on a dry non-stick skillet
    2 slices lean, thick sliced Hormel sugar cured bacon
    8 ounces O.J. diluted with 8 oz. water
    8 ounces instant decaf coffee
    1 slice potato bread w/1.5 tbl Fleishmann's margarine and 1/4 teaspoon powdered cinnamon
Morning Medication:
    10 mg glipizide 45 mins previous to breakfast
    425 mg metformin with breakfast
    17 ml Floradix (17 mg elemental iron from ferrous gluconate)
    5 mg lisinopril
Morning Supplements:
    400 IU Vitamin E
    1,000 mg Vitamin C
    400 mcg Folic Acid
    1,250 mg Garlic
    Multivitamin for Seniors
Post Meal Supplement:
    4 oz. unadulterated Cranberry Juice in 10 oz. water

Lunch
Note: 4h 40 min past breakfast; nothing ingested between except water and decaf instant coffee
Blood Glucose: 97
Meal:
    12 oz. V-8 juice with 1/4 tsp powdered cinnamon
        [My mother's comment: "Mmmm...good! What's in this?"]
    8 oz. 4% fat cottage cheese dotted with lots of black pepper.
    2/3 of a 1.5 oz. bag of microwave popcorn, regular style

    Her joints are bothering her. The sky's been threatening all day but hasn't yet delivered. She's been up for quite awhile. We watched a movie, played some Sorry, talked some while I cleaned, overall she's been more tired than usual but didn't decide to take a nap until just about 15 minutes ago. I wasn't surprised. What surprised me is that she didn't try to get me to let her go back to bed right after breakfast. It wouldn't have worked but during breakfast I thought that might have been where we were headed. She was having trouble focusing even though she'd seemed perfectly energetic during her arising routine. I could tell it wasn't that she couldn't, it was that she didn't want to; she didn't think she had the energy.
    She hasn't been in the best of moods, either...more of a "rats leaving a sinking ship" mood. She's snipped at the sky, then swung around toward me and said, with as much snide as she could muster, "I know, you like this. Just like your father."
    She enjoyed the movie, Moonlight Mile even though I didn't know what it was about going into it so couldn't prep her. I got it because of the cast. Typically, as my mother reminds me, my chances of getting something she might like are 50/50. This one struck some kind of chord although a different one, I suspect, than the producers intended. At the end of the movie she said, "Now, didn't somebody die or something?"
    "Yeah. That young guy's fiance. She was shot."
    "Did we ever see her?"
    "Well, sort of yes, sort of no. You could have missed her."
    "Well, I liked the movie but I don't see the point of the shooting."
    Just before lunch she thought she'd be ready for another movie, as she'd moved her bowels and, as usual, her energy soared (relative term). But, for Mom, at least, Lost in Translation isn't an after-lunch-on-a-hellish-weather-and-my-knees-hurt day movie.
    Maybe...
    ...later.

    And, yes. Sometimes it takes a little over an hour of welcoming my mother to the morning to get her started. Most of the time I take her blood sugar right after I awaken her in bed but this morning she was up on her elbows, glasses on, interested in talking about the view out her window and I actually forgot to apply the needle to her finger until she was naked, in the bathroom, ready for cleansing.
    127 is excellent considering what she did and didn't ingest yesterday: The former category including chocolate cake with 850 mg Glucophage and popcorn, V-8 juice, toast and cottage cheese throughout the rest of the day, and, she told me this morning that she had a second piece of cake "while you were asleep on the floor". I thought the cake looked a bit smaller this morning. The latter category included her evening glipizide, metformin and some kind of reliably balanced meal after breakfast.
    I've been having delightful fantasies this morning about the possibility of being able to control my mother's blood sugar completely with cinnamon. This morning I carefully measured out her "dose", 1/4 teaspoon. As it turns out, that is less than I've been putting on her toast every morning for some months, now. I didn't increase the "dose", though. I'm going to spread the cinnamon throughout the day, 1/4 teaspoon in the middle of her day, probably in her V-8 juice, and another 1/4 teaspoon in the evening. I am going to slowly decrease her metformin while increasing her cinnamon unless her blood sugar begins to show that I can cut it back more drastically or shouldn't cut back any more. The fulfillment of my fantasy will take place when I am able to (dream big, Gail) take her off all her diabetic medication that isn't of the food variety. I even have a wicked scenario tucked behind this one about how her mainstream physicians (except maybe one) will find my control of her blood sugar with cinnamon scandalous and will try to subvert my efforts by pulling stunts like refusing prescriptions for blood sugar testing strips; refusing to attend to her if she, at some point, needs critical care, because, with my presence in the hospital (my presence at her in-hospital bedside, since her overnight stay alone in Banner Health Hospital in Mesa in September of 2002, is virtually assured) and attendance to her blood glucose tests, they will have to administer their typical diabetic medications and I won't allow this, and they won't allow a non-doctor to treat a patient despite the fact that this non-doctor has been treating this patient with much more success than mainstream doctors for 3 years, now...I do go on, don't I? What can I say...I'm a fantasy type of girl, and this one is especially delicious. I'd love to hear just one mainstream physician say, "I can't treat your mother because you refuse to treat her with medicine!" Just once.

    It was emitted from deep sleep. She looked good: Pink and relaxed. Just a few minutes ago I checked her again. She was dreaming, eyelids cracked, the lower rim of her blue, blue iris hoizontally agitated. I don't like to disturb these dreams she concocts in the morning sun while she's warming herself into wakefulness. They're, without exception, good dreams: Dreams of moving into ever larger and older homes; dreams of making cookies; dreams of ordinary moments of excitement in the company of extraordinary loved ones. Sometimes I'm in the dreams, sometimes I'm not because I haven't been born yet. Sometimes in these dreams I was born long before my time.
    I expect her blood sugar to be high this morning. Mom snacked lightly but regularly yesterday and there was never a time when she had "fasted" long enough to properly administer an evening dose of glipizide. I decided not to take her blood sugar last night. I didn't want to know and neither did she. One dose of metformin mid-day without a glipizide chaser works well on my mother but two doesn't do a thing so I figure, considering its side effects, best not to administer it at all. I saw to it that she had the equivalent of 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon yesterday (not cinnamon oil, by the way), so, perhaps this morning will be normal. As I sniffed the air around her bed I didn't notice the unmistakable smell of excess sugar in the urine. Her normal-blood-sugar urine smell, when she hasn't been eating something else that challenges (and, sometimes, delights) her digestive system, is very mild, not completely unpleasant and probably wouldn't be unpleasant at all to me if I didn't know it was urine. It is pervasive, though light, rather like the smell in a front room from a backroom wherein incense is burned. When I'm feeling good I barely notice it. When I am feeling irritated I notice it in places that have never been exposed to her urine. She, of course, does not smell it.
    I think the phenomenon of her mild urine smell may be related to an experiment conducted in one of the Northern European countries sometime in the mid to late 1990's. Someone got the idea to determine what organic odors smelled least offensive and most pleasing to a broad cross section of the population. The sweetest, most pleasant smell turned out to be the smell of underarm sweat from grandmothers. Although no reason was given, I've wondered if it could be the lack of hormones that is responsible for the sweetness. This could also explain the mild odor of elderly urine.
    Rain has been promised though only lightly delivered as yet. I've already done light cleaning. We have two movies left to watch. Mom liked Runaway Jury but didn't care for A Mighty Wind. I think she might not have gotten it, although she does remember our collection of 60's folk music which included: The New Christy Minstrels; Peter, Paul and Mary; Judy Collins; Joan Baez; The Chad Mitchell Trio The Kingston Trio; Bob Dylan; Arlo Guthrie; Pete Seeger; Woody Guthrie; with a smattering of indigenous folk stuff. She remembered us singing a lot of these songs, both profound and pastiche, in the car and around the house, harmonizing then playing havoc with the lyrics, singing in pidgin, our voices approaching shriek pitch, until one or both of our parents would yell at us to quiet down. She even remembered the blues song about the cemetery we made up on a long distance trip across the U.S. during one summer vacation. She didn't, however, get the movie and complained that there wasn't enough music.
    These days, I am consistently (and pleasantly) surprised by her expanding interests. I think, for instance, that she likes Sex and the City because she identifies with at least one of the women, not Charlotte. She followed Miranda closely, I noticed, until Miranda got married, then switched her attention to Carrie. She always keeps an eye on Samantha, though. We tried The L Word but were neither amused nor provoked. She expressed interest in The Passion until she realized it is a theater experience so far, so we'll wait until it's in DVD. She's decided, though, that she wants to catch up on "the Bible movies" before the DVD is released. We watched The Ten Commandments twice in one weekend about a month ago. That was a trip. She always thinks she wants to see The Last Temptation of Christ until it starts, then she gets bored, which is unfortunate, because with each showing I am increasingly fasincated with this film and insist, when we get it, that we see it through. She does, however, prefer the more realistic portrayals of biblical characters and events. One of her perennial comments, when watching one that captures her interest, is, "...life was violent, back then." I think she revels in the adventure, more so now that she's in a position to reevaluate and redefine her life in terms of adventure.
    Early this morning I ran errands to make sure that we could spend the day snug at home enjoying the rain (hopefully). My energy is always high on rain and snow days. Although Mom enjoys mugging her disgust for precipitation, she loves my wet-and-cloudy-day buzzes. So I'm expecting a good day. I'm curious about her blood sugar level this morning.
    I just heard a second reconnaissance cough. Time to see what she's up to. I'll report her blood sugar level...
    ...later.

...and, technically, you'd be right. Mom suffered a surprise bowel movement today a few hours after arising, being cleaned, eating and playing Sorry. It is so rare for either of us to eat anything like 13.6 ounces of meat over a two or three day period, let alone one day, including holidays, that when my mother's bowels surprised her today I wasn't surprised. I devoured my meat as ravenously and completely as my mother and my bowels were a bit on the active side today, too. My mother's color, though, remained positively striking all day despite ingesting only 15 ml of iron in the morning. Previous to her bowel incident she was pretty lethargic and talked a lot about taking a nap. I didn't discourage her but waited her out. Once her bowels had cleansed themselves she regained some sparkle and remained up throughout the day, eating lightly, mostly complex carbohydrates: V-8 juice, popcorn, a couple of pieces of oat bran toast. We did try the cake today, modest pieces some time in the afternoon between movies. It was good but awfully sweet. We both tend to forget that, in the case of food, sometimes absence does not make the heart grow fonder. Later in the evening, because she'd meandered through the kitchen looking for cigarettes and noticed the cake still on the counter, she considered aloud the possibility of more cake. I waved away her suggestion. One piece of cake every few months is enough for me, regardless of what kind it is. This seemed to convince her, too. "I was just trying on the idea," she said, "but you're right, it doesn't fit."
    Today was my day to be surprised by tiredness. I fell asleep on the living room floor this evening, not one of my habits. Mom, though, stayed up till past 2300 and had to awaken me to bid me goodnight. When I zonk on the floor I always make sure that I am close enough to her perch that any movement will wake me. Previously I've never had to be awakened. Tonight I did.
    I think my exhaustion was part psychological. Although I made the decision more than a few days ago to forego my mother's endoscopy and lived with it for a few days to see how it felt, over the past 24 hours I became so comfortable with it in the context of my management of my mother's health that I finally reached the point where, unless I am asked, I feel no need to explain to these particular doctors why I'm canceling. If I'm asked I feel sure I can explain my decision succinctly and without upturns of voice at the ends of my sentences. Why the difference? In the last 24 hours I made a concerted effort to review all my actions on behalf of my mother's health since 1999. I systematically listed and reviewed all records from mainstream medicine and its practioners and all records from other sources. I realized the following:

1. While having been valuable for medical, testing and lab prescriptions, all mainstream health practioners have tended toward over medicating my mother. This over medication endangered my mother's life on one occasion and nullified the action of an antibiotic on another occasion. I have tended to undermedicate and have caused no critical episodes as a result. The only critical episode that my administration of medication to my mother has caused is that my informed decisions to feed her ibuprofen in the absence of any other available pain medication and to monitor her metformin for excellent blood sugar control at the same time during her critical convalescence from her back injury contributed to her current bout with anemia.
2. My mother has been tested from stem to stern in every way possible except endoscopically. The cause of her iron deficiency anemia continues to elude mainstream physicians. It eludes the non-alternative health community as well but it is this community that is helping me successfully treat her anemia, not the mainstream medical community, and helping me treat it without bothersome side effects that require more medication, like constant constipation.
3. The mainstream medical community has yet to offer me any help with her back injury except for x-raying her back and determining that nothing was broken. The only adequate and thoughtful help I've received so far in this regard is from the alternative health community.
4. I have never been indifferent nor incompetent in my consideration of and treatment of my mother and her health. The alternative health community has performed likewise. The only indifference and incompetence my mother's health treatment has experienced is from the mainstream medical community.

    When I understood the above (in somewhat more complex detail) I realized that an enforced vacation from the mainstream medical community, if this happens, is not going to hurt her even if this means a further delay in physical therapy. Although my mother still tilts to the right when she stands and walks, the acuteness of the angle depending on how rested she is, her strength improves daily, we continue the wheelchair-as-walker therapy every other day (sometimes every day) and her interest in the outside world is reviving. Once reliable healing took hold her improvement began registering exponential leaps.
    It is a a mind blower to watch someone heal whose body is so obviously winding down. Human resilience is astonishing.
    An Observation:  Sometimes I hold one of my mother's blood test reports in my hand after attempting to imagine, graphically, what her blood is doing from the numbers (MCS is particularly good at encouraging this process) and realize, at a sublingual level, that I am looking at a snapshot from the story of existence.

    She's frowning, in REM, but in no other way agitated. Her pillow's bunched and held with her left arm beneath her head. Although her lips aren't ruddy they aren't pale, either. Her skin continues to luxuriate in that peach undertone. She's pulled the covers back from her upper torso and legs. She's wearing three pairs of paper underwear. It isn't uncomfortable (believe me, she'd tell me if it was; in addition, I ask) but it's a challenge to dress for maximum protection. Despite this I'm sure she's begun to leak through because the cats avoided jumping on her bed. But it's not yet apparent.
    Yesterday, sitting at the dining room table, easily forgetting her bleary-minded losses at Sorry despite my prodigious coaching [although I don't let her get away with flubbed moves, misunderstood card instructions or clumsy board ettiquette like MPS does. I tease her into compliance with accusations of 'cheating'.], she stared out into our magnificent view from our snug, sunny, peachy keen home and said, "You can't beat the winters, here, can you."
    I didn't judiciously probe to see if she thought she was in Mesa rather than Prescott. She exhibited a dangerous level of enjoyment the two hours we were in what I've begun to refer to as our auto-house in Mesa on Tuesday. I shudder to think what she's going to be feeling as we incorporate frequent day trips there to fertilize the trees, get stuff out of there, look at our possibilities for sale, etc. I have to continually remind myself that, for the most part, my mother is a creature of her immediate environment and can always find something to appreciate above any other place (yes, she makes these comparisons) where ever she finds herself.
    We're working up to rain, today. Looks like it's going to settle in for a good 24 hours, beginning mid evening with the bulk expected Saturday during the day, tapering off Sunday and Monday, a clear, cold day Tuesday then two days of mixed rain/snow showers. Yesterday she mentioned that she likes "the variety here, like the snow."
    "You mean the Christmas card snows we've had."
    "Yes. You don't get that in Mesa." So. She knows where she is or at least she knows she's not in Mesa. Good, good, good.
    "And, here when it rains we can see it," I add.
    She shudders. "Yes. You like that, don't you. So did your father."
    I know.
    "So did one of my uncles...not Uncle J____," Her uncle J____, my Great Uncle J____. I also have an Uncle J____, her brother, well, her dead brother. "Especially storms."
    Sometimes this person is her Uncle J____, sometimes it's one of her grandfathers.
    "He'd stand outside and watch the storm approach then weather it out there as long as he could."
    She could have been talking about either my father or great uncle or great grandfather. I've heard this short-short story multiples of 10s of times. Still, I can't resist an automatic internal, "Righteous!"
    "Good sleeping weather."
    That, too, if it doesn't get too exciting. Typically, sleep doesn't work for me during "bad' weather, not even at night, which works for both my mother and me. I leave her alone to sleep, she leaves me alone to "do whatever it is you do on your own."
    Righteous.
    I do get nervous when she sleeps what I determine to be 'too much.' I can't tell you exactly how I judge this. A certain heaviness to the way her body is laying on the bed, her posture sometimes approaching a fetal position. A shallowness of breath that tells me her lungs need to be exercised for clearance. I err on the side of caution and I know this irritates her. I always tell her, "If we make sure you can always get up, you'll always be able to go back to bed."
    This makes sense to her although I'm not sure it makes sense to me.
    I never get nervous when she sleeps too little. She always makes it up within 24 hours.
    I recall my fourth grade teacher, Ms. Nesbitt, telling us that you can never "make-up" missed sleep. She didn't know my mother.
    Later.

    In line with my decisions regarding my mother's anemia, aside from giving her 45 ml of Floradix (a total of 45 mg of elemental iron from ferrous gluconate) a day I have, of course, been making sure my mother's diet includes lots of foods containing iron. Since my mother is a happy carnivore this has meant more meat than we used to eat. Yesterday I decided, faced with a sale that worked out to 2 bone in beef rib-eyes for the price of one, I served her tender, marinated (in Worcestershire garlic and cracked black pepper) grilled steak. The cuts were hefty. Normally she and I will share a cut the size of the smallest I could find (13.6 ounces). Yesterday though, as I hung over the meat counter looking for a steak that was lean on the sides and marbled in the middle it occurred to me that this time, considering her body's need for iron and the blood test indications that her body is becoming not only active but vocal on behalf of its drive toward health, I decided not to determine from past experience how much she might eat but give her a full steak and let her have at it to her stomach's content. I was sure this would mean we'd have meat left over in a portion equal to what each of us had eaten but I figured we could make an improvisational beef stroganoff with the left overs. She likes my surprise stroganoffs.
    I served the steak with tantalizingly quick-pickled beets and artisan bread chunks oven toasted with garlic butter and freshly grated Parmesan. Because her sweet tooth has been screaming lately, a change of tune, actually, except for the chocolate on Valentine's Day (which initiated a 2.5 day bowel self-cleansing) and she's been talking cake I meandered through the gourmet desserts aisle and selected a small, decadent "Chocolate Confusion" cake filled with Bavarian cream.
    She slept a fair amount yesterday although each time she arose she seemed progressively perkier. Good. She must be needing the rest. She's been fairly sedentary lately, although she's getting around the house very well and only remembers her back in the late evening when she throws herself down on her bed. I'm trying to break her of this but she does it anyway. Every time she does this her back grabs in protest.
    Her appetite has been a bit fey lately so I assumed that, despite her unusually enthusiastic reception of my recital of the dinner menu, even at her hungriest, because she hasn't moved much in the last two days, she'd probably eat a bit less than half of what I served but I'd serve it anyway just in case. I'll be damned if she didn't clean her plate. She didn't even stop to slather the steak, done perfectly to her preference, with A-1 sauce and/or ketchup. She ate all her beets and asked for more so I gave her what I had left on my plate. She polished off a hunk of garlic cheese bread. Her last masticatory act was to gnaw every last bit of flavor off the side bone from her steak.
    I didn't serve the cake. We both ate so much meat that the cake didn't even sound good. No matter. My mother's sweet tooth will scream again this evening and we'll plan dinner around dessert. I'm not concerned about the possible purgative effect of the chocolate in the cake. My mother prefers her chocolate in candy, the richer the better. She's been known to polish off blocks of German baking chocolate before she gets to the part of the recipe that calls for the chocolate she ate. A few years ago some well meaning friends decided to introduce her to sugar free (but not refined carbohydrate free) candy. She ate so much of it over the holiday that it raised her blood sugar. She's famous for that one. At one time her body handled what was a daily deluge while she rationalized her consumption of chocolate by telling about an aunt who swore that her good health was due to chocolate, at least a pound a day. No more, though. She's doing okay without it I think, despite the fact that she used to refer to her daily bag of Hershey's Almond Kisses (in the gold tin wrap) as her "vitamins". As well, meagerly administered, it is the best natural purgative I've found in which she'll willingly indulge.
    It was a delight for me to behold her gusto over dinner. She surprised not only me but herself. As she ate she commented, bite after bite, how good everything tasted. How "exactly right" the selection was. "I guess I needed this," she said a few times. Her lack of attention to condiments told me that her appreciation was coming from a deep cellular hunger, not a superficial (and, sometimes, at her age, annoyingly supercilious) tastebud hunger.
    She remained awake through the weather part of the 2200 news last night. She'd arisen from a 2.5 hour nap a little after 1800 and we were eating before 1900, as she'd earlier nodded off during the time when she normally would have eaten lunch, having arisen at 1000 and eaten a lackadaisical breakfast around 1100. Her blood sugar was 68 (low normal) upon arising in the evening although I'd forgotten to take it in the morning before giving her glipizide. As per her Mesa PCP's and my observations, we don't worry about her blood sugar until it dips closer to 60. At any rate, I prefer to manage my mother's blood sugar from the high end, controlling for upward rather than downward spikes. My mother's vitality is shaky on a good day anymore (although her spirit usually disallows her from realizing this, which is good) and I'd rather work her down from speedy rather than up from lethargic.
    I've been having very tender feelings toward my mother lately, specifically from the day of our appointment trip to Mesa, Tuesday of this week. She is such a cheerful trooper. I mean this in a good and personal way. I believe the military was like the nunnery for my mother. She was convicted to be there. If she'd been born just a little later she could have stayed in not only through pregnancy but single or married motherhood if she chose and she probably would have chosen this. Her entire attitude toward life is not so much military as it is strategic. Although she'd been moving very little for a few days previous to our visit, during the visit she walked a lot, took it well, was not even interested in using the wheelchair as a walker. She ate well, enjoyed herself, was alert, never took a nap, never even dozed. She retired early, about 2130 that night. She had arisen at 0500 without complaint. The day following our trip she was "on end" (which is to say, her rear end) for most of the day. She took a two hour nap. Yesterday, she was extremely tired. Although she assented while eating breakfast to the idea of a driveway therapy walk, it was cold and windy and she was obviously tired. She ultimately refused the opportunity. I worried for a moment but I find that if I trust her somatic sense and keep a close eye on her, her days, whatever their character, work for her.
    I've had so many opportunities to observe this within the last few days. I can only admire her stamina and good disposition. She does not like being old, as I recently told a friend. Despite the fact that there have been a few times in the last three years when I've thought my mother was finally feeling her mortality, the truth is that even at her worst my mother thinks she is somehow going to get out of old age in some way other than by dying out of it. The first time I realized this, a few weeks ago, my immediate audio/visual image was of my mother using one of her favorite allusions to the life and "death" of Methuselah. It was through her that I learned, so early that I cannot remember the initial lesson, of the lives of men of the Abrahamic God who did not die but were absorbed into their God. It never occurred to me, as her youngster, that these stories may have been her favorites because this is how she intends to leave the earth. As well, I didn't, until my middle and her late adulthood, understand that her delight in and curiosity about being alive as well as her willing spirit to try anything (well, in my mother's case, almost anything and much of that well into her "elderly" phase) are her trademarks. Another trademark is her willingness to trust her sense of what is right and wrong for her and discard anything that gets in her way, including prescribed medications.
    Speaking of which, the reference to cinnamon. A few weeks ago I ran across a reference in a book nestled in the bookshelf of the acupuncturist's office that mentioned cinnamon as a regulator of cellular insulin sensitivity for all bodies that could be a valuable treatment for type 2 diabetics. Last night I searched cinnamon/insulin and came up with some interesting research. One article recommended 1/2 teaspoon per day for diabetics and non-diabetics alike. Since I'd heard about this I've been sprinkling our toast with pure cinnamon every morning. One article, which I'm pleased to advertise here, suggested using cinnamon sticks in tea. I discussed and read parts of the article with my mother last night. She was intrigued. Not being absolutely sure of my mother's taste for cinnamon (although noting her long ago preference for Dentyne gum), I thought it best to run the idea of including cinnamon in our diet, at least half a teaspoon a day, by her. I suggested not only cinnamon on toast but in juice if appropriate (somehow I think it would ruin pure orange juice) and in our hot liquids, primarily her and my coffee and tea. She was enthusiastic. Today if I get a chance certainly no later than tomorrow, I'll be looking for bulk cinnamon sticks. I'm hoping I'll be able to reduce at least her metformin intake. I continue to consider it suspect in her bouts with anemia.
    I followed the cinnamon/insulin search with what turned out to be an awkwardly worded search for information on the dynamics of cinnamon with typical type 2 diabetic medications but so far have found none. I expect my failure has to do with my clumsy search terms.
    I can't help but remember that despite her ruddiness she seemed underlined in white on Tuesday in Mesa. She doesn't seem so now and I'm not sure if the difference might be in the angle, intensity and lack of atmospheric filtering of the light here or if since Tuesday she's regained the peach undertone that signals a return to iron sufficiency. Her appetite for red meat last night, lots of it, allayed most of my concerns.
    I continue a close vigil. I expect to continue this vigil through the rest of her life. I know that at some point her lack of ability to imagine her own death will make no difference. I think I'll notice this when the time comes. In the meantime I watch, I take note, I tell her the truth about everything, I include her in decisions even when her mentality is more creative than normal and I use what I know and what I see to tilt her in favor of her robust spirit.
    Often, while reviewing what I know and what I see in my active vigil over my mother's life, I think about the "value" of protecting Ancient Ones, extending their lives, working to enhance the quality of their lives. I'm familiar with the vague apologias about "wisdom" and "valuable contrasts that prove the rule". I also know that Ancient Ones as a large scale segment of the population is a relatively new human phenomenon. We don't quite know what to do with our elderly nor what to expect from them. We often don't know why we are keeping them alive except for vague personal reasons that sometimes have less than felicitous nativities. I have difficulty forming, let alone lingualizing, any reason to do what I'm doing: Preserving the life of one who is so "elderly, frail and physically weak" that if she had been left to handle her life herself she would be long ago dead. It would have been an easy death because she doesn't know death and she loves sleep. She would have gone into it with her eyes blissfully closed but a myriad of things would have done her in years ago if she'd been living alone: Her dehydration, her lack of appetite awareness except under extraordinary circumstances, her belief that "nothing is new under the sun" including ways to treat dis-ease due to age, etc. I sometimes have flashes of her death mask under these circumstances. I think it would have been, well, expressionless. This death will not happen to her now and I'm glad it won't. I could not countenance anything but the diligent attention it takes to allow her life and her love of life to continue as long as she choses. I can't tell you why I know that what I'm doing with her is a good thing but I know it is. As well, to quote Elton John, it truly is "no sacrifice".
    Last Wednesday I took my mother's acupuncture appointment. Both the acupuncturist and I felt that Mom could handle a week or two without treatment and I need to have my thumbs addressed. During the history taking segment of the appointment, which was quite informal between the acupuncturist and me, she acknowledged my care of my mother, especially the intensity, and launched a direct probe: "It must be hard."
    Hmmm...now that I'm thinking about it, I guess it depends on how you define "hard". That's exactly what I said. I continued, telling her that I considered that I was actually in an enviable position as a nurturer. I briefly related how I had decided early to eschew all nurturing behavior with which I was uncomfortable including becoming a wife/significant sexual other, a mother or a roommate, for that matter. I lived like this by choice and with much enthusiasm and satisfaction for decades. I was proud of the fact that I had not been able to tolerate same place living arrangements with a long-time lover. By the time I got to the point in my life where one-on-one nurturing was asked of me by my mother there was no danger of me losing the opportunity to "know" or "be" myself, to feel cheated by whatever nurturing my mother required of me. I considered the danger that I might not be up to it. I discussed this with my mother prior to agreeing to come live with her. As it turns out, it is precisely my independence and sense of self that has allowed the arrangement to work for both of us. "And," I added, "besides, this way I don't worry about her."
    The acupuncturist was patting down the treatment table and confirmed me with a heartfelt grunt.
    Almost everyone, I thought, has an elderly parent. Everyone knows what I mean. I'm lucky to be able to do this. Even, and maybe especially, in my weaknesses I am lucky. So is my mother. We are both lucky that I didn't start out life as the nurturing type, didn't even pretend to it. When serious nurturing was asked of me I wasn't burnt out from decades of nurturing others and neglecting myself. Both my mother and I were blessed by her perspicacious ability to determine that she needed a companion while she was still negotiating her life independently. This allowed both of us the chance to get used to each other before we had to get used to how old age was planning on overtaking my mother. She, as well, had reveled in her independence after my father had died. So had all her daughters. It was not easy, I think, for her to ask for companionship but, lucky for her, who better to ask than her obnoxiously independent daughter?
    I'm often the victim of extemporaneous speeches regarding the virtues of "taking care of oneself" so one can "take care of others". Except for one subtle instance, I invariably hear this from women who have spent their lives nurturing. I even got the "mothers are cautioned in airplanes, in case of emergency, to secure their own oxygen mask before their children's" speech. I am often not quick enough on my feet to counter so I usually let a chance at response go. These people, the women, anyway, are always well meaning (the man, interestingly, was not) but I have to remind myself that they speak from lives devoted to nurturing often taken on without thought, facing exactly what I'm doing but from the perspective of one who is tired of doing it. Their need to take care of themselves, to nurture themselves (actually, to be nurtured, but often this is out of the question) is so much and has been so long a part of their lives it doesn't seem like a hunger anymore. I agree, they need to first put the oxygen on themselves. I'm not sure whether I've just always been wearing oxygen or whether I developed my independent lung capacity early and securely enough so that I am not at this time in need of emergency oxygen. I do believe there is a potent connection between my ability to immerse myself in my mother's care with little complaint and without debilitation and my previous years of immersing myself in my own care.
    It's in the way I massage my mother's legs in the evening. It's in the way I wash her as we sink bathe her in the morning. I don't just intellectualize what would feel good to her, what her body might need in the way of touch. I take advantage of somatic thought. I contact my toes, ask them what they sense from my mother's and apply massage until my toes tell me her toes feel better. I do the same up and down her legs. Sometimes I am so intensely involved that I get shiver chills as my mother does. By somatically thinking about how to massage her as my hands work her extremities I perform a subtle massage on myself from the inside out. I find that the more I approach every activity involved in nurturing my mother from this perspective, the more likely I am to be revived by what I do for her, including the extremely intense activity of vigiling.
    I'm not saying that women shouldn't be nurturers early in their lives. Some many of us must choose to be nurturers early as well as later. Like that young man at the Sharing Wisdom Caregiver's Conference said, "If you're not taking care of someone, you're not alive." I'm just saying...things that make you go "hmmmm"...
    Later.

    There's much I want to mention, separate events, separate realizations, yet entwined at the moment like finely forged chains of gold thrown in the corner for storage. To begin, I'm feeling very good this evening. I have felt consistently good and hopeful for the past three days, including the day we went to Mesa. Despite the results of her blood test or, perhaps, because of those results and a few other events I feel capable and trustworthy in directing my mother's health care. There are a few steps I took that I will not repeat but I knew the risks were low and quickly discoverable if activated.
    So. I received a copy of my mother's 2/10/04 Blood/Urine test results in the office about 15 minutes prior to my mother's appointment. In my purse I had a copy of her 1/12/04 results. They were almost identical except that her BUN had moved 3 points into the normal range. I took this to mean that her body, although continuing to be anemic, was optimistic about reversal and could probably use some help. Once she began having regular bowel movements I cut back severely on the iron. It was also about this time that I began cutting back quickly on the ibuprofen. Within days of tolerating reduced doses further apart she was taking none and not realizing it. I wanted to allow any irritated intestinal linings a healing environment and do so while seeing to it that the healing process did not have to battle a systemic problem like constipation. These were my primary reasons for medicating and not medicating her as I did between 1/12/04 and 2/10/04. I was, of course, curious to see if her body was going to begin self-correcting its anemia as her stomach lining healed. Stomach linings heal surprisingly fast considering that they are almost constantly in use even when not digesting food, but relatively speaking it is a slow process. I made sure she had plenty of capaisin (sp? will check latter) containing foods; so-called "hot" foods. Dried medium to hot ground peppers. Szechuan seasoning in just about everything. Lots of garlic to bolster her immune system. Lots of ginger, just because it tastes good. These foods promote healing of the intestinal lining and my mother has a taste for hot, which is lucky in this case.
    The day of the blood draw for the last series of tests she also had an acupuncture appointment in which I asked the acupunturist to address my mother's anemia if possible. Whether or not she did I don't know but she was the one who told me about Floradix. She is the third person in the healing professions who has shaken her/his head over elemental iron from ferrous sulfate. The other two were M.D. physicians, yet she's the only one who had a solution which is working despite the dose of elemental iron from ferrous gluconate being only 4% of what Mom was prescribed of the ferrous sulfate when her anemia was at it's worst a year ago last fall, then again in the late winter.
    At any rate, after discussing my mother's blood test results with MCS, listening to what she had to say about various readings, I said, "Okay, then, I'm going to tell you in laymen's terms what it sounds like to me and you tell me if my description is accurate," or something close to that.
    She agreed.
    "My sense is that Mom's body was, on the 10th, still anemic but attempting to reverse this condition despite the apparent lack of outside support [i.e., iron supplementation, etc., although I had removed the ibuprofen and later, around 2/10, temporarily her baby aspirin in the morning just to be sure all irritants that could be eliminated were]. It also seems that her body feels confident of its ability to reverse this and with a little outside help it'll chug right along. I'm especially heartened by the normalization of her BUN. Her immune system is working well, too, recognizes something is off and is alerting the media. So. Does my description sound reasonably realistic?"
    She said something like, "That's how I see it," or some other supportive, confirmational statement.
    "So. No endoscopy. Not at this time. No reason to do it."
    "No."
    I was also confident in determining that her anemia is not affecting her other systems at this time and probably won't, for a while, anyway. Well functioning bowels keep her nice and clean as well and her blood sugar automatically becomes easier to manage. Good kidneys and good blood are interlinked in an amazing catch-22 relationship so, when one is looking better, even miniscule changes in the other bode well. This is how I understand it.
    I'm still trying to figure out what allegorical reference her anemia, specifically iron deficiency anemia, is making to her soul and her life. I may be too close to her to make this determination. Lisa Alther. Kinflicks. Got to read that passage again.
    Tonight Mom and I discussed the problem of pain and her ability to become anemic at a moment's notice. "I don't know, Mom," I said. "Maybe we're going to have to revert to the opiates." Although those are also constipating. Is there any analgesic that isn't constipating and doesn't have some other potentially unhealthy side effect, like irritating the digestive lining, as well?
    I believe my mother applies a sort of bio-feedback on herself in regards to pain, but this time it didn't work. Sometimes I could see her struggling to figure out how to connect to her back in order to subdue the pain but it was as though she didn't have any frame of reference for back pain and neither did I so, at least for the first two months, she was often wild-eyed with pain even with the ibuprofen. She bore it well. I bore it less well.
    Pain is at only only an annoyance level now. Her level of alertness is steadier. Her physical strength continues to wax and wane dramatically but I'm not fearful of allowing her to sleep when she feels like it, as, if it is during the day or evening, she typically awakens within and hour to an hour and a half.
    I have more to mention, not the least of which are steak and cinnamon but I'm tired, I've got to get some sleep.
    Later.

...here. Very little changed from 1/12/04 and 2/10/04. The dropping of Mom's BUN back into the normal range is optimistic. Most values crept closer to normal. The Immunofixations look good. I wasn't sure what I was expecting. I knew I was allowing my mother's body to work on her anemia without outside help but with the boost of keeping her away from anything that might be caustic to the stomach lining. "Without help" included not starting her on iron ingestion therapy until the evening of 2/10/04 with Floradix, which delivers a significantly lower dose of iron. I believe it is helping despite the fact that Mom's hematologist, whom we saw yesterday in Mesa, was skeptical about it's value. "We normally give a 325 mg pill a day," he said. I know. And at one time, my mother was taking three of those pills without results. As far as I'm concerned, we'll try this.
    I noticed this morning that I can get ferrous gluconate in 50 mg pills which promise to be "gentle to the digestion" for a significantly lower price. I think at this time I'll stick to the Floradix a total of 45 mg per day, which is 100% more than is required daily. I read someplace else this morning that iron overdose, while rarely a problem in adults (although, once again, "certain risks" can accrue to "the elderly") can be determined by a "blue" or "maroon" tinge around the lips, at which point one should contact one's physician. This has happened to Mom. I simply stopped the iron for a day or so and the tinge disappeared. Despite no physician ever mentioning this to me, a blue/maroon tinged lip line didn't seem like an indication of health to me.
    MCS and I discussed the results thoroughly which discussion I'll post, probably later this evening. As well, there's more I intend to mention, but, well...
    ...later.

    Here it is. This is the first blood test I've entered by copying a similar Trellix (the auto site builder I used to use) page and punching in numbers. It took me awhile to get the hang of it and construct a few macros. As I entered the numbers and compared them with the 9/17/02 template I'd created, I noticed that her numbers were about the same then as now, a little better now. That was immediately before her blood pressure crash, just before she was fed Prednizone and furosemide to relieve congestion. At that time her iron deficiency anemia was not yet considered remarkable by physicians, let alone diagnosed. By mid-November of that year she had recovered from the anemia without any invasive tests/procedures.
    This time I think "we" can assume that the extreme ibuprofen usage 'anemiated' my mother. I'd like to think that she looks like she's improving but I don't know. I'm open for any results from last week's blood draw. Then I'll decide. What to do.
    I have more to report regarding my mother's internal Chocolate War but, well, later. We haven't played Sorry today so I've got an appointment.

...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.