Mom & Me Two Archive

    Although my mother's entire anemic profile has concerned me I've been especially concerned about her hematocrit, as it has seemed to me that it isn't rising as quickly as her hemoglobin. I expressed this to MCS and she explained the following: As a rule of thumb, hematocrit should be in the neighborhood of one's hemoglobin measurement X 3. Since Mom's hemoglobin on Thursday was 9.5 and 9.5 X 3 = 28.5, as MCS said, "She's right where she should be."
    I'm sure MCS has told me this before. I'm sure I've made notes on it. But if I don't enter it online I tend to forget the particular contents of my millions of notes.

    When I initially saw this on the lab report below the name and fax number of Mom's PCP I thought it was a typo or perhaps the name of the person who performed the lab tests preceded with a typo. Just in case, though, I looked it up in my new medical books and found nothing. So I left a message for MCS about a strange entry on the report. When she called back she told me that this was, indeed, a lab finding. As she explained it, imagine you've stacked some pennies and gently pushed them over. The arrangement they make is called "rouleaux" and is applied to a blood sample when the blood cells look as though they've been stacked up and gently pushed over. Blood cells should be separate, so any indication of Rouleaux is a sign that the cells are sticky. She also explained that it is not uncommon for this to occur because of a sticky slide or a sample that's too dry. At any rate, a reading of 1+ isn't anything to worry about, she assured me, especially since this is the only time it's occurred.
    While she was talking I got to thinking. Mom's been off aspirin since 6/9/04. I also took her off vitamin E, then garlic, within the last month because they have anticoagulant properties. I decided that Mom's Rouleaux may have something to do with the complete lack of anticoagulants, especially since her mysterious mini-stroke a few years ago indicates that she could probably use a little anticoagulation. So I added vitamin E and garlic back to her morning supplements. I didn't reinstate the aspirin, in deference to her PCP. But if what I think is happening within her body proves itself over the next few weeks then I'll be convinced that Mom's anemia is connected to her metformin use, not internal bleeding and I'll put 81 mg aspirin back on her breakfast supplement list.

...but 1000 or some minutes after depending on how long it takes for me to perk up. I didn't awaken until 0900, which was a surprise. My first thought was, "I should have set the alarm." My second thought was, "No, if I couldn't get up earlier without an alarm then I needed the sleep." I've set up the house for her, I've gone through my email addresses and cleaned them out, now I'm sipping coffee and contemplating the day ahead.
    I noticed, when I peaked in on her, that Mom awoke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and, wonder of wonders, remembered to keep on the oxygen cannula.
    Although we need to make a supply run sometime today, the day will be focused on her since yesterday was focused on business even after I returned from the emergency business duty. I've got some boxes of paperwork to go through this weekend but I expect we'll work that in. Monday we're expecting visitors, friends we intended to visit in the Valley yesterday but whom I cancelled Thursday evening because of Mom's dragginess. Canceling the visit was actually a stroke of luck, as the business emergency would have happened whether we'd been here or not and would have become even more critical if I'd missed the call yesterday. I'm looking forward to MCF's visit and so is Mom. These are the people who've done exactly what I'm doing for their father/grandfather and, simply from having done this, don't generate the kind of distraction from Mom and the expectation that their needs come before Mom's (the generation of which I no longer pay attention to but from which I feel the weight anyway) that other visitors do. Most of the time the only people who get it are people who've done it...and not with the "developing" young but with "declining" Ancient Ones. It's funny, I've noticed lately, because I've become verbal on this, that it is impossible to convince people who've raised kids that they have no idea what it is like to tend to an Ancient One. Across the board they are absolutely sure that caring for children is so similar to caring for an Ancient One that it may as well be the same. This, of course, speaks to the reluctance within the Northern European Cultural parts of our society to take care of Ancient Ones within the family and to consider "family" a larger group of people and relationships than the nuclear model suggests.
    I can see where my thoughts are headed this morning. Time to switch to Mom mode.
    We've got to plant that daisy today, too. That should be vitalizing for both of us.
    I'll get to my online "to do" list...
    ...later.

    Soon after 1000 I was interrupted, while awakening my mother, by an emergency business matter that I had to dispatch before 1400. Although it appeared that my mother was going to be a fairly easy wake-up today I knew that the business matter was going to consume a good two hours and my mother, if I continued with her, would consume a good two and a half hours. So, much to her delight and my chagrin, I informed her of what was going on, reblanketed and repillowed her and she blissed back into sleep. I wasn't able to get back to her until 1330. By that time she'd managed to sleep her way into fairly alarming dehydration, even though I'd managed to get 16 oz into her before I was interrupted, and marked stiffness which would cause her to drag and resist all my efforts to get her moving even a little for the rest of the day.
    At this point I was fairly certain the day would be fucked but continued with her, coaxing her into beating me at a few hands of gin (the play of which she's managed, within the last week, to retrieve from her memory vaults to the point that I've had to concede this is definitely her game) and a couple rounds of Sorry instead of planting the Gerbera daisy, as we'd planned. Although I'd been pretty stoked this morning over Mom's blood test results, my excitement and plans had decayed from that point on except for a curious (and interrupted, though continued later) and enlightening conversation with MCS somewhere in there. Then, early this evening Mom turned to stone and I could not move her although I was able to convince her to remain up for a lunch that turned out to be dinner. During dinner preparation I was thinking, "Today I could have used that 'service' that doesn't yet exist in the commercial world of people who will awaken your charge on your behalf."
    For several reasons that quietly developed as the evening progressed I am now very happy with today. At the moment I am, as usual, exhausted, and needing to sleep, but I want to make a few reminder notes to myself upon which I'll expand, most likely tomorrow evening.

1. Rouleaux
2. Hemoglobin x 3
3. Mom preparing for a new phase; MCS, it's not what we were thinking
4. What's happening with Mom physically and my speculations on why
5. How my medical management plans for Mom are changing, rapidly, as it turns out
6. Thank you for the opportunities, many of which I didn't realize were opportunities until tonight
7. The bend ahead into which, I realized only tonight, we're beginning to lean

    I've got to get myself to bed. I can barely keep my eyes open.
    Later.

    I just picked up and entered the test results from yesterday's blood draw. Her hemoglobin is recovering nicely. Her hematocrit and a few other indicators are following behind. I'm very hopeful and believe that things are looking good. Her MCV is nicely normal now, a good sign. In addition, if the same range references had been used up here as in the Valley, her RBC would be considered within normal range, which is excellent. Her monocytes are up, however I think this is at this point okay. Heightened monocytes can be an indication of chronic inflammatory disorders, viral infections, parasites, and chronic ulcerative colitis. My guess, since her monocytes have been elevated for awhile and seem to have gone up rather than down but everything else looks good, is that she may have a low grade viral infection that her body is in the process of fighting. I'm not going to worry about this unless I get an indication from MCS or Mom's PCP that I need to. Her immune system is probably iffy right now anyway but we're working on everything so I think this will settle down shortly. Despite what her doctors may think I do not believe that her elevated monocytes are indicative of a chronic inflammatory disorder or chronic ulcerative colitis or, for that matter, parasites.
    It's just now 1000. Earlier, at a little before 0800, when I peaked in on her, Mom was up on her elbows but wanted a few more hours' sleep. We agreed on a 1000 awakening. Here I go. I'm sure I'll write more...
    ...later.

...literally. Something very interesting happened today. While we were at the lab waiting to have Mom's blood drawn for her "as needed" CBC I noticed, along the top of the obligatory aquarium, a row of brochures advertising several agencies who provide, for a price, a variety of services aimed at either the elderly living at home alone, caregivers to the elderly or those seeking assisted living. Once again, this morning, Mom and I had gone through a horrible hour and a half of me trying to get her up while she resisted despite our conversation last night. I was ready, by the time I finally got her out of bed, because her urine had begun to overflow the plastic sheet onto the floor and I was very harsh with her about not only laying stubbornly in her urine but peeing through her soaked layers of paper underwear to the point where it was splashing onto the floor, to throw in the towel; in point of fact, the three towels I'd been using to sop up the urine leaking from her throughout our hour and a half Get-Up-No argument. We spent most of the morning, as I bathed her, as she took her breathing treatment, ate and as I prepared her to go and took her to the lab having a not very congenial conversation about the possibility that it was time for someone else to take over her care. The conversation was more my distressed monologue peppered with pointed questions than a conversation of course, and being the strong willed woman that she is, Mom refused to participate in it by refusing to answer my pointed questions.
    When I saw the brochures it occurred to me that maybe I could hire someone to do the two most unpleasant, distressing chores I have, thus take care of the problem: Waking her up in the morning by giving her a reason to get out of bed (or, at least, participating in the pitched Get-Up-No battles on my behalf and maybe do it with more finesse that I've lately been displaying) and hovering over her to drink the liquids I give her in order to keep her minimally hydrated. The brochures displayed an amazing number of chores that you can hire someone to do. Aside from the obvious chores you can, for instance, hire someone to rent and watch videos with your charge. You can hire someone to go through your cupboards and refrigerator on a regular basis and get rid of expired (in both senses) food; organize your mail; pay bills; play cards/board games with your charge; take walks with your charge; set up a "secure" bath (although not actually help the charge bathe); accompany you on appointments and take notes; talk about "the old times"; talk about "current events"... The lists went on and on and ended with an enticing invitation to call if the chore you needed done wasn't listed. So I called all five agencies, two of which were local franchises of national companies, three of which were locally based. Although I doubted that I could hire someone to perform water torture for me I considered it possible that I could hire someone to wake her up and coax her to sit up on the edge of the bed for me. These are the only two services that I really feel I could use help accomplishing. If they were done by someone else they would relieve me of two major sources of stress in my life, the first being major because it sets the tone of my mother's day.
    No one wants to do these two things. Not even for money. Not even for a lot of money. One woman bluntly responded, "Honey, when you're at the place where you want to hire someone to do those things, you should consider a nursing home."
    That's all Mom needs: A 24 hour saline drip and a burly CNA picking her up out bed in the morning, scrubbing her down and sitting her in a wheelchair. It's funny, after I discovered that the sources of my personal caregiver stress are chores only "volunteer" caregivers like me will do, I told Mom what I'd learned and told her what the one woman said to me.
    Mom's response was, "No, I'm not ready for that. I've seen that. I'm not there, yet."
    She has seen "that", with both her mother and her sister. And, she's right, she's "not there yet...not ready for that".
    There isn't an item on any of the lists that causes me stress and that I'd consider paying someone to do on my behalf. When stress surrounds any, yes, any of the items listed, it isn't over the chores, it's over the limited amount of time I have when so much of it is devoted to intense vigilance and companionship. In fact, all the items listed are chores I wouldn't want to slip away from my grasp, neither mental nor physical. I wouldn't mind if someone would come over, someone whose company she enjoyed, and "play" with her. She'd probably enjoy this, too. When we have the money again I'm considering doing this since I have a hard time getting her to go to places where she would meet these people and indulge in these activities. I prefer, though, to keep my eyes and mind on everything else, even if I slip occasionally. As well, the last thing I'd do is hand her medical care over to the watchful eye of someone else; if the highest educated and experienced professionals can't manage it well I certainly haven't got confidence in the less well educated and experienced professionals.
    You see, that's the thing about caregiving, whether it be of children, the infirm or the elderly. We as a society don't value the events that really matter enough to spot the caregiver in those areas, like giving someone a reason to get out of bed when an overly familiar face no longer holds enough to charm to engender the desire to wake up to it. We don't acknowledge that it might be a good idea for everyone involved if we didn't leave all those hidden chores to one person. For god sakes, we don't even acknowledge that parenthood isn't necessarily a good idea when only one or two "parents" are doing it. A large segment of this Westernized society has way too much at stake emotionally in the "I did it myself" game; so much that we regularly endanger all those around us who need care, including ourselves, without considering that those who need care are in danger; or shrugging our shoulders and saying, "Well, that's life." That's life if you accept it as life. Remember Hillary Clinton's' so-famous-it-now-sounds-trite citation: "It takes a village to raise a child"? Well, it takes a village to care for everyone. Absolutely everyone. Not a state. Not a government agency. Not the law. A village. When are we going to understand this, act on it, and finally, finally, give everyone in our society, caregivers and charges alike, a break? We don't need more laws, more agencies, more hired help. We need more people who care, about their relatives, their friends, their neighbors, enough to fit these people into their lives and stand up to the rest of society and say, "I am doing something important. I am one of many who is helping to care for one of the many."

    This next paragraph is a note to myself and you, the reader. The real news in this journal is happening over at Mom's Daily Tests & Meds right now. You're missing out if you don't visit and scan the developments every once in awhile. I'll cover it in brief later. For the record, though, very interesting changes are taking place in Mom's body. I think I know what is going on but I'm giving it a good trial period before announcing what I think I will be announcing in a bit. In any event, all the hard evidence is piling up over there. Ignore it if you wish and wait for the final summary which may appear here, then again, it may appear there. All I wish to say, at this point, is that I think I've finally cracked the code despite Mom's doctors. I'm very excited. I now look forward more to posting over there than posting over here.
    It's late. I need sleep. Later.

    It surprised her, unpleasantly, when her knees refused to cooperate, and sobered her up a little about the importance of movement, even a little bit, every day, as well as sleeping a bit less. She tends to remember that she recovers quickly from physical disability, even though over the last 9 months I've learned better. Today she worried herself over why, when she was walkering pretty good at Costco on Saturday, her knees simply didn't have it in them to get her past the bench at the grocery three days later. I told her, "Mom, three days when you're going on 87 is like three months when you're going on 17. It's harder to retain what you refuse to use. Now will you get up when I ask you to? Now will you get out when I ask you to?"
    She said, "Yes." And nodded. That's a good sign. I'll have to remind her, of course, not just daily but, I'm sure, hourly. Tonight, though, while we were talking about her habit of asking me, sardonically, when I rouse her in the morning, "Why..." she needs to get up, I was inspired with the perfect answer, "To celebrate making it through the night, to celebrate the new day you get to live through."
    She didn't smile. Her eyes widened and she looked directly at me, sober as a startled judge. "I never thought of it that way."
    "Well," I said, "I'm going to be reminding you every morning to think of it that way."
    "Good," she said.
    For lots of people, 'cover elders" notwithstanding, old age is definitely a bitch. Nothing is the way you thought it would be and no one can give you any reliable advice. Every age has its mentors, except the age of the old. I think, if and when you make it into the regions of the Ancient, it's as much of a surprise as when you were born.
    Tomorrow we go in for a blood draw. I've already told her, in an effort to prepare her subconscious, that I'll be awakening her much earlier than normal so we can get in early enough to have the results either tomorrow afternoon or early Friday. I'm anxious to see if the mega doses of iron I've been giving her have helped. I hope so. I hate having to fend off doctors who want to continue to poke and prod her, who want to continue to try to talk me into allowing them to run scopes through her and needles (or borers, as in the case of the dream test) into her. Interestingly, one of the medical books I bought a little over a week ago talks about the needle aspiration bone marrow biopsy. It seems that it is the less reliable of the two types of bone marrow biopsy, the other being surgical removal of bone marrow matter, also done under local anesthetic. "Dry" aspirations are not uncommon for a couple of reasons, having to do with how the cells are packed in the particular region of bone being biopsied. There is a "contraindication" for both types of the procedure which is mentioned twice in the explanation: If the patient is unable to cooperate and lie still. This definitely covers Mom. This has been a concern of mine even before reading that it is a "contraindication". On the table she will not remember what is being done to her, even as she is being worked on and the procedure is being explained. This is typical of her in unfamiliar environments when she is the object of the environment, not a subject within the environment. Secondly, if she feels any pain she will react, instinctively and physically, even as she is being told not to, and the test explanation assures the reader that there will be "intense" pain when the bone is penetrated. I'm sure, in fact, that the reason the internist who did Mom's colonoscopy considered the procedure torture for Mom is that Mom was (to the internist's surprise; the doctor didn't do the necessary homework on Mom prior to the procedure and didn't believe anything I said about Mom) unable to remember where she was and what was being done to her, thus she was unable to cooperate. This lengthened the procedure by twice what it normally is and, as well, caused the internist to declare to me immediately after the procedure, among other things, that she never wanted to scope Mom again, not up or down. I don't blame her. I wonder, though, why it is that physicians choose not to believe one another's experiences and are so god damned fired up to scope and needle and cut into patients who have proven they are not able to cooperate. I wonder, as well, why physicians don't believe a patient's medical advocate on these issues. Oh well. I'm just sorry we haven't yet advanced beyond the "barbaric" practices of twentieth/early twenty-first century medicine, as they were so succinctly pronounced by Bones in that Star Trek movie where the crew of the Enterprise traveled back in time to snatch a whale into the future.
    I know that by refusing the bone marrow aspiration/biopsy (whichever the doctors have their hearts set on) and the endoscopy that I may be making it impossible for non-alternative medicine to ever discover and repair the source of her iron deficiency anemia...thus, I may be "condemning" her, for the rest of her life, to the metabolic injustices of mega-iron supplementation and the experiential drag of blood transfusions. But I'm willing to take on that responsibility.
    Within a few weeks we'll be able to continue her acupuncture treatments, which are directed toward correcting her blood chemistry through alternative means. I think that her first treatment was significantly helpful and simply needs a few more follow-ups. Once again, we'll see.
    Yes, I'm still wondering if she needs the stimulation of more family in her life on a daily basis and, yes, we're still talking about this. I don't expect any immediate decisions.
    The dryer just ended its first cycle. I can set it up on its second and go to bed.
    Later.

    On Independence Day Mom and I spent the day watching a variety of movies on TV, the most spectacular and memorable of which was Yankee Doodle Dandy, a movie neither of us had yet seen, which played in the late afternoon. Mom's energy was low that day although she stayed up throughout without feeling the need to take a nap. She was on oxygen all day, never rummaging for cigarettes, never mentioning them, so I never brought them up.
    Soon after the start of the movie I sprawled on the floor next to my mother's rocker, glued to the set, studying Cagney's surprisingly light-as-helium dancing and strong singing. Somewhere in the middle of the movie I smelled smoke. Knowing that there were no cigarettes or smoking paraphernalia around my mother I looked back and noticed her lighting a crumpled Kleenex with a lighter, one she had stowed, unbeknownst to me, in her nail care bag which she keeps on the coffee table next to her rocker.
    I grabbed the Kleenex out of her hand, rushed it to the sink, nearly setting the house on fire, doused it and returned to the living room. I scolded her for lighting the Kleenex for all the reasons I could think of, all having to do with endangering the safety of our lives and our property, which she received with the insolence of one who is sure of what she was doing. I was beside myself, wondering why we were, once again, experiencing her firebug tendencies. Although she'd been in what I considered a bit of a fog all day, her blood sugar was not high, her color looked better than fair and her blood pressure was in the low area of her normal range but not unusually low. I remembered that I had e'd MFASRF about the first firebug incident. Hoping that this was one of the bits of e's I'd clipped and entered somewhere into the online history of our sojourn together, I ran a quick search and there it was The Peculiar Light of Inspiration.
    I also consulted a blood test taken 2 weeks after the aforementioned incident which indicated that all Mom was suffering from, physically, was high blood sugar. After reading the entire description and taking into consideration Mom's physical state then and now I realized that, although foggy mentality might have something to do with her intermittent, faulty belief that lighting paper was not a dangerous activity, her firebugging always occurs when she is under the stress of not being able to smoke when she chooses. At the time of the first firebug incident the pressure was applied by visiting family and was obvious. This time, though, the pressure was applied by me in my attempt to make sure that she is receiving enough daily oxygen to allow the iron supplements to do their work to build up her hemoglobin.
    I have not completely cut out her smoking. Even on days when she is mostly on oxygen I allow her cigarettes here and there (well away from the oxygen, of course). I'm meticulous about explaining, every time I put her back on oxygen (when she starts panting after smoking a few cigarettes) that I'm not making her quit, I'm trying to enhance her body's ability to bring her out of her anemia. She has, over the last few weeks, been very obliging and has appeared not to be experiencing stress over the greatly reduced number of cigarettes I'm allowing her. In fact, on July 4th I was surprised that from the time she awoke she did not ask or rummage for cigarettes so I, naturally, didn't bring them up and kept all cigarettes and smoking paraphernalia hidden, thinking that maybe she had "forgotten", in her fog that day, that she smoked.
    No such luck. She may forget consciously that she smokes but her subconscious does not and apparently nudges her to express her frustration by igniting something, anything. Needless to say, when I realized this I also realized that I was going to have to strike a more accommodating compromise with her smoking habit whether or not she consciously asks or looks for cigarettes.
    I immediately gave her a few cigarettes, let her smoke until she started panting, then continued to supply her with a cigarette here and there throughout the evening, assuring her each time I put her back on oxygen that this did not mean I was forcing her to quit, I was just making sure that her oxygen quota remained high during her recovery from anemia.
    There are four lessons I learned from this:

• Never underestimate the power of the subconscious that lies beneath what we blithely and disrepectfully label "senility".
• Although it has seemed (sometimes to me, probably often to others who occasionally read this web effort) that my meticulous recording of all aspects of Mom's and my journey through her Ancient One stage is little more than therapy for me and psychologically masturbatory, at that, in fact it is one of the most valuable things I do. I did not remember that the first firebug incident resulted from being pressured by others not to smoke until I looked it up. I needed to know this on Independence Day in order to take reasonable steps to insure the safety of our lives and our property.
• This lesson is a reaffirmation of something of which I am reminded on a daily basis: The definition of and need for healthy behavior is not nearly as clearcut as our need for The Absolute would prefer.
• The last lesson, as well, is not really a lesson but a reminder that, as MFASRF recently put it when I e'd him about all this, "having a dialogue with someone whose intellect and intentions you trust is amazingly helpful." What he wrote is a humble tribute to the one relationship in my life that, for as long as it's existed, has seemed to me to be the one in which I can say anything, absolutely anything, and not fear the consequences (despite the fact that, at one time, the consequences were harsh; still, no fear was involved). That, reader, is friendship par excellence.

    As you have probably noted, I'm not in a rush to awaken Mom this morning, although now seems to be a good time to begin. After yesterday's extremely stressful beginning I'm holding back a bit today, hoping that it will be easier to pry her out of bed. At any rate, I have a temptation to dangle over her: Adam's Rib comes on at noon, a movie both she and I adore.
    Off to set up the house for Mom's arrival into the morning.
    Later.

...this morning out of which I awoke sobbing. This time I remember most the dream. Mom and I were in Mesa, living out of our almost empty mobile home for a few days while she entered the hospital for more tests which were supposedly being done to find the source of her chronic anemia. The doctor handling her care was the one doctor who, in reality, visited us in the ER room the night she was admitted for a blood transfusion and lied to me about the results of her informal digit-up-the-ass-looking-for-occult-blood exam performed on her before the transfusion began.
    During the first part of the dream I was frantically looking for her in the hospital. I learned she was in room 247, but 247 was not on the second floor. A kind, courteous hospital employee guided me to the separate, one story wing that housed room 247. My mother was not in her room. I was told she was "undergoing tests" which would take "all day" and that I should leave the hospital and return later in the afternoon when she would be in her room. Which I did, wandering about the mobile home park, looking for someone who might be able to help me find adequate medical help for my mother. Unfortunately, no one was in the park.
    When I returned the floor plan of the hospital had changed. Again, I was unable to find her room or the wing to which I'd previously been directed until yet another kind, courteous hospital employee took me to an elevator which was to transport me to the floor, several stories above us where I was assured I would find my mother's room. The elevator was a contraption containing three molded seats with holes for one's ass and legs. When the elevator doors opened all three seats were occupied. The seat from which one of the riders exited and was, thus, left for me to occupy was obviously broken. The hospital employee informed me that if I took the empty, broken seat, I may not get to where I'm going. I began a frustrating, protracted search through what became a maze of hospital corridors, staircases and nurses stations looking for my mother.
    When I found her room she was sitting on her bed in very good spirits her head shaved except for a few strands of disheveled hair on her crown. There was a hole, about an inch in diameter, on the right side of her head just above her ear covered with a thin, brown disc that appeared to be made out of pressboard and was not well attached. I asked her if the procedure to which this hole attested had been painful and she assured me, remaining in good humor, that it had been "unimaginably" painful.
    The doctor managing her care was at the nurses' station writing on a chart. I approached him and asked what sort of test for anemia would have required that a large hole be drilled into the side of her head.
    "It's the Sandburg-Ross test," he told me, head down, not looking at me as he spoke. "We had to drill the hole in her head because she ate the mint and parsley on her plate."
    "But, she always eats the garnishes," I protested. "Does that have something to do with her anemia?"
    "No," he responded. "No one ever eats the parsley and mint when they stay at the hospital so it was necessary to do this test."
    "Were any of the tests you performed specific to her anemia?"
    "No," he responded. "We need to do more tests."
    I decided to remove her from the hospital. She and I wandered the halls, she in her hospital gown with her head shaved and drilled, until we made it through the hospital maze and past the growing crowd of health care professionals who followed us to the parking lot, warning that she needed more tests, the cause of her anemia still hadn't been discovered.
    When we arrived at our mobile home and began preparing for our journey back to Prescott we heard something lumbering about in the attic crawlspace. We followed the noise from room to room, trying to determine what sort of creature would make such a noise. When we returned to the living room the animal opened the attic access and peered down at us. It was a mammal, about five feet long including a two foot muscled tail with a sand and black fur coat, looking a bit like kangaroo on all fours with the head and face of a diminutive koala. "It's a wadi [yes, I know that a wadi is not an animal, in reality]," we agreed.
    At this point I despaired of ever finding adequate medical help for my mother's anemia and began to sob. As it turns out, in reality, in my sleep, once again within the last couple of weeks, I began to sob and awoke myself.
    The obvious point of the dream rings a bell but a few of the specifics do not: The "wadi"; the attic access in the living room (there is no attic access in our mobile home in Mesa as far as I know); the thing about my mother indulging in the medically suspicious behavior of eating her meal green-garnishes (in reality she never eats her green-garnishes, thus I usually eat them); the mobile home park being completely empty, except for us; the number "247"; the drill-a-hole-in-the-head test being named the "Sandburg-Ross" test; why I considered the appearance of the "wadi" proof that non-alternative medicine would never discover the source of my mother's anemia.
    When I was in college I took a psychology course in which the instructor asked us to record our sleep dreams, whereupon most of us in the class found ourselves awakening throughout the week immediately at the end of all our dreams and remembering them in great detail. When the class studied our dreams en masse we came to the conclusion that, for the most part, dreams appear to be an activity of the brain wherein it sorts through the detritus of "waking life" [quote's a tribute to Richard Linklater's Waking Life, one of my most beloved films], reviews everything in mysterious sequence with unexplainable embellishment, trashes some of the detail and stores the rest. In view of the above dream I tend to agree with this observation. Still, though, I wonder, is there any personal meaning I should be attempting to extract from the more absurd elements of this particular dream that might help me make some sense of the absurdity of my mother's current non-alternative medical adventure?

...there is much I'd like to post but today has been another day of intense vigilance which is continuing throughout this evening, mainly because Mom and I are working on cleaning out her bowels, which appear to be cooperating, finally. I'm going to have to watch the cheese, I guess, and balance binders against the diarrheaic properties of the Niferex-150.
    There are a few things I want to mention, though. First, over the weekend I entered two more recent blood tests and forgot to mention them here:

• Blood Draw Date 6/17/04
• Blood Draw Date 6/29/04

    There is one more from her recent experiences that I haven't yet obtained, the test from her 6/8/04 blood draw at her PCP's office. This included Iron & TIBC and TSH analyses, and, if I remember correctly, a Comprehensive Metabolic Panel. As a reminder to myself, I want to enter my experience, this weekend, of understanding the value in the posting of all this information, which, I'm sure, seems to many, not the least of whom is her PCP, unnecessary. That, however, will have to wait.
    I do have time, though, to direct you to a rumination in Mom's Daily Tests & Meds, entered today. It involves my nascent realization that this situation with me may not, any longer, be the best situation for my mother and why I'm beginning to consider this. Those of you who have a vested interest in where and with whom Mom resides will want to read and think about this. The link at the beginning of the last sentence will take you directly to "it". My considerations, by the way, have nothing to do with the recent Firebug Incident, which I hope to be able to cover very soon, possibly tomorrow.
    Later.

    Very low key holiday weekend except for another firebug incident which I mention here as a reminder to myself to write about it in more detail when I have the time. Suffice it to say, the incident, apart from what happened, renewed my appreciation for my insistence on recording, here, everything I can either think of and have thought of in e's to others regarding my journey with my mother.
    Last night Mom and I watched a Showtime movie, The Maldonado Miracle. One of the characters and situations portrayed in the movie is a middle aged man taking care of his mother who appears to be deep into senility (unlike my mother). The film was obvious and relentless in portraying the journey of the caregiver as one that is properly done quietly and modestly. I absolutely disagree with this, whether applied to the caretaking of children, Ancient Ones or the infirm. The reason caregiving, at this time in this country, is such a difficult row to hoe is that those of us societized within the "nuclear family" model believe that it is a personal, private matter. The only respect we show is for those caregivers who quietly go about their business, bother only the state when they need help, work hard to appear to have no vested interest in what they do other than to sacrifice themselves to the care of someone else and "whistle a happy tune, whenever [they] feel afraid". Bullshit, I say. This is one of the reasons I continue this journal...in order to say "Bullshit" as often as I deem necessary and focus attention on exactly what I'm labeling bullshit.
    As I've attempted to do over the last few mornings, I'm working on awakening Mom a half hour earlier than the previous morning, just to get her used to existing on less than 12-14 hours' sleep, which I believe will be good for both her body and soul, so I'm off, again.
    Later.

...for a couple of days but Mom's been eschewing naps. Even though she hasn't been particularly active I prefer to turn my attention to her when she's up. If she's watching TV or movies I prefer to companionate her. Sometimes we just sit and talk. We've been playing Sorry more often than the last several weeks, too, and have played Scrabble a couple of times, all good signs. When she's critically anemic she isn't even interested in sitting up. She's been awake and aware, though, over this last weekend. I don't want to give her a reason to trot to bed out of boredom caused by me not paying attention to her. As well, although I've had a few minutes here and there to myself, I've preferred to spend my time on the internet communicating with MFASRF.
    Once again, there is a little information about how Mom's been doing at Mom's Daily Tests and Meds if you want to check in there when I'm not checking in here regularly.
    We've got one more movie to watch from the bunch I rented for the weekend and it's due tonight so I guess we'd better get to it. I'll be back later, hopefully tonight.