When I was a preschooler (except nobody called us that back then, we were just kids), I stayed with my grandparents all day every day while my mom worked. I don't know when this began, but as far back as I can remember, it was the state of things. I didn't mind it, in fact, I loved it, just figured every kid stayed with their grandparents all day every day while their mom's worked. I always felt loved and welcomed by them. I remember a single incident of a spanking from my grandmother with her soft house shoe because I kept going across the street to play with some neighbors even after she told me not to. I also remember lots of rocking.
My grandfather, we called him Pop, worked all day, too, for a wholesale grocery company about three miles from their house. He would usually already be at work when my mom dropped me off, but he called mid-morning to talk to Grandmother, and almost always to me, too. Occasionally, when Mom and I were running late, she would stop at a bakery close to Grandmother and Pop's house, and get me doughnuts -- which is probably the reason I still love glazed doughnuts above almost all other sweets. These doughnuts, in my memory, were exceptionally good. They always had a little crisp bottom where they had cooled on a wire rack and where the sugar had run down and pooled. These were doughnuts with substance, not the too-soft, doughy confections you find nowadays. These old time doughnuts were just good, and I was always exited about stopping there on the way in the mornings. This would usually be the first thing I said to Pop when he called -- "Mama stopped and got me doughnuts this morning." And he would always say in reply, "Be sure you save me the hole." What he meant was the imaginary hole, the center, back in those days you didn't see fried doughnut holes like you do now. I suspect the bakeries probably put what bits would have been the holes back into the dough to be rolled out and re-cut into actual doughnuts rather than selling holes separately. I never saw doughnut holes for sale until I was an adult.
At noon, we would hear Pop's car arrive in the driveway, and I would hide behind the refrigerator to jump out at him with a "Boo!" when he came in the back door. He would tremble and shake just as if I had scared him to death, just as if we didn't go through this ritual every single solitary day, and then he would hug me and kiss me and take me on his lap for a minute. And I would present him with my empty palm and the "doughnut hole" I had saved for him. He sometimes sang, "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You." I still remember the words to that old song.
At this time, mid-1950s, Pop would have only been in his 40s, but he seemed so old to me. He always wore a white shirt and modest tie, a Silverbelly hat, lace-up wingtips. He was of that time period. He loved his family, he loved Tennessee Ernie Ford, Gunsmoke, he loved God, and was a lay Baptist preacher. In World War II he drove landing craft for the Navy in the Pacific theater. After the war, when he went to work for the grocery company, he taught himself to speak Spanish so he could talk to the men in the shipping department. He could play the French harp. He kept a roll of wintergreen Lifesavers in his desk drawer, a roll of Lifesavers I sometimes robbed when I thought he wouldn't notice. He never said a word about my thievery. He was three years younger than my grandmother, a fact which she hid from everybody all their married life. He was my Pop and I adored him then, later, and still.
After lunch (we called it dinner) was done, while Grandmother washed dishes and I colored at the kitchen table, Pop laid down to take a quick nap. He was a snorer and the walls of that wooden house would shake he snored so loud. After about twenty minutes, Grandmother would send me in to awaken him. I would open the door and say in a stage whisper, "Pop. You've got to go back to work now. It's time to wake up." And he would say, "I'm not sleeping, I'm just resting my eyes." No matter the window-rattling snores that had just ended. I think he had it in his mind that it was somehow wrong to take an actual nap in the middle of the day.
In January 1992, Pop and I met for lunch. He went to the same cafe for lunch every day, managed by one of his nephews. They all called him by his name. They showed us to his regular table. They knew he wanted sweet tea. I don't remember what we ate for our meal, but we split a piece of apple pie, and then we went back to his house. This was not the same house where I had stayed as a little girl, but was a much more modern, comfortable house that he had bought for my grandmother a few years before she died. We sat in the den and talked about my writing. We talked about history. I was surprised by how much he knew about some of the historical characters from Texas history and the Old West. He gave me a book which I still have, GUN IN POCKET, BIBLE IN HAND. We discussed religion. Pop was still giving sermons at a nursing home then, but didn't have his own church anymore. Some of his views surprised me coming from him. He was not as close-minded as some of the so-called religious people I hear spouting their rigorous ideas now. He gave me a bracelet that had belonged to my grandmother. I still have it and cherish it.
Two weeks later, Pop got up one morning to prepare himself for the day. He was in the bathroom shaving when a massive heart attack or a stroke struck him down. My aunt and uncle found him mid-morning lying on the floor. We were all in shock. I had just spent that great day with him. I'm glad we had that time.
Happy Birthday, Pop. You would be 98 years old today. I love and miss you, still.
Onward ....
Friday, August 24, 2012
Sunday, August 12, 2012
COPD or I Think I'll Get Another Opinion
So, I was not getting any better from my sickness. I would have a good day, then two bad days. Or I would feel better, start trying to check off my list, and slide backwards into feeling basically like crap. So, I called a doctor. One reason I was hesitating on this is because I really love my doctor back in Texas, and since I haven't been sick since we've been up here full time, I haven't had the need of a local doctor. Didn't know who to go do. My SO went to a doctor here once last winter, so I tried calling him. Frankly, I wasn't that upset when I was told I could see THAT doctor until mid-week next week. Because, well, he's a D.O. rather than an M.D. and I have these prejudices. Anyway, they told me that the only opening they had was with their newest associate, a M.D., to the clinic, and I could see her the next morning at 11:30. Fine. I am spoiled by my Texas doctor who, when he knows you are truly sick, will work you in that afternoon. And I was obviously sick -- I could barely talk above a whisper. But they were going to make me wait until the morning. Fine....
I thought I would wake up the next morning feeling well, and call to cancel the appointment as soon as they opened. But there were some things that happened to change that plan. Namely my SO, who showed up here at 9:30 pm having driven straight through, 16 hours, from Texas just so he could be here to take me to the doctor the next morning. He had been worrying about me, and hated being so far away, and when I told him I had made the appointment, he drove like a maniac to get here to make sure I MADE that appointment. He thought I had pneumonia. He wasn't far wrong. This was the clincher -- him making that desperate drive. But the second thing that happened is that I was coughing so hard, really the hardest cough I have ever had, that I threw up. Literally. Right on the bathroom floor. Jeez! Did I need THAT to clean up. Answer -- no. But I realized that this cough is really a bugger-bear, not normal at all, or productive enough, and even my ribcage was starting to hurt from this violent cough. Maybe I had whooping cough -- I'd read where it was making a comeback. And besides all that, I really wasn't feeling good enough the next morning to call and cancel, so I let my sweetheart drive me the 26 miles into town, and I made the doctor's office.
They had a ream of papers for me to fill out that took over 30 minutes. Apparently, I gleaned from some of the questions and statements I had to sign, that there is a big narcotic drug problem in Las Vegas, NM -- ya think! Maybe that explains all the violent headlines in the local newspaper. I told the lady at the counter that I felt like I was applying for a mortgage. She said I ought to have to make all the copies once I was finished.
I liked the doctor. She was, I would say about 38, young, smart, straight-talking. She told me she believes I have COPD. What?!!!!! Aka Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. No way, I said. She said that even though I have been a non-smoker for 20 years on my last birthday, I still have lung damage. I argued that the last time I'd had a chest X-ray, right before I had the breast biopsy in 2008, the doctor had told me that I had the lungs of a person who had never smoked, that you could not tell I had smoked 10 packs of cigarettes a week for 19 years. He said that! She just smiled, gave a head shake, and went on to tell me about how COPD presents itself in these bouts of acute bronchitis, and that I was not moving good air through my lungs. She said she thinks I have about 93% of my lungs at this stage, but that there is a test that will definitively diagnose COPD and that she would like to perform that test if I would like her to in about thirty days, once the infectious bronchitis I have now is taken care of. I liked her, as I said, but I got my back up about this. I refused to believe I have COPD. I said that I was going to be seeing my doctor in Texas on the 23rd of September and I could get him to do the test. She said that would be fine, and proceeded to take down all his information so she could forward her reports to him. How presumptuous of her!
Then she said that she was going to go get prescriptions she wanted me to take to clear up this bronchitis, and left the room. I laid there with my head spinning. I cannot have COPD. That is an incurable disease that can kill you! My SO had a woman he worked for who died from it about three years ago. She'd had a lung transplant and everything. I would go to my Texas doctor and together we would just decide that I had FINALLY developed asthma. I'd had an allergy doctor tell me I was borderline asthmatic back in the 90s.
She came back in and I attacked her with questions. She explained that asthma is usually something that begins in childhood. I gave her my whole history with allergies, shots, yada, yada. She sat down and listened. I said, "Can't this be asthma, or allergies, or what do you think?" She looked clearly at me. "I think it's COPD. But we need to do that test to get a definitive diagnosis." And I'm sitting there thinking, what do you have to gain from me having COPD? Are you being paid by somebody to prescribe COPD medicine? Is this just the designer disease of the year? Is there some ulterior motive for you telling me all of this? Why do you hate me?
She explained what she wanted me to do with all the drugs she was prescribing. Prednisone to get me through this bad bout of bronchitis -- which was caused, she said, by a viral infection that went into a secondary flareup, namely bronchitis. I have taken prednisone. It makes you feel like you can conquer the world. It's what the vet gave Trouser the last three months of his life. The next thing was an antibiotic, and amoxicillian combo to kill the infection. The third, and most important she said, thing was an inhaler, combivent. If this thing really helps you, she said, it will be a step towards us looking further into the COPD. Ah-ha!! Could this be the drug she was taking payoffs on? And then she gave me a steroid nose spray -- yeah yeah, been there done that. A million times. They make my nose bleed. But I've made my prescription drug deductible. I took it from her. She said go home, throw away the cough medicine I had been taking, and to take Mucinex without the D. And all this in addition to my blood pressure and cholesterol, etc etc. I really feel like a little old lady, now, with a pill despenser so I can keep track of what all I've taken each day.
Speaking of little -- I had lost 10 pounds. The only good side effect from all this. Don't mean to be so shallow. I celebrate any effortless weight loss, ok?
So we stopped off to fill the prescriptions, and I was really fading by the time we got home. My SO made me take a nap. I laid there on the bed and my mind was still reeling, but a little slower now. I remembered way back in 2000 when I had been admitted to the hospital emergency room with a BIG infection following my hysterectomy. The staff was more worried about the lack of oxygen in my blood than they were about my reddening incision area. The kept running test, took me to nuclear medicine, drew blood. And then I thought about how I cannot seem to get acclimated to this altitude, and we are coming up on one-year of being here full time. I walk the dog and come back so winded I can't move off of the couch for thirty minutes. Just bringing the groceries in from the car down in the carport takes the air out of me so much that I have to sit down before I can unload them into the pantry or the fridge. And climbing Mount Capulin when the boys were here last year, that seriously nearly killed me. Everybody was laughing at me, but I was in super distress. I tried to laugh it off, too, but it aggravated me how they would not take my situation seriously. They just thought it was because I'm out of shape. Well, there is that, but I do have breathing problems, too. Real breathing problems. My SO is constantly asking me if I'm "whipped out." His question, asked when he hears me gasping, also makes me angry.
Why the anger? I'm not sure. Maybe because I watched my mother die from lung cancer. And my grandmother from congestive heart failure. Both of them cause breathing problems. I try to take care of myself. I am not a svelte 20 year old and I see people my age who look better than I do, but I have never been sickly, in fact, have always hated to be sick. I have always been energetic. Nothing bores me more -- usually -- that to sit on my butt in front of a television, or to just sit doing nothing. That's just not me, never has been. I have to be busy, gardening, cooking, cleaning, even reading has become harder to do over the years, and makes me wish I liked audio books more so I could read and go. I am too young to get an incurable disease! I just am! But in my heart of hearts, I think this doctor may be right.
I joined an online forum. I've been reading posts other people with COPD have written. I'm encouraged that it is something that can be managed, but I still don't want it to be ME! I really do have a doctor's appointment with my old Texas doctor when we go back at the end of September. I thought I was just going for my yearly blood check so he would refill my blood pressure and cholesterol meds. But I guess I should probably call them on Monday with this latest news, because I think this doctor I saw Friday really is going to get in touch with him if I don't, or even it I do. She didn't seem like the kind who would make idle threats. Or diagnoses, for that matter. I'm not happy about all this, but I would like to know one way or the other.
Onward ....
I thought I would wake up the next morning feeling well, and call to cancel the appointment as soon as they opened. But there were some things that happened to change that plan. Namely my SO, who showed up here at 9:30 pm having driven straight through, 16 hours, from Texas just so he could be here to take me to the doctor the next morning. He had been worrying about me, and hated being so far away, and when I told him I had made the appointment, he drove like a maniac to get here to make sure I MADE that appointment. He thought I had pneumonia. He wasn't far wrong. This was the clincher -- him making that desperate drive. But the second thing that happened is that I was coughing so hard, really the hardest cough I have ever had, that I threw up. Literally. Right on the bathroom floor. Jeez! Did I need THAT to clean up. Answer -- no. But I realized that this cough is really a bugger-bear, not normal at all, or productive enough, and even my ribcage was starting to hurt from this violent cough. Maybe I had whooping cough -- I'd read where it was making a comeback. And besides all that, I really wasn't feeling good enough the next morning to call and cancel, so I let my sweetheart drive me the 26 miles into town, and I made the doctor's office.
They had a ream of papers for me to fill out that took over 30 minutes. Apparently, I gleaned from some of the questions and statements I had to sign, that there is a big narcotic drug problem in Las Vegas, NM -- ya think! Maybe that explains all the violent headlines in the local newspaper. I told the lady at the counter that I felt like I was applying for a mortgage. She said I ought to have to make all the copies once I was finished.
I liked the doctor. She was, I would say about 38, young, smart, straight-talking. She told me she believes I have COPD. What?!!!!! Aka Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. No way, I said. She said that even though I have been a non-smoker for 20 years on my last birthday, I still have lung damage. I argued that the last time I'd had a chest X-ray, right before I had the breast biopsy in 2008, the doctor had told me that I had the lungs of a person who had never smoked, that you could not tell I had smoked 10 packs of cigarettes a week for 19 years. He said that! She just smiled, gave a head shake, and went on to tell me about how COPD presents itself in these bouts of acute bronchitis, and that I was not moving good air through my lungs. She said she thinks I have about 93% of my lungs at this stage, but that there is a test that will definitively diagnose COPD and that she would like to perform that test if I would like her to in about thirty days, once the infectious bronchitis I have now is taken care of. I liked her, as I said, but I got my back up about this. I refused to believe I have COPD. I said that I was going to be seeing my doctor in Texas on the 23rd of September and I could get him to do the test. She said that would be fine, and proceeded to take down all his information so she could forward her reports to him. How presumptuous of her!
Then she said that she was going to go get prescriptions she wanted me to take to clear up this bronchitis, and left the room. I laid there with my head spinning. I cannot have COPD. That is an incurable disease that can kill you! My SO had a woman he worked for who died from it about three years ago. She'd had a lung transplant and everything. I would go to my Texas doctor and together we would just decide that I had FINALLY developed asthma. I'd had an allergy doctor tell me I was borderline asthmatic back in the 90s.
She came back in and I attacked her with questions. She explained that asthma is usually something that begins in childhood. I gave her my whole history with allergies, shots, yada, yada. She sat down and listened. I said, "Can't this be asthma, or allergies, or what do you think?" She looked clearly at me. "I think it's COPD. But we need to do that test to get a definitive diagnosis." And I'm sitting there thinking, what do you have to gain from me having COPD? Are you being paid by somebody to prescribe COPD medicine? Is this just the designer disease of the year? Is there some ulterior motive for you telling me all of this? Why do you hate me?
She explained what she wanted me to do with all the drugs she was prescribing. Prednisone to get me through this bad bout of bronchitis -- which was caused, she said, by a viral infection that went into a secondary flareup, namely bronchitis. I have taken prednisone. It makes you feel like you can conquer the world. It's what the vet gave Trouser the last three months of his life. The next thing was an antibiotic, and amoxicillian combo to kill the infection. The third, and most important she said, thing was an inhaler, combivent. If this thing really helps you, she said, it will be a step towards us looking further into the COPD. Ah-ha!! Could this be the drug she was taking payoffs on? And then she gave me a steroid nose spray -- yeah yeah, been there done that. A million times. They make my nose bleed. But I've made my prescription drug deductible. I took it from her. She said go home, throw away the cough medicine I had been taking, and to take Mucinex without the D. And all this in addition to my blood pressure and cholesterol, etc etc. I really feel like a little old lady, now, with a pill despenser so I can keep track of what all I've taken each day.
Speaking of little -- I had lost 10 pounds. The only good side effect from all this. Don't mean to be so shallow. I celebrate any effortless weight loss, ok?
So we stopped off to fill the prescriptions, and I was really fading by the time we got home. My SO made me take a nap. I laid there on the bed and my mind was still reeling, but a little slower now. I remembered way back in 2000 when I had been admitted to the hospital emergency room with a BIG infection following my hysterectomy. The staff was more worried about the lack of oxygen in my blood than they were about my reddening incision area. The kept running test, took me to nuclear medicine, drew blood. And then I thought about how I cannot seem to get acclimated to this altitude, and we are coming up on one-year of being here full time. I walk the dog and come back so winded I can't move off of the couch for thirty minutes. Just bringing the groceries in from the car down in the carport takes the air out of me so much that I have to sit down before I can unload them into the pantry or the fridge. And climbing Mount Capulin when the boys were here last year, that seriously nearly killed me. Everybody was laughing at me, but I was in super distress. I tried to laugh it off, too, but it aggravated me how they would not take my situation seriously. They just thought it was because I'm out of shape. Well, there is that, but I do have breathing problems, too. Real breathing problems. My SO is constantly asking me if I'm "whipped out." His question, asked when he hears me gasping, also makes me angry.
Why the anger? I'm not sure. Maybe because I watched my mother die from lung cancer. And my grandmother from congestive heart failure. Both of them cause breathing problems. I try to take care of myself. I am not a svelte 20 year old and I see people my age who look better than I do, but I have never been sickly, in fact, have always hated to be sick. I have always been energetic. Nothing bores me more -- usually -- that to sit on my butt in front of a television, or to just sit doing nothing. That's just not me, never has been. I have to be busy, gardening, cooking, cleaning, even reading has become harder to do over the years, and makes me wish I liked audio books more so I could read and go. I am too young to get an incurable disease! I just am! But in my heart of hearts, I think this doctor may be right.
I joined an online forum. I've been reading posts other people with COPD have written. I'm encouraged that it is something that can be managed, but I still don't want it to be ME! I really do have a doctor's appointment with my old Texas doctor when we go back at the end of September. I thought I was just going for my yearly blood check so he would refill my blood pressure and cholesterol meds. But I guess I should probably call them on Monday with this latest news, because I think this doctor I saw Friday really is going to get in touch with him if I don't, or even it I do. She didn't seem like the kind who would make idle threats. Or diagnoses, for that matter. I'm not happy about all this, but I would like to know one way or the other.
Onward ....
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Between the Flu & the Olympics
My SO left exactly a week ago on a work-trip. I had a list of things I wanted to get done during the ten days he would be gone, articles I wanted to start or finish, returned manuscripts to get back out, the endless novel, as always, my secret cat book. Within two hours of him leaving, I knew I was getting sick. My throat had been sore since the day before, not horribly sore, but naggingly so. By mid-day last Wednesday, it was beginning to feel horribly sore. But I did finish the gardening article. It was mostly finished anyway, just needed another edit. Raced to the post office to get it off, and that was the last of my productivity.
By day two, my list was not getting done, or was getting done in slow-motion. Throat really sore now, chest heavy, head aching like a hammer. By day three, the body aches began. I had run out of all my medications, so I ran to town. Well, drove -- it's 26 miles! I picked up a few groceries while I was there. Good thing, too, because this thing -- this flu -- was about to take me down! Seriously.
I had a date with some friends for Saturday morning. We were going to the Heritage Home Tour they were having in town, tours of 8 different historical homes -- my kind of thing. I had bought the ticket. I was really looking forward to it, wished my SO was here to go, but he would not have liked this as much as me -- just wasn't the sort of historical thing he really likes to do. But alas, twas not to be. I awoke on Saturday morning feeling like a sick, thick, snorty, achy, hoarse blob of raw flesh.
I staggered to the kitchen to make coffee. The HOT coffee might help my scratchy throat. I dug out the Robitussin. I drank it straight from the bottle. I let the dog out but didn't go with her. Hell with it. Let somebody holler. All she would do anyway was go hunt chipmunks by the wood pile. I'd get back to her when I felt less dizzy. I flopped down in the chair with my coffee, turned on the television, which I never do when the SO is not here. The Olympics were on. I stared slack-jawed at the picture. Zombie-like I dialed my neighbors to tell them I would be skipping the Heritage Home Tour. My neighbor didn't recognize my voice. "You sound horrible," she said. "I feel as bad as I sound," I said. I hung up and staggered over to the let the dog back in. She spent the rest of the day out on the deck while I slumped in my lounge chair with my coffee and the Olympics.
I watched every single event that day. And the next day. And the next. By then, completely hooked. I lost my voice, so it was no good going anywhere. My head hurt most of the time. I was so medicated I would fall asleep in my chair and wake up when the cheering crowds on TV alerted me that something wonderful had just happened. I dreamed about Olympic events. I was back in junior high school doing tumbling routines, or trampoline routines. Baton twirling had become an Olympic event, and I was trying desperately to remember the fundamentals. We used to get tested on those fundamentals during try-outs. I worried about being too old for the event. But I did still fit in my twirling outfits, a real dream if there ever was one. It was kind of cool, though, almost like hallucinating but not quite. I'm pretty sure I was really asleep. I woke myself up snoring a couple of times.
So here it is a week later. I'm feeling better but I still can barely talk. I still have a nasty cough, and I tire so easily. My body is telling me to take it easy and I am, with the Olympics, and my new Mac Book Pro. But my list is still sitting here unfinished. And my sweet man will be home on Friday. Wasted alone time -- between the flu and the Olympic Games. But hell, they only come around every two years.
Onward ....
By day two, my list was not getting done, or was getting done in slow-motion. Throat really sore now, chest heavy, head aching like a hammer. By day three, the body aches began. I had run out of all my medications, so I ran to town. Well, drove -- it's 26 miles! I picked up a few groceries while I was there. Good thing, too, because this thing -- this flu -- was about to take me down! Seriously.
I had a date with some friends for Saturday morning. We were going to the Heritage Home Tour they were having in town, tours of 8 different historical homes -- my kind of thing. I had bought the ticket. I was really looking forward to it, wished my SO was here to go, but he would not have liked this as much as me -- just wasn't the sort of historical thing he really likes to do. But alas, twas not to be. I awoke on Saturday morning feeling like a sick, thick, snorty, achy, hoarse blob of raw flesh.
I staggered to the kitchen to make coffee. The HOT coffee might help my scratchy throat. I dug out the Robitussin. I drank it straight from the bottle. I let the dog out but didn't go with her. Hell with it. Let somebody holler. All she would do anyway was go hunt chipmunks by the wood pile. I'd get back to her when I felt less dizzy. I flopped down in the chair with my coffee, turned on the television, which I never do when the SO is not here. The Olympics were on. I stared slack-jawed at the picture. Zombie-like I dialed my neighbors to tell them I would be skipping the Heritage Home Tour. My neighbor didn't recognize my voice. "You sound horrible," she said. "I feel as bad as I sound," I said. I hung up and staggered over to the let the dog back in. She spent the rest of the day out on the deck while I slumped in my lounge chair with my coffee and the Olympics.
I watched every single event that day. And the next day. And the next. By then, completely hooked. I lost my voice, so it was no good going anywhere. My head hurt most of the time. I was so medicated I would fall asleep in my chair and wake up when the cheering crowds on TV alerted me that something wonderful had just happened. I dreamed about Olympic events. I was back in junior high school doing tumbling routines, or trampoline routines. Baton twirling had become an Olympic event, and I was trying desperately to remember the fundamentals. We used to get tested on those fundamentals during try-outs. I worried about being too old for the event. But I did still fit in my twirling outfits, a real dream if there ever was one. It was kind of cool, though, almost like hallucinating but not quite. I'm pretty sure I was really asleep. I woke myself up snoring a couple of times.
So here it is a week later. I'm feeling better but I still can barely talk. I still have a nasty cough, and I tire so easily. My body is telling me to take it easy and I am, with the Olympics, and my new Mac Book Pro. But my list is still sitting here unfinished. And my sweet man will be home on Friday. Wasted alone time -- between the flu and the Olympic Games. But hell, they only come around every two years.
Onward ....
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