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Chicken! (#575)

“The chicken!”

It must be difficult to awaken on a Friday morning to those words being shouted by the wife of your youth. I will never know just how difficult.

Doug jumped out of bed and said, “What? What chicken? Where? I’ll catch it!”

No, silly. It’s not a live chicken, nor is it a recently dead one running around with its head cut off. It’s the six pounds of chicken thighs that have been thawed in the fridge for three days and must be grilled TODAY or they won’t be good anymore!

I woke up instantly alert this morning, raring to go with my obsessive/compulsive list of stuff I usually spend ALL NIGHT thinking about.

We ate dinner at Scott and Brooke’s house last night (so yummy!) and then I couldn’t go to sleep until around one. I get all wound up when I’m having fun and have never figured out how to wind back down in time to call it a night.

But even though I only got six hours of sleep, they were the BEST six hours I’ve had in years. I only got up twice to go to the bathroom and didn’t lie in bed afterwards wide awake, thinking. And thinking. And thinking.

Nor did I have any nightmares, night sweats, or any dreams at all that I can remember.

It was glorious, people. It reminds me of one of my favorite phrases in all of Christmas Caroldom: “Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.”

Ah…deep and dreamless sleep. The kind so fabulous that you wake up chirping about chicken.

Posted by Katy on 10/28/05
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Connectivity Versus Productivity: I Report, You Decide (#574)

If you had to choose between connectivity and productivity, which way would the balance shift?

I’m afraid I’ve become a slave to connectivity. And boy, does my productivity suffer because of it. I probably have adult ADHD, or at least the AD part. I’m thinking my attention span isn’t long enough to fully embrace the AD and the HD at the same time. Sigh.

I love the Internet. I really do. And I’m so in love with email that I might as well—as my father would suggest—marry it.

But along with some other needed changes I’m making in my life, including sacrificing the viewing of Lost for the sake of recapturing some Lost Time, I’m going to be self-limiting my connectivity.

I’ve got dreams and goals and things I’m supposed to be accomplishing with what’s left of my ever-shortening lifespan.

Am I really a better person because I spent two weeks of my life soaking up Katrina coverage? How about that week after Christmas, glued to the news day and night after the tsunami? Sure, I wrote a couple checks for relief efforts, but I’d be fooling myself to say my obsession with bad news makes me a more useful citizen of God’s kingdom.

To be honest, I’m trembling a bit just thinking about tipping the scale toward productivity. I’m a bloomin’ connectivity addict, and I need help!

Just so you know.

Posted by Katy on 10/25/05
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Before And After (#573)

Write the names on the backs of aging photographs, even though you know perfectly well which of your children had ringlets of wispy blond hair, and wore the pale green sleeper while clutching the blanket with the embroidered rosebuds on its satin edge.

Write the names on the backs of the photographs.

Do it for the sake of those who will come after you, as a common courtesy, a loving legacy, a silent witness to you having been here, a reminiscent nod to the fleeting prime of your life.

Do it because you believe not only in your own short story, but in the tiny jot or tittle you represent in God’s redemptive story on the earth. He put you here, He’s authoring the script of your life and of your faith, but you have a part to play.

Write the names on the backs of the fading photographs, and the dates, and the places, too.

Don’t put it off, foolishly trusting that cognition will always serve, and that the lines and faces and scenes you’ve memorized so well will always be written on the tablet of your consciousness.

One day, many years from now, you may shuffle through these photographs and wonder about the handsome young men, the beautiful babies, the brides, the smiling youths in caps and gowns.

Turn the photographs over then, when you are old. Read the names of those you’ve loved and, every once in a while, you’ll see your own name, too.

Remember, for the sake of of those who will come after, all the ones who’ve gone before.

Posted by Katy on 10/25/05
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Late Bloomer? (#572)

“Have you finished your therapies for today?” I ask my mom on arriving for a morning visit.

“I’m half done,” she says. “I’ll finish later. All the therapists and nurses have been called to a meeting, and I know why.”

Sounds fishy to me, and I’ll bet it does to you, too.

“Okay, Mom. I’ll bite. Why are they all in a meeting at the same time?”

She lowers her voice to a whisper. “To talk about….her.” She points through the drawn curtain, toward her roomie, Inez.

“What’s up with Inez?” I ask.

Mom shushes me. “She’s just pretending to be asleep. She’s listening to every word we say. Keep it down!”

I lean in closer, touch her hand, and mimic her whisper. “What’s up with Inez?”

“Her daughter-in-law was here at six a.m. When Inez didn’t open her eyes, the woman said, ‘Are you on drugs?’ And then Inez said, ‘Yes. They give me drugs to make me sleep.’”

“So, let me get this straight. Do you think someone here has been slipping mickies into her V8?”

“I know so. Her daughter-in-law started packing her stuff up right then.” Mom pointed to the clock on the wall. “See that? That’s all she’s got left that’s not packed. She’s leaving today, and I’m thinking it will be on the daughter-in-law’s lunch hour.”

I listen closely for Inez’s characteristic death rattle. Sure enough, the old gal’s asleep. She couldn’t fake that noise if she tried. I get up and move across the room, passing Inez’s bed, toward her wardrobe closet.

I open it as stealthily as I’ve ever done anything in my life, and sure enough, nothing has been packed at all. I sneak back to Mom’s side of the room.

“Mom, everything’s still on hangers. I don’t think she’s going anywhere…” By the sounds of her, of course, I think she may soon be going to her final destination, but I don’t say so.

“I could have sworn that daughter-in-law of hers was packing. And that would be against the rules of this place. You have to give them seven weeks’ notice when you’re moving out.”

“Seven weeks?” I say. “Do you mean seven days?”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

I try not to appear startled. “Anyway, Mom, I’m sure Becky will be in soon to do your physical therapy. The meeting must be nearly over.”

“I hope so,” she says. “I talked to the guy who helps me get dressed and told him all about poor Inez. He didn’t act surprised at all that they’re drugging her, which made me wonder if he’s in on it, too. Do you know what he said?”

I can’t begin to guess. “What, Mom?”

She gazes earnestly into my eyes and squeezes my hand, as if to impart strength for what’s to come. “Next they’re going to give her cocaine.”

I burst out laughing, and don’t care whether I awaken Inez or not.

“Mom, you’ve missed your calling. You should have written suspense novels.”

She laughs, too, and then she smiles for longer than usual, as if she’s just imagining potential career possibilities for the very first time.

Posted by Katy on 10/20/05
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The Good Stuff (#571)

When I was a little kid, we wouldn’t have dreamed of throwing a tantrum in the A&P.

For one thing, my grandfather was an accountant who worked in their big office downtown. How would it look if his grandkids were the type who threw themselves in front of the Hershey bars and pitched a fit?

For another thing, we knew everyone in the A&P. Joyce, the gal whose check-out line my mom always chose over Jo Ann’s even though Jo Ann was nearly as lightning-fast, never failed to address Lizzie and Mary Baillie and me by name, and sometimes gave us each a stick of gum if we behaved.

The A&P might as well have been an extension of St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, for that matter. Whenever you showed up (except on Sunday, of course, when all shops were closed for the Sabbath), there was Mrs. Ryffe, Mrs. Park, Mrs. Ramm, and Mrs. Como.

(We never saw Father Jacobowski or Monsignor Schumacher or Sister Sheila Ann there, though, which pretty much sealed my belief that holy people—like the saints in heaven—don’t need to eat.)

If we acted up in the store, believe you me, those ladies of the church would have been watching for us in line at confession on Saturday.

So we didn’t nag or whine or pound our fists to get what we wanted, and yet I remember lots of fun stuff being hauled home from the store—the kind of stuff that cost between a nickel and twenty-nine cents back in those days.

When I say “lots of fun stuff,” you gotta understand I mean maybe one small item per child every couple of months. And I suspect even those purchases delayed us getting new saddle oxfords until our toes were pinched.

Back in the day, when kids were actually rewarded for good behavior instead of bad, Little Golden Books rated. My mother still has our 45-year-old copy of “The Poky Little Puppy,” a classic which I saw a youngster bawling for just yesterday at Walmart. (Yeah, right…)

A yo-yo was something which never failed to thrill, and a set of jacks—even though we knew our knuckles would be skinned by sunset—meant neighborhood fun on the sidewalks of Grand Avenue.

Doug says that marbles were high on his list, and that explains the huge coffee can of marbles that occupies a shelf in our basement.

(I call the can our “retirement fund,” but I still haven’t gotten around to researching the value of antique marbles…if we end up moving to one of those countries where you can have a maid, a gardener, and a cook on an income of $600 per month, you’ll know the marbles didn’t pan out.)

When he wasn’t losing his marbles, he was enjoying the comic books he scored for being an exemplary kid. He also remembers distinctly when Superballs hit the market, and he was such a nice boy that he collected quite an assortment of them.

Silly Putty was a perrenial (or, perhaps, perennial…) favorite. My dad, who normally wouldn’t entered a shop to save his life, once came home from work with three egg-shaped containers of the goofy stuff—one for each of the three of us, all in bed with the mumps. Yeah. Silly Putty ruled.

What about Magic Slates? Do they still make those? I craved fresh Magic Slates almost like my daily bread. I loved etching intricate pictures on the filmy panel, but I only wanted to lift the film to make my artwork “disappear” if I hated my picture. If I loved it, I hid the Magic Slate. Who wants to lose a creation they love?

The only solution I could think of was to be really, REALLY good the next time we went to the store, so that maybe by some miracle involving my mother having nineteen more cents to spare, I could have another one.

Only one item gave me shivers if it made it into the grocery cart and all the way home—a wooden paddle with a ball on the end of a rubber band.

Those puppies cost a quarter, which would have been on the high end of disposable income in our family. And they lasted less than a day before vigorous play resulted in the ball breaking loose from the paddle—and then what?

You can guess what, that’s what. Now that I think about it, Mom never objected when one of us wanted the paddle with the ball. You might say she saw the “end” from the beginning.

Any trinkets you remember scoring from forays to the grocery or the five-and-dime?

And did you get them because you were very, very good, or because you were horrid?

Posted by Katy on 10/19/05
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Autumn Vision (#570)

In the wee hours last night, during one of my frequent periods of obtuse wakefulness, a vision came to me.

A beautiful young woman with light brown hair down to her waist pushed a pram down the sidewalks of a cozy neighborhood. She wore red lipstick and rouge, and a triangular silky headscarf tied under her chin.

A little girl held on to one edge of the baby carriage, walking to the left of her mother, and another tiny girl did the same on the other side.

Leaves skitterred across the cracks in the concrete, a few of them disguising a hole so that the oldest child stepped in it by accident. “Step in a hole, break your mother’s sugar bowl,” the lady said, laughing.

The lady pointed out bungalows along the way. “That’s where Janice and Jeanette live, remember?” And then a few houses later, “Patty Mahoney lives in that house. You went there for her birthday party last Saturday.”

The oldest of the girls was nearly six that day. Of course, she remembered Patty’s birthday party! All the girls were there: Kathy, Mary Beth, Frances, Ann Marie. She’d wondered if everyone’s mother had been asked to dress the party-goers alike in baby-blue full-skirted dressed with big-bow sashes, because that’s what each girl wore. That alone had seemed like a miracle to a five-year-old.

The oldest girl peeked into the stroller to make sure the baby girl was still asleep, and smiled. A glass bottle of milk lay curled up in the baby’s chubby arm, and her rosebud lips made her look just like a Gerber baby.

“Look both ways,” the woman said when they came upon a street corner, although she provided all the protection the children needed, and they knew it.

The oldest of the girls couldn’t help noticing, while they crossed the quiet street, how the wind picked up just enough to blow their matching flowered skirts in the same direction. She thought about how impossibly wonderful it was that her grandmother had made those skirts, and how no other mother with her little girls looked as pretty as they did right then.

She even thought that God was watching them cross that street, and that He was the One who sent the wind. She knew He must love looking down at the mother and the little girls, that they must have made a beautiful picture for Him that fine fall day.

Even now, whenever the vision comes to me again on a crisp October night, I think of God and how happy we must have made Him.

Posted by Katy on 10/18/05
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Now That Really IS A Problem! (#569)

“I disagree with your previous caller,” said the man to the host of the local call-in show this morning. “People really are more rude to others these days, but I don’t think it’s because their self-esteem is so high…”

“Sir, I think that caller was just kidding.”

“Oh. Well, that’s the problem with radio. You can’t see the inflections. You can only hear the words.”

It’s always something.

Posted by Katy on 10/17/05
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Swish (#568)

My grandmother, perhaps the most fastidious housekeeper God ever created, nevertheless had a six-inch-deep catch-all drawer in the family room, the top drawer of a chest containing otherwise boring material.

If she’d been an ordinary Grandma, I guess she would have called it a junk drawer, but junk drawers typically are located in the kitchen, and she was anything but ordinary.

She called it her “swishing drawer.”

Grandma’s swishing drawer was the only storage recepticle in the home which we were allowed to mess with, but don’t get me wrong. The swishing drawer was fraught with adventure, pregnant with discovery, and perilous with common household danger.

For some reason, even though she had a vanity in her bedroom which held her make-up, perfume, and false eyelashes, the swishing drawer overflowed with nail polishes and manicure stuff. Scissors, tweezers, emory boards both new and ancient, cuticle pusher-downers, and the most audacious colors you can imagine.

“Tangerine,” “Red Hot Pepper,” “Coral Reef,” “Wine and Roses,” and “Sand Dune.” And, of course, so that she could at least occasionally pretend to be sedate: “Clear.”

I loved to pull out all the little bottles and line them up on top of the chest, from the least crazy to the most “out there.” Once I had the bottles out of the way, the in-depth swishing could begin.

There were packages of a thousand triangle-shaped black “corners” she considered using to attach snapshots to photo album pages. I say considered because the swishing drawer was filled with photos, some in their original Kodak envelopes, and some strays all on their own. I don’t think she ever actually mounted any of them in albums.

Little round hole-punch reinforcements with sticky glue on the back skittered through the drawer with abandon, though I can’t honestly remember Grandma having a three-ring binder.

Embroidery floss, crochet hooks, knitting needles, and a darning egg whetted my appetite for the needlecrafts, and hardly a visit to Grandma’s ended without her helping me learn a new skill.

But that would happen in the afternoon, after her chores were done. In the morning, it was just me and the drawer. She’d set up her ironing board in the kitchen and pretty soon I’d hear her running a sinkful of water. She’d be a while, I knew, once she started making up the starch in the sink and dipping Grandpa’s dress shirts in the concoction.

“You OK in there, Kate?” she’d call.

“I’m fine,” I’d say. “Just swishing.”

“Well, have fun.”

I’d plunge both hands in and swish my way through handkerchiefs, tiny packages of Kleenex, batteries, an address book, a crossword puzzle dictionary, a magnifying glass, a book of stamps, paper clips, a pocketwatch, newspaper clippings about people dead and alive and medical conditions I sure hoped she didn’t have, bookmarks, a coin purse with a few Buffalo nickels and a couple $2 bills inside, and a rubber-banded stack of letters addressed to “Carl and Bernice Pattengale, Grandview, Missouri.”

Yesterday, when I visited Mom in the nursing home, she asked me about a watch that had gone missing. My Mom is perhaps the most lackadaisical housekeeper God ever made, so I’m not surprised that she’s lost something.

“I haven’t seen it since you were in the hospital,” I said.

“It’s got to be here somewhere, Katy. See that top drawer of the night stand? Go swishing…”

So I swished and swished, digging up get-well cards from cousins in Scotland and empty candy wrappers, and manicure scissiors and emory boards, both new and ancient. There was an address book, a few newspaper clippings, and a coin purse made to look like a beaded slot machine.

I felt like a curious little girl again, my mother playing the part of Grandma.

I didn’t find the watch she’s missing, but I found something much more important. I found out that some things aren’t meant to change, and swishing drawers are one of them.

“It’s not here, Mom,” I finally said, worried she’d be frustrated.

“I know,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “But wasn’t that fun?”

Posted by Katy on 10/15/05
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D-Day (#567)

So I’ve wheeled Mom into her dining room for lunch, and I’m about to say good-bye for the day. I bend down to hug her, and she leans her head against my chest.

“Who loves ya, babe?” I say. She nods her head but doesn’t answer, so I fill in the blanks. “Katy loves ya, right?”

She smiles and nods again. I turn to leave, and then I hear her voice calling after me.

“Love you, Diane!”

I turn around. “Diane? Who’s Diane?”

“Well,” she says, “I call your sister Mary by the name of Donna, so I thought I’d call you Diane.”

“Does this have something to do with the Lennon Sisters?” I ask. “Because when I was heavier, you used to say I looked like Peggy Lennon…”

“And you did,” she says.

“So now that I’m thinner, you think I look like the skinny Lennon Sister, Diane?”

She rolls her eyes. “This has nothing to do with the Lennon Sisters.”

“Well if Mary is Donna and I’m Diane, does that mean Liz is now Dierdre and Bridget is Demi?”

She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Of course not, silly.”

I laugh and head for the lobby. “OK, Mom. I’ll see you later.”

“Whatever you say, Diane.”

Posted by Katy on 10/14/05
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Passing (#566)

Every once in a great while, a stranger catches my eye for no reason in particular, except an astonishing sense of deja-vu or a fleeting feeling of what-might-have-been.

It’s happening again, right this minute—and like always, I’m caught off guard.

I realize full well that once she crosses the street and rounds the bend, with me walking in the opposite direction, I’ll never see her again in this lifetime. She’ll blend into the crowd of window-shoppers and I’ll turn into the coffee shop as if nothing has just happened.

Suddenly it occurs to me that this seems wrong somehow. I’m startled by the thought.

Why should it matter to either one of us? Hundreds of others have passed me by on my afternoon stroll, our eyes never meeting, our smiles unexchanged. Why should she be any different?

Because our eyes do meet, that’s why.

If only for a second, a glint of sunlight passes between the branches of a blazing maple tree and cuts a path between us. We look up, startled to be face-to-face, struck speechless. We keep walking away from each other, though, as if we notice nothing.

What else can we do?

Even if I run into her again someday, I’ll never remember her, I tell myself. She’s unremarkable in appearance, not particularly fashionable or dramatically blonde or shockingly thin.

She’s just a girl, like me.

It’s the falling leaves, that’s all. They’ve hypnotized me again, they’ve held me sway under the October spell of their sunkissed dance until I’ve come to imagine that she and I are destined to meet, that if I don’t turn back and speak to her now, both of our lives will end up missing something—someone—we were meant to know.

I don’t say a word, but I know what I would say if I had the courage. I would stop in my tracks, smile like I’d known her forever, and say, “It’s you.”

Her eyes would flutter with confusion, and then twinkle with amusement and recognition before she’d finally say, “And it’s you.”

That’s exactly what would happen, don’t you think?

It’s you.

Posted by Katy on 10/13/05
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No Comment? (#516)

Tomorrow is October 13.

For those of you who comment here, I hope it will not be a date which long sticks in your minds as the one about which you warned me. I hope that this site undergoes a smooth transition from what (and where) it is now to what (and where) it shall be.

All I know for sure is that BlogBack will no longer be handling comments just a few hours from now. And that because comments have become such an important part of my raison d'etre, I am filled with fear and trembling.

What if something goes dreadfully wrong? What if every collected comment here is lost forever, and those comments still to come are not able to be brought to fruition?

Doug, my husband and tech guy, is doing...something...in this regard. He is switching fallible over from one...um, thing to another, uh...deal. It could have something to do with servers, I suppose. Or server farms. I cannot say. I only know that he's worked on it until late into the night for many weeks now, and still he seems unsure what the outcome will be.

I've heard the term Cold Fusion bandied about, but I'm not sure why. I'm not even certain what Cold Fusion is, only that it gives me a little chill whenever I say it out loud. Fallible is about to leave it behind, I believe, but if so, what will take its place?

Doug tried to explain the process to me tonight over dinner, he really did. He said, "Let me put it in terms you'll understand," and then he gave it his best shot. When I failed to comprehend his layman's lingo, instead of dumbing it down yet another huge notch, he spoke at a higher volume.

Suffice it to say that when you see fallible next, it will likely look somewhat different, but I'm betting that will be much less of an issue for you than it will be for me. Because you probably understand completely what's to come on October 13, while I am wholly mystified.

I'll bet you never would have guessed that about me, would you?

Posted by Katy on 10/12/05
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Doug And Katy Both Dodge Bullets! (#517)

Well, this is a red-letter day. Not only did I find out that my biopsy turned up no skin cancer, but Doug found out his brain is "unremarkable."

When you get to be our ages, believe me, unremarkable is the best word on earth! It beats "interesting" any day of the week.

Thank you, Lord, for the mercies in each morning.

Posted by Katy on 10/12/05
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Umm…Yeah. Can I Get Onion Rings With Those Broken Ribs? (#518)

Lately, I've had a craving for onion rings that I just can't seem to satisfy. Maybe it's because they go so darned great with ribs, and I've got ribs on my mind all the time.

Especially, of course, broken ribs. And those would be my mom's.

Just before I stepped into the shower this morning, onion rings sounded good, and I knew that had to be bad. And then I remember thinking, "They're going to call me any minute from the Funny Farm to say she's fallen."

But a girl has to shower no matter what, right? I mean, if I'm going to spend the day in the ER, I'd rather smell fresh and antiseptic if at all possible.

The second I turned the water off, before I'd even grabbed a towel, Doug stuck his head in the bathroom. "Your mom fell a couple of hours ago. They're sending her in an ambulance."

"Yeah, I know. I'll be ready in a sec."

Nine weeks to the day since she last broke bones, another broken rib. They didn't admit her, but they sent her home with instructions to use a breathing machine and walk (with help!) to avoid pneumonia.

I haven't had time to stop for my onion rings, but the craving hasn't lifted, either. Dear Lord, I wish it would.

Posted by Katy on 10/08/05
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What Are The Odds? (#519)

Today I awakened feeling like I need to make a solemn commitment to you, my friends and readers. It's long overdue, but believe me when I say it's been weighing heavily on my mind for some time now.

I know, I know. You think I'm going to renew my reneged-upon promise to resist posting on panties. If only it were so.

No, today I make a fresh promise, one I've never made before, one which contains within its few words a sincere sentiment I hope with all my heart to accomplish: I will do everything within my power to prevent this blog from turning into nothing more than an old-fashioned "organ recital."

That's right. You deserve better. For the most part, you are young, healthy specimens who do not deserve to be brought down to my level of personal medical expertise. You have so much to live for, so many hopes, so many dreams--why should I be allowed, with a single post about a colonoscopy gone wrong or the scary label on a sterile needle package that reads "BiopsPunch," to dash your many illusions?

I should not be allowed to bring you down, and my commitment to you is that it won't happen again. Starting, I swear, tomorrow.

For today, though, I have to ask a question of the higher-math aficionados among you. Please, please send me your responses in the comment space provided here!

Suppose a woman develops a brain tumor called an "acoustic neuroma," which occurs in the population at the rate of 1 per 100,000. She has surgery to remove said tumor, which has robbed her of the hearing in one ear, and goes on to tell the story six years later. Her condition is not inheritable, nor is it catching.

What are the chances, I ask you, of said woman's husband noticing a marked hearing reduction in one ear only, going to an audiologist at the insistance of his worldy-wise wife, and being immediately scheduled for an MRI to look for an acoustic neuroma?

So far, that's where we are in the story. Next week, Doug has the MRI. The following week, we find out the results. Could it be statistically possible for both man and wife to develop matching tumors, which only occur in 1 out of 100,000 people out there in the normal world?

If you can do the math, I'd love to know the chances.

All I know is that when I told the nurse in my doctor's office about it the other day, while she prepped me for a needle biopsy to see if I've got basal cell carcinoma, she couldn't help laughing and saying, "Katy, it'd be just your luck."

Posted by Katy on 10/06/05
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Whiplash (#520)

So my mother's surgery date was all set for this Friday. I have lived with an ominous sense of dread I couldn't get rid of since I noted the event on my calendar right next to "Lynn Raymond's appendectomy."

Last night, I drew an x through Mom's surgery, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Monday, she and I spent the better part of the day at the hospital doing all the pre-op stuff. Lab work, filling out a million forms, meeting with the anesthesiologist, and--finally--having one last chat with the surgeon.

The doctor--the same man who one week earlier said "the bone has not healed, we'll need to operate"--entered the room and, without missing a pessimistic beat, began enumerating all the reasons why this surgery was a very bad idea.

He never brought up the standard stuff that they tell everyone, like you could get a blood clot in your leg and die, or you could never wake up from the anesthesia and die. That's the kind of stuff that highly-experienced patients like my mother and me wave off with a shrug and say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me something I don't know."

Instead, the good doctor talked about the risks that were specific to Mom and her medical conditions. Things like getting an infection which might not heal because of her diabetes, and ending up having to have her arm CUT OFF.

Whoa. That's a pretty drastic weightloss program, huh?

The risk of nerve damage was high, he said, and if it were to occur, she would completely lose the use of her arm and hand. Kind of like having her arm cut off, but the scale doesn't budge.

Then there's the fact that her bone is so soft that the plates and screws could detach and be floating around in there, necessitating more surgery.

He went on and on, for most of an hour. I finally said, "Doc, let me get this straight. Are you saying you don't want to do the surgery?"

You see, folks, it's just that my mom has some stuff wrong with her, and she's starting to freak out the professionals. She's an insulin-dependent diabetic, first of all. Then there's the Hepatits C, the congestive heart failure, the extreme osteoporosis with many bones at risk of spontaneous fracture, the obesity, sleep apnea, seizure disorder, blood clotting problems (she's a bleeder and sprouts fist size bruises out of thin air), and probably multiple myloma (a bone marrow cancer).

She also takes 18 prescription meds, but who's counting?

"Well," the doctor hedged. "I'm not exactly saying I don't want to do it. I think there's a somewhat better chance of having a successful outcome than an unsuccessful one..."

Sheesh.

Yesterday, Doug and I got Mom into another orthopedic doctor we've had lots of prior personal experience with. We know his personality and bedside manner better, and we decided if we ever needed a second opinion, now's the time.

"I concur with the other doc," Doc Number Two said. "There are too many risks going into this. I'm advising you wear the fracture brace for the rest of your life, and skip the surgery."

"Well," Mom said, "I'm already 75. How long can the rest of my life be?"

She's hates that brace, I'm telling you what, but she's decided living with the brace is far better than taking the chance of having to live without her arm. Monday they removed the sling and said she could start using her arm as much as possible. I've seen her arm twice now without the brace on, and it's, let's just say, freaky looking. Fortunately, from her vantage point, she can't see the way her upper arm contorts when she moves it.

Where do we go from here? I can't say for sure. I'm cancelling the surgery today. I've also got calls in to several people to try to get Mom's physical and occupational therapy reinstated, so that insurance will start paying again for these days in the nursing home. Our hope is to get her back into her independent living apartment, but we may have to move her into assisted living. Time will tell.

As for me? While I'm waiting for the phone to ring, I'm going to take a nap. If it turns into a nice, long one, that will be just fine with me.

Posted by Katy on 10/05/05
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Personal blog of christian writer & fallible mom Katy McKenna Raymond in Kansas City, Missouri Katy is represented by Greg Johnson at WordServe Literary Read more Katy at LateBoomer.net Follow Katy on Twitter Follow Katy on Facebook 123 Recent Posts Try Becoming Brenda Starr Off Beat Scattered That’s It So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What? The Spoon Sciatica Sweetheart A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices. As with everything in life, balance is key. Slow down, you move too fast… Yeah, I know. I have issues. Search Advanced Search Syndicate Login E me at katy @ ngenius.com	Chicken! (#575) “The chicken!” It must be difficult to awaken on a Friday morning to those words being shouted by the wife of your youth. I will never know just how difficult. Doug jumped out of bed and said, “What? What chicken? Where? I’ll catch it!” No, silly. It’s not a live chicken, nor is it a recently dead one running around with its head cut off. It’s the six pounds of chicken thighs that have been thawed in the fridge for three days and must be grilled TODAY or they won’t be good anymore! I woke up instantly alert this morning, raring to go with my obsessive/compulsive list of stuff I usually spend ALL NIGHT thinking about. We ate dinner at Scott and Brooke’s house last night (so yummy!) and then I couldn’t go to sleep until around one. I get all wound up when I’m having fun and have never figured out how to wind back down in time to call it a night. But even though I only got six hours of sleep, they were the BEST six hours I’ve had in years. I only got up twice to go to the bathroom and didn’t lie in bed afterwards wide awake, thinking. And thinking. And thinking. Nor did I have any nightmares, night sweats, or any dreams at all that I can remember. It was glorious, people. It reminds me of one of my favorite phrases in all of Christmas Caroldom: “Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.” Ah…deep and dreamless sleep. The kind so fabulous that you wake up chirping about chicken. Posted by Katy on 10/28/05 Permalink Connectivity Versus Productivity: I Report, You Decide (#574) If you had to choose between connectivity and productivity, which way would the balance shift? I’m afraid I’ve become a slave to connectivity. And boy, does my productivity suffer because of it. I probably have adult ADHD, or at least the AD part. I’m thinking my attention span isn’t long enough to fully embrace the AD and the HD at the same time. Sigh. I love the Internet. I really do. And I’m so in love with email that I might as well—as my father would suggest—marry it. But along with some other needed changes I’m making in my life, including sacrificing the viewing of Lost for the sake of recapturing some Lost Time, I’m going to be self-limiting my connectivity. I’ve got dreams and goals and things I’m supposed to be accomplishing with what’s left of my ever-shortening lifespan. Am I really a better person because I spent two weeks of my life soaking up Katrina coverage? How about that week after Christmas, glued to the news day and night after the tsunami? Sure, I wrote a couple checks for relief efforts, but I’d be fooling myself to say my obsession with bad news makes me a more useful citizen of God’s kingdom. To be honest, I’m trembling a bit just thinking about tipping the scale toward productivity. I’m a bloomin’ connectivity addict, and I need help! Just so you know. Posted by Katy on 10/25/05 Permalink Before And After (#573) Write the names on the backs of aging photographs, even though you know perfectly well which of your children had ringlets of wispy blond hair, and wore the pale green sleeper while clutching the blanket with the embroidered rosebuds on its satin edge. Write the names on the backs of the photographs. Do it for the sake of those who will come after you, as a common courtesy, a loving legacy, a silent witness to you having been here, a reminiscent nod to the fleeting prime of your life. Do it because you believe not only in your own short story, but in the tiny jot or tittle you represent in God’s redemptive story on the earth. He put you here, He’s authoring the script of your life and of your faith, but you have a part to play. Write the names on the backs of the fading photographs, and the dates, and the places, too. Don’t put it off, foolishly trusting that cognition will always serve, and that the lines and faces and scenes you’ve memorized so well will always be written on the tablet of your consciousness. One day, many years from now, you may shuffle through these photographs and wonder about the handsome young men, the beautiful babies, the brides, the smiling youths in caps and gowns. Turn the photographs over then, when you are old. Read the names of those you’ve loved and, every once in a while, you’ll see your own name, too. Remember, for the sake of of those who will come after, all the ones who’ve gone before. Posted by Katy on 10/25/05 Permalink Late Bloomer? (#572) “Have you finished your therapies for today?” I ask my mom on arriving for a morning visit. “I’m half done,” she says. “I’ll finish later. All the therapists and nurses have been called to a meeting, and I know why.” Sounds fishy to me, and I’ll bet it does to you, too. “Okay, Mom. I’ll bite. Why are they all in a meeting at the same time?” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “To talk about….her.” She points through the drawn curtain, toward her roomie, Inez. “What’s up with Inez?” I ask. Mom shushes me. “She’s just pretending to be asleep. She’s listening to every word we say. Keep it down!” I lean in closer, touch her hand, and mimic her whisper. “What’s up with Inez?” “Her daughter-in-law was here at six a.m. When Inez didn’t open her eyes, the woman said, ‘Are you on drugs?’ And then Inez said, ‘Yes. They give me drugs to make me sleep.’” “So, let me get this straight. Do you think someone here has been slipping mickies into her V8?” “I know so. Her daughter-in-law started packing her stuff up right then.” Mom pointed to the clock on the wall. “See that? That’s all she’s got left that’s not packed. She’s leaving today, and I’m thinking it will be on the daughter-in-law’s lunch hour.” I listen closely for Inez’s characteristic death rattle. Sure enough, the old gal’s asleep. She couldn’t fake that noise if she tried. I get up and move across the room, passing Inez’s bed, toward her wardrobe closet. I open it as stealthily as I’ve ever done anything in my life, and sure enough, nothing has been packed at all. I sneak back to Mom’s side of the room. “Mom, everything’s still on hangers. I don’t think she’s going anywhere…” By the sounds of her, of course, I think she may soon be going to her final destination, but I don’t say so. “I could have sworn that daughter-in-law of hers was packing. And that would be against the rules of this place. You have to give them seven weeks’ notice when you’re moving out.” “Seven weeks?” I say. “Do you mean seven days?” “Isn’t that the same thing?” I try not to appear startled. “Anyway, Mom, I’m sure Becky will be in soon to do your physical therapy. The meeting must be nearly over.” “I hope so,” she says. “I talked to the guy who helps me get dressed and told him all about poor Inez. He didn’t act surprised at all that they’re drugging her, which made me wonder if he’s in on it, too. Do you know what he said?” I can’t begin to guess. “What, Mom?” She gazes earnestly into my eyes and squeezes my hand, as if to impart strength for what’s to come. “Next they’re going to give her cocaine.” I burst out laughing, and don’t care whether I awaken Inez or not. “Mom, you’ve missed your calling. You should have written suspense novels.” She laughs, too, and then she smiles for longer than usual, as if she’s just imagining potential career possibilities for the very first time. Posted by Katy on 10/20/05 Permalink The Good Stuff (#571) When I was a little kid, we wouldn’t have dreamed of throwing a tantrum in the A&P. For one thing, my grandfather was an accountant who worked in their big office downtown. How would it look if his grandkids were the type who threw themselves in front of the Hershey bars and pitched a fit? For another thing, we knew everyone in the A&P. Joyce, the gal whose check-out line my mom always chose over Jo Ann’s even though Jo Ann was nearly as lightning-fast, never failed to address Lizzie and Mary Baillie and me by name, and sometimes gave us each a stick of gum if we behaved. The A&P might as well have been an extension of St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, for that matter. Whenever you showed up (except on Sunday, of course, when all shops were closed for the Sabbath), there was Mrs. Ryffe, Mrs. Park, Mrs. Ramm, and Mrs. Como. (We never saw Father Jacobowski or Monsignor Schumacher or Sister Sheila Ann there, though, which pretty much sealed my belief that holy people—like the saints in heaven—don’t need to eat.) If we acted up in the store, believe you me, those ladies of the church would have been watching for us in line at confession on Saturday. So we didn’t nag or whine or pound our fists to get what we wanted, and yet I remember lots of fun stuff being hauled home from the store—the kind of stuff that cost between a nickel and twenty-nine cents back in those days. When I say “lots of fun stuff,” you gotta understand I mean maybe one small item per child every couple of months. And I suspect even those purchases delayed us getting new saddle oxfords until our toes were pinched. Back in the day, when kids were actually rewarded for good behavior instead of bad, Little Golden Books rated. My mother still has our 45-year-old copy of “The Poky Little Puppy,” a classic which I saw a youngster bawling for just yesterday at Walmart. (Yeah, right…) A yo-yo was something which never failed to thrill, and a set of jacks—even though we knew our knuckles would be skinned by sunset—meant neighborhood fun on the sidewalks of Grand Avenue. Doug says that marbles were high on his list, and that explains the huge coffee can of marbles that occupies a shelf in our basement. (I call the can our “retirement fund,” but I still haven’t gotten around to researching the value of antique marbles…if we end up moving to one of those countries where you can have a maid, a gardener, and a cook on an income of $600 per month, you’ll know the marbles didn’t pan out.) When he wasn’t losing his marbles, he was enjoying the comic books he scored for being an exemplary kid. He also remembers distinctly when Superballs hit the market, and he was such a nice boy that he collected quite an assortment of them. Silly Putty was a perrenial (or, perhaps, perennial…) favorite. My dad, who normally wouldn’t entered a shop to save his life, once came home from work with three egg-shaped containers of the goofy stuff—one for each of the three of us, all in bed with the mumps. Yeah. Silly Putty ruled. What about Magic Slates? Do they still make those? I craved fresh Magic Slates almost like my daily bread. I loved etching intricate pictures on the filmy panel, but I only wanted to lift the film to make my artwork “disappear” if I hated my picture. If I loved it, I hid the Magic Slate. Who wants to lose a creation they love? The only solution I could think of was to be really, REALLY good the next time we went to the store, so that maybe by some miracle involving my mother having nineteen more cents to spare, I could have another one. Only one item gave me shivers if it made it into the grocery cart and all the way home—a wooden paddle with a ball on the end of a rubber band. Those puppies cost a quarter, which would have been on the high end of disposable income in our family. And they lasted less than a day before vigorous play resulted in the ball breaking loose from the paddle—and then what? You can guess what, that’s what. Now that I think about it, Mom never objected when one of us wanted the paddle with the ball. You might say she saw the “end” from the beginning. Any trinkets you remember scoring from forays to the grocery or the five-and-dime? And did you get them because you were very, very good, or because you were horrid? Posted by Katy on 10/19/05 Permalink Autumn Vision (#570) In the wee hours last night, during one of my frequent periods of obtuse wakefulness, a vision came to me. A beautiful young woman with light brown hair down to her waist pushed a pram down the sidewalks of a cozy neighborhood. She wore red lipstick and rouge, and a triangular silky headscarf tied under her chin. A little girl held on to one edge of the baby carriage, walking to the left of her mother, and another tiny girl did the same on the other side. Leaves skitterred across the cracks in the concrete, a few of them disguising a hole so that the oldest child stepped in it by accident. “Step in a hole, break your mother’s sugar bowl,” the lady said, laughing. The lady pointed out bungalows along the way. “That’s where Janice and Jeanette live, remember?” And then a few houses later, “Patty Mahoney lives in that house. You went there for her birthday party last Saturday.” The oldest of the girls was nearly six that day. Of course, she remembered Patty’s birthday party! All the girls were there: Kathy, Mary Beth, Frances, Ann Marie. She’d wondered if everyone’s mother had been asked to dress the party-goers alike in baby-blue full-skirted dressed with big-bow sashes, because that’s what each girl wore. That alone had seemed like a miracle to a five-year-old. The oldest girl peeked into the stroller to make sure the baby girl was still asleep, and smiled. A glass bottle of milk lay curled up in the baby’s chubby arm, and her rosebud lips made her look just like a Gerber baby. “Look both ways,” the woman said when they came upon a street corner, although she provided all the protection the children needed, and they knew it. The oldest of the girls couldn’t help noticing, while they crossed the quiet street, how the wind picked up just enough to blow their matching flowered skirts in the same direction. She thought about how impossibly wonderful it was that her grandmother had made those skirts, and how no other mother with her little girls looked as pretty as they did right then. She even thought that God was watching them cross that street, and that He was the One who sent the wind. She knew He must love looking down at the mother and the little girls, that they must have made a beautiful picture for Him that fine fall day. Even now, whenever the vision comes to me again on a crisp October night, I think of God and how happy we must have made Him. Posted by Katy on 10/18/05 Permalink Now That Really IS A Problem! (#569) “I disagree with your previous caller,” said the man to the host of the local call-in show this morning. “People really are more rude to others these days, but I don’t think it’s because their self-esteem is so high…” “Sir, I think that caller was just kidding.” “Oh. Well, that’s the problem with radio. You can’t see the inflections. You can only hear the words.” It’s always something. Posted by Katy on 10/17/05 Permalink Swish (#568) My grandmother, perhaps the most fastidious housekeeper God ever created, nevertheless had a six-inch-deep catch-all drawer in the family room, the top drawer of a chest containing otherwise boring material. If she’d been an ordinary Grandma, I guess she would have called it a junk drawer, but junk drawers typically are located in the kitchen, and she was anything but ordinary. She called it her “swishing drawer.” Grandma’s swishing drawer was the only storage recepticle in the home which we were allowed to mess with, but don’t get me wrong. The swishing drawer was fraught with adventure, pregnant with discovery, and perilous with common household danger. For some reason, even though she had a vanity in her bedroom which held her make-up, perfume, and false eyelashes, the swishing drawer overflowed with nail polishes and manicure stuff. Scissors, tweezers, emory boards both new and ancient, cuticle pusher-downers, and the most audacious colors you can imagine. “Tangerine,” “Red Hot Pepper,” “Coral Reef,” “Wine and Roses,” and “Sand Dune.” And, of course, so that she could at least occasionally pretend to be sedate: “Clear.” I loved to pull out all the little bottles and line them up on top of the chest, from the least crazy to the most “out there.” Once I had the bottles out of the way, the in-depth swishing could begin. There were packages of a thousand triangle-shaped black “corners” she considered using to attach snapshots to photo album pages. I say considered because the swishing drawer was filled with photos, some in their original Kodak envelopes, and some strays all on their own. I don’t think she ever actually mounted any of them in albums. Little round hole-punch reinforcements with sticky glue on the back skittered through the drawer with abandon, though I can’t honestly remember Grandma having a three-ring binder. Embroidery floss, crochet hooks, knitting needles, and a darning egg whetted my appetite for the needlecrafts, and hardly a visit to Grandma’s ended without her helping me learn a new skill. But that would happen in the afternoon, after her chores were done. In the morning, it was just me and the drawer. She’d set up her ironing board in the kitchen and pretty soon I’d hear her running a sinkful of water. She’d be a while, I knew, once she started making up the starch in the sink and dipping Grandpa’s dress shirts in the concoction. “You OK in there, Kate?” she’d call. “I’m fine,” I’d say. “Just swishing.” “Well, have fun.” I’d plunge both hands in and swish my way through handkerchiefs, tiny packages of Kleenex, batteries, an address book, a crossword puzzle dictionary, a magnifying glass, a book of stamps, paper clips, a pocketwatch, newspaper clippings about people dead and alive and medical conditions I sure hoped she didn’t have, bookmarks, a coin purse with a few Buffalo nickels and a couple $2 bills inside, and a rubber-banded stack of letters addressed to “Carl and Bernice Pattengale, Grandview, Missouri.” Yesterday, when I visited Mom in the nursing home, she asked me about a watch that had gone missing. My Mom is perhaps the most lackadaisical housekeeper God ever made, so I’m not surprised that she’s lost something. “I haven’t seen it since you were in the hospital,” I said. “It’s got to be here somewhere, Katy. See that top drawer of the night stand? Go swishing…” So I swished and swished, digging up get-well cards from cousins in Scotland and empty candy wrappers, and manicure scissiors and emory boards, both new and ancient. There was an address book, a few newspaper clippings, and a coin purse made to look like a beaded slot machine. I felt like a curious little girl again, my mother playing the part of Grandma. I didn’t find the watch she’s missing, but I found something much more important. I found out that some things aren’t meant to change, and swishing drawers are one of them. “It’s not here, Mom,” I finally said, worried she’d be frustrated. “I know,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “But wasn’t that fun?” Posted by Katy on 10/15/05 Permalink D-Day (#567) So I’ve wheeled Mom into her dining room for lunch, and I’m about to say good-bye for the day. I bend down to hug her, and she leans her head against my chest. “Who loves ya, babe?” I say. She nods her head but doesn’t answer, so I fill in the blanks. “Katy loves ya, right?” She smiles and nods again. I turn to leave, and then I hear her voice calling after me. “Love you, Diane!” I turn around. “Diane? Who’s Diane?” “Well,” she says, “I call your sister Mary by the name of Donna, so I thought I’d call you Diane.” “Does this have something to do with the Lennon Sisters?” I ask. “Because when I was heavier, you used to say I looked like Peggy Lennon…” “And you did,” she says. “So now that I’m thinner, you think I look like the skinny Lennon Sister, Diane?” She rolls her eyes. “This has nothing to do with the Lennon Sisters.” “Well if Mary is Donna and I’m Diane, does that mean Liz is now Dierdre and Bridget is Demi?” She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Of course not, silly.” I laugh and head for the lobby. “OK, Mom. I’ll see you later.” “Whatever you say, Diane.” Posted by Katy on 10/14/05 Permalink Passing (#566) Every once in a great while, a stranger catches my eye for no reason in particular, except an astonishing sense of deja-vu or a fleeting feeling of what-might-have-been. It’s happening again, right this minute—and like always, I’m caught off guard. I realize full well that once she crosses the street and rounds the bend, with me walking in the opposite direction, I’ll never see her again in this lifetime. She’ll blend into the crowd of window-shoppers and I’ll turn into the coffee shop as if nothing has just happened. Suddenly it occurs to me that this seems wrong somehow. I’m startled by the thought. Why should it matter to either one of us? Hundreds of others have passed me by on my afternoon stroll, our eyes never meeting, our smiles unexchanged. Why should she be any different? Because our eyes do meet, that’s why. If only for a second, a glint of sunlight passes between the branches of a blazing maple tree and cuts a path between us. We look up, startled to be face-to-face, struck speechless. We keep walking away from each other, though, as if we notice nothing. What else can we do? Even if I run into her again someday, I’ll never remember her, I tell myself. She’s unremarkable in appearance, not particularly fashionable or dramatically blonde or shockingly thin. She’s just a girl, like me. It’s the falling leaves, that’s all. They’ve hypnotized me again, they’ve held me sway under the October spell of their sunkissed dance until I’ve come to imagine that she and I are destined to meet, that if I don’t turn back and speak to her now, both of our lives will end up missing something—someone—we were meant to know. I don’t say a word, but I know what I would say if I had the courage. I would stop in my tracks, smile like I’d known her forever, and say, “It’s you.” Her eyes would flutter with confusion, and then twinkle with amusement and recognition before she’d finally say, “And it’s you.” That’s exactly what would happen, don’t you think? It’s you. Posted by Katy on 10/13/05 Permalink No Comment? (#516) Tomorrow is October 13. For those of you who comment here, I hope it will not be a date which long sticks in your minds as the one about which you warned me. I hope that this site undergoes a smooth transition from what (and where) it is now to what (and where) it shall be. All I know for sure is that BlogBack will no longer be handling comments just a few hours from now. And that because comments have become such an important part of my raison d'etre, I am filled with fear and trembling. What if something goes dreadfully wrong? What if every collected comment here is lost forever, and those comments still to come are not able to be brought to fruition? Doug, my husband and tech guy, is doing...something...in this regard. He is switching fallible over from one...um, thing to another, uh...deal. It could have something to do with servers, I suppose. Or server farms. I cannot say. I only know that he's worked on it until late into the night for many weeks now, and still he seems unsure what the outcome will be. I've heard the term Cold Fusion bandied about, but I'm not sure why. I'm not even certain what Cold Fusion is, only that it gives me a little chill whenever I say it out loud. Fallible is about to leave it behind, I believe, but if so, what will take its place? Doug tried to explain the process to me tonight over dinner, he really did. He said, "Let me put it in terms you'll understand," and then he gave it his best shot. When I failed to comprehend his layman's lingo, instead of dumbing it down yet another huge notch, he spoke at a higher volume. Suffice it to say that when you see fallible next, it will likely look somewhat different, but I'm betting that will be much less of an issue for you than it will be for me. Because you probably understand completely what's to come on October 13, while I am wholly mystified. I'll bet you never would have guessed that about me, would you? Posted by Katy on 10/12/05 Permalink Doug And Katy Both Dodge Bullets! (#517) Well, this is a red-letter day. Not only did I find out that my biopsy turned up no skin cancer, but Doug found out his brain is "unremarkable." When you get to be our ages, believe me, unremarkable is the best word on earth! It beats "interesting" any day of the week. Thank you, Lord, for the mercies in each morning. Posted by Katy on 10/12/05 Permalink Umm…Yeah. Can I Get Onion Rings With Those Broken Ribs? (#518) Lately, I've had a craving for onion rings that I just can't seem to satisfy. Maybe it's because they go so darned great with ribs, and I've got ribs on my mind all the time. Especially, of course, broken ribs. And those would be my mom's. Just before I stepped into the shower this morning, onion rings sounded good, and I knew that had to be bad. And then I remember thinking, "They're going to call me any minute from the Funny Farm to say she's fallen." But a girl has to shower no matter what, right? I mean, if I'm going to spend the day in the ER, I'd rather smell fresh and antiseptic if at all possible. The second I turned the water off, before I'd even grabbed a towel, Doug stuck his head in the bathroom. "Your mom fell a couple of hours ago. They're sending her in an ambulance." "Yeah, I know. I'll be ready in a sec." Nine weeks to the day since she last broke bones, another broken rib. They didn't admit her, but they sent her home with instructions to use a breathing machine and walk (with help!) to avoid pneumonia. I haven't had time to stop for my onion rings, but the craving hasn't lifted, either. Dear Lord, I wish it would. Posted by Katy on 10/08/05 Permalink What Are The Odds? (#519) Today I awakened feeling like I need to make a solemn commitment to you, my friends and readers. It's long overdue, but believe me when I say it's been weighing heavily on my mind for some time now. I know, I know. You think I'm going to renew my reneged-upon promise to resist posting on panties. If only it were so. No, today I make a fresh promise, one I've never made before, one which contains within its few words a sincere sentiment I hope with all my heart to accomplish: I will do everything within my power to prevent this blog from turning into nothing more than an old-fashioned "organ recital." That's right. You deserve better. For the most part, you are young, healthy specimens who do not deserve to be brought down to my level of personal medical expertise. You have so much to live for, so many hopes, so many dreams--why should I be allowed, with a single post about a colonoscopy gone wrong or the scary label on a sterile needle package that reads "BiopsPunch," to dash your many illusions? I should not be allowed to bring you down, and my commitment to you is that it won't happen again. Starting, I swear, tomorrow. For today, though, I have to ask a question of the higher-math aficionados among you. Please, please send me your responses in the comment space provided here! Suppose a woman develops a brain tumor called an "acoustic neuroma," which occurs in the population at the rate of 1 per 100,000. She has surgery to remove said tumor, which has robbed her of the hearing in one ear, and goes on to tell the story six years later. Her condition is not inheritable, nor is it catching. What are the chances, I ask you, of said woman's husband noticing a marked hearing reduction in one ear only, going to an audiologist at the insistance of his worldy-wise wife, and being immediately scheduled for an MRI to look for an acoustic neuroma? So far, that's where we are in the story. Next week, Doug has the MRI. The following week, we find out the results. Could it be statistically possible for both man and wife to develop matching tumors, which only occur in 1 out of 100,000 people out there in the normal world? If you can do the math, I'd love to know the chances. All I know is that when I told the nurse in my doctor's office about it the other day, while she prepped me for a needle biopsy to see if I've got basal cell carcinoma, she couldn't help laughing and saying, "Katy, it'd be just your luck." Posted by Katy on 10/06/05 Permalink Whiplash (#520) So my mother's surgery date was all set for this Friday. I have lived with an ominous sense of dread I couldn't get rid of since I noted the event on my calendar right next to "Lynn Raymond's appendectomy." Last night, I drew an x through Mom's surgery, and breathed a sigh of relief. Monday, she and I spent the better part of the day at the hospital doing all the pre-op stuff. Lab work, filling out a million forms, meeting with the anesthesiologist, and--finally--having one last chat with the surgeon. The doctor--the same man who one week earlier said "the bone has not healed, we'll need to operate"--entered the room and, without missing a pessimistic beat, began enumerating all the reasons why this surgery was a very bad idea. He never brought up the standard stuff that they tell everyone, like you could get a blood clot in your leg and die, or you could never wake up from the anesthesia and die. That's the kind of stuff that highly-experienced patients like my mother and me wave off with a shrug and say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me something I don't know." Instead, the good doctor talked about the risks that were specific to Mom and her medical conditions. Things like getting an infection which might not heal because of her diabetes, and ending up having to have her arm CUT OFF. Whoa. That's a pretty drastic weightloss program, huh? The risk of nerve damage was high, he said, and if it were to occur, she would completely lose the use of her arm and hand. Kind of like having her arm cut off, but the scale doesn't budge. Then there's the fact that her bone is so soft that the plates and screws could detach and be floating around in there, necessitating more surgery. He went on and on, for most of an hour. I finally said, "Doc, let me get this straight. Are you saying you don't want to do the surgery?" You see, folks, it's just that my mom has some stuff wrong with her, and she's starting to freak out the professionals. She's an insulin-dependent diabetic, first of all. Then there's the Hepatits C, the congestive heart failure, the extreme osteoporosis with many bones at risk of spontaneous fracture, the obesity, sleep apnea, seizure disorder, blood clotting problems (she's a bleeder and sprouts fist size bruises out of thin air), and probably multiple myloma (a bone marrow cancer). She also takes 18 prescription meds, but who's counting? "Well," the doctor hedged. "I'm not exactly saying I don't want to do it. I think there's a somewhat better chance of having a successful outcome than an unsuccessful one..." Sheesh. Yesterday, Doug and I got Mom into another orthopedic doctor we've had lots of prior personal experience with. We know his personality and bedside manner better, and we decided if we ever needed a second opinion, now's the time. "I concur with the other doc," Doc Number Two said. "There are too many risks going into this. I'm advising you wear the fracture brace for the rest of your life, and skip the surgery." "Well," Mom said, "I'm already 75. How long can the rest of my life be?" She's hates that brace, I'm telling you what, but she's decided living with the brace is far better than taking the chance of having to live without her arm. Monday they removed the sling and said she could start using her arm as much as possible. I've seen her arm twice now without the brace on, and it's, let's just say, freaky looking. Fortunately, from her vantage point, she can't see the way her upper arm contorts when she moves it. Where do we go from here? I can't say for sure. I'm cancelling the surgery today. I've also got calls in to several people to try to get Mom's physical and occupational therapy reinstated, so that insurance will start paying again for these days in the nursing home. Our hope is to get her back into her independent living apartment, but we may have to move her into assisted living. Time will tell. As for me? While I'm waiting for the phone to ring, I'm going to take a nap. If it turns into a nice, long one, that will be just fine with me. Posted by Katy on 10/05/05 Permalink Page 37 of 84 pages « First < 35 36 37 38 39 > Last »


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Personal blog of christianwriter & fallible momKaty McKenna Raymondin Kansas City, Missouri

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