Life Signs

I retired a year ago, after my husband went into a medical crisis. Jerry spent time in intensive care at Crittenton Hospital, where the nurses were wonderful and probably saved his life. Diabetes, heart and artery disease, small strokes, sepsis and sudden kidney failure had all taken a toll on him and working full time with a disabled daughter and dangerously ill husband was taking a toll on me.
The first week of official retirement, my ten year old grandson came to spend winter break with his mom, grandpa and me.
Dustin played happily all week while my husband recovered in his recliner and our daughter rested or slept on our couch because her furnace was out again and she sleeps most of the time.
Suddenly boy's chin clunked to his chest as he replicated a skateboard jump with twist off a 12 inch high jogging trampoline.

"I'm okay," Dustin said, but his face turned white as a hard boiled egg. Chills shook his body. He couldn't turn his head or lift his chin.
I put him to bed but became alarmed a few hours later when he said he couldn't raise or turn his head.
His dad took him to Beaumont Hospital, where X-rays showed two dislocated vertebrae, C2 and C3. The doctor said, "Any sudden movement could sever his spinal cord."
His dad feared losing his job if he missed work that night, so I arrived in time to ride the ambulance that transported Dustin from Troy to Royal Oak, where he was admitted to intensive care.
The ambulance driver said sometimes little boys have conditions that look very serious, but they recover very quickly. It reassured me, but then I went numb with panic when we were met at the Emergency Room by a team of pediatricians and specialists, plus a Chaplin who offered me "grief counseling."
Dustin looked small in a blue cervical collar big enough to be a flotation device. He hardly spoke, except to ask for help drinking or sitting, and how soon before he could skateboard again and when his parents could come. The hospital said the insurance would only pay for 48 hours care, so Dustin was being sent home when he should have stayed in the hospital.
He slept most of the ten days until the collar came off, until the danger of paralysis passed.
He recovered.
Not me.
Thumps, cries, screams, any threat to his head or neck made me panic.
Cries and screams were usually reactions to the Lions game on t.v., a missing remote control device, or Dustin's $19,000 bill from the hospital which, due to disputes between medical and homeowner's insurance, hospital billing and two divorced parents, I feared having to pay,
Today when Dustin screamed, everyone ran. We found him bent over the bathroom sink, crying, "A scar! On my chin! I can't go to school!"
"It's a scratch," I said.
He put his face up to the mirror. "It looks like a tattoo! I zipped my skin when I zipped my hoodie. Cool!"
Trying to prevent another crisis created contagious panic.
 I'll try to remember thumps, cries and screams are signs of life.
And remember to embrace life instead of bracing myself against the bumps and detours on its rocky, awesome road

Mom versus the wheelchair

For two years, Mother refused to use a walker or wheelchair, but she could barely walk. She wore an alert button to summon help when she fell, but that didn't stop her from getting concussions and injuring her knee.

"Give me one good excuse why you won't get a wheelchair." I said.

"People will think I'm old," the eighty three year old said.

"I'll get you a helmet with a sweatshirt that says "Test Driver," I said.

"People will feel sorry for me," she said. 

"No they won't. They'll get mad you're blocking their way with the chair."

"I don't want people to get mad at me," she said.

"Too late. Each time you fall and get hurt, you block hallways and grocery aisles until the ambulance arrives."

"I heard someone got electrocuted in an electric wheel chair," she said.

"I heard anacondas dwell in the plumbing of Rochester Hills," I said, "but I still go barefoot in the bathroom. In the dark." 

"But you screamed like an idiot when you stepped on my sponge roller the other night. Take no chance, have no fear, that's my motto," Mom said.  

The phone rang.

My younger sister, calling from California.

Mom turned on the speaker phone. She said she had good news.

"Oh!" Mother said, "did the doctors find out what's wrong with your knees so you can go back to work?"

"No! I can shop, cook, clean, my knees stopped hurting, I've stopped falling, and I don't need surgery. All because I bought a wheelchair," my sister said.

"But you're so young!" Mother said.

"I looked older hobbling and falling down every day," Sis said.

Mother finally went to an orthopedic specialist to see what she needed.

  

Caregiver Survival

Being somewhat ambulatory in a household where everyone else is less than somewhat, I've found the following  choices to be especially helpful.
First, faith.
Faith in God.
Faith in a better future, even if the future is as close as tomorrow and the "better" is as small as a cup of hot chocolate on a cold afternoon, an entertaining television show, laughter following a night of tending to someone in pain or a day of taking reluctant people to doctor appointments and blood tests.
Faith that what I do for incapacitated or young relatives matters, even though mostly it's cooking, cleaning, driving, reassuring and making sure medications are properly taken, appointments are kept, reckless behavior is quashed, each chore is completed in time for the next chore.

Second, brief flights of freedom.
Hobbies that make me forget everything for awhile; for me, reading, art and creative writing.
Meeting a friend for lunch, because after people in my house are fed, they hardly notice my absence until dinner but in the evening they all want to tell me something or need help with forms or homework, and they fear the dark and my disappearance into it forever if I leave.
Sometimes a nap or a long, hot shower in the middle of the day constitutes escape and rejuvenation.

 Third, the Caregiver's Golden Rule: Remember to do unto one's self as one has given and done for others.

Fourth, faith.

Update on Daughter's Health

Jennifer says she is feeling emotionally better about feeling physically bad.

She is happy her doctor never called with her test results from the cat scan on her pancreas, assuming this means there were no irregularities.

She prefers to assume everything is all right, and it probably is, as far as something physicians can easily detect.

Meanwhile, she continues to lose weight and a size ten boy's t-shirt and basketball shorts fit her better than her own jeans and sweaters.

Her hands shake uncontrollably, and her eyelids flutter.

Her pain, feeling cold and exhausted means that her son's usual view of his mom is her face above a blanket.

While arguing with her, my husband received bad news from his doctor, and advice he has yet to take.

I decided I had better take care of myself, which care givers often forget to do.

My swollen knee was x-rayed, I was given anti inflammatory medication and I had an allergy shot at the highest dose yet.

By nightfall my face was so swelled, I could not see to fix supper.

My family tucked blankets around me and worried I might die.

Their fears were annoying and I must be equally annoying when I worry about them.
So I will try in future not to do that.
Their attempts to be comforting were comforting.
So I will try in the future to be more so.

Losing a job but finding work, part 3

After months of fearing homelessness and hoping for miracles, Mary and her husband decided to use some of their retirement savings to buy a home in Indiana, where relatives lived.

Paying cash gave them an advantage over other bidders.

Their new home is on ten acres instead of four, it cost $100,000 instead of $350,000 like their previous home, and it is bigger than the home they lost.

They are surrounded by forest yet only four miles from a major city, and Mary says it feels more like home than any where they ever lived, perhaps because it is completely paid for and "No one can take it away from us!"

Her husband's health improved despite the emotional stress of waiting for foreclosure, and the physical stress of moving their belongings by themselves, 370 miles, one truck load after another using their pick-up.

Mary drove to Michigan twice a month to work for a week at the retail store, and sometimes she drove by the home she once loved.

"It was so sad. We had asked the bank to let us refinance, but they would not allow that, and after we left, each time I drove by I saw more and more deterioration and signs of people breaking in. A year after we left, it still wasn't for sale and I noticed someone had ripped the boards off so I peeked inside the windows. The basement was flooded, and it looked like someone stole even the kitchen sink."

The store where she worked closed permanently, and she was eligible for unemployment benefits again.

A few months later, her husband's 99 weeks of unemployment ended but a month later he turned 62 and filed for Social Security.

Mary started a new job this month, working full time doing work she once performed in Bloomfield Hills for $15 more an hour than she earns now, but she is grateful.

"Our boys are happily married, successful, working in careers they love," she said, "But I tell them to recognize the difference between what they want and what they really need. "The landscaping, home improvements, vacations, cars, all that STUFF we bought sort of enslaved us, and it was the money we saved that saved us. Now we have freedom to relax, enjoy life, help our parents and visit friends and relatives. Life is good."

Losing a job but finding work, part 2

After the shock and humiliation of being fired passed, Mary found benefits.
Unemployment benefits paid 2/3 of her salary.
Arthritis symptoms and migraine headaches disappeared.
Blizzards she did not have to commute through made her happy to be inside in her lovely home.
After posting her resume and completing applications online a hundred times with no result, she took part time employment at a high-end fashion store, a job she always wanted, at 1/4 her former hourly pay.
"I loved helping women find flattering styles and hoped my degree would lead to a higher position," she said of a promotion that never came.
On holidays she drove to Florida, Georgia, and Indiana to visit relatives, becoming active in their lives now that she worked part-time.
Her husband purchased more flower bulbs, saplings, gardening gadgets and tools, making their four acres of land a show place for the gardening business he hoped to start if the unthinkable happened, and he lost his job of 37 years.
He was "let go" a year after Mary, at the age of 60.
"Before we were down-sized out of our jobs, we believed our good judgment and hard work would bring rewards in the form of higher pay," Mary said. "Not unemployment compensation or Social Security from early  retirement." 
She continued: "We couldn't make our $3,500 a month house payment, so we just waited for the mortgage foreclosure, tried to find jobs, and we grieved."
They considered starting a business in doggy daycare or flower and plant sales, discovering costs, regulations and zoning issues they never expected.
They started a business breeding golden retrievers. As a result they own four dogs they purchased to breed, plus the last litter, born a few days after learning two of the sold dogs suffered a potential birth defect. so none of their twelve animals could be sold or bred.
Their credit union let them live in the home for a year without paying on the mortgage, then offered a deed in lieu in return for the property.
"A deed in lieu frees you from your obligation to the mortgage holder, but it ruins your credit and bars you from another mortgage for seven years," Mary said.
Stay tuned for part three later this week

I wax no stalgic

I had a wonderful childhood, growing up in farm land  where everything was dangerous and exciting, but my overprotected grandson is bored.
My parents graduated from Central Michigan University and to protect us from the polio epidemic, they bought a farm house in the country.

Neighbor kids threw dried cow dung at each other like frisbees, and rode in the open bed of pick up trucks.

We jumped from haylofts, sometimes into a pen with a bull to outrun.

We treasured lead toys bigger than our hands, about as heavy as a bowling ball, and painted with lead paint, like the walls of our bedrooms.
Dentists put mercury in our fillings.

Our homes were insulated with asbestos.

We explored dense forests and gravel pits, four to eight children fearlessly led by an eight or nine year old and no one could swim.

Wasps nested under the outhouse holes where we set our posteriors.

There were lots of smells: outhouses, chicken coops, cows, kids that only took a bath once a week in a steel tub heated by tea kettles, but we were used to the odor of ourselves and each other and impervious to germs.

My grandson asked today if we are poor, because we eat a lot of chicken.

Some of my neighbors were so poor, they lacked electricity and indoor running water but they were only poor in earnings.
We were rich in all the ways that mattered, and we knew it.

Everyone owned land, Mother sewed us lovely clothes, we were never hungry or alone.

My grandson does not know that vegetables and tomatoes grow in dirt, or that it takes months to raise a baby chick, so it is eventually possible to steal its eggs and one day cut its head off, hold its feet and dunk its body into boiling water, twist and pull hot feathers off, burn off pin feathers with a candle, cut off neck and feet, extract gizzards, liver, egg sacs and worse, then cook it for three or four hours.

He does not know the meat he eats was once alive, and it died painfully to feed him.

He does not know that someone very poor and far away sews his jeans, jackets and t-shirts.

He is less rich than me when we lived on a farm.