Whoops! A red light

Dear People, (City of Fort Worth, Automated Red Light Enforcement)

It is plain to see that I ran that red light.  The worst part of the whole ordeal is that my granddaughter was in the car.  We had spent the day shopping for material to make doll clothes and she had said, “Oh Grannie, that light was red.”  Of course, it was too late.  I had desperately tried to get over, but being unfamiliar with the new roads, waited too long.  (No one was being too friendly.)

I do want to say this, ” I was sure the intersection was clear, but could not get even one more look up to check the light.”

So, to sum it all up – I am really sorry for breaking the red light rule.  Here is my punishment along with sending you the knowledge that my granddaughter (who was in a very tragic accident when a drunk driver hit her mother) will probably only remember that her Grannie Pam ran a red light and that, my friends, is a far worse punishment than the fine!

Love to All

A new route

 

 

 

We finally got our courage up and changed doctors.  Why is there such guilt associated with this particular move?  As the Man said, “But, I like Dr. XX so much.  I really hate to hurt his feelings.”  We just finally had to realize that it doesn’t matter if we really, really, really like him.  That’s not the point.  I really, really, really like my three-year old granddaughters, but I don’t think I want them treating us for illnesses (although sometimes their presence is more medicine that the doctor prescribes).

I am sick of doctors that are allergic to old people.  I have never understood the fixation with chronological age.  That must be obvious since the Man is 30 years older than I am; however, his blood pressure today was 120/60 while mine probably couldn’t be charted!  Age is a relative thing.  It’s all in the health.  I have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, have had a light stroke, migraines, etc.  The Man has none of these things.  The only thing wrong with him is his bones have served their time with hard work – way harder than most of us could even imagine.

His previous doctor said he had congestive heart failure.  I asked how he knew that – was it a blood test or could he detect it with the stethoscope?  No, he just said that most people at “his age” have some heart failure.  That went into his medical file.  How scientific was that, and now it follows him to every surgeon he will see.

The new doctor said she saw no signs of any heart failure and although many elderly do have some, it’s not a done deal.  And she also noted that there was no treatment going on for it in his chart.

No more bitching today.  It’s been too good a day.

By the way.  The new doctor is a woman.  Go girls!!

I don’t want to share the details

It’s my last post about The Man.  He is deteriorating, and I am loosing strength.  Everyone keeps saying why don’t you call me, let others help, but really what can they do?  Can they take care of his toileting needs?  Can they fix the foods that he likes?  Can they help him dress, change his soiled sheets, help him shave?  Can they talk to him to remind him of intimate moments to try to bring his mind back to the present?  Can they remind him of his role as a father, husband, lover, provider?  Can they infuse me with strength and rest?  It’s all mine at this point.  I intend to see it through.  I have never shirked a task, and this is one rough task.  Pray for his peace.

Spastic tubes???? Plllleeeeaaaasssseeee help us!!

Health Experts Dismiss Assertions on Rape

By PAM BELLUCK

Published: August 20, 2012

Dr. John C. Willke, a general practitioner with obstetric training and a former president of the National Right to Life Committee, was an early proponent of this view, articulating it in a book originally published in 1985 and again in a 1999 article. He reiterated it in an interview Monday.

“This is a traumatic thing — she’s, shall we say, she’s uptight,” Dr. Willke said of a woman being raped, adding, “She is frightened, tight, and so on. And sperm, if deposited in her vagina, are less likely to be able to fertilize. The tubes are spastic.”

Leading experts on reproductive health, however, dismissed this logic.

“There are no words for this — it is just nuts,” said Dr. Michael Greene, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. David Grimes, a clinical professor in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina, said, that “to suggest that there’s some biological reason why women couldn’t get pregnant during a rape is absurd.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/us/politics/rape-assertions-are-dismissed-by-health-experts.html?_r=1

 

 

Can you name this horse?

It’s such a prick

 

After several days in the hospital, the Man’s 40 plus weight loss issues were finally discovered with a scope that gave the most gruesome pictures of a large ulcer on the top of his stomach.  The thing was huge.  The doctor said it was the largest he had ever seen, but he probably says that to everyone just so they can brag.  The blood loss has stopped, and I was encouraged by his clarity of mind after he began to hold food down again.  I decided the unnerving loss of his mental capacity slowly day by day had been due to the massive blood loss and so it seemed.  But alas, after a couple of days of an almost back to normal existence, I walked in and asked him about breakfast and could tell when he looked at me I knew it wasn’t the blood loss.  When he asked me if it was bedtime at 7:00 am I was devastated,  beaten, scared, and resigned to our fate once again.  What a prick tease to let us have that week of normality (however weak he might be), then jerk the chair out from under us.  To be grateful for the time-any time- is becoming such a gift, like a newborn baby to be nurtured and loved and cherished.  We are in this together, just like he told me the first time I met him.

Just to set the record straight

 

I have but one sister.  There will never be another.  She is a unique individual.  Strong, smart, single-minded and there when you need her.  I would never have and will never trade her for any one for any reason.  She can be the most important ally that you have.  We have that trait in common from our dad.  She is and always has been prettier than I, but I like that as well.  She knows how to take care of herself, knows all about old movies, fashion and electrical business.  She is organized and a planner and when she does something she does it right.  She goes all out.

She is not always fun and light, but the good inside of her will come to the rescue like a mother tiger and as for me all the rest is easy to ignore.  I ignore her harshness and her not wanting to be with her family.  I ignore her hard-headed my way or the highway attitude because I know that is what makes her the strong person she is.  There are too many good things to care about the other and besides don’t we want that for ourselves as well?  We don’t want everything we ever do to  be held against us.  We grow and change and learn and we hope that of all the people in the world our family will understand and give us the freedom to do that.

I love my sister, and I know she loves me too.

The quiet time

It was a busy day.  Cooked fresh peas and canned peach jam, salsa, and bread and butter pickles.  That went along with house cleaning, laundry, dishes (as you can imagine from the canning), and trying to make the man rest more comfortable.  This is a near impossible task, but it was finally accomplished late in the afternoon with he and I having a marathon of old TV shows – The Rifleman and Dr. Quinn.

His decline in health is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, I want to do everything for him, but on the other it troubles him for me to do that because it only amplifies his helplessness.  And let me tell you, helplessness is not a word he has needed until now.

When he first fell in March, I really believed he would get over it, but I am now beginning to wonder.  At 87 it would not be unthinkable to be seeing the beginning of the end.  He and I have had lots of conversations about this very thing because of our 30 year age difference, but talking and experiencing is (as you all know) two different things.  Always before he has said that he was thinking only about living, not dying.  He hasn’t said that in a while, and I am afraid to ask.

It is this time of night that I am finally assured of the peaceful completion of a day.  I have never been so uncertain before.  But now, in the cool of the summer night,  he lies here beside me, snoring softly, and I feel the comfort of his presence, the strength of his character, the surety of his love, and the steadfastness of his care.  I don’t think age can take these things away.

 

 

                                   

Title IX and the athletes left behind

 

 

 

Not feeling very motivated to write lately, this one has caught me by the heart.  I am 58 years old.  In 1972 President Richard Nixon signed the Title IX legislation that made it illegal to discriminate against women in sports.  I graduated in 1971.

I was a tomboy from birth I guess.  I had little toy guns on my diaper pins.  My daddy was a baseball playing fool, and I benefited from that with many evenings of catch in the backyard.  Fortunately for me, my dad did not believe in cutting any slack to anyone (not even a girl) and I learned to catch a hot pepper just as well as any boy.  It was that or get hit with the ball and catching it was much less painful.  At the age of 12 we moved to a small town that had girls’ basketball, and even though it was three on three, I loved it.  By the time I was a freshman, the game had changed to the boys’ version of five on five, and I existed for sports.  The by-product of that was my coach made sure we kept our grades up, and I excelled on both the field and in the classroom.

By the end of 1968 our school board in Everman, Texas had decided that they could no longer afford to fund five  basketball teams.  At that time there was a varsity girls and boys team and a junior varsity girls and boys team and a boys freshman team.  That board, made up of entirely men, decided it could only fund three teams.  I imagine you can see where I’m going.  So behind the cloak of secrecy, it put in a girls’ coach with instructions to let the program go as far downhill as possible.  She held not one practice the final year we played.  Imagine – a team that did not practice one time.  We even went so far as to go to the gym on our own until we were barred for lack of supervision at which time our parents began coming with us.  We were then banned completely without a coach and our coach would not come – I imagine for fear of her job.  We got a petition up with many, many community signatures that was presented to the Board.  They thanked us.  That was all they did.  We lost miserably.  I had already had college coaches talk to me about playing for them, but with our program completely deleted when I was a sophomore that went down the drain as did my will to continue.

I lost the thing I loved and that motivate me the most.  I quit caring about school;  I experimented with things better left alone and who’s to say that wouldn’t have happened anyway, but I don’t believe it would have.  You SOB  bigoted all male school board took the very thing I was the best at and loved the most at that time because you were making decisions for women without any regard for women’s’ feelings.  I will always resent that and will never forget it.

Kind of reminds you of today doesn’t it? Leave my vagina alone and guys — give up trying to make decisions for women.  We are quite capable.  I hope the young women and their parents of today are stronger than we were.

How many stories are there like this?

http://www.wnba.com/titleix/powerofnine_060812.html

 

The loss of a child

I was reading about a young couple that lost their first child unexpectedly.  As they contemplated having another child, a support group of couples that had been through the same adversity gave them added strength.

My grandmother had been married for 17 years to a philandering man, when she found herself pregnant for the second time.  Her only child was already 16 when she delivered a seemingly healthy baby boy.  Richard gave her joy in a relationship that had never been ideal.  He was a happy, fat little one, born in February.  Come June he was obviously not thriving as he should. He had trouble breathing, and in the Texas heat with no air conditioning in 1947,  it was greatly exacerbated.  She finally took him to the doctor; one of those old family doctors that had even been known to make house calls.  As he listened and examined Richard, it was obvious something was wrong with his heart beat, but being an old country doctor he could do little.  He sent my grandmother with her four-month old baby to a specialist that very day.  My grandmother did not have a car and had ridden the bus to the doctor’s office.  She had only prepared one bottle and an extra diaper not realizing she would be going to another doctor.  She called my mother then 16 to get on the bus and bring her the necessary supplies to make another trip across town to another doctor knowing the entire time that it couldn’t be good.  Resupplied she went alone with Richard to the specialist.

The specialist gave her the bad news.  There was nothing he could do.  Richard had an enlarged heart, and he would not live very long.  All she could do was take him home and love him for the time she had left with him.

In comes her husband, my grandfather.  He had not been home much since the baby’s birth, and as I said he was a playboy so that was not unusual.  When she told him the news, he refused to believe it and insisted that they take Richard to Houston (they lived in Dallas) to a doctor that he swore was some kind of miracle man.  These doctors in Dallas just didn’t know what they were talking about, so he had a relative with a car come and take his little family to Houston while he stayed home.

It was breathtakingly hot at the beginning of July, and cars with no air conditioning were the norm. For those that understand the heat of the southwest,  you know it is just indescribable how stifling it can be.  Upon arrival Richard was gasping for breath, so they rushed to the hospital.  The relatives dropped off my grandmother and Richard, and they took my mother to another relative’s house in Houston to stay.

All alone,

 

in a strange hospital,

 

 

my Mama Lou held her precious baby as he died in her arms a few minutes later.

 

 

He was buried in an unmarked grave in a city far from home.

 

 

There was no one to support her.

 

She divorced my grandfather shortly thereafter.