Days End Photo

My Mom was in a surgeon’s waiting room and…

By request I am publishing an interpretation of an email I sent over a year ago regarding an incident with my mother. Sand, this one’s for you…

I took my mother to the oral surgeon first thing this morning to have two infected teeth removed. Since her Mastoid ear surgery a couple of weeks ago, she can’t hear much at all.

While we were anxious in the oral surgeon’s waiting room, a yearling child was vocalizing happily just out of our sight-line in the large area.

My mother leaned to me and said,

That’s pleasant to hear.

Oh, you can hear that? Good.

After a couple of minutes Mom said,

It’s a man, right?

What?

It’s a man screaming.

What man?

The screaming.

After skipping a beat,

It’s a baby talking

I said, while pointing to the right of the waiting room.

Mom pointed to the left, saying,

Isn’t it a man screaming in the dentist chair?

No, it’s a baby talking.

Poor Mom had been sitting, waiting to have two teeth pulled, listening to a grown man scream in the dentist chair.

Well, men are big babies anyway…

…was all she had to say about that.

Tooth Fairy Truths

My mother had me leave my teeth for the Tooth Fairy on my nightstand.

I told her I was supposed to put it under my pillow. Everyone knew that!

Mom said The Tooth Fairy was very busy and we should help her out by making her job easier, and she wouldn’t wake me retrieving my tooth from under my pillow.

Three mornings in a row I awoke to see my tooth still where I left it. Mom said The Tooth Fairy was very busy and she would get to me as soon as possible.

On the fourth day I awoke to see my tooth still beside me on the nightstand. The magic had dulled by this time, and I wasn’t surprised. It was a school day and I heard Mom climbing the stairs to come wake me. Depressed, I rolled over and pretended to be asleep. I didn’t want to go to school. Mom came in my room and then left again. I heard her going down the stairs. I didn’t understand and I rolled over…

My tooth was gone. A quarter was there instead. The truth slammed into my brain. Mom was the tooth fairy. And she was too busy to get to me for four days…

The Duck Pond

I’ve passed this farmland throughout my life…

Ducks…Geese…a lovely view…

This small building on the shore of the pond…so picturesque on a late autumn day…

Salem Witch Museum Photo

Barn Along the Way

I’ve passed by this barn for most of my life. Some structures are as much a part of the scenery as the trees and the mountains. The view is unimaginable without it. You look for it, expect it, and feel at peace when your eyes are filled with its seemingly timeless beauty with all its flaws.

Geriatric Doctor Without Concern for Patients

This falls into my…”Are You Kidding Me?” catagory.

I took both my parents to their primary care checkup this week.

Now..they have both had this doctor for over 20 years, when he took over the practice from the retiring town doctor. Both my parents have attended every check-up, followed every directive, taken every medication…

I’ll ignore the fact he never had my mother get a bone density scan in all these years. Of course, her 85 year old hip broke this winter, causing her to fall.

I’ll ignore that I had to report his last office location to the town code enforcer for an exterior handrail to the entrance that had pulled out of the wall, so offered no support for an elderly person to get into the building, and had not been fixed after YEARS,  AND when I tried to bring my parents through the wheelchair access door, I had to make my parents wait outside on the ramp while I moved a stack of cardboard boxes that blocked the entrance. I’m trying really hard to get over this BS, but I am hitting the laptop keys a bit too hard, it seems.

All that aside…Doctor PB moves to a new location down the block by combining with another practice. Fine.

Geriatric Doctor…remember that…

One handicapped parking spot.

No wheelchair automatic door opener on any door. Only one entrance, but three doors to get to his office inside.

I had two people with walkers, one blind with dementia, and I had to be a contortionist to open the door for Mom to enter the outer entrance space, and keep Dad from walking off into the door jamb as I try to hold the door open and help pull his walker into this cramped entrance.

Now, I have to back up two old people with walkers so that I am able to open the office door into the entrance space, and again, do the yoga pose to get them both in.

Now we have to walk across a waiting room of sick children to enter the Geriatric doctor’s door (right next to all the goobery kiddy books and toys) to go to his ‘waiting room’. This glorious waiting room has upgraded since my last visit when there were only two chairs, and I had to sit on a walker. Now there are four! One directly behind the door so you can get whacked in the knees when another patient arrives. It’s not an official space, just a wide spot in the hallway. Ridiculous.

What happened to HIPA? No privacy here to discuss appointments, referrals, prescriptions.

What happened to ADA? The patient following us was crippled with two walking sticks.

I’m not even going to bother telling you about the exam room ballet we had to dance to get us all in, but I was sweating by the time I got to sit down.

On a walker.

Thank you for letting me vent. I feel helpless when I come home from a day like this, with a migraine, aggravated Fibromyalgia, and exhausted.

Pain is subjective

…and I’ve been subjected to it long enough to know.

At doctor visits you are now expected to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst. They even have emoticons on an insipid chart for you to determine your level of dis-comfort based on a frowny face.

Believe me, if you are close to an 8 you aren’t getting out of bed, much less showing up for a scheduled check up appointment to point at a yellow circle faced sliding scale of smile to frown.

Chronic pain is far different from an acute case of the hurts. It goes far beyond a frowny face emotion. 

Continue Reading…

One Heart

I showed my mom my Blog the other day. I had my homepage open on the screen when she walked in the room. She didn’t understand what she was seeing, but I tried to explain my purpose – without much  conviction – and I demonstrated how each category photograph slides into a full view when the cursor  moves over it, and by clicking she could access my posts under these different categories. I could see I was baffling her even more.

I wrote about you and Dad,

I said as I opened my post titled Mom and Dad. I printed out the post so she could read a hard-copy (I know she can’t read on dark backgrounds, yet I insist on having a black theme). I stood beside her, on edge,  trying to read my mother’s response.

She giggled. To what I don’t know, but she read on and at another point she giggled again. Towards the end she leaned into it. More focused. When she finished she turned to me, looked me in the eye, and gave a curt nod. Not enough for me, I had to ask what she thought of it. Mom looked down at the last page and said out loud,

One form, one destination, one heart.

She looked at me again.

‘Nough said.

Mom and Dad

My parents met at Loring Air Force Base in Maine during WWII.

My dad saw my mother from across the room, first noticing her legs, then finding out she was the best jitter bugger. They married on a three-day-pass before my dad was shipped out to Pearl Harbor to peel Potatoes.

The barracks he slept in were riddled with torn and shredded metal from the Japanese air attacks prior to his arrival.

During the six months they were apart, my parents wrote to each other.   

We recently found a metal box, that my tin knocker father made, in the cellar filled with their love letters. 

We  have never pried into their privacy regarding these letters, but my father wanted to burn them. I put them away where my mom knows they are safe and Dad won’t find them to throw on the wood stove without a second thought, his Dementia denying their worth.

How many more generations will be able to celebrate their 64th wedding anniversary with their one and only love, lover, husband, wife?

At present Dad can’t see and Mom can’t hear and neither of them get around well…and with the two of them we laugh and cry and whisper and yell. We lead and follow, step this way then that. One is up and one is down as they both try to get in step again.

Last week as Mom, Dad and I left a neighborhood restaurant, full from Fried Clams and a day in Portland with another doctor appointment, I had Dad by his right arm, catching up to Mom as she reached the end of the ramp. Mom was wobbling with her cane and no longer moving forward without the handrail. Parked in the closest Handicapped parking space we still had 20 feet to totter to the car. Dad stopped walking and told me to help Mom and he would wait for me to come back to help him, though he would have to stand, without support, legally blind to his surroundings while I helped his wife, his life to safety.

“No Dad, we’ll get there together. We’re the three musketeers.”

I threw my right arm around my mother’s waist, and my left arm around my father’s waist, leading the three of us as we slowly waddled towards the car.

One form, one destination, one heart.