-
-
The Groups
Oh Fay can you see?
It is a beautiful sunny day. The lizards are out and scampering around the magnolia trees. The dog is blissfully happy hiding under the shade of the azalea shrubs. And yet every five minutes The Family Feud is interrupted by an emergency update: FAY IS COMING!
And since Grandmother comes from an era where the word “fay” meant something very specific every time she hears the name of the tropical storm she turns to me and asks if I know what that word means. I lift my eyebrows and she giggles like a little girl. This happens every five minutes. Seriously. The 1940’s part of GM is alive and kicking today…
I need to write about the many ages of GM one of these days. Some days she wakes up and is moderately present in the now. She is aware that she has family and that she is a matriarch. And yet some days she wakes up college age GM. This is a GM that will look at you in horror if you explain that you are her Granddaughter. “Ha ha!” She will retort. This is the GM that sees a photo of my Grandfather and does not realize that he was her husband. A familiar worn grey sweater that once belonged to my Grandfather will be pointed to and explained, “That was my Daddy’s”.
We had one of those days this weekend and it was especially hard on Mother. We have learned that Mother and I have almost opposite sensibilities. I can handle GM when she is lost in a different era. I can cope with her not knowing that we are related, as long as she relates to me as someone that she can trust. I can not deal well with days when GM is combative or aggressive or mean. Mother, on the other hand can deal with an aggressive day so so well but crumbles when her Mother does not know her. I think it makes Mother feel a giant loss of self. If she is not GM’s daughter then who is she?
Today GM knows me and yet I am unclear if she knows that I am her Granddaughter. But she is being cute and silly today and so things are fine. She giggles at the Tropical Storm name, asks me if we have enough peanut butter and toilet paper and then gets sucked back into what the survey says.
(thank you for holding my hand yesterday.)
If I were to tell you.
Do you ever have those moments where you are just barely clinging to yourself? I feel so quiet and still right now. I feel like I am alone in an empty room and that I have been told to not make a sound. I feel scared and worried and emotional and nervous. I feel like I will certainly never make it to Friday. I feel anxious and intoxicated and panicked and static.
I feel like if I was a fish alone in an ocean I would open my little fish mouth and a little bubble would escape. And I would watch the bubble slowly rise to the surface of the ocean and as soon as it burst you would hear, “please”.
If I were to tell you how anxious I am about Friday it would not be enough. I am suspended in the air, a slow motion woman, aiming her mind and body towards a target marked “perfect”.
Bridge over troubled water…
Every time I see something about the awesome new site, Bridges, that song begins to play in my head. Bridges is a new Mel inspired site that is really taking off and I am thrilled to be a part of it as a contributing editor helping people understand what it is like to care for someone with Alzheimer’s. So much of our blogrolls focus on one or two things: infertility, parenting, and in some cases who is doing the parenting (one woman, two women, etc)
But trying to get knocked up, stay knocked up, raise a family, and all the variations in between (which includes the harsh reality of not getting knocked up, not staying knocked up and not knowing what it is like to raise a family) isn’t the total sum of our being. It certainly feels like it when that is what we are focusing on. But chances are if you were to run into your favorite middle school teacher today your opening sentence would not be about your cervical mucus. No. It would be about that great trip you took in the late 90’s, or that horrible accident that happened to someone you cared about, or that life changing illness that happened…
Bridges is a site that allows those of us that usually write about one or two things to show you what else is going on in our world. There are posts about mental illness, addiction, autism, body image, postpartum depression, adoption, cancer…The topics that we as a community are dealing with are vast and overwhelming. We are not just vaginas- we are whole women with whole lives and giant life hurdles.
Being able to contribute posts about Alzheimer’s Disease is very important to me. Before I began to be Grandmother’s care-giver I had a totally abstract view about what the disease was about. I honestly thought that it would be just a quieting of the mind and then the memories would be gone. What I didn’t realize is that it is a totally violent disease that is not quiet and certainly not subtle. It is literally a horrible thief that robs and pillages and steals and leaves painful messes.
I want to share as much as I can with you about my experiences with Alzheimer’s because the number of people that are diagnosed with this disease is rising and chances are someone in your family could succumb to it. Someone that right now can tell the most fantastic and wonderful stories will one day look at you with vacant and sad eyes and not be able to tell you what their most basic need is.
I have a post coming up in a few weeks on Bridges and in November I will be doing a lot of blogging about Alzheimer’s as it will be Alzheimer Disease Awareness Month. I would also like to hear from you guys about any experiences you have had with the disease. I want to be real and open about it. This is not the quaint shuffling Grandparent that is featured on the drug commercials where Grandpa forgets how to set the table, it is a horrific disruptor of families where Grandpa can’t even feed himself. The more we can help each other through the better. I know first hand, through all the love and support that I get from you guys, how amazing our community can be.
Please go expand your view of your blogroll and visit Bridges. Click around. Look at the contributing editors and see what they will be talking about. If there is a topic that you feel you can speak on let us know. We are building bridges from site to site and soon we will all be connected.
_______________________________________________
Your Bridges assignment: 100 Words Project
Please write 100 words about September 11th. It can be from an older, previously published post, it can be something new, it can simply be a photograph. Submit your 100 words to Mel by August 31st. On September 11th we will be publishing your words on the Bridges site. It will be a sort of memory wall for our community. Read more details and how to submit here.
Open Letters
Dear NBC-
I have really been digging the Olympic coverage. Seriously good stuff. My beef with you is your horrible coverage of the gymnastics team finals. Yes, I am totally the gal that usually just watches gymnastics in the summer & figure skating in the winter. I do enjoy watching other sports- diving, swimming, even that Saturday boat race thing was cool. But honestly- I am all for gymnastics. Your coverage begins at 8 and ends after midnight. There is a brief break for local news and then usually there is continued coverage at like one thirty am.
That is a lot of air time.
Plus there is a time delay and space to do some editing.
So can you please tell me why the final team gymnastics showdown didn’t start aring until around 11pm the other night? And can you tell me why you aired over an hour of men’s beach volleyball BEFORE covering gymnastics? I mean I get that we are meant to watch ALL sports, but seriously. Men’s beach volleyball? Don’t you realize that there are little girls staying up late on a school night waiting for the good stuff? (and, ahem, 32 year old girls too)
I couldn’t stay up that late so I set my dvr to record things. And my dvr cut off right at midnight. So I never got to see the floor routines. I only ever saw U.S.A. and China do like 3 rotations. No other countries. What the hey, NBC?
Please fix this before the individual competition airs for gymnastics.
Thank you in advance-
A Gymnastics Fan
_______________________________________________
Dear Kraft-
I have been a long time lover of your mac & cheese box product. Seriously it got me through some tough times. I also am a pretty basic fan of crackers. When I heard that you guys were coming up with a Mac & Cheese Cracker I was interested. And then I saw your commercial and was very turned off.
In your ad you give an adorable kid a mac & cheese cracker and then they smile and appear to rise up on liquid yellow liquid stuff. I imagine you were going for some sort of visual on how profound the flavor is. It is so WOW that the kid is lifted up into the sky.
But I imagine if you put this ad in front of a test panel before airing it you might have found out that it looks more like eating the cracker gives kids the yellow runs.
Please fix this or at the very least please do not air the commercial on any channels that I watch.
Thank you.
_________________________________
Who is getting your Open Letter today?
Instant Silver Lining
So I was all set to write a nice and classic rager for you guys. It was going to full of ire regarding the fact that I was not able to be seen at my local OB today because someone in their office forgot to tell me that they needed ALL of my health records. No health records= no service. No negotiating. It makes sense, but after an hour + in the waiting room with angry toddlers and a fidgety GM not being able to be seen kind of sucks a whole lotta lilly-white ass. Forget my hopes of getting an ultrasound today. Hopes officially dashed.
Thankfully the staff was really sweet and kind about everything. They were able to help me out with another matter I needed* and they gave GM a lolly-pop. There were a lot of older women preggos and I found that freakishly comforting. The best people watch moment was when a total stylista gal breezed into the waiting room in a total Angelina inspired getup. She never removed her sunglasses and texted on her iphone the entire time.
So after an hour of waiting and 10 minutes of being told that I could not be seen GM and I took the long way home so we could do our monthly wave to the ocean. Hello Ocean!
I got home, cranky, annoyed, and like I said, ready to be pissed and angry at the world. Because nothing goes my way. Woe is me…and other annoying dribble like that. But then I got a call that I have been waiting for. The call regarding my insurance. And the call went so, so well that I instantly saw the silver lining of the no-go OB appointment: I probably won’t have to pay for the next appointment! (which is in exactly one week: ultrasound included) Now lets just hope like a mofo that I am still knocked up in a week. Please, please, please…
*So the thing that I needed from the OB’s office was “proof of pregnancy stating my EDD”. I needed this in order to get my insurance stuff pushed forward. I was able to get an official letter just in time to make the insurance people happy.You may or may not hear more about this process depending on how comfortable I am with full disclosure.
Happy Birthday to my GM!
87 years ago the Matriarch of my family was born. She was born at home, at the M&M apartments in a large Southern city. She has loved chocolate ever since. She just woke up and as we shuffled from her room to the rest room I sang the birthday song to her. She says she doesn’t believe it is her birthday. Her exact words were, “well. We’ll see about that…” I hope it is a good day. I hope she is happy and lucid and connected and most of all I hope she feels loved.
87 Years Ago:
Today:
This & That: The weekend edition
*So while I still firmly have a vat of fear that I routinely bathe in there are some things that are happening internally that are oddly and freakishly comforting. Yesterday the gagging, retching, barfing sensation kicked in. I couldn’t find a comfortable position to keep things chill. It literally felt like there was a lava lamp of yuk bubbling up in my esophagus. And sick, twisted fuck that I am, completely embraced it with giant happiness. Finally that made me feel less like a phony. For now…
* GM’s birthday is on Tuesday. She will be 87! Don’t tell GM but Mother and I plan on getting her drunk on chocolate and cupcakes. Heh.
* Speaking of GM we are doing a bit better. Slowly. She is releasing the grip on terseness and melting back into a bit of sweetness. This afternoon she caught my eye as I lounged on the sofa. She winked at me and said, “You need all the rest you can get.” And my heart totally sung with happiness for the GM that I crave. The issues that brought us to the hospital are slowly getting better, but that alone is making things rough around here.
* The Olympic opening ceremony. Holy fuck. Seriously amazing. Did any of you catch the piece on the guy that created it on CBS Sunday Morning today? This 40 year old, native of China (now U.S. citizen) created the entire vision. One guy. That is serious genius.
* Watching the women’s gymnastics now and am baffled that these girls are 16 years old. Really? 16? At least 30% of the gals look like they are in 5th grade. But oh how they leap and jump…wow.
* And I know that the new site is still new and unfamiliar, yes the review site, but just to hint about what kind of direction things are going in, one of us (sadly not me) might be doing a review on something that might be in your bedside table. Just saying…You know you want to bookmark it with that tease, right?
* And when can we talk about the finale of So You Think You Can Dance? The top three was totally what I wanted. And the Wednesday show featured that number with everyone in plaid! You know I was loving that.
* What about Next Food Network Star? I miss Lisa already.
* And what is UP with effing heat indexes? Why is it always over 100 degrees here? Hot, hot, hot.
* Only three more sleeps until my first ever OB appointment. Insane.
A future project gets revealed:
Something that I have always enjoyed doing is writing reviews. Whether you like it or not I like to talk about the television shows I watch, the movies I rent, the cleaning supplies I can’t live without…And now I have decided, along with two of my favorite people/bloggers who also like to talk and discuss what they are reading/watching/eating/buying, to create a separate space where we can do just that.
Reviews & Contemplations: 3 Women and a Blog would like to cordially invite you to check out our digs. The paint is still a bit damp, and we may need to do some sweeping up, but come on in and make yourself at home.
There is a new Mothertalk review up for James Patterson’s The Dangerous Days of Daniel X. Following the review I want to start a discussion about what books you enjoyed as a young adult. Check out the site, read the review, and let’s talk teen lit!
The Sound of Silence.
It has been an extremely long and hard week. I am pretty beat down and exhausted so I doubt this will be one of those pretty and eloquent posts.
Alzheimer’s is fucking hard. Even on a good day it is hard. On a bad day it is soul-sucking.
GM had a relatively “normal” Tuesday. She had no memory of spending all of Monday in the hospital, no memory of the things that brought us there, and no realization that she needed to take it easy. But I was actually happy that she was doing so well. I mean who wants to remember hours and hours and hours of hospital hell? So Tuesday was calm, maybe even mellow.
Wednesday things started to shift.
By Thursday it was bad.
And this is the stuff that is hard for me to write about. I mean who wants to document and put up for the world to see horrible things that their Grandmother did or said? Who wants to relive it as she struggles to find the right word that would convey just how awful and mean and tense things were. Not me. I just can’t.
Yesterday was just shit.
And I know that her violent mood shift was totally connected to the chaos that was her Monday. I know that when she acts this way that it is not personal (even when that is how it manifests).I know that it is just her mind trying to claim some sort of control over a body that is no longer always connected to the mind. I know that when things are at their worst she is absolutely not culpable. And I grapple with all of this as I try to not cry or retreat or talk back. I try to go emotionally limp and push the Granddaughter part of me away and just focus on being a good caregiver. But I kind of suck at that. I always cry.
I think it is especially hard for me right now because I am just one big blob of emotions. I fucking cry at everything. Even the idea of sad things makes me cry. So being in a situation that is actually 100% authentic, real-life sad just about destroys my foothold on sanity.
On top of care-taking during a rough week I also have that looming fear that will always, always, always follow around an infertile. Always. It is the fear that the really horrible stuff is right around the corner. I fear that the Snork was just some mind trick, that it is a twisted and belated April Fool’s. When I find myself doing things like dealing with my insurance (which is a very large post that may or may not be written for public consumption) or scheduling an appointment for for an OB I feel like someone will stand up and call me a liar. The fact that I have an OB appointment next Wednesday just blows my fucking mind.
When does the bliss come in? I think I am just still in shock about it all…
And as I deal with all of these conflicting emotions- the stuff from GM- the feeling like a fraud- the nonstop weeping and peeing- I find that I retreat. I tuck away and hide myself with like this blanket of shame. Even sharing all of this now makes me feel a bit raw and uncomfortable. Like I should just buck up and deal. But dealing, as I am finding out, is hard.
Difficult Days
Something that I haven’t been blogging about in depth is some of the difficult stuff GM has been going through lately. I won’t go into detail here, but her issue resulted in my rushing her to the hospital yesterday. Thankfully there is virtually a brand new Mayo Clinic Emergency Facility two blocks away and she was seen immediately.
GM becomes completely disoriented in a hospital. She is at times adorable and witty and then instantly screaming and confused. Mother and I were able to be with her for every exam and procedure and that was very helpful in keeping her calm.
Watching someone you love suffer with pain is one of the worst things ever. But when that someone has a memory disease it just seems cruel and so very unjust. Every 2 minutes she would repeat the awareness of hurting. It just makes me so incredibly upset to think about that right now.
We were able to get a diagnosis for two things that we can begin to treat at home. And thankfully we were discharged late last evening.
Every time GM has to go to the hospital we loose more of her. Sometimes she will sort of bounce back in a week or so, but usually the disorientation sets her back permanently. I am truly worried about who she will be when she wakes up this morning. I worry about how altered she will be, and how long she will stay that way.
I will be taking a small internet break for a few days so that I can focus on her 100%. Your thoughts and prayers are appreciated and desired.
-
-
Great Hosting By:
