A Touch Here or There

Anyone who has ever cared for a senior citizen on a daily basis will tell you, if he's honest, that it's dadgum hard. In fact, it's exhausting and frustrating. For the caregivers AND the senior. For the caregivers, it taxes their patience and energy. For the senior, it robs them of their security and independence. When we're having a particularly difficult day with Papa T., I try to remind myself that he doesn't want to be weak and dependent, and I try to imagine what it's like to walk in his aged shoes. It must be scary to lose your memory, and I can only imagine how frustrating it is to lose your ability to do simple math or to see or hear clearly. I fully understand why there are days when he's downright difficult or surly. I'd probably be mad too, if I couldn't find the bathroom when I know it's just yards away in a house I've lived in for years. Those thoughts and a deep breath (or two or three) help me to find the patience I need on those troubling days, which don't outnumber the good days, but they are certainly gaining ground. There are enough of them that when an especially good day rolls around it seems special.


Monday night, I sat with Papa T. so Hubby could have a poker night with his buddies. It had been weeks since Hubby and the boys had gotten together for their "me" time, and it was something Hubby needed desperately. For a few hours, I sat with Papa T., and we ate dinner and caught up on some routine things, like trimming his fingernails and reading aloud the monthly magazine about the University of Kentucky Wildcats, the Cats' Pause. He's a huge Big Blue fan, so he soaks up every word of that magazine. The reading aloud duties fall to me because Hubby and Teen Angel hate reading aloud, and Papa T. says they don't enunciate well. Because I don't often have many opportunities to read to him, we usually have more than one edition to read per session, and it takes a while. So, for quite a while we read stats and articles about the players, most of which I have little interest in but have learned quite a bit about during these reading sessions. It's starting to rub off a little, I think. Don't tell anyone, but I flipped the TV over to the game the other night to catch the tail end of it. I'd like to pretend that it's just because I wanted to know the outcome so I could talk intelligently about it with Papa T., but alas, I really just wanted to see them win. I've also been watching the Murray State games in snippets, too, but I'm blaming that on the fact that I'm a Murray alum. Surely, I'm not falling under the spell of this thing they call college basketball?

Anyway, we eventually got around to trimming his fingernails, which also falls to me because Hubby can't seem to tell the difference between the nail and the nail bed. (I like to sum up my care giving duties as the Three F's: food, finances and fingernails.) Papa T's fingernails grow like crazy, so he and I have a little trimming session every couple of weeks. I pulled an ottoman up to his recliner and grabbed his hand. The skin was soft and wrinkled, signs of someone who retired from a desk job years ago. They've long lost the traces of his years spent working on the farm. I pulled his hand close and started working, and as I did, it suddenly occurred to me that it was one of the few methods of touch he receives on a regular basis. Oh, he gets touch through hugs from Teen Angel but he's not one to hug adults. We hold his arm when trying to lead him somewhere, but we don't do a lot of that because we and he are trying to keep him as independent as possible for as long as possible, and that means sometimes letting him find his own way. Mama J. is gone, and so is her touch for him. His isolation has left him in an environment where the contact with people's voices, presence and touch is gradually diminishing. It was a light bulb moment for me, and I got lost in that moment as he told me a story I no longer heard, and Wheel of Fortune rumbled softly on the TV behind me.

I thought about him. I thought about age. I thought about my age and how quickly I will be in his shoes. And I wandered if the same thing will happen to me. And I wondered how often I forget that he needs the touch of human hands, arms and faces. I forget that too often, I think. I refocused on our conversation, slowing down the work, realizing that it wasn't a job that should be rushed. I took my time, turning each finger gently, holding his hand for as long as possible and filing his nails with great care when I was finished with the clippers. Filing for much longer than necessary really. And I listened.

Our conversation drifted to the trip to Europe with Teen Angel, and he started asking me to describe things there he'd never seen and would never be able to see. "What's the Mona Lisa like?" he softly asked. "Smaller than you'd think," I said. I described the room in the Louvre in which it hangs, the crush of people squeezing in to see her behind the glass case and her delightful smile. I told him of the beauty of the Venus De Milo and how close you can stand to her. I described the construction of the Eiffel Tower and what it's like to stand at the top and witness a rainbow stretching from one side of Paris to another. He asked about the other art museums, and I told him about the beauty of the Orsay and the wonder of Monet's Water Lilies at the L'Orangerie. I tried to find words adequate enough to relay the beauty of the stained glass in St. Chappelle Cathedral and how it takes your breath away to stand in the midst of it. I let him ask the questions, and I added tidbits I thought he'd find interesting. He nodded from time to time with an occasional, "Hmm," or a smile. At some point, I told myself, "You will always remember this evening, Hula. When he's gone and even before then, you will remember this conversation." We wrapped up when his overnight sitter came through the door, bustling in with her bags and shouting greetings from the front door all the way into the den where we sat. The magic of the evening was broken with her arrival.

In the past week or so I've been trying to decide what I want to give up for Lent. I've considered several things and haven't been able to settle on one particular item. It certainly wasn't going to be cake. I did that one time, and it was the longest month of my life. I couldn't concentrate on being God-like because I was too busy trying not to gnaw off my fingers. Deprivation does not work for me. Besides, that's not really what Lent is about. As I listened to the Ash Wednesday service at lunch today it finally occurred to me that I shall focus on the human touch throughout Lent. Using it to connect with people who really need it, especially Papa T.. It could be as simple as the grasp of a hand, a touch on the arm when talking or just a pat on the back. I'm not talking about invading someone's space or making him feel uncomfortable. I'm just thinking that it wouldn't hurt to be more affectionate with those who seem to really need it, especially the elderly or the lonely. Perhaps with enough practice it will become a habit. And perhaps it will give me more patience with Papa T. And Hubby. And Teen Angel. I think it's important at this stage we're in right now, and I'm not sure I can adequately explain why. It's significance is a little harder to describe than the Mona Lisa.

And it was a Good One

Papa T. got to come home this afternoon. Yay! He had to come home with oxygen. Boo. And that could be permanent. Oh my. We're not sure yet. We'll just have to wait and see, but it's definitely a possibility, and if that's the case, Lord help us all 'cause that oxygen tube up his nose has been a thorn in his side since he got to the hospital. He hates it. But as Hubby says, it is what it is, so he may just have to get used to it. Easier said than done probably. We're hoping that now that he's home, he will actually improve. His progress at the hospital had plateaued, and the doctor was a little stumped by that, but we really think that he will improve now that he's back to his house, his bed, his surroundings and his routine. And UK basketball. Go wildcats. One thing's for sure, we will celebrate for the next few nights with some of his favorite dinners, which basically means any combination of home cooked vegetables with a side of any kind of bread.


It has been a long seventeen days, and some of those days were good, and some were downright depressing. Taking care of old folks is hard work, and it can be very stressful when there are issues like blindness and dementia involved. Daily, I spent the drive to work praying for patience and strength and healing and a sense of humor. Five mornings ago, when I was having a particularly stressful spurt and I was more than a little tired, I caught myself asking the good Lord to give me a good day. And when I realized what I was doing that old Don Williams song rolled through my head. Before you know it, I was singing Lord I Hope This Day is Good for about three miles. And I don't know all the words, so it was a lot of "Lord, I hope this day is good" and a fair amount of humming. I thought how appropriate that song was for this particular moment in my day to day life.

"Lord, I hope this day is good. I'm feeling lonely and misunderstood" and "Lord, have you forgotten me?"

How honest is that? And it's a real toe tapper, so that was kind of uplifting. I downloaded it from Hubby's CD collection, and I've been playing it since. It shall be my theme for the time being, and that leads me to the question of the day, my friends. What song would be the soundtrack for YOUR life right at this moment? Shout it out 'cause I'd like to know. And in the meantime, here's to home cooked vegetables and heartfelt music. Yay!

On the Mend

Papa T. is still in the hospital, and he has a way to go before he's truly well. The poor man has been through the wringer in the past week and a half. As the doctor explained it, we got Papa T. to the hospital just as his pneumonia was starting so it had to settle in and get worse before it got better. And it did get much worse. In fact, about last Thursday, we were starting to worry that he wasn't going to get better. His oxygen level was really low, causing him to be very confused and to talk out of his head. You never knew what he was going to say. At one point, he was trading two cows for a sitting hen and another time he was hiring teachers. His speech got somewhat slurred, and we got scared.


He has slowly gotten rid of a great deal of the pneumonia, but he's weak and will need some rehab before he can go home. Shhh. Don't tell him that just yet. He's going to have a fit when he finds out, and it's best not to upset him until we have to. The bottom line is that in a couple of days they will likely move him to the rehab floor of the hospital where he'll stay several days, and when he goes home he'll have to have some nursing care. We've already hired someone to sit with him at nights while he's in the hospital because one thing's for sure, Hubby can't hold out much longer at this pace. It's just too overwhelming, and it's time for more help. The doctor says it will be five or six weeks before he's back to normal, which prompts me to say to all people over sixty, GET YOUR PNEUMONIA SHOT. Sister mercy, it's crazy how fast pneumonia can overtake a senior citizen. It really scares me. My uncle who recently passed away developed pneumonia after a fall, and after several days he started looking and feeling good, sat up in the bed and laughed with us and then his family was told the next morning he had less than a day to live. He was dead within twelve hours. That s**t kills, so don't fool around with it brothers and sisters.

It looks like we have several more days of sitting by his bedside, trying to convince him to eat hospital food and getting acquainted with every nurse who works the third and/or sixth floors of the hospital. If we're lucky, they'll have that roast beef special in the cafeteria at least one more time. Ug. I took one look at that and swore I was back in college as it definitely looked like something good ol' Winslow (Winslop) Cafeteria served up back in the day.

We've already had plenty of time to experience just about every aspect of the hospital in the past week and in the doctor's offices in the adjacent building since I had my yearly physical there this week, and I have a couple of suggestions for the folks in charge.

1. Can we not get a better hospital gown? I know the patient has to be accessible, but those gowns reveal way too much way too easily. I've seen more of Papa T.'s lower half than I ever wanted to see. I love him, but there are just some things better left to the imagination.

2. Is there a reason patient doors aren't closed more often? Everybody else has on that same gown, and just going from the elevator to Papa T.'s room every day for the past eleven days I have seen more hoo hoo's and wee wee's than I can count. And they don't offer eye bleach for hospital visitors.

3. Is it really necessary to put someone on a cardiac diet if he's tip toeing toward death's door, and you want him to eat SOMETHING, anything? Really, how much does trans fat matter at a time like that? If you want someone to eat so he can get his strength back up, for the love of Mirtle, don't give him dry chicken and tuna salad every day. I'm thinking of sneaking in a little serving of green beans cooked in hog jowl with a biscuit for Papa T.

4. Don't they make some kind of seat warmer for those exam beds they make you lie on in the doctor's office? I was laying under my lovely paper gown at the gynecologist's office yesterday (and can I just say my jewelry accessorized very well with that gown), freezing my patookus off and wondering why on earth they can't heat those things. I mean, we heat car seats now. Why can't we apply that technology to those beds? You don't have to use them on people with a fever, just those of us with thin blood.

5. Also, doctor's office staff should probably quit trying to be so politically correct when handing you those crazy paper gowns to put on. The nurse gave me a "vest" and a "skirt" yesterday. I promptly ripped the vest which was certainly thinner than a Bounty paper towel, and then I had trouble covering up both cheeks with the so called skirt. I told the doctor that I had cocktail napkins at home bigger than that skirt and offered to bring them next time. She didn't think I was nearly as funny as I thought I was. Perhaps, I should have offered to trade her two cows for a sitting hen. Maybe that would have made her smile.

The one Where Papa T. Professes his Distaste for Chicken

In the interest of keeping things lively around here, we like to work in a trip to the emergency room every now and then, preferably when the ER is at its busiest. Despite a great Saturday evening that included Teen Angel taking him to dinner, Papa T. woke up Sunday morning feeling like he had been run over by a bulldozer. He hurt so bad he was moaning, and had he not had a fever I would have blamed it on the jumbo sized platter of catfish and gallon bucket of coleslaw he ate the night before. We thought he might have an infection of some sort, so we loaded him into the car, throw up bucket and all, and headed to the hospital. By the way, why is it you can go for years without transporting a nauseous person in your car, and the minute you buy a new car, somebody has to puke while riding in it? I rode in the backseat with him all the way to the hospital, shoving the plastic garbage can under his nose every time he groaned. It took me back to that time when I was about twelve and got sick on the way home from the company safety picnic due to a hot dog and too much Tilt-A-Whirl. Tip: Do not eat a hot dog covered in ketchup and ride the Tilt-A-Whirl seven times in a row. And then drink a big Pepsi.


We made it to the hospital without any big messes, and much to our surprise, Papa T. had some pneumonia, probably a result of that bad cold he had a couple of weeks ago. He was very weak and achy, so they admitted him, and he'll likely be there for several more days. And I'm not namin' any names, but when all of this is over, somebody is gettin' a pneumonia shot whether he likes it or not. Although, after the catheter incident, getting a needle anywhere close to his body will be a big achievement.

This means a week of running back and forth to the hospital, which really isn't as bad for me as it is Hubby. The poor man is exhausted from staying at the hospital. He has the brunt of the work. Teen Angel and I just fill in the gaps as needed. It also means a week of erratic meals. So far this week, I've had for dinner: Popcorn, Sunday night and a salad with a side order of mashed potatoes last night. That still beats the steady stream of fruit salad, tuna sandwiches and chicken breasts Papa T. is getting on his cardiac diet. I don't know where hospitals get their honeydew melons, but they are like green bricks. Papa T. is not the most patient of patients, so it should be an interesting few days. If I'm lucky, tonight's special in the hospital cafeteria will not be tuna.

Roar!

Because of his vision and hearing issues, Papa T. is pretty limited in his entertainment options. They pretty much amount to books on tape, which get a little old, and debating politics with me and Hubby, which is downright dangerous. He also spends a fair amount of time with the radio, listening to talk radio and various ballgames. He's mildly entertained by local high school football, but he's about to get really wound up because basketball season is about to begin. Around these parts University of Kentucky basketball is huge, and he is a card carrying member of the Big Blue Nation. As in he's been known to jump out of his recliner and say bad things when the Cats lose. Kentucky is ranked number 2 in the nation going into this year's season, and he couldn't be more excited. We ordered him a subscription to Cat's Pause, the team's monthly magazine, and a copy of the 2011 Wildcat Yearbook, thinking he would enjoy that. And the yearbook arrived in the mail the other day.

And because I apparently have the best enunciation in the family, I have been elected to read it aloud to him. All 300 plus pages. Folks, by December, I may be the only person who doesn't watch college basketball who can recite every stat on each Kentucky player. Ask me how tall Eloy Vargas is. Go ahead.

How The Country Boy Came To Eat Prosciutto

For months now, we’ve been feeding Mama J. and Papa T. dinner every night. By “we” I mean Hula comes home from work, cooks dinner, slaps food onto two plates and sends it down the street via Hubby. Sometimes he drives the truck. Sometimes he uses the golf cart. And these nifty plastic deviled egg carriers from Wal-Mart that perfectly hold foil wrapped plates. It’s usually a race to get dinner finished in a timely fashion, so those two don’t die of starvation. Old folks like to eat early, ya’ know. And Hula doesn’t get home from work until 5pm or so, so it’s run, run, run from the minute I hit the door. When the food hits the plates I often throw my hands in the air al la rodeo cowboy and yell, “Time!” Or sometimes I channel my old Rocky Horror Picture Show days and sing out, “Masta’, dinner is prepared!” Teen Angel laughs. Hubby doesn’t. Sigh. Smart aleck humor is so unappreciated in my house.

One of the biggest obstacles we’ve had to overcome is Papa T.’s palate. The man grew up on a farm in rural Tennessee during the depression. Dinner to him is a piece of pork, two starches and a piece of cornbread. Period. He is not an adventurous eater. Wild and crazy to him is leaving the bacon grease out of the green beans. Now, the rest of us are foodies. We enjoy all kinds of foods. We like to try new things. Hubby wasn’t always that way. He takes after his dad. When we first married he ate meat and vegetables. End of story. No spaghetti. No lasagna. No enchiladas. No seasonings. It’s the way Mama J. cooked when Hubby was growing up. It took a while, but eventually I forced him to try new things, and now he eats all kinds of stuff. Except for fish. If it’s not cod or salmon, he skips the fish.

Teen Angel and I are always experimenting with new meals. Our pantry is full of interesting stuff. Nothing makes us happier than visiting Whole Foods. The closest one is two hours away from us, so when we venture to Nashville, we take a cooler for a Whole Foods stop. Other women shop for shoes. The Hula-gen gals shop for organic pasta made from corn, pasta colored with squid ink and blood oranges. And cheeses. All kinds of cheeses. When we whip up something new, Mama J. dives in, Teen Angel and I happily chew away and Hubby sniffs it warily and then cleans his plate. Well, except for that potato pizza fiasco I had last month. I don’t know what happened, but instead of crispy golden potatoes on my homemade crust, I had underdone mush. It was not good. We all scraped off the potatoes and ate the crust. Man CAN live by bread alone. At least until the next morning. We are proof.

Papa T. just doesn’t care for anything but the mundane, and I’m not making more than one kind of meal each night. As mama used to say, “I ain’t runnin’ a truck stop,” so we have to compromise. I make my fair share of pork seasoned vegetables and homemade biscuits and cornbread. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good homemade biscuit. It’s one of my favorite food groups. But the rest of us can stand only so much of that fare. We like lighter, healthier stuff and more fun stuff, so I have resorted to a tactic I used with Teen Angel when she was much younger and much pickier. I lie. I know it’s shameful to do that to a blind man with dementia, but we all do what we must to get by. If a kid thinks a talapia fillet is a chicken nugget, and he’ll eat a chicken nugget, you tell him it’s a chicken nugget and everyone eats in peace. If Papa T. wants country cookin’ we simply tell him what he wants to hear before he digs in. When I send Hubby down the street with plates of out of the ordinary, I give Hubby the “lie”. For example: Sunday night I made homemade pizza with caramelized red onions and prosciutto. It was delicious, if I do say so myself. It’s a recipe from The Pioneer Woman, and let me just tell you that homemade pizza crust recipe of hers is great. Now Papa T.’s idea of pizza is thin crust cheese pizza. If he could get rid of the sauce and eat just the crust and cheese, I think he would, so when Hubby asked was on the menu, I told him, “Homemade pizza with caramelized onions and prosciutto, but tell your daddy it’s plain pizza and country ham.” “Aye-aye,” my partner in crime said, and down the street he went. A half hour later he returned. Papa T. had gobbled up every bit of his pizza and country ham and declared it “mighty tasty”. And there was peace all over the land.

This technique seems to work well as long as we stick somewhat close to the truth. I’m just not sure he’s going to believe the gnocchi is tiny biscuits.

True Blue

At dinner last night Papa T. was relaying the story of how he almost choked to death Sunday night. It seems he took a large pill without any water right before going to bed. Some time later he awoke choking on the pill. The gagging went on for what seemed like forever, and Mama J. couldn’t hear him from the den where she had fallen asleep in a chair. He said he reached the point where he literally thought he was going to die or as he put it, would “meet his Waterloo”. And the first thought that flashed through his mind as he prepared to meet his maker?

“Damn, I’m gonna miss that UK game,” he said.

I laughed so hard I almost choked on my creamed corn.

Old School

The Hula-gen's are all over class reunions these days. Last weekend we attended my elementary school reunion. Yesterday, we took Papa T. and Mama J. to Papa T.'s 57th high school reunion. We drove an hour and a half to a city in Tennessee where the class gathered, passing through the tiny town where they attended school so many years ago. There were twenty one students in Papa T.'s graduating class, and his was a big class. There were six seniors in the group that graduated before them. Ten members of his class gathered yesterday, as they've done for the last several years. It was great fun to listen to them swap stories and tell lies on each other. Hubby and I were the youngest people in the room, and we didn't mind at all. We listened to a lot of wisdom and soaked up some character. The grilled shrimp wasn't bad either.


Papa T. grew up in a farm town. It's the kind of town that still has grain bins on the main drag, a little BBQ joint and a handful of homes on the "other side of the tracks". The old storefronts with big glass windows are still there and tell you exactly where the bank, the post office and the hardware store used to be. Not much has changed there in the seventy years since Papa T. trudged to school down dusty dirt roads in sturdy brown brogans. In his time, everybody farmed, nobody had any money and you ate what you raised. School was important, but it was a level playing field, since no one had fancy clothes or expensive backpacks. People made do with what they had.

The school he graduated from still stands. It's closed now and sits abandoned at the edge of town. It housed elementary grades AND high school students. It was actually built when Papa T. was in third grade. The original school burned one day while the students were in class. Papa T. remembers being ushered out of the building and a frantic search for a missing first grader who was later found at home two miles away. He remembers spending the next two years scattered around town where the grades were divided among the local Baptist, Methodist and Church of Christ churches. Classes were held in Sunday school rooms and sanctuaries with dividers placed in the main aisle, separating grades. By the fourth grade, he was in the brand new building where he would spend the next nine years with the same small group of kids. This is their senior picture.

Papa T. is the third from the left on the back row. Apparently, he and his classmates were close. A symptom of being a small group, I suppose. They still seem to enjoy each other's company.

This lady looks like a Hollywood glamour queen in her yearbook photo.

This fellow helped Papa T. to get into a fair amount of trouble way back when.And this guy used to keep a $2 bottle of Four Roses bootleg liquor bought out of the the back door of the local funeral home hidden in the corn crib. The boys slipped out there for a snort every now and then.

There were tales about old cars and watermelon stealin' and stolen kisses. And most interesting of all, they each stood up individually to give everyone an update on what had happened to them in the last year. Most of them told of their RV trips and their grandchildren's achievements. One lady remarried after being single for 26 years. Papa T. was last, and I held my breath a little when he stood to speak. I looked at Hubby and made eye contact with Mama J. They were nervous, too. It's been a terrible year for Papa T.. Losing your eyesight and a grown child to suicide are not things you want to share with the whole world, but everyone in the room was somewhat aware of his situation. His blindness had been an elephant in the room up to that point. He rose slowly, his bad knee causing him to grimace a little. He smiled and as he always does when he has to deal with something difficult, he met it head on. He talked about his eye problems as a young man and explained that his last surgery was the last operation possible for him and that it didn't really do anything to stop the blindness. I caught the tear that started to squeeze out of my right eye before it slid down my cheek. He explained how life sometimes hands us obstacles and we just "have to deal with them". And then he said something that took me by surprise. He told his fellow classmates how much he cared about them and that the one good thing about blindness was that in his eyes, they would never grow any older. That they were standing still in time to a certain degree and that he liked that. They liked it, too. They all smiled and then rolled with laughter when he broke into a story about him and James on the court square with a loud muffler and a police officer.

I breathed a sigh of relief and marveled over the way he had handled the situation. And I smiled at the warmth those folks still feel for each other after 57 years. How remarkable. I found it especially comforting on the heels of a national day of remembrance for the folks lost in the worst terrorist acts on American soil. While there is still turmoil and hate around the world, in its small corners there are folks who love each other and nurture each other through the years. They toil the soil, walk down Main street and keeps things rolling in small town America, generation after generation. Hubby and I enjoyed our visit with the Class of '52. Those Puryear Hornets gave us quite the education yesterday.

Pedaling as Fast as we Can

Some of you have asked about Papa T., and I appreciate your concern. He is doing much better. He had a terrible time Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. All of the stomach distress and the medical tests, some of which involved fasting, left him weak as a kitten. He didn't even feel strong enough to give the nurses and doctors any trouble. After scoping him from end to end, they finally determined that he has diverticulitis, which makes sense given that he had eaten lettuce, berries AND cashews right before this attack. (My, he's going to miss his cashews.) They've been pumping him full of fluids, but he's still kind of weak. This morning, the doctor suggested they keep him at the hospital for another week for some rehabilitation because of the weakness. An exhausted Mama J. thought that was a grand idea. Papa T. disagreed. As I am typing this they are battling that one out at the hospital, and Hubby is on the sidelines refereeing. I think Papa T. is going to win this one, and I suspect he will be home later today.

He tends to improve remarkably once he's on home territory, so I'm not sure it's a bad thing for him to skip the rehab. One thing's for sure, he's going to have to change his eating habits. The nuts and seeds and evening junk food snacks are going to have to go, and we're happy about that. We've been trying to get him to give up the nightly Cheetos and Pop-Tart binges for a while to no success. But when someone's pushing eighty and wants strawberry frosted Pop-Tarts, who are we to demand he can't have them. Just because someone grows older doesn't mean he automatically surrenders his free will. This way, he's willing to eat better to avoid the gastrointestinal nightmare that put him in the hospital, and it was his choice, so to speak.

It's been a looong week for the Hula-gen's. Hubby, Teen Angel and Mama J. have all spent most of their time at the hospital, helping with Papa T.. In between spurts of rain and Papa T.'s medical tests, Hubby has been running home to mow and do errands. I've raced from busy days at work to the hospital in the evenings and then errands and home. My work day yesterday put me in the sun for about twelve hours. Summer finally arrived here, so it's currently 612 degrees in the shade and humid. I was whipped last night, and so were the rest of my peeps. We slept like hibernating bears last. In fact, Teen Angel is still sleeping. I am off of work today, and I'm glad. It will give me a little time to slow down a teeny tiny bit and do some paperwork and phone calls regarding Sissy's finances and accounts. I'm starting to get responses from all of the letters and death certificates I had to send out to various banks, insurance companies and offices. Egad, that's a long, drawn out process. We are pedaling along, we seem to be over the hump on this latest medical issue with my in-laws and we have an invitation to a ParrotHead party tomorrow afternoon, so things are looking up. I hope to be back to reading your blogs and commenting more in a day or two, but for now, it's still one bump at a time, and I truly appreciate your concern.

Just Another Day in Paradise

It’s been quiet around here for a solid week. Too quiet. So quiet that I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop because the Hula-gen’s lives are always filled with mayhem. It’s not that we like to roll that way. It just happens to be the hand we’re dealt most of the time, and we’ve come to expect it. And so do the people around us. Mama seemed shocked when she asked me this past weekend how things were and I said, “Calm.”
“Really?!”
“Really.”
“Hmm. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Yeah, thanks.”

But honestly, it was hard to enjoy our week of peace because I kept waiting for something bad to happen. I know, I know. It’s a bad habit. What can I say? I’m a little scarred from the previous tragedies in our lives.

So it was no surprise when Hubby called me at work yesterday and said he, Mama J. and Teen Angel were on their way to the hospital with Papa T. Papa T. had a rough Sunday with nausea, vomiting and other stomach distress I will only describe as Mt. Vesuvius. He failed to get better, and he seemed really dehydrated Monday morning, so off to the ER they went because they couldn’t get him into the doctor’s office. Was the mayhem about to begin?

Nurses and doctors spent a few hours poking and prodding him until they decided he had some internal bleeding and he needed to stay for more tests. He was not happy. In fact, he was downright surly. “The only reason they’re keepin’ me is ‘cause I have good insurance!” he told the rest of the ER. Never mind the internal bleeding. Ah, perhaps the mayhem was beginning.

Papa T. is not a good patient. In fact, he’s a nurse’s worst nightmare. You also have to understand that when he turned 76 years old he declared himself finished with preventive testing. He feels like he’s lived long enough to quit most of the routine tests that roll around every few years, (including regular teeth cleanings). The only stuff he wants to endure is necessary repair work. After his last colonoscopy he declared that he was finished with colonoscopies forever and was pretty ticked off when they found polyps and they told him he’d need another rear end Roto-router in three years. “Bah! We’ll see,” he said. He just hates medical tests, and he definitely hates the hospital. He hates hospital food, and he hates hospital gowns. I expected him to be in rare form by the time I got to the hospital yesterday evening. Instead, he was pretty quiet. Surprising. We made small talk, and he seemed pleasant. Still waiting on they mayhem to begin.

Teen Angel and I took Mama J. down to the cafeteria for dinner, and when we returned we found that Papa T. had received and eaten his dinner, which consisted of broth, tea and a cherry Popsicle. He hates cherry Popsicles. In fact, he hates any meal that doesn’t consist of at least three vegetables and two pieces of cornbread. “How was your dinner Granddaddy?” we asked.
“Terrible. I had beef broth and it tasted like S**T!!! The only thing that was good was the tea, and that’s not sayin’ much. I don’t know how many dinners I’ve had in my life, but I know that was definitely the worst I’VE EVER HAD!!”

Ah, there’s the chaos I was waiting for. I looked at Hubby and Teen Angel and we started to laugh. And guess what? Papa T. has to have a colonoscopy tomorrow. Did you just hear the thud of the shoe dropping? Pray for us, brothers and sisters, it could be a long week. But at least things are back to normal around here.