Looking For The Positives

[kayc]

Thank you, all!  Kelli came 7 pm the first night, visited until bedtime, woke up at 9 and left at 1:30 so wasn't here long, but I did get her to help me put up the Christmas tree while she was here and she walked Kodie once.  I'm doing okay, can't do much, no lifting, gripping, immersing in water, etc.  Took a shower this morning, that was a challenge, quickest ever!  Kodie has been an angel, so glad!  He was upset when I came home as he was in the house in the dark, did not think I'd be gone that long since they'd told me 20 min.  I was scared to be alone at first and probably could have used help the first couple of days.                                                                      

Still have the original pain/numbness so waiting to see if the operation even helped.  

 

[Kieron]

Sorry Kay.  🙁

For what it's worth the image I tried to include was huskies.  but i guess it didn't save correctly or something and now I can't delete it. oh well....

[Margm]

When they pulled/cut out the rest of my teeth they gave me heavy Motrin to take home.  Some suffering for sure.  They could not even give me Motrin now.  I have to stay spot on careful, but accidents happen and we cannot help that.  We think we can't stand the pain, but if you had a baby before epidurals, you don't know how much pain you obviously have to take.  Will never forget my neighbor in the country hospital 58 years ago asking me the next day (when I had to get up and walk) "Well, have you had that damn baby yet?"  The whole hospital heard "I don't want this damn baby."  I didn't do much cursing then.  I did learn some words but the closer you get to heaven, you talk a lot nicer.  Can you imagine our ancestors having 10 children with no pain med.  Damn Eve for making gullible Adam eat that apple.  Myself, I hate pain (of course we all do).  

My sister called me yesterday and her x-rays of her back showed degenerative disk disease.  She had suffered such back pains, and she takes 12 medications to be able to breathe.  She won't give up her cigarettes, I'm not fussing, if they give her comfort, the damage has been done so why quit now.  She says that is the only thing her doc fusses at her for.  She thinks maybe if she went to a hypnotist it might help.  I've seen it help my supervisor at the last hospital I worked.  But, my sister does not want/cannot quit.  She was afraid it was her kidneys.  She said she was an organ donor and that was all that was not injured she could donate.  All I have is my brain and heart and I'm sure they would think twice (nah, not even once) about using a 78-year-old brain or heart.  My heart is broken anyhow.  

[Gwenivere]

1 hour ago, Marg M said:

All I have is my brain and heart and I'm sure they would think twice (nah, not even once) about using a 78-year-old brain or heart.  My heart is broken anyhow.  

I don’t think they do brain transplants....yet, Marg.  Otherwise we could live forever getting younger bodies.  And what happens to those we displace?  🤪

Never had a baby, but I believe about the pain.  I’m sorry your sister has the back pain, that I can relate to that in full.  No one would want our hearts.  In that I include our brains (mind) and memories. Especially now that they have so much more pain.  Wish I could erase so much of mine.  The real reason is because the good stuff now hurts.  Never in my life did I plan for or expect  that.  When they were happening,  it was grand.   Howcould something so good become something so hard to relive?   We used to laugh reminiscing.  Now we cry.

[Margm]

My daughter has had radiation to her brain and she varies.  Some days she will go 72 hours with no rest.  Then some days she will sleep off and on 72 hours.  Nawlins lets her know when she has to "go" and sometimes if she cannot wake Kelli up, she runs and jumps in the bathtub and does her business.  Most times she wakes her up.  I had radiation to my lower torso and there is no variance for me, I am slow moving 24/7.  

[kayc]

18 hours ago, Marg M said:

if you had a baby before epidurals, you don't know how much pain you obviously have to take.

I had both of mine naturally, no pain blockers, I didn't want to chance it harming them.  Yes we can take a lot of pain, but at the end of that we get this beautiful baby and we know our pain will be worth it in the end, also that it will soon be over.  But for anything else we don't get that reward or assurance, we don't know if/when it'll be over!  Makes a difference to our mindset.

My sister insists on smoking too even though it prohibits me from being able to help her as much and she has severe COPD.  I can't judge but neither do I understand, not having smoked myself.  I guess I just don't want something that controls me or overrides my common sense.  But George was a smoker too and I know it calmed him...he'd cut back 90% when he died, he was trying but I guess it was too late.

[MartyT]

1 hour ago, kayc said:

But for anything else we don't get that reward or assurance, we don't know if/when it'll be over!  Makes a difference to our mindset.

Indeed it does, Kay. I think pain is like grief: the worst pain in the world is the pain you're experiencing right now ~ most especially when you don't know if or when it will end. I'm so sorry that you're in such distress, and I hate that physicians are so reluctant to prescribe medication for pain ~ most especially right after surgery, when it is most severe. 

[Margm]

6 hours ago, kayc said:

But George was a smoker too and I know it calmed him...he'd cut back 90% when he died, he was trying but I guess it was too late.

Billy had to give up the cigarettes and went instead to oral tobacco, snuff, Copenhagen.  My first article that was published in a medical journal was written by a resident who did study on the oral tobacco and kidney cancer.  Billy even tried to give this up.  He would come and show me he had only had three cans for the week.  I did not criticize or praise him either but I know he wanted to stop.  My brother-in-law put cigarettes down and never touched tobacco again..  Some can do that but Billy had been smoking since pre-teen, as his whole family did.  Mama smoked the whole time she was pregnant with my sister.  I had weighed over 8 pounds, no smoking while pregnant and my sister weighed 6 pounds, and I guess already addicted.  Mama offered to buy me cigarettes.  She bought them for my sister.  I tried inhaling twice and it hurt so bad I figured it was not worth it.  I do believe the poison helped kill Billy.  But even though I cannot be in my sister's apartment for long, it is her substitute for the reason I use Xanax.  It is too late now anyhow.  It is a form of suicide to keep from getting Alzheimer's, on her way of thinking.  I don't want her to hurt.  

[kayc]

My FIL gave up cigarettes when he was in his 70s, he lived to his 90s, just quit and that was it, but most can't do that so easily!  My sister Peggy has never tried, she WANTS her cigarettes, demands it as her right, even though the rest of us cannot be around it and her husband lived with her smoking and died of cancer.  I don't bring it up to her.  I did try to broach the subject after the rehab place had her off them for a month, but her husband bought them for her and she lit up the moment she was home.  They say secondhand smoke is worse, don't know but it didn't help him any, I'm sure.  I'm so glad I didn't get into smoking, hard enough giving up Carbs!

[kayc]

18 hours ago, Marg M said:

It is a form of suicide to keep from getting Alzheimer's, on her way of thinking.

I think that's in part, Peggy's thinking too.

[Gwenivere]

I gave up smoking almost 2 years ago.  I didn’t give up nicotine and use the lozenges.  It’s not known if nicotine is very harmful, but the delivery (like smoking or vaping) definitely is.  So I’ve swapped my addiction, but docs are happy about the no smoke in the lungs part.  It was part of my life for so long.  If I could, I’d still be smoking.  Only another smoker would understand.  I knew I’d never be a reformed kind and bug others.  I think it’s admirable you don’t ride your sister, Kay.  I  never found it disgusting like the support groups I abandoned.  Once someone there tried a thread about let's be honest, who really still wants to and got slammed. I do see my young neighbors do and I’ve had cashiers tell me about their smoke breaks.  One said he thought it will become illegal at some point.  I doubt that.  They could ban it everywhere, but short of shutting down the nicotine industry, your home is still a free zone for anything.   Just would create a black market.  Smokers don’t see it as killing themselves.  It’s typically something it aggravates that becomes the reason to quit like me.  Lungs shot not from smoking (not helped either tho) but an irreversible condition that really makes no sense I have, but I do.  The reason it happens don’t apply to me.  Well, this was long winded.  

I do think that someone that has a reason (health, family) to quit should.  But as with all things, it’s a personal choice even if it seems selfish.  It’s so easy to judge someone or thing. 

We all have things people disagree with or find odd.  We know how it feels when those are commented on.  That is what bothers me most of all.

[Margm]

I rode Billy about it when we were first married.  Many fusses.  I quit fussing.  Bothered me waking up to a cotton mattress burned an oval hole and the burning had spread, but no flame, just charred material that kept burning.  His folks home burned completely down with many living with them when he was working nights and sleeping days.  He escaped with his jeans only.  But said he was not smoking.  I would not try to get my sister to quit, though she wants to actually.  Thinks she could do it with hypnosis.   I hate to see her hurting.  People look at people who smoke, who have the nicotine habit and look down on them for not being strong enough.  My sister is a member of AA.  She quit liquor twice.  She cannot quit smoking.  I quit prescription biphetamines after seven years "cold turkey" because I did not know you could buy them without a prescription and besides, would it have been the real stuff. The doc was a "weight control doc" and he left women from La., AR, Texas and Tenn. even to handle it the best we could.  I went absolutely crazy/mad/insane.  I had to be hospitalized as I was a danger to myself and those around me.  It was not a pretty sight.  I slit my left wrist and sure enough, I hit the big artery.  Only a mile from the hospital, my neighbor sewed me up and asked if it was intentional..  The angry fit I threw was intentional, the slamming my arm down on a broke glass candle holder to pick up a table was intentional.  He didn't send me to the psych ward.  He wanted to.  Didn't matter, I admitted myself the next day.  My dad stormed into the room with his hat in his hand wanting to know what had I done with the life he and Mama had given me.  About four of us in the room were dumb-struck, no words said, he stormed out.  So, I sorta understood Billy's and my sister's addiction. It was a craving I could not handle and thus began 15 years of psychotherapy and many things happening that required me to keep going. The smoking itself was making Billy's arteries clogged.  He had to quit after more than one kidney stent.  But the liquid tobacco did not clog his arteries, just probably killed him.  Some people can quit.  Some people cannot. I understand.  I grieve my sister's pain as a pain she cannot help.  I will forever grieve Billy. 

  

[Gwenivere]

Wow, Marg.  A doc got you hooked and then disappeared?  That is so morally wrong.  What a nightmare.  {{{{hugs}}}}

[kayc]

I talked with my sister about it yesterday and she thinks it's in part her way of avoiding growing old & getting dementia like my mom, like a passive suicide, I totally agree.  Plus calming.  I can understand it with my head, still I wish she didn't as often I don't go in there because of the smoke, I always suffer for it.

[Margm]

9 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

and then disappeared?

No, at one time he was one of the  most visited OB/GYN docs in the surrounding towns.  He was in the city, he delivered Kelli.  The one thing I remember was his telling me a woman needed help losing weight, and I became one of his followers.  I heard the authorities talking to him in his office.  He came in for my "examination" and said "they seem to think I have women addicted to these drugs, are you addicted.  I said "no, I'm not" (now write the prescription).  One other GYN doc before the cancer, I filled out my form and he said you mention you were addicted to amphetamines.  I told him what his colleague had done (we women were willing accomplices), and he said, "yes, Dr. T., got a lot of our women addicted."  The day after my wrist cutting I went to his office to get a referral to a shrink.  He saw the wraps on my arm, threw up both hands, walked backward out of the room and I never saw him again.  I was hysterical, crying openly, walked to my car, got in, rode to next medical complex, recognized a shrink I had typed often,  no appointment (did not need one, I was insane).  A good Samaritan had followed me, I got out of  my car at the shrink's office and he left and waved me on.  I guess I could have sued the Dr. T., but probably a lot of women might have.  Still, he was allowed to practice, he retired an old, old man and lived to be 100.  He was from a well established rich family.  And, this was in the 1970's.  

[Gwenivere]

So you went to another doctor and he wouldn’t treat you?  They take an oath to do no harm.  I realize this was the 70’s and maybe they they didn’t know the severity of amphetamine dependence, but still needed to listen to patients.  That you had your arm wrapped and was in the midst of withdrawal, he should have helped get you-the care he couldn’t provide.  I don’t know how you can say you were 'willing' accomplices.  You were under the influence.  That doesn’t make you willing.

[Margm]

2 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

So you went to another doctor and he wouldn’t treat you?

No, I returned to the doc that had given me the prescriptions.  He would not even talk to me, just raised his hands when he saw my packing around my wrists, and he started walking backwards, would not talk to me, and all I wanted was a referral.  I think he had already been confronted with some other damaged females.  He would not talk to me..  I got hysterical and ran out the door.  I was already so messed up anyhow.

[kevin]

A real positive, its passed Nov 15th and "most" of my Christmas lights are up and working.....and we are getting hammered today with snow..........Your Thanksgiving or my GreyCup are my milestones.....Take care

[Gwenivere]

Really pretty, Kevin.  Makes me miss the days Steve would get our place all gussied up and festive.  Used to love coming home to all the lights.  Wayyyyy back when he did the roofline too.  Like the tree and front door.🎄

[Margm]

Well, "Merry Christmas" to you too Kevin, very pretty.  

 

[kevin]

Gwen, the roofline means ladder work which I avoid...Next year I might arrange for one of my Grandsons to do the high work....I'm sure Steve enjoyed lights as much as I do.....now my friends want EggNog....

 

[Gwenivere]

Precisely why I had Steve quit doing the roof.  Leave that for the strapping lads now.  He and a neighbor had a yearly contest of who could get done first right after Thanksgiving.  We liked those white reindeer too.  Someone stole one once.  We put a sign in its place hoping the perpetrator would see of how very sad to steal something meant for many to see.  Guess they did In their yard.  Talk about contradictory behavior!  

[KarenK]

Very pretty, Kevin. Now, I'm jealous of your lights and your snow!  lol

[kayc]

Wow, your outside is decorated beautifully!  I have my tree up and am proud of Kodie, he hasn't touched it!  But I'm afraid it'll be a lonely TG & Christmas.  I'm glad you're around family!  And the snow is beautiful, I hope you keep it there (we're predicted some).

[kevin]

Sharing some good news, I proposed to my Karaoke Girlfriend and its a Yes.......I met Judi 2 years ago  when I moved up here and its been great....makes this Covid life somewhat liveable...