October 27, 2011

• Late October finds me still in San Francisco, and all of the visitors are wrapped up for the season — Each to their own place, and fittingly;  This year ended with a favorite niece and three of her friends getting together at my house.  During their stay I had begun leaving the oxygen behind, for my husband, I kid you not;  Did not like the way it appeared in our home, and “He,” wanted things back to normal.  Thus far, he has decided what I should ear, when I should leave my oxygen behind,  and made certain that I saw the nutritionist to put me on a diet for weight loss, but it was, “I,” his wife who had the pulmonary embolism.  He, however, got tired of our place, “Looking like a nursing home.”

  Out side of an exceptional view, the only way this place, except for the remodeled lower flat which we rent out would not feel like a nursing home would be if the Hayward Fault decided to remodel the entire Bay area, and that is going to happen;  We just do not know when, and it will be a very frightening event, for we had a quake on it this past week that was a 4.0 which gave us the hardest jolt that we ever remember, and it is because we are just across the Bay where it was centered under the UC Berkeley campus, but it was short and our reenforced house felt as if we were about to have to run outside if we could get out.  Since quakes are geometric in strength;; I do not  want to imagine a slip/slide quadrupled by a factor of ten for each fraction of a point on the 4.0, so mathematicians out there;  Give me some help, for I do not know exactly how it works;  But an 8 is not double a 4, but is more near a very large bomb being dropped, so I will allow you to take the Richter and show your stuff.

  But, back to my husband;  Have you ever met anyone that all of your friends presumed that he hated them;  Well, that is my man, only he feels that his brilliant mind works better here in his mother’s home, and to explore why I have never run all of these years, then you may just have to read the book;  Now won;t you, for he becomes a part of it.  We did not run back in those  days, and I am not going to advise you to start it now;  For even grown children have issues after such change in their lives much less younger children.  I am so sad to tell you that you should never get married just presuming that it is always going to be about being happy, and for those of you who want to be warm at night, and that is all that you all want;  May I suggest a teddy bear, good quality and an electric blanket, for if that is your only though of how marriage is going to be;  Then I ask you to think again.

  When it gets really frightening is when the conversation goes away,  the next thing, the art of having someone making sounds of a chomping horse, the day when fiber taking is out of synch with over active gastric activity, sleep apnea machines for one or both, and then the agonizing moments of endeavoring to figure out which kid needs the most and how much your retirement funds will be affordable for them.  In other words;  The aging partner, and the countless hurdles which brings one to those moments when you used to whisper wonderful things in the night, and a voice came back;  Now you are just lucky to share any time, especially when eating becomes instead of a pleasant time;  there is that silence which allows you to hear every bite like chalk on a black board, for the lack of conversation makes echoes of everything as if a wood chuck is in your home under the table.  It takes courage to open your mouth and to say the first words to clear the silence;  But do not stop talking whatever you do, for if you do;; Then you are failing the relationship yourself.

  I have only had one other near death experience, and that was when I had my twins;  I almost bled to death, and this time it was a pulmonary embolism.  Up until this point, I cannot list what all and when I have taken care of my husband, but I can reassure you that any nurse who ever took care of  him would reassure you that he is the worst patient on the face of the earth; and score one for me;  They usually feel that I am the best patient they ever had, because I was a nurse, and I do not want to make their lives miserable.   Frank, himself decided I had been in care long enough for this pulmonary embolism;  So he decided the breadth of my care.  He was able to hold out until the week before the hospital was going to finish home care, so he was nicer to me than usual for those seven weeks.  Tomorrow or the next day, he will decide my exercise regimen, and it is because he deeply loves me;  Wrong, my friend;  It brings me back to better health as such he has zero responsibility to me, and I go back to care taking him.  It is just his nature, and I married him when I was 20 years old, thus he is weary with the whole thing.  He does not see it as being a less than kind manner to act, considering I go without the osygen that has rested and helped my lungs to heal..   He did not marry me to become a nursing home  devotee;  No, he married me to be a wife, a wage earner, and to have children.  What is love anyway?  Is it a about feeling good or feeling dutiful;  You cannot get around it;  It is both.

  I think this is all called issues of aging, and no one prepared us for them, but they are here, so I advise you to have a plan, for you too will make this journey unless you perish young.  Just know that anything which makes you uncomfortable about being around aging citisens;  you are one breath, a few shawdows, and the best  you can be until them time comes, But;  At least let the physician decide when the oxygen needs to be taken away, for otherwise you are left uncertain that it is not a desire to see you in death, or a ploy for you to just come back and see how llong before round Two.  I have made the discovery that being Hard of Hearing might be routed in the definite need to close out much that irritates one.  Love any moment that you can, but marry the whole package, for sometime it is going to be wrapped with bailing wire instead of the soft ribbons of early romance.

  We did not know how to leave it all then, and now some of  us try to count the little things;  He makes me coffee when I am out here, and he took care of me for almost two months, because I had blood clots in both lungs.  When I scalded my leg this summer accidentally with boiling water;  He did not offer to come back to Cincinnati, and now I have the worst scare that you have ever seen, because I just treated it how I knew burns got treated in the ER, and he was enjoying his Bohemian club out here.  Of course he would have been useless anyway for that, because he cannot stand the sight of blood much less baseball sized blisters, so I just cried sometimes, for I had no help.

  My friends who have successful marriages, the proud, the few, seem to enjoy doing things together just as a natural consequence of things they enjoy; hiking, travel, planned meals that suit both; And all such things.  Our lives are my husband’s forethought of what is important and how things will work.  He is where he wanted to be in retirement:  In his mother’s home.  He control’s the money, and I am informed what is and is not important.  This week he told my house help to come every other week, knowing specifically that I had asked the gentleman to come each week, so I will just have the man bring help, work twice as long and to keep the place clean that way.

  After a pulmonary embolism, the way you know if you are going to have more;  If you get short of breath and make it to the hospital on time.  I will feel safer one year from now if no other has developed.  Meanwhile, may you be blessed and wiser than my generation, and if you get married, just make certain that you know these days are coming, and I pray for you blessings and love to carry you over when just being pretty is not enough.

  Pinkhoneysuckle

  • 5:14 am
  • 2 Comments