Still Kickin'

I knew it had been a while since I've posted on my blog and when I looked I was embarrassed to see how long it had been...  A lot has happened since my last post and nothing really has happened since my last post.     Let me explain that statement.

In August I was pretty much tired of feeling like the hamster in the wheel, running and running to nowhere on the medical side of my life after getting my blood drawn every month and going to the G.I. and having virtually the same conversation about getting the liver function down to somewhere near normal.  I was having some side effects that I attributed to the Imuran, the liver medicine that I had been taking, along with prednisone (steroids) for months.  My doctor was getting frustrated, also I think, because my liver readings were not getting down to where he thought they should be and I was thinking if the dang liver med hadn't kicked in to deal with the problem and get me off the steroids then why am I taking it?  We talked and I told him that I felt some of the problems that were putting me in the dirt were side effects of the Imuran and I wanted to know if there were other options.  He was honest with my that he really didn't know as it was pretty much all he knew to do and he would prefer that I go to a liver specialist that would be more knowledgeable about it all.  Fine with me but I'm getting off the Imuran and he said that was fine but would you not go off the prednisone.  Well, I thought what is 7.5 mg every other day going to do for me but for now I stayed on it.

I went to Ft. Worth for the weekend of August 24th.  My sister-in-law was going to sing for her first time with a gospel group and 6 or 8 songs solo in the program.  The concert program was at a large church in Benbrook, a bedroom community in the south part of Ft. Worth.  My sister that lives in Weatherford, TX, west of Ft. Worth drove in and we got to visit and sit together during the concert and that was fun to get to catch up with her.  It seems we don't get to do that often enough.

This was the flyer for Diane's first professional appearance.  Gloria Diane Gardner or as we call her GG or Diane. She also went with Praise, Inc. to Vermont for 4 days of concerts.  My baby brother went with her and Praise, Inc. on their Vermont trip and they got to visit with my cousin and her husband that live close to where the concerts were being held.  I was jealous that they got to visit my cousin as it has probably been 15 or 20 years since I've gotten to see my cousin... but I wasn't cognizant enough to fuss too much about it.  I, once again, have digressed from my post...

Meanwhile back at the ranch... The Evening Of Praise was wonderful, but also very long.  Anyone that has ever gone to a gospel singing evening knows it will go at least 2 hours and more likely 3-4 hours. Since I went with Bennett (baby brother) and Diane we were at the church so they could get set up and do sound checks and all that pre stuff and then we were at the church for the tear down and all total we were there from about 3:30 in the afternoon until 11 p.m. that night.  I was wiped out.  I slept for the better part of Saturday.  Praise, Inc. was going to sing at a car show and I was looking forward to getting to see all the older cars and enjoy some more music but I was so exhausted that I told Ben he was going to have to go without me.  Diane was also pretty wiped and was staying home until little brother called and smooth talked her into going to the show and doing some more singing both solo and with the guys. I slept, watched a little t.v. and slept some more and some more.

I had planned to get up and go to church with B. and D, on Sunday but I didn't wake up until almost noon on Sunday and when they got home from church we all basically crashed, napping and watching t.v. until Sunday night when we met two of my nephews at the movie, the first one I'd been to at a movie theater since I went with Ben and Diane to see "Elf" when it came out several years ago.  I got up on Monday and drove home. Exhausted.

Somewhere during that stretch of a few days I decided in one of more disastrous decisions that the prednisone wasn't doing any good no more than I was taking... 7.5 mg every other day.  The doctor hadn't told me that you have to step down, way down before you quit taking it and I figured there wouldn't be any problem.  I was so very wrong as any of you who have been on an extended steroid regimen know.

NEWS FLASH... Sometimes I just amaze my own stupid self... I just now in talking with Carol realized I lost almost two months.  I was thinking that I just lost about one month, but I'd been thinking that the concert was in September when they were in August. I got home on Monday even more tired than usual from my trip. And from there things pretty much started heading south.  I slept, got up to eat, maybe get on the computer a bit, maybe not, back to sleep and the next day repeat.  Then the pain started.  I would take pain pills when I got up to feed the dogs in the morning, go back to bed and when I'd get up again I'd take more pain pills just to try to keep the pain at a manageable level... it wasn't working very well.  I went to my regular doctor about getting stronger pain medication until I could see the liver doctor.  I had my first appointment with him on Sept. 20th I think.  Before he did anything medication wise he wanted to get lab work and then we would get down to the business of figuring out what he was needing to treat.  He order 15 different blood tests. I got the bill for them the other day... over six thousand dollars of tests.  Thank God for Medicare otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation because I'm one of those that has no other medical insurance.

In the time after the blood tests until my appointment to see him again, the pain really kicked in.  I would wake up one day with hot, searing joint pain in maybe my elbows one day and then in my wrists and hands the next. You could see the swelling and almost feel the heat coming off whatever area was hurting that day.  My hands looked like I had been in a fight.  My knuckles would swell up to almost double normal size and the swelling would go halfway up my arm. When the pain traveled again it went to my knees.  I was in such pain just trying to walk from my bed to the bathroom (about 12 steps) that I had to use Carol's cane for several days and thought about getting her walker but I didn't get quite that bad. As the days passed I got to being almost analytical watching the pain traveling from one area to the next in my body.  Almost as if I was on the outside of my body looking in and observing what was going on.  For example I figured out when the low grade fever started coming on the pain would start intensifying. The pain meds my family practice doctor gave me that were stronger than what I normally take for the fibro pain and they would afford me some time where I wasn't curled up in a whimpering blob on the sofa or asleep in the bed on an average of 12 hours out of the 24.

I'm going to make this a two-parter because I'm getting worn out trying to remember what all went on since the end of August.  I can remember 40 years ago great, just don't ask what I had for dinner last night and here I'm trying to recall what went on in my drug induced state for almost two months.  I promise not to make you wait for two days, much less two months but I have to take a break for now...

What Do You Do?

When the temperature is 102 F. and the heat factor is 108 F.?  If you are as lucky as me you have a sweet niece and her husband that have a pool and family visiting from out of town that gives me the excuse to drive about an hour to Bethany, a bedroom community of Okla. City, and jump in and play with my nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews and a few great, greats.

Yours truly and my great, great niece Brooke.

A whole mess of heathens…  The young man closest to us with the love of his life and her daughter and his baby sister is my great nephew and his family visiting from Florida.  Jeremy, not to be confused with another Jeremy in the family, brought Heather and Haley home to meet the family.  Melissa (baby sister) and Haley hit it off from the airport.  Where you find one you find the other. Those little girls are having too much fun playing.

  This is what we call fun in our family… get a bunch together and play volleyball in the back yard and play in the pool and eat.  I’ll post more on the eating because we are doing this all again today after church and there will be more of our wild bunch in from Ft. Worth and Nancy and Steve have quite a spread planned for our lunch.  In the meantime I thought I’d post a few pictures for those of you suffering through the sweltering heat with us that don’t have a pool and a mess of kids to play with in it.

My great nephew Chris, brother of Jeremy…

Jeremy, home from Florida, for a few days of mama’s hugs and brother and sisters loving and teasing and story telling…

He’s making sure to get the point of his story across…

Aunt Helen trying to help get the fourth person in the big ring… they all tumped over. 

My sister is up from Ft. Worth for a visit and she and Sandie Kay, another great niece, are talking about Sandie’s nursing courses she’ll be taking this next semester.  That handsome fellow that you can kind of see between them is the other Jeremy, Sandie’s husband. 

My nephew Bill, probably telling his niece Melanie, some kind of story.

Dave is Melanie’s husband.  There is an abundance of tattoos in this family but I have to say, as the old auntie, they are all in good taste.  No nasty uglies, either words or pictures.

My great niece, Sandie.  She is such a doll and I don’t get to see her as often as I’d like because she and Jeremy live up north and east of Tulsa and she is busy with school and being a mom and wife.  When the weather cools off I’m going up for a visit and teach her how to bake a potato.  It’s one thing that I can cook and she says she can’t cook them so I’ll help her with that and Jeremy will grill the steaks…  Sounds like a fair swap to me.

I’ll take some more pictures today but I just thought I would throw these out to you all and ask you what you do to cool off in the heat of summer?

A Post To Ponder...

Yesterday I went into town to the hospital's Breast Center to get my mammies slammed. Always a fun trip for any of us, but that's not what this post is about. While waiting for my turn on the mashing machine I picked up a magazine that I hadn't read (the one with a picture of Palin with a gun slung over her shoulder on the cover) and was flipping through, scanning the articles.

Then one caught my eye, so much so that I read it over again. The author, a woman, was writing about being a member of a grudge holding family. So much so that after a particularly bad argument with her mother over the phone, she and her parents did not speak for 12 years. 12 YEARS!

She would receive a Christmas card, signed with their last names every Christmas, but other than that, no communication. One day she received a note from her father with, as she called it, three magic words... "I'm so sorry."

She said they began to write letters back and forth in which she found out from her father that her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Soon she and her husband drove six hours to visit her parents and she asked her husband what she could say after a 12 year separation. He said "How about hello? Ask them what they've been doing."

Her father set a turkey loaf on the table and they sat together for a meal, the first in 12 years, and it was the first to come for several years before her mom died. She had a chance that first year to take walks with her mother and talk about old times before the Alzheimer's took first her mother's mind, then her life.

That is what this post is about... lost time due to holding grudges. While she was fortunate enough to reconnect with her mother and her father, how awful it would have been if her father had not written those three 'magic' words and her mother had died with the grudge still being held. I have sibs that hold grudges, not to the point of not talking if we are at a family get-together, but it makes me sad that they cannot just let go and let it be.

And since I'm into keeping it real, I held a grudge against my sister for years and did not go out of my way to talk with her or to just drive out to see her when we were younger. When our mom became senile and didn't know us kids, I started thinking how much it hurt not to be able to communicate with her or anyone I loved and I decided during that time it took too much from me, physically and emotionally to carry a grudge. It just got to heavy to bear.

Since then, I've made the trip to see my sister, I've called her and we visit and talk about all the times we missed due to my stubbornness (my words, not hers) and my anger (again, my words). I feel better and lighter around her now. We can laugh and we can cry together. We can be sisters as sisters should be, relaxed and at ease with each other.

So if you have the "grudge family history" think about it. Is it worth the weight of carrying it around? Is it, like mine was, a defense mechanism to keep from being hurt by words or actions of someone else? And do you want it to be an example to your kids as how to act towards problems with other people, to carry that anger and pain around?

Just think about it. Her words sure struck me and I don't like the years that I lost, but I felt I needed to share my story with you. If this touches a nerve in you, you might want to just say, "Enough.". I'll get off my soap box. Getting my poor little mosquito bites slammed just made me pensive, I guess.

Next post I'll be all sweetness and light, maybe even funny.

I promise.