brilliant living color

Meet Judy Jane and Sigh, my angels.

Yesterday was a good day, a blessed day and it was in color.

It started out looking awful. Mom had an appointment with her cardiologist about the new pacemaker/defribulator they connected to her heart. I was just not looking forward to it and don’t usually go to appointments with her. But I wanted to make sure I understood how it worked and what the prognosis is.

Mom's understanding was that her heart was too far gone for a pacemaker, so we were confused as to why they put one in her chest. But in fact mom’s heart rate is too fast and a pacemaker doesn’t kick in until it goes too slow. Oh! But that wasn’t the end of the surprising little tid bits we got from the delightful young lady that is my mom’s cardiologist.

First she explained how once a day the DF (I will shorten defribulator to df, cause’ I’m lazy) will get a phone call everyday from the manufacturer and it will download mom’s heart activity, run a diagnostic and then forward the whole mess to mom’s df “specialist”. Then, if I understand correctly, the specialist can tweak the programming if need be and update the puppy the next time the df gets a phone call. HOW COOL IS THAT?

All it needs is a free landline and it calls her “heart” every night between four and seven a.m. to check in. Yes, even mama's heart gets phone calls. I just love technology. She can travel to 120 different countries and it will contact her there and do it’s thing. I had no idea things were moving quite that fast. I knew we were testing that sort of thing, but not actually doing that sort of thing.

Mom was also under the impression that nothing had really changed, since she thought she was too sick for a pacemaker, and that all the df did was keep her alive, not make her better, so she couldn’t hope to get any stronger. This has obviously been the most difficult thing through all of this. So I just swallowed the lump in my throat and came right out and asked the doctor, “Can Mom start living again?”

The doctor looked at me in shock, turned to look at mom in puzzlement and said, “Yes! Of course! That’s what this is all about. Go out live, play, enjoy life.” She explained that it would take a little time, but she could start building her strength up and getting back to her old life as soon as she wanted. Just keep her arm below her shoulder for five more weeks until the wire is good and seated into her heart. I was so happy I was giddy.

There are some special things she needed to be aware of, like keeping a cordless phone 6 inches from her heart. She might set off alarms at airports and anti-theft things. She has a card she can present if this does happen. These things can interfere with it as well, so she needs not to linger around them, but just moving away from them will stop the interference. Some things she has to just stay away from completely but they are few. 12 inches from an induction cook-top. What’s that about?

Afterward we sat visiting in a Safeway parking lot, just enjoying the easy breaths and playing with the dog. Mom's new caregiver was with us and she has been another blessing bestowed on the family. She fits right in and doesn't seem at all shocked by our strange little family. Although, personally, I think she's just good at hiding her puzzlement.

Then we went to the library and Mom waited in the car. I went into the library with Avon and without Mom and was in and out in 10 minutes, just grabbing stuff off the shelf lol. Avon must have thought me a not very discriminating shopper. But I saw a favorite author and a new line I just had to check out. I went in without Mom, and that hasn’t happened in ten years. Ironic? Isn't it grand?

It was one of those days that is experienced in brilliant living color. I thank God for my mother and his gifts of intelligence and ingenuity, that are keeping her with us. Mostly I thank Him for things like parking lot conversations with your best friend and your dog and hugs and smiles and living color.



My angels. When they're not propping me up, they're propping each other up :)

Siphonaptera’s Siphonaptera incommodious

Well, it’s been an intensely stressful and incredibly lonely two days. Who do you call when it tries you right down to your toes? Who’s the 911 for that “biggest fear” panic in your life? When you’ve worked tirelessly to save it all up for your best friend, and that one person goes to the hospital hours away and you don’t accompany them? Well that’s what I’m here to tell you. Guilt is now your new best friend. Guilt is your closest companion. Guilt is actually a closer companion then the one you stand praying over on the front porch as they drive off in an old jeep aimed at a scalpel and a tiny machine intended to shock the most tender heart you’ve ever encountered.


That’s when you start manning the phones. That’s when all the rules about where you draw the lines to the keep the divide between you and the rest of the world good and wide begin to narrow. That’s when pretty words of reassurance, and long winded speeches about propping each other up and clichés of the American way of life hit you right between the eyes, and sink like a lead bullet to the middle of your chest. Your center of gravity, your middle, core, gut, heart. The place where you feel those emotions that you carefully keep off your face and out of your voice. This is where proverbs are no longer cliché’s, but words of divine wisdom meant to give us hope and encouragement.


This is the time when “people like me” curl up with a creamy hot cup of self-loathing and a good long book of circular reasoning.


Answering the telephone and claiming a complete sense of confidence while handing out updates and scheduling changes is an absolute must. Previously established rules on phone answering with codes for acceptable people getting through are thrown out a proverbial window, we can always fall apart later about unintended intrusions, what if it‘s news?!


One calmly passes out prayer requests like Halloween candy. Out of your mouth comes the cheery, “say a prayer for…they have a need”. While the phrase inside your head is something akin to, ‘if you ever had any compassion in your life, you’ll spend the next eight hours confessing every sin, offering every prayer and trading in on good deeds for the sake that my loved one might or might not need divine intervention’.


Due to your “delicate” reputation, everyone will concentrate all of their efforts on diminishing your worry. God knows, the last thing you need is someone accusing you of drama at a time like this.
They will systematically make you feel like Captain Kirk in the drama department. A single, “I’m worried.” is an invitation for the eye-rolling “Don’t be silly.”. the aloof silence, or my personal favorite, “Oh my God! You’re absolutely right! Disaster is just out of reach and by this time tomorrow we’ll be planning a funeral!”. With this last one I can only imagine weather there’s a motive here, or just thoughtlessness.


So I’ve learned, and I imagine most worry warts by a relatively young age, have learned that it’s best to share the fear with just a single person. Therein lies the rub. When it’s that single person who you’re worried about who do you express your worry to? You certainly don’t want to worry that person anymore than they’re already worried. You try to concentrate those conversations on encouragement without making them feel like their fear is unfounded. Cause it is founded.


So, for now, you are the positive one, because you already fell apart and now you are that “someone else“ again. That someone who has eyes and ears and a mouth for making silly sounds that people agree to call language. It’s that gift of gab that allows for that opposable thumb we’re so proud of you know. You balance, “I love you’s.” with, “Everything’s going to be just fine.” The typically polite “good-bye” becomes taboo, foreign, a word no longer part of your vocabulary. It is replaced with “drive safely” and “I’ll see you soon” . Quick pecks on the cheek and “hands on the shoulders/elbows down” hugs become long, prayerful wraps of two armed embraces and the wagging tongue holds still while language devolves to the eyes. Perhaps someday science will find that an animal’s glance conveys vastly superior intelligence when compared to the rigid confinement of the syllable in conveying the true meaning behind our primitive words. The eyes express your final thoughts in private though, where no one can see the depths that are hidden and the welling that longs to brim over. After the coast is clear , they’ll express themselves again when you get that phone call, the one you’ve spent so much time anticipating and dreading. Here human language excels. Here it pushes against its restraints and says all the things someday you’ll wish you’d said before that call, before the appointment, before you ever thought to fear.


Then, if you have any sense at all, you write about it! Because in my experience, if there’s one thing guilty sidekicks with drama complexes are good at, it’s dumping their feelings all over the internet and wondering why they can’t relate to anyone in the real world.


Now as a person who feels a spiritual connection to the ostrich, I sit in no judgment of anyone else’s response to a worry wart’s worry. Especially if said worry wart tends to read something into absolutely every detail of absolutely every conversation. This disorder, and I’m certain they’ve developed a pill for it, so it must be a real disorder, is probably called something like Siphonaptera’s Siphonaptera incommodious, which literally translates: flea‘s flea disorder. Did you know that fleas have fleas? Well they do. I saw it on discovery (insert smiley emoticon here). Anyway, details themselves have details. I think people with this disorder often grow up to be successful political advisors. These are certainly the people we see picking apart speeches and attributing ridiculous motives to every word, phrase, action or inaction for any politician who isn’t on the disordered persons side of the isle. But I digress, as conversationally detail disoriented people tend to do. Hey! That’s good. Let’s call it Conversationally Detailed Disorientation Disorder, or CDDD for short.


Wait, I’ve just forgotten the point I was making. Oh yeah! It sucks when your best friend has surgery on their heart. It sucks even more if you can’t be there for them. And it sucks to the point of being an off-color joke, if there’s no one to share your fear with and no on to hold your hand because you’ve managed to chase everyone else away. And to boot, it’s a whole new level of suckiness when your only outlet is the telephone and you can’t hear a damn thing. BTW: to anyone who thinks I laughed or sounded sympathetic at the wrong moment in the last two days and now finds me insensitive or a really fast talker. That’s because I either didn’t hear you right, my mind filled in the missing words with the wrong thing or I couldn’t understand anything you said. In which case I wasn’t rambling or hogging the conversation, I was just talking really fast so you couldn’t get a word in edgewise that I was destined to miss-hear anyway.


And, if all this isn’t crazy enough for ya, just wait until it sinks in that when I sat down here twenty minutes ago I was gonna write a blog detailing everything from the moment we heard she was going in for surgery, until the moment we heard she was on her way home. But like most people with, the now widely excepted, disorder that is CDDD, I made it all about myself. :-*