LAZY DAY REMINISCENCE -- BETRAYALS

BETRAYAL OF ONLINE PRIVACY 

My online privacy has been betrayed by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. The ultimate betrayal will occur if President Trump signs their bill as he is expected to do.  No longer will Internet service providers be required to get my permission before collecting and sharing/selling my data.  Will voters remember this betrayal in 2018 and 2020 elections?


BETRAYAL OF EARTH'S HEALTH

Earth's health is betrayed by President Trump  as he rolls back climate regulations and protections causing the U.S. to be more dependent on polluting fuels affecting our water, air and climate making my children, grandchildren and me more ill.  Will voters remember this betrayal in 2018 and 2020 elections?


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Recently I came across this draft I wrote six or eight years ago but never posted here.  I decided to share this then fond reminiscence of my husband, my mundane day's activities and thoughts about work, patients I was serving then,  my future and whether I wanted to retire.  I did finally retire three or five years later, but continue currently to maintain requirements for my state license and national certification.   

Lazy Day Reminiscence - Pondering My Future 

This wasn't the first time I experienced a lazy day.     I had these days rarely in my young single adult life.  Then, when I married, for many years I had no lazy days,  particularly once we had children.   Years after the children left home my husband and I quite accidentally had a lazy day that was so successful we began to  increasingly share more the older we became.  

Initially, we felt a bit guilty deciding to indulge ourselves, so hesitantly sought mutual reassurance from each other that lazing around all day in our sleeping attire was acceptable  behavior.    Hopefully, no one would come unexpectedly to our door.   There was an unspoken sense that such an out of the ordinary activity  might best be kept secret lest others wonder about our judgment.

I suppose whatever guilt we felt was strictly self-imposed, arising partly because of an inherited strong work ethic we had both pursued throughout life.    Arising early each day we had dedicated hours to our employment -- work outside and in the home,  sometimes until quite late into the night or early morning.   Meals might on occasion  be rushed or even skipped when we were single, or before out children were born.   Recreational, relaxation and vacation time carefully scheduled still might be subject to cancellation​ due to unexpected sudden work needs.

Also, there was the knowledge a multitude of activities or chores were likely  awaiting undertaking with resultant concern we would be leaving them  undone for another day.    Sleeping late is one thing, but to lounge about all day and evening attired in pajamas and robe without having  dressed was quite another matter.   But that's what we occasionally did in our later years after he retired and I was working only part time.  

There's just me now -- awaking one morning, I  glanced at the clock's time while foggily reviewing in my mind my must-do's for the day.   I recalled from the previous day the sadness I felt that a therapy patient younger than me had to be discharged to comfort care only.   She had experienced a fluky minor medical problem when on a vacation trip with her husband in a faraway  English-speaking nation.    An infection developed unexpectedly becoming significantly more serious after they returned home.   Now she was living through her final days.    

Contrasting with a more positive outcome, an older patient I discharged that same day had been successfully safely  transitioned to regular food.   A day later she has been up in a wheelchair for the first time since admission to be wheeled outdoors into the warm sunshine by her husband.    Her expectation is to return home to independent living soon.

My remaining patient wasn't scheduled to be seen for expressive language, understanding and cognitive issues until the next day.   This meant I didn't really have to leave the house except to retrieve my morning newspapers, unless I received a phone call notifying me of any new physician referrals.

I leisurely reach across the bedside night stand to turn on L.A.'s all news radio station, KNX before making a brief trip to my contemplation/powder room.  Returning to the bedroom I thought I was up for the day but was lured, then succumbed to my beckoning bed's seduction.    Several hours later I re-awakened  to reporters voicing the continuing current local, national, international news, weather and traffic reports.   Eventually arising I finally  wander down the hallway, pausing to raise the house thermostat's temperature a few degrees.

Peeking out the front door as I slip a jacket on over my P.J.'s to make myself half-way presentable, I gamble I can sneak half-way down my driveway and back to gather my newspapers before any periodic passing cars come traveling down my street.    I like this daily outing regardless of my attire and whatever the weather conditions --  sunny, rainy, foggy, hot or cold.      Having safely scurried back inside I realize it's lunchtime.   I choose to have  breakfast which can be quickly and easily prepared in the microwave oven -- oats, ​a teaspoon of cinnamon​, nonfat milk.  

Opening the microwave door I'm greeted by a dark interior.  What's this?  The microwave power is off, so away I go to the circuit box where I determine I have to reset the breaker.   Why this breaker turned off I have no idea -- power surge or what?    Returning to the kitchen I'm relieved to find the oven's light on.   A few cooking minutes later  I sprinkle a thin layer of bran buds on the now hot cereal,  add a diced ripe banana half,  a layer of blueberries and a few luscious red raspberries.    I'll leave the refrigerated strawberries and blackberries for my evening dinner.

By now I have consciously decided, considering the time of day and my lack of any appointments, that this will be a lazy  day -- and so it became as the hours flitted by.  

Dinnertime's menu decision consists of a choice between a previously cooked braised chicken breast with a colorful vegetable mix , or an individually prepared healthy organic dinner quickly radiated.    I chose the later consisting of a nice sized salmon fillet with spanish rice (I prefer wild rice) and fresh green beans which I garnish with a handful of cherry tomatoes.  The aforementioned fresh fruits complete the meal.

Opening the refrigerator door to gather my food items,  I'm again startled by another dark interior that was well-lit earlier.  Oh dear!  No power.  I wonder how long the unit has been off?   The refrigerator was alive at breakfast.    Back to the circuit box, this time a flashlight in hand to slice through nighttime's darkness.   Locating what I think is likely the specific offending circuit breaker, I repeatedly attempt to reset it but this troublesome one does not seem to cooperate.

Discouraged, I finally return to the kitchen ruing that I hadn't discovered this problem earlier in the day since I didn't want to incur emergency rates calling an electrician at night.    I thought about food life in the freezer section as I opened the refrigerator door half hoping for a miracle.   Amazing!   The interior light was on -- the ancient breaker had caught in place despite outward protruding appearance.
The rest of my lazy day/evening would pass without complication.

Early in the evening a phone call comes with physician orders to see a new patient the next day. The person is known to me from treatment I provided several years ago.    I know the individual  has declined somewhat since  then, but I wonder what has transpired now that necessitates my being consulted?   Nursing and her private duty aide with whom I've long interacted will up date me on the cantankerous lady's status tomorrow.

Days or weeks sometimes pass and I have no appointments since I cut back my part time work schedule even more, mostly serving only one facility now.   Still, I'm on call weekdays which prevents spontaneous personal trips out of town.       Perhaps a driving trip temptation is best avoided given the increasing cost of gasoline which is well over $4 a gallon now and predicted to rise to over $5 here in Southern California USA.    Yesterday I overheard a colleague say in  a southeastern gulf coast city drivers were currently being charged $7 for as gallon of gas.  

Sometimes I think that perhaps I should fully retire, but then I think that during those times I'm at home, I might miss working some few weekday hours.    There's much I should, could or, would do here at home so I know I 'd have no excuse for being bored, but how much would I actually do?
Still.....maybe that appointment commitment minimizes the risk I'll be tempted to increase the number of my lazy days.    But,  continuing to work, yearly state license and national certification require attending the necessary all day continuing education seminars periodically to which I often must commute some distance.     Yet, I think,  I do thoroughly derive pleasure being part of my mostly aged 50 to 100+ years elder patients life transitioning process.    I like interacting with them, their family and friends who may live nearby or far away.   We all learn so much from each other.

The experience makes me very aware of how unexpectedly anyone including me might experience some of these debilitating  medical issues I see with others.   I'm not without a few medical issues of my own.   Should my health situation alter I wonder just how well I would cope and adjust to challenges similar to theirs?    I'd like to believe I'd be motivated to maintain a positive attitude and treat those around me genially, but I can certainly understand how difficult that might be.   No doubt one day I will clearly determine either by choice or otherwise that full retirement is my primary desire, but until then I'll likely augment my days with an occasional lazy one.

FRIENDS -- MEMORIES -- GENEALOGY

Holiday greetings of colorful cards, letters, family photos received from friends were most enjoyable this past season.    Two friends weren't heard from which has given me concern.  Such missing responses become an increasing occurrence, especially in my older years.    One card, still with my unread letter inside, was  returned, stamped "undeliverable", also, "no forwarding address".   A follow-up phone call elicited a " no longer in service" response -- but we had talked just last summer. I found  no obituary on the internet (yes, I resort to checking there sometimes).

My former neighbor/friend  had become a widow in recent years, spoke of  gradually losing her vision, so maybe she's had to relocate from her home, and/or  is no longer able to communicate.  Two of three sons tragically died due to different causes years ago, so maybe the remaining son who lives elsewhere hasn't thought to let her friends know about her.  Strange a letter wouldn't have had a forwarding address if she's still living, even if in a different city.  I'm stymied in checking further.

The other friend hadn't been able to use, first,  her computer, then write, due to increasing hand tremors she said   Later she told me she was going to have to begin dialysis.   Also, earlier memory issues she described  to me were becoming more serious.    Then I didn't hear any more for the past year.  But I've continued to write periodically, as she previously had asked me to do, with letters she could put in her purse, carry along to read while in waiting rooms or receiving treatment, or whatever.  I finally phoned her, left a recorded message a week or so ago.  I received no response,

I was considering what else I could do to obtain an up date on her condition,-- maybe I could prepare a postal card to mail to the house -- write several short statements with check-off boxes, self-address the card so a family caregiver could just mark a box, then drop in the mail.  She often marveled we were so lucky to have each other still in our lives.

She's the only living person who's known me all my life -- is one year older than me -- we knew of each other's family beyond the immediate relatives.  Her parents visited me in California when returning from a Japan trip to visit a daughter there at that time.  I remembered meeting some of her other relatives, an aunt, grandmother, other grandparents who had a little candy store in their garage.   So much history though we haven't seen each other in over fifty years.  

Then as I wrote this one recent evening, my phone rang.  Her younger sister, that my friend resisted letting play with us when we were little, called me after receiving word from the youngest nurse sister that my dear friend's time was short -- hours, days.  She'd stopped eating.

I recall a few years ago being asked to see a patient for swallowing -- to establish her eating/drinking refusal was not due to an actual swallowing deficit.  She presented with appropriate alertness, attention, orientation, cognitive skills.  She then successfully accepted and safely swallowed water trials, agreed to a few bites of pureed consistency fruit similarly tolerated.   She pleasantly refused any more.  My having established her swallow function was intact, she then  nicely refused any further oral trials of any liquid or food, or to name anything else she would like.in the necessary subsequent few sessions I was obliged to see her.

My encouragement for her to eat or drink was respectful, not badgering, threatening, but offered her an opportunity for intake if she desired some for any reason as she could also request from staff and/or her family any time.  Alternative feeding (tubes) was not an option.   She had other professional contacts to assess her condition..  She had chosen to not eat or drink as her way of resolving her personal terminal medical prognosis.   Usually after about three days, if not sooner, reality mental functions deteriorate with the absence of water intake and further body decline.   Staff informed me this lady actually lived about two weeks, longer than her medical status might have been thought to be the case.  

I'm thinking of all this as I reflect on my friend with hospice -- in her home on the east coast far away from my home in California.  Family said she had long ago ceased having dialysis treatments, her memory has wandered about though sometimes she has responded to prompts from the past.  I cried.

I wrote once again through the tears of memories -- preschool recollections playing with our paper dolls -- each of us with quite different ideas.    I had few paper dolls, but they were whole people, though with limited changes of clothes. (I began to make more clothes and paint them by school age).  I was troubled by her dolls out of a catalog -- because she cut off all their heads so whenever she wanted a change of clothes, she simply held another head on the clothed body.   What bothered me was a body could be turned one way and a head facing another in what was clearly an impossible body position.  Also, when she put them down to get another doll the heads would easily fall off and it was disconcerting to me for my dolls to be interacting with headless dolls, or heads detached from bodies into strange positions. Years later we chuckled over these childhood complications in our friendship.  

Another issue was why wouldn't she allow her little sister to play with us occasionally?  In our elder years when I queried her about that she said it was because she wanted all my attention for herself.

We were also part of a tap dancing quartet, each girl with a different color hair -- my red, her brunette, a blond and one with black hair -- tapping our hearts out to the "Parade of the Wooden Soldiers" in a real theatre stage recital.   When we were Jr. High School age, my family had moved to an isolated rural situation for a few years and I often felt lonely.   Her family had moved to our state's capitol -- the big city -- when I was next able to visit her.

Tap dancing was still very important to us, though we both, years earlier, had to give up our dance classes.  I had been so impressed when she told me she had seen Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in person -- perform his famous sand dance.  In our elder years when we reminisced and I recounted how much I had admired she had actually seen him tap, she admitted she didn't remember actually seeing him, causing us to laugh about some of our youthful behavior when she added, "I sometimes lied then".



She was then living in the projects which I thought was wonderful with so many people around, but in our elder years she said she had been embarrassed at having to live there. Her father had a military injury and was temporarily between jobs.  I thought she was pretty lucky because my father had years earlier abandoned our family.

She surprised me, too, because when we went to the movies, she had secretly arranged, without her mother knowing, for her boyfriend to join us there.  He actually sat beside her and she allowed him to put his arm around her shoulders and even kiss her.

She told me of getting mad at me when I visited her there because she had an asthma attack one night when we had been fast asleep in our shared bed.  She started coughing, paramedics had to be called to take her to the hospital and she wanted me to go with her, but I only vaguely was aware of what was happening and never really fully woke up.  Of course, they never would have let me go but that didn't matter.  

Years would pass and we wouldn't see one another.  Our contact fluctuated as we became caught up in our own lives, but our mothers were friends and corresponded so we kept track of each other.  We usually exchanged holiday greetings, wrote a short note, or some years longer letters.   I was a single young college graduate when next I visited, meeting her finance' as the two of them showed me the apartment they had rented to move into once they were wed following his college graduation.  "Yes", she told me, "I know I said I swore I would never like red-headed boys because your older brother teased me, but here I am marrying one."

Then, years later I lived in the same city as her, I was married and she had several sons.  When I visited I recall seeing those little boys busy in the sand box loading and dumping with their Tonka Trucks.   Who could have imagined after she moved to the East Coast and they became young men that they would start playing with the huge real trucks as they established a landscaping business, prospering to this day.

Each of our long marriages ended in different years, when our husbands with some similar medical issues could no longer overcome the effects of their gradual health decline.  We could commiserate with each other during some of the challenging times, provide comfort when needed, then share observations about the world of widowhood we encountered.

I never got to tell her last summer that I had my genealogy researched by another blogger who really did a remarkable job and presented the information really well.  Wish  my friend could see the genealogy book prepared for me, plus even some special sections for other family members.  My friend would really be surprised to learn as I was -- some of my ancestors actually were among those who founded that fair city where she and her family have lived all these years.   I know she would have been motivated to check into even more information there with any local historical groups with which to surprise me.

We haven't even had an opportunity to hash over this past presidential election, or to discuss our shared dedication to women's rights in this current environment.  So many more memories.....

..........Just as I was editing this to schedule for future posting, the call came -- she passed gently into that good night, surrounded by her loving family.

I celebrate her life -- this woman who spent many years providing innovative comforting interventions augmented by her religious orientation for hospital hospice patients in her city....

I celebrate her life -- this loving, nurturing wife, mother, grandmother....

I celebrate her life -- this true.lifelong friend.....

I cry tears thinking of all we'll no longer be able to share.

Her death symbolizes so much more.  

I miss her.

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