Waiting for sunshine

Spring, and "meteorological" summer (bah) have yielded precious little sunshine.

It rained this morning as I came back from work.

But I looked up from lunch and saw sunshine.

Time to impart a  bit of wisdom to another generation.

Vinegar!

Newspapers!

Elbow grease!

How the windows shine.

I was thinking about a previous encounter with elbow grease.

Five years ago I was felled by that massive stroke,

but delivered to the hospital in time to be clot busted.

When I regained consciousness an arrogant little nurse demanded the name of the round thing on the wall, and the little thing on her wrist. I could not find the words.

Every time she woke me, the same questions.

I couldn't locate their names.

Many times later I said "If you'd tell me, then I'd know, wouldn't I!"

She didn't!

Before I fell into the void again I struggled and struggled for the one on the wall.

It came and went and came and went.

I woke up to it coming and going.

She caught me on the upcycle.

Clock!

I made my daughter bring me a notebook and pencil.

Every noun I remembered that week went in the book.

Words the doctors said went in the book.

I wrote "red" and drew a shoe.

Someone brought back my red sneakers and put them on the windowsill.

People came in and evaluated me constantly.

The last day the speech therapist came in, and there was a test in pronunciation and definitions.

The last word I had to define: elbow grease.

The next day I went home.

An old cornmudgin

My brother, our brother, is a good man, affable, secretive, kind, devious, generous, given to occasional excess. He’s worked hard at everything, his job, his motorcycle, his garden, his car. Kittens curl up and sleep between his feet, cats seek his lap. He answers children’s questions, shows them how to swing a hammer or handle a shovel. He helps where he sees a need. He accepts little.

Walt is my oldest brother. I left home at my earliest opportunity; he returned home at his earliest opportunity. My sister was seven when I left. Walt was Jan’s big brother; he watched out for her, helped her, protected her. When Walt came home from the service he bought Mr. Lymon’s house, on the street behind our parents. Everyone knew Mr. Lymon would not sell that house to anyone but Walt. That’s just how it was.

Walt met Hazel when he was in the service in England; they married and came home. Our Hazel; she figures in several old stories of mine. Three sons came along, Roy, John and Mark. I don’t know what ended their marriage, but it did. Hazel eventually had to return to England; she did not become a citizen and could not be sponsored without a spouse. Walt took custody of his sons.

My brother had a romantic concept of women, and an unshakable visual ideal. His wives, three in total, were small women with black hair. He married the last two, I’m sure, to take care of them and their children. Walt’s job relocated him for years to southern Ohio and Mark, his youngest son, had trouble holding his own in the blended families; eventually Mom brought him back home.

Walt had one daughter with his last wife, and there is another young woman who came by his wood shop to talk to “Dad”. He took care of all his children who have scattered to the parts of the county that were their childhood homes. Mark is here, ten minutes away.

When Walt retired fifteen years ago he moved to Mark’s house and they began renovating it together. Walt is a fine craftsman; Mark keeps things tidy. For several years Walt ran a small woodworking business out of our barn. He was so cavalier about sawdust that Tom eventually put a dust collector on the ShopSmith and carted sawdust out in wheelie bins.

About ten years ago Walt had a stroke. Like me, he was a smoker, and like me suffered the consequential bone loss. We compared creaky knees back in our sixties. But nicotine is a tougher taskmaster, and one day Mark called the house, asking Janice to intercede. He thought his dad had a stroke the day before, but was refusing all help. Walt’s little sister arrived in ten minutes and took him to the hospital, where he stayed several days while doctors regulated his blood pressure (yes, he’d had several old heart attacks and small strokes) and started therapy for a semi paralyzed right side.

A day or so after Walt was released he pulled his Jeep into the yard. He came over for someone to tie his shoes. The hardest part had been shifting with his left hand. Yes, he was our same brother.

And so we have gone on these last five years or so. Same old Walt, putting together the family picnic every summer. Sometimes smoking, sometimes not. Regaining drafting skill with his right hand.Quitting the doctor when he disagreed with her. Stocking my daughter’s pantry for several years; underwriting braces for Emily and for his granddaughter, Caitie. Becoming so right of right in his views that we sat on the porch in comfortable silence, having little in common to talk about except family.

Walt organized yesterday’s picnic. He brought all the food over Friday afternoon and stowed it in the fridge.  He slipped in early yesterday, and laid down on a bed for a nap. Not unusual; he’s a night owl and we often see the Jeep in front of the barn in the wee hours. But when he appeared for hot dogs and hamburgers, we knew he was in trouble. No, he was fine. “Have you had another stroke?” his little sister asked bluntly. No, he was fine, as he carefully assembled his picnic plate and slowly made his way out to the table.

After lunch he joined everyone on the porch, and everyone watched him like a hawk. He was not well, spoke little and soon excused himself in carefully slurred words. We watched him across the yard, his left side considerably drooped, steps painfully slow. The driver’s side of the Jeep did not face us, and we watched him go around to it. He was at the door, opened the door, and disappeared. “He’s down!”

Help assembled, lifted him upright. “It’s the trick knee” he announced, as animated as the old days. No help necessary, don’t call an ambulance, he was fine, right up on the seat and off. Adrenaline is pretty powerful stuff. Mark and Caitie discretely left a minute later, to tail him home.

Mark called this afternoon. He woke his dad to assess his state of being and found Walt ready to go to the hospital, but later on, not now. Janice said to tell him she said so. Mark was grateful for the advice and said he would get the old man to the hospital, and that’s where he is now. Jan took charge last time, Mark was able to take charge this time. The baton has passed.

Only the diagnosis is left. We wonder if the old curmudgeon will take his medicine.

Walt and his oldest boy, Roy, about 1968

A plethora of O’s

Once I was a crack typist. Sixty or seventy words per minute. I almost typed WPM, and while there is a generation who would recognize that, there are two that don’t. Clickity click, ding, carriage return, clickity….. And so on. I was not so good at numbers up there above the QWERTY line; I suppose the looking dragged me down to sixty WPM.

Things have changed, and it’s not old age. Even though I've worn the register mark from the keyboard F, I still clicked along as necessary, and having the ten key number pad was wonderful. My right hand could dart over for necessary numbers and come right back to the register mark on J. Then I had that stroke, in 2010.

I’m not complaining about the outcome; some remarkable medicine let me carry on with life. I am left to deal with new shortcomings, however. The physical therapist who discharged me wrote “Unstable” on my chart, which really sums it up. And I’m unstable because my right side drags a bit.

Some days all is well and I get on like a reasonably stable old lady. Some days I sigh and reach for the cane. It’s a wonderful rudder. It’s also a hand rail at all those steps that have none. There are far too many rail-less stairs in my life. Some days my right foot comes along just fine, some days it drags a little, and some days I actually have to tell it “heel, toe, heel, toe” to encourage it along.   But, I get where I have to and do what I have to do.

Look at that right toe of my beloved red deck sneakers. I haven’t worn them through, yet!

The real problem is the O’s. My right hand drags all the time. It adds gratuitous O’s to all my work. The red squiggle and I are firm acquaintances. Sometimes I think, people should just see this; they would laugh until the tears run. It looks like the room of monkeys attempting to recreate Shakespeare.

But, I clean it up before I hit publish. No stability, but I still have my pride.

How Carly sees me

Not quite a month ago I fell, landed on my six day old eye implant and came up with an incredible shiner. I decided it would be the last of the several nasty spills I’ve taken over the last year; I would find someone who would teach me balance.

Several years ago a local woman I’ve known for years, Natalie, and one I didn’t know, Carly, opened a fitness studio in the big building across the road at work, and hung a huge banner over the third floor balcony rail: Total Body Fitness. Week before last I rounded up the phone number, called, and got Carly.

I told her I was an old lady who’d had a stroke, not done well with rehab, worked out at the gym until a year ago, and this past year was on a slippery slope to the bottom unless I found the brake on my sled. “Honey,” Carly said, “you need your core back and I can do that for you.”

Carly put me through the paces for two weeks before my second cataract surgery. I had to take this week off (I do follow some instructions to the letter!), but next week I’m back at it. The first visit I climbed three loooonnnng staircases to the studio, Carly hanging over the top banister, “You can call that your warm up!” She put me on the treadmill anyway.

At our last session Carly had me doing exercises on the balance ball. Granted the ball was against the wall, but I didn’t fall off the top, either side or the front as I lifted weights. She was pleased I moved so soon from doing the routines seated on the front of a chair. (Secret: it’s far easier to balance on that ball than sit up straight on the edge of a chair!)

As we parted until next week Carly asked if she could mention my name in a little blurb she was inserting in the current community news, the little paper our township publishes monthly. I had no problem with a testimonial; she’s worked the bejammers out of me, got me balancing on that ball in two weeks with promises of keeping my balance when we’re through. She means what she says! The paper was in yesterday’s mail. Carly is priceless, and that elevator is too scary to enter!

TOTAL BODY FITNESS

Total Body Fitness would like to welcome our new clients, Deb xxxx (Hudson) and Joanne Noragon (Peninsula). Neither of these women allows the challenges of life to get the best of them. We especially want to thank Joanne 70+ yrs. Old, a stroke survivor with paralysis, who refused to use the elevator to get to our third floor studio. We also want to thank all of our many clients over the years.

Age resistant

Had I been able, I would have grown old wearing three inch heels.  I love seeing grey haired women in crisp trousers and jackets.  And heels.  I don’t even have grey hair.  The last time I wore heels was at my daughter’s wedding.  That was twelve years ago and they were the only pair I had saved, my beautiful Victorian boots with two inch heels.

The earrings were wonderful.  Corkscrew, ear specific.  I gave them to Shelly during the reception.  It had been so long since I wore earrings, even gold, they hurt.  The ring is my Grandma Rolf’s engagement ring.  A bloodstone cabochon, our birthstone. It’s put by for Caroline.

No, when I left the corner office (actually, a hallway passed my office in two directions) in 1988, my three inch heels were idled.  Can’t weave in them, could drive eight hours in them, but would have to change to sneakers to offload hundreds of pounds from my van and set up a show.  They just weren’t practical.  I did wear nice sneakers or nice Mary Jane’s at my shows.

Probably the fall I retired.  With Linda and her daughter Cara, right after Linda’s mastectomy.  Cotton was all she could stand to wear.  Fortunately, I wove cotton.  My Mary Jane’s were toward the end of their road.

I retired to get a new hip.  I stood right up against the wall and the technician measured me at 5’6”.  Which I was. That was to leave my leg the correct length on the operating table.  I remained 5’6” for another couple of years.  Then I started limping.  I was down to 5’5”, except where I had a titanium hip and thigh bone.  I put a quarter inch lift in my right shoe.

A couple years after that I fractured my back.  It involved a lot of stupidity on my part.  Now I ask those nice clerks to lift a carton of copy paper into my cart.  That was like getting on the down escalator for height. 

So, I’m 5’4”, and definitely in the vertically challenged group.  Adding the stroke to that, well…as they reminded me when they discharged me from physical therapy, I’m not a stable woman.  Give me a cane and I can get through Ikea with Beth and Caroline any day.  As long as my current pair of sneakers have gone to the shoemaker to have the sole sliced apart and a half inch rise inserted.  Actually, that’s pretty cool.  He just slices through the sole, glues on a half inch piece the same color, glues the sliced off piece back on and hey presto, both my legs reach the ground simultaneously.

I’m still fussy about shoes.  I like suede sneakers in the winter; far warmer.  Right now I’m wearing red canvas sneakers and have black and white plaid sneakers in my closet.  Oh, and a beautiful pair of oxfords for weddings and funerals and meetings.

But, my winter New Balance suede sneakers are pretty disreputable after several winters of snow and slush in the parking lot.  I went looking for a new pair.  They’re called Retro.  They haven’t been to my shoemaker, yet.

So, I’ll be seventy next March, and still have three inch heels.  Made in the USA.  Me and the shoes.  Thank you New Balance.

Now, about the grey hair...

Cigarette stories

A doctor asked me recently why I’d quit smoking.  The price.  I love kids and think they should have health insurance, but that last federal tax was a little over the top. The last carton lasted until March 31^st and  I quit on the next day, the effective date.  Several years ago.

“Only the price?”  He was dubious.  “Health?  Social attitude?  Restrictions?”

“Nope, only the price.”
“Well,” he said, “admit it.  You’d start again any day.”
“Absolutely not!”

“Why not?”

“After I spent fifty years looking for a reason I’m not about to be looking for another reason To Do It All Over Again.”

He’s a short, round and jolly man and laughing all over by the time I got to the end of the story.  He said he had a smoking story for me.  “You smoked?”

“No, my brother.”  His brother must be as tall and thin as the doctor is short and round. An engineer.  A runner.  For recreation, marathons, half marathons.  The engineer often told his doctor brother the running was the antidote to the cigarettes.  The doctor didn’t have any argument convincing enough.

One time the two of them, the doctor and the engineer, were sitting by their father, who was in a hospital bed.  The engineer, making conversation, asked what if dad choked.  “He’d be resuscitated,” the doctor replied.  “How do you do that?”

The doctor got up and looked around the office.  He wanted to show me, too.  He picked up the heavy metal grip of the instrument he’d just used to check my ears.  He said, “I got up, went over to the wall and took down the instrument. Handle just like this. Long flexible tube to go down the throat.  It has a light on the end, so I can see where I’m going.  I turned on the light and wiggled the tube around to give him the idea.”

His brother jumped up and asked if he was in that hospital bed for any reason and coughing up cigarette phlegm, that’s what would happen.  “You bet.’  His brother said “That’s it, I’m done.”

Some time later the doctor asked the engineer how he was able to still go to bars and shoot darts.  Before the cigarettes were sent outside.  Wasn’t he still tempted.  “Sure,” said the engineer.  But it always went down the same way.  He’d ask.  Someone would give him a cigarette.  He’d ask for a lighter.  Someone would give him a Bic.  He’d flick.  Do you know, the flame of a Bic is the same size and intensity as the light on the end of a resuscitation tube.  He’d break the cigarette in half and give the donor a buck.

The second time I woke up mad

A year ago June I had a massive ischemic stroke.  Now I have to check in with a neurologist every three months.  Sometime after a check in, I’ll think of another question I’d like to ask, and keep it in mind for the next time.  Last time Dr. Wong asked me if I’d had any more stroke symptoms.  I asked what these symptoms are like and he asked “What happened last time?”  I told him I went over like a felled tree.  “Well,” he said, “that’s a symptom.”  We both laughed.  When my cardiologist asked me the same question a week later I told him the only symptom I’d ever experienced hadn’t reoccurred.  He liked my story.

That’s exactly what happened.  I took our new rescue Cairn, Euba, out for a walk.  I came back in the front door and crashed to the floor.  I couldn’t move anything and could barely speak.  I was quite unconcerned.  Eventually my grandchildren stood around looking down at me.  Then my brother-in-law came in and wanted to know what occurred.  I didn’t answer.  He picked me up, put me on the sofa and went outside to wait for Jan; he knew she would be home shortly.

When Jan and Shelly came in from their errand Jan went straight to the phone and Shelly, the nurse, assessed stroke before Jan was done dialing 911.   The ambulance was soon whisking me off; the EMT fellows told Jan not to keep up.  The last thing I remembered was being taken off the ambulance.  Probably around 6:30 pm on a bright, cloudless June afternoon, and I thought “it’s really dark.”

Jan and Shelly showed up right behind me and they and the stroke team pinpointed the time of the “incident.”  Jan had called Tom to say they were on the way home shortly before he found me on the floor; she looked up the time of the call on her cell phone.  The doctor asked if there was a power of attorney, Jan said she would go home for it.  The doctor said don’t bother, you need to decide about using a clot buster.  Jan figured I would like to live so she took the remaining 50% chance on the clot buster.

The first time I woke up I looked to my left.  There was a doctor.  Except he was split in half, head to foot, right between the eyes.  Half a doctor.  I looked right.  Another doctor.  Split right down the middle.  No head.  Left.  Same thing.  Right.  Same thing.  “Wow.  How interesting” I thought.  When I asked Dr. Wong, months later, it was the clot on my visual cortex.  The headless doctor had his head tilted down and to his right.

I have vague memories of being trundled through hallways, put through a CAT scan, an MRI, more than once.  I recall saying “For this I quit smoking.”  Beth, Shelly and Jan were all there for that and insist I was asking for a cigarette.  Wrong.  There were no nouns in what I said.

Eventually I really did wake up.  A nurse was shining a light in my eyes and asking what it was.  She pointed at her watch and asked what it was.  She pointed at the clock on the wall and asked what it was.  I didn’t know the word. Later I asked Dr. Wong about that, right in the hospital.  That was the clot on  language center.  The nurse kept waking me with that damn flashlight and her questions.  First I strained my whole self to recall the words.  But then I snapped at her “If you’ll just tell me, I’ll know!”  She did, and I hung on tight to those nouns.

In a few more hours I woke up enough and thought enough to realize I did not know one single noun past the three the nurse gave me.  I had adjectives, but no nouns.  I was really angry.  More angry about the nouns than about how weak my right side was.  When Beth and Shelly came to visit I had demands.  I wanted my red sneakers.  I said red.  I drew a shoe.  I wanted a book.  I drew that.  Which book?  A blank book!  I needed to start writing stuff down as fast as I learned it.  Especially what the doctors were telling me.  I’d write that down as fast as I could.  If I couldn’t remember it all I’d ask them to come back and tell me again.  I wrote down the name of every noun I saw and could think of.  

I was so unhappy about the nouns that I would talk around a word.  I used words I didn’t remember seeing since I read them in a book in college.  The physical therapist walked me up and down the hall a few times, using the IV trolley for a cane and a wide white strap for support, and said I would need therapy.  Whatever.  I wanted to get back and write down physical therapy before I forgot it.  The speech therapist came in to assess me.  She didn’t really believe me about the nouns.  I could define all the words she asked about and when I explained elbow grease to her she said I passed her assessment.  I wouldn’t have known elbow or grease  if she hadn’t said them.

I put the book away when I came home from the hospital.  I asked people to be patient while I remembered words, and they were.  I have most of my nouns handy now and seldom have to stop and fish, or ask.  A while back I did have the need to tell a chauvinistic old man he did not know the difference between patronizing and apologizing, but it took me three days to remember the word patronize. I missed that opportunity, but I have the ammunition if he ever sends another scurrilous email to the township.  I work out three times a week, but my heart will never truly be in it, and someone else will be carrying my bags.

 I asked Dr. Wong what became of those two clots and he said they break up and stuff up the capillaries in the brain.  I have pieces of those two clots left, one on vision, one on language.  He said they could break loose and start travelling.  If I’m lucky, he said, they will go through my liver or kidneys, real good clot blusters.  If not, they’ll make the round trip and get me again.  I asked him how fast clots travel.  “As fast as your heart beats!”  Quite the education I’m getting.  When I see him in another three months I want to know why I was never frightened.

This morning at the post office I passed the very EMT who put an IV in my arm before he put me in the squad.  He grabbed my hand, we exchanged greetings.  He never let go my hand.  Finally he said, “You know, sitting around the day room afterwards, we had no hope.  Someone mentioned you the other day and said who would have thought.  Someone one else said it’s exactly what we should have expected, and we all laughed.”   He’s a great young man.  Seriously, he’s only old enough to be one of my kids.  I thanked him and wished him a Happy Thanksgiving.  I don’t know if I would have posted this if Scott hadn’t patted me on the back this morning.  I don’t waste a lot of time on the event, but I am so thankful for the outcome.

I am thankful my sister was on her way home.  I’m thankful she took in the situation and picked up the phone.  I am thankful the EMS crew got me to Akron General in fifteen minutes.  I am thankful Akron General is the stroke trauma center of Summit County. I’m thankful Jan could pinpoint the time to within a few minutes.  I am thankful she picked half a chance of surviving over no chance.  I am thankful for the friends and family who watched out for me.  And, I am thankful that nurse made me so mad.