Burning incense:
the smoke rises, curls,
and dances
like the smoke from your cigarette.
A memory from long ago
When you and I drank wine
and talked into the wee hours of the night
solving the world’s problems.
Mother and daughter.
Daughter and mother.
Long ago.
I miss the smoke dance
But I miss the wine
and the long talks more.
Jaci 2022
(Mary Lou 1932-1995)
Image by Ralf Kunze from Pixabay
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The rains have come, and with them we have cooler temperatures than normal. The switch from dryer and warmer than normal to cooler than normal caught me off guard. I’ve been waiting for the rains to come and soften the hard ground so I could transplant several items, but I was hoping for a little warmer Autumn. Ah, well, we get what we get when it comes to the weather, especially during a La Niña year. And the rains did do what I wanted them to do: seep into the dry earth, soften the soil, and lend some good transplanting weather.
It was dry on Thursday, so I donned my rubber boots, several layers of clothes, and found my garden gloves. I had plans of digging up some sod, but it hasn’t rained enough for that chore or I am feeling my almost 66 years of age. I gave removing sod a hard pass.
We leave a lot of dying plants standing: mullein, evening primroses, sunflowers, and plants in the sunflower family – anything the birds will work over during the next few months. The cosmos is still unruly and blooming, so I didn’t touch that. I pruned the hydrangea flowers back as far as I dared without damaging the bush: hydrangeas do not like to be pruned but this one has taken a beating by the sun in the years since our tree fell down and it lost its shade. I feel badly for it.
Last spring, I bought a number of bushes that I potted for the summer. I had a few potted plants left over from 2021 as well, waiting for me to decide where I wanted to permanently place them. One I decided I didn’t want, period: a cutting from my rosemary that had grown root bound in the pot I had it in. That went down on to the corner with a FREE sign on it. It was gone within three hours (she came back the following day to thank me for it – that has never happened!).
I placed the mock orange and the red flowering currant, native bushes, about five feet apart. The soil is rocky and I don’t water that flower bed very often which should be perfect for both bushes. I have four roses and a Rose of Sharon in the same border in front of our house. One of those roses will be history next spring as I have decided it was not what I expected and I really don’t like it that much. I’ll put it out on the street as free when I dig it out and replace it with a rose I do like. It’s a floribunda (Burgundy Iceberg – Jackson Perkins) and I prefer English tea roses. The point is: I will have a row of bushes blocking our house from the street from the mock orange through the small lilac. Lots of small flowers in between, like marigolds to repel the aphids.
I have an accidental strawberry patch out front as well. I planted one Hood strawberry in the ground as it did not fit in either of my two strawberry planters – and it took off, filling a 4×4′ of cleared ground.
I pulled a number of huechera (coral bells) out and a handful of geraniums. These have been sitting in a bucket of water waiting for a nice day to replant. I can move more of them in the Spring, but for now I wanted to see if I could get them to take root during the rainy season under our vine maple out back and along the shady south flower bed. I lost my blackcap raspberry this past summer. I’m sad about that: I love my raspberries and it is a native that the bees, spiders, and birds love (and me – did I mention I love my raspberries?). Not to worry: there are seedlings coming up where the old vine was and they will be fruit bearing by the time I run out of frozen blackcaps.
While I was in back, I remembered I wanted to move my Lenten rose to a shadier spot: it was growing under the yew tree but the yew tree inexplicably died last summer. It was a native yew, too. The loss of the yew left the Lenten rose in full sun, not a good combination.
On the subject of the yew that died, it came as a package deal my husband dug up in the National Forest (permits are free): a mountain maple (also dead now), a sword fern, and a plethora of poached egg flowers (limnanthes douglasii). The latter have taken over that flower bed but they only bloom early in the Spring and die completely back afterward. The sword fern is large enough that it shades my perennial fuschia. I threw half a package of Pacific Northwest wildflower seeds back there this year and to my great surprise, most of the seeds germinated. I’ve had wild mallow in shades of pink and white and now I had tall cosmos in shades of pink and white. I planted one of my hyssop plants where the Lenten rose ad been: it was potted and had been in the same garden area all summer, so I know it likes the lighting.
The dog dug it up right after I planted it and I cried and swore and replanted it, blocking the dog with bricks and big rocks.
The dog has smashed my poor English lavender to smithereens. I dug it up and planted it in a different location and threatened the dog’s life if he so much as sniffed it. Sometimes he takes me seriously. The rue was planted in the same sunny flower bed, root bound as it was. It dies back in the winter.
The mystery plant was planted into the ground. I don’t have a plant marker or tag for it. I know when and where I purchased it but I cannot remember what it is. I pawed through all my plant tags and labels – nothing. I didn’t even write it down.
I did deadhead a few peonies that already have blackened leaves. I cut the hops down. I pruned the small lilac away from my roses.
We have pulled all the tomatoes and peppers from the ground.
I am leaving the tender perennials and self-sowing annuals to spread their seeds. I will cut them back in the Spring. I will cut the cosmos down as they fade and cease to bloom. The Japanese anemones will have to be cut back as well as they fade – birds don’t feast on the seed heads. I need to dig up and separate irises, especially the invasive yellow Japanese flag irises. I had no idea when I planted them, but I also had no idea when I first planted fireweed in my yard. Fireweed is a native. And, oh, can it take over, much like our native milkweed. Someday e will die or sell this house and the person buying it will curses us for the milkweed.
And maybe the fireweed, too: I discovered a new fireweed plant amongst the wildflower seeds that germinated. I didn’t dig it up, but left it under the Camellia.
I left so many plants waving their seedy heads. We have lesser goldfinches, golden-crowned sparrows, and our usual juncos, chickadees, and song sparrows: they love the left overs of our garden, unruly as it seems. The grapevine ran down the length of the fence in both directions, providing us with a little more privacy from the little entomologist next door: she’s six and is always asking us to catch bugs for her. Her parents allow her to paw through their compost and we are often regaled by loud announcements of what she’s discovered in said pile: maggots, worms, native snails, slugs, non-native slugs, and more. We are hopelessly in love with the neighbor girl.
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This summer, while I was Home Alone, I had a recurring thought on our life: Blessed. Oh, not so much financially, but in friends, in the location where we live (the USA), and in being able to do things we need to and love to do.
For instance, we are blessed that we are retired and my husband could go spend several weeks with his younger sister taking care of his mother’s home and visiting her in the various clinics during her ordeal. We are blessed that it was all about the medications and that an ER doctor put it all together for us after eight weeks of fear and confusion.
We are blessed that my own scare with the heart issues this year was also just medications and high cholesterol.
I was blessed to be able to take a break during my days and just sit in the backyard. No bombs going off, no hurried packing, no running for our lives from invading armies: just a suburban backyard with flowers, birds, and insects. My heart went out on a daily basis to Ukraine and Afghanistan (women in particular in the latter). We have too much junk and I made several trips to a thrift store to donate what we no longer use, never used, and don’t need – all in good condition. I put things out on the corner of the street and advertise them as “free” and people just make off with the bounty because they need or want what I no longer need or want. I never even see it go.
It’s the peace that gets me. I read the news and take on all the emotions of people oppressed. Ukraine. The Congo. Fears of the Boko Haram. Somailia. Rohinga. Myanmar. Syria. Venezuela. If I was rich, I would pour my money into helping these refugees. I am not and all I can do is pray and acknowledge that I know their pain and suffering.
I worry about the insects. Bees and wasps and pollinators. I worry about the decline in birds. I watch my neighbors put poisons into the soil and into the air. I shrink a little bit every time. But my yard is a haven.
We feed squirrels, crows, birds, and probably a few Norway rats (as long as they don’t make a home in my home, I don’t care). We provide haven for multiple species of native bees and wasps as well as yellowjackets and bald-faced hornets (don’t get me wrong: the latter two tread a very thin line with me: if they are in my path of hand-weeding, they are GONE). I don’t use herbicides, I hand-weed everything.
My days as a conservationist are drawing to a close. I am sixty-five going on sisty-six. My knees don’t work as well as they once did. I have to have a plan to get back up when I go down. My wrists hurt. It doesn’t take much to make my back ache. My days of weeding by hand are numbered. I recently hurt my Achilles tendon by stepping wrong on a piece of wood the dog left laying around in the yard. Took a week before I could come down stairs normally.
And just today, I experienced a slow-motion backward fall out of the laundry room.
But I am blessed. I have medicare. No bones broke. I swallowed arnica pills and no bruises popped up. My ego was damaged, but I am blessed.
The yellowjackets dug a nest in one of my flower beds and I couldn’t get to their nest to kill them. I weeded carefully around their nest and they tolerated me. I am blessed. Last time that happened, I got stung three times and my dog got stung several more times. This time, I saw them first.
The thing is this: it’s easy to look at the dark side of life. I lean into the window of a car of a stranger, a Veteran, to say “Thank you.” His wife asks if I still have my son. I have to reply, “He’s buried in Pensacola.” And that took my breath away. I cried in my car, alone.
I am blessed: my oldest is still living and she came to visit me this summer. My son’s ex-wife sends me photos and videos of the three children they had together. My beloved daughter-in-law was able to sell a asset this autumn that put money in the kids’ college funds. I am blessed.
There are moments I don’t feel blessed. Quite a few moments when I don’t feel blessed. I despair. The world is so messed up right now, how can any one person feel like they are blessed? Why should I be chosen to be blessed? I don’t have an answer to that. My fortunes could change in a heartbeat. Anyone’s fortunes could change in a heartbeat.
That’s why we cling to that feeling of being blessed.
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July, 2022. What a long time ago. What a long, dry, warm time ago. We had a summer to rival my childhood memories of growing up wild and free in Nevada under the blistering sun, barefoot on the concrete, bathing suit and towel tucked under our arms as we made our way down to the public outdoor swimming pool. One hundred degrees. Our feet hardened to the concrete, but we still ran across the pavement and the creosote railroad ties. Sprinklers kept the lawns alive.
The Willamette Valley of Oregon heated up and dried out. Sprinklers are for flower beds and vegetable gardens: lawns go dormant in the stifling heat of an unusually dry summer. The mercury dipped and climbed between the normal eighties and the unusual triple digit days. I no longer go barefoot and there is no outdoor public swimming pool I would be caught in (not even a swim suit I would be caught in!).
My mother-in-law had a sudden decline in health. She’s dealt with A-Fib most of her life, but her primary care giver retired and a new doctor took over her care. The A-Fib freaked the new doctor out and new meds were prescribed. All of our lives turned upside down for the rest of the summer (she’s fine now, for the record). My husband was about to spend the best part of the summer in a town across the state from me and I was about to spend the summer alone.
Alone, with the dog.
I like solitude. I was perfectly fine with no one here. I avoided most social contacts. It was a summer for me to work in the yard, clean the house, sip some wine, and enjoy the quiet. If I needed companionship, I knew where to turn, but – for the most part – I soaked in the solitude. Quiet. Just the dog and me. And a single phone call every evening between five and seven o’clock to catch up on the news with my beloved.
He was not having a good summer, but he was making the best of a bad situation.
We spent six weeks apart. He was four and a half hours away (four, if he drove hard). I was here, tending the vegetable garden, the apple trees, and the flower gardens. I deep cleaned the first floor of the house. I socialized on weekends. He socialized on weekends in a tri-county area, watered his mother’s lawns and vegetable garden, and mediated between his siblings.
I loved it, but I missed him. Some social events need a partner in crime, and he’s my go-to. We have mutual friends, but it’s not the same when you are the third wheel. And our oldest grandson came down to visit us, only there wasn’t an “us” during his visit. That was hard: not having Poppa here to visit with Z. Grandkids need to know their grandfathers.
We timed Z’s visit with the Bigfoot Festival in Canby, Oregon. Z’s mom flew down with him. The temps soared into the triple digits and we have no A/c in our 1930’s bungalow because no one has ever really needed it here (and, as a native Nevadan, A/C is overrated). Too hot to sleep in the house, so we did what I did as a child growing up: we camped in the back yard under the stars. We didn’t have Wolfman Jack to DJ the music on our transistor radio. West Coast people my age will recognize that reference: the best DJ ever.
Ruger. Ruger had a bit of trouble accepting new people into his life. Z already towers over his mom and I. Ruger was a tad bit afraid of this gangly giant in his yard. The first night when Z had to go into the house in the dark and come back out, Ruger thought he was seeing a ghost. He barked. His tail tucked. He never raised his hackles, but he was afraid.
We went to the Bigfoot Festival. What a waste of money! It was pushing triple digits. We sweated. We looked at vendors and we spent money. There were speakers from different television shows and supposed research people. There were NO exhibits of actual evidence. We are open, but we’re also very logical. The local store that sells Legos™ was the big hit. Screw Bigfoot Festivals that can’t bring in any evidence and only want to sell you junk.
They only spent a week with me.
Don returned home after his weeks were over. His mom was stabilized (it was her meds all along, much like my scare earlier this year). Ruger was over the moon. I am happy. I was beginning to get a little lonely.
Summer has been over for a few weeks, but the weather is only now beginning to change. I think it stayed nice for a few weeks so Don and I could enjoy it together. I just wish he had been here to visit with Z.
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Your anniversary is coming up this week. Six years. I want to wish you a Happy Anniversary, but I don’t know how to reach you – and I can’t say I like the person you married. Nevertheless: I hope you have a good anniversary. You never needed my approval for who you chose to be your life-mate. I hope you understand that.
I wanted to be present when you got married. I remember letting you try on my mother’s hand-made wedding dress and you looked so pretty in it. You took it home. I thought that my husband would walk you down the aisle. I think that was the second-to-last time I saw you. The next time I saw you, you had been married for a few months and I convinced you that I needed to bring you a wedding gift so you made time in your day to accommodate me.
You returned some items of mine, but not the wedding dress. I should have asked after the dress. It was my wedding dress as well. I didn’t know it was going to be the last time I would see you in person. I didn’t know I was a trigger for your anxiety. I apologize for that.
You were emotionally destroyed before you ever came into our household and I wish I had known what to do with your pain. I tried to let you direct our steps: did you want counseling? No. Did you want to talk? Some. Should I treat you like my very own child? Yes.
But those were not the real answers, were they? You needed counseling. You needed to talk to someone other than me. You needed to be treated differently than our cousins. You were lost, abandoned, alone, defiant. I tried to set the bar high but you wanted me to set the bar low. And now we both are lost to each other.
I want you to know that I was always proud of you. You made your way without asking for much help. When you did ask for help, I tried to be there, and while I may have been irritated at the choices you made to get you in the situations you found yourself in, I was proud that you found the courage to ask for help in getting out of those situations. You were the child who had to learn the hard way.
I have respected your need for distance. I respect your choice of mate, of lifestyle, of boundaries. But I want you to know that I miss you. I miss your sharp humor. I miss your critical observations. I miss your smile.
I did not know you were so damaged. Your little brother and sister are damaged, too. No one should lose a beloved mother at a young age and have to be raised by strangers. I want you to know I did my best, but I understand it wasn’t enough. I didn’t have the understanding or the resources.
I am not going to carry that guilt to the grave. I have forgiven myself, even if you never forgive me. I will love you forever, even if I never hear from you again. Your cousins – your brother and sister – told me to let it go. And here I am: telling you that I love you, I forgive you, I ask for your forgiveness – but I am letting you go.
These are your choices now, not something I have done to you. I wish you a happy anniversary with the man who has chosen to stand beside you. That’s it, kiddo.
Shalom.
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It is May. The month of flowers and weeding. Lots and lots of weeding. I do little else in May: the house can get dirty, the houseplants wilt, and artwork go by the wayside. Genealogy is an obsession that can wait until the last weed is pulled and flower bed edged. Everything in my world is about dirt: the texture, the smell, the tiny creatures that live within it, and the clumps of it that cling to the roots of the weeds I just pulled. Dirt under my fingernails, behind my ears, and pressed into the fabric of my jeans. Dirt cleanses my mind.
Because we have had a wetter (than usual) April, May has brought forth more weeds. I feel like I am fighting a losing battle.
Weeds are subjective. There are some plants you do not want in your garden because f how invasive and plant-soul-sucking (meaning they crowd out plants you want to grow) they are. Herb Robert (“Stinky Bob”, St. Robert’s Herb, Geranium Robertianum) is one of the most invasive in this area. Pretty pink flowers, edibility, and herbal uses aside: Stinky Bob is a weed to eradicate. Chickweed in all of its forms. CLOVER. Grass – Lord, GRASS. I despise grass. Crab grass, saw grass, clumping grass – I don’t know the names of the invasive grasses in my flower beds, but I know how much I despise grass. I’m allergic to all grass.
But – I love foxglove, forget-me-nots, Japanese anemones, daisies, “baby-blue-eyes”, and speedwells – all considered “weeds” by others. We allow dandelions and false dandelions to grow, flower, and seed in our lawn (sorry, neighbors with the chemical lawns). Native milkweeds make their way under the concrete and into the garage on deep runner roots. I have daylilies in the public right-of-way (should the city ever develop the area, I won’t be out much in terms of flowers, but they are pretty when they bloom).
Sword ferns are a weed in the Pacific Northwest. I have spaces for ferns.
I have crocosmia that needs reined in and Shasta daisies ushing the limits of their location. Asters, “pearly everlasting”, and carnations that just seem to grow despite everything. The peonies – and I have a lot of peonies – need mulched and fertilized.
My flower beds are a mix of natives and perennials I like. I don’t do much with annuals, except to plant marigolds around my roses every year to fight off aphids and the petunias I plant in hanging planters. My fuschias are “hardy” ones that dies back in the winter and come back up in the spring. I once thought that going “all perennials” would make each growing season easier except there’s the profusion of weeds that are so difficult to eradicate naturally.
Tomorrow (or Sunday) I will apply a mix of vinegar+salt+Dawn dishwashing soap to some of the hard-to-weed areas. I’m using professional grade vinegar (Home Depot): one gallon+1 cup cheap salt + TBS of Dawn. I’ll spray it on the ivy, the grasses, the “stinky Bob”. I can’t use it near my flowers. It won’t kill the roots – at first. Multiple applications will eventually kill the roots. It doesn’t have a half life like commercial herbicides. (But I will confess to having used Round Up on Himalayan blackberries, the scourge of the PNW – but I now have those mostly under control and just stripping them of leaves kills them: can’t grow chlorophyll which feeds the stems.)
English ivy is harder to kill: the roots are under my neighbor’s fences but the plants grow on my side of the fences. The neighbors poison everything, but as long as ivy can find a place to get chlorophyll, it thrives. My side of the yard. I am hoping my vinegar solution will work on the ivy. I have a week of nice weather for it to soak into those leaves and kill them.
This is my life every March-June. Everything else falls to the side until I get the flower beds whipped into some sort of order. Then the weather gets warm and I avoid the loft where my computer is. And, finally, the season of dead-heading comes upon us, but only those plants that the birds will not use for foraging throughout the winter. I’ll mulch and make a final pass at weeding in the hopes that I will beat the grasses back before Spring comes around again.
I always lose.
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I have debated what to write for my next blog post. 2022 has brought about quite a few changes in my heart and my goals, and it has caused me to consider where I want to go with this rambling blog of mine.
I do want to touch on genealogy here and there. Family stories and family tree findings. I will be migrating all of my art related posts to this blog as I am shutting down my “professional” (ha!) website for my artwork and promising myself to do most of my marketing on Facebook and Instagram from here on – but only the finished images. Here is a place for me to write about how I got to the finished image so I can remember the process and keep it public in hopes that it will inspire some other faltering artist. I also want to record things that go on in my life between gardening (we are headed into that season again) and those I love (especially the subsequent generations).
I did go in and delete certain pages as I feel they no longer apply to the ME in 2022. No little bios of my children who I was still homeschooling when I started the blog. The oldest has moved on to become a homeschooling mom (reluctantly) of four children. I understand the “reluctantly” as I felt like my own time during the homeschooling years was just putting off my own dreams and plans for the future. But I also felt (as she does) that my children were more important than any feeble plans I had. I think I did pretty well.
The second child died at the age of 34. I’m still grieving. I am involved with a group Bible study called “GriefShare” and it is helping some. I did decide that any advice I would pass on to another grieving parent would be this: don’t listen to anyone who offers you a “Christian platitude”, e.g. “God had a better plan..” I stop short of advising anyone from slapping said Sister or Brother in the face with the Bible, but only out of a better conscience. I would slap them. My husband and I are wading through our grief and I share with my daughter-in-love and daughter often. I have resources that many bereaved parents and spouses do not have. I am grateful, but I still hurt deeply.
The third child… Well. I know many adult friends who suffered some sort of trauma at the hands of their own parents, and many of those friends are adoptees. I listen. I read. I respect her distance and her decision to cut us out of her life: her younger siblings, my husband and I, our children, and so many other relatives. I can’t pretend I understand, but it isn’t about my understanding, is it? It’s about her perception of her childhood, the trauma of losing both of her parents, and choosing to live with people who were very different from the mother she loved. It has been four years… or five? – since I last saw her in person or actually spoke to her. Her choice, not mine. I grieve the loss of that relationship but I am finding it easier to let go of because I know she is well, I know she contacts some of her old friends and some relatives, and I know that it was her choice, not mine.
I could follow that rabbit hole into a dissemination of my own childhood and my neglectful parents, but I also know how much I was loved by those people. They weren’t perfect but they would have laid their lives down for me or for either of my siblings – or the countless other young people they helped along the way. I was raised by some incredible human beings with large flaws and larger hearts.
2022 has been a muddle of health concerns. I realized early on that I could no longer push a grocery cart the length of our local Fred Meyers (Kroger on steroids). Every muscle hurt and my breath came up short. I started walking to an app that measures my steps and how far I have walked. I figured I was simply out of shape due to the past two years of Covid., grief, and Covid. And I developed a DVT (blood clot) in my left lag.
I think that would have been enough, but the sonogram specialist freaked and I ended up waiting 4.5 hours in the emergency department of the local hospital only to be told to “go home”. The ECG they took showed an anomaly and they recommended I see a cardiologist and have an echo cardiogram. My primary also freaked and asked my to NOT continue with my exercise regimen. “Light” work only and “strolling” only.
Two weeks later, the cardiologist dispelled any of that. He wants me to pursue my walking itinerary to the point of “not being able to sing, but being able to talk”. He changed my blood pressure meds. He took ‘Heart Disease’ off the table. I still have the DVT, but I am – once again – free to push my physical body to the limit (which isn’t much: I’m up to a whole 2/3’s of a mile in a single walk). But I feel better about the potential prognosis. And I’ve gotten a LOT of gardening done as it is the first week of April and I am plant crazy.
This Saturday is “Garden Palooza” back for the first time since 2018. I will spend money buying perennials. Wednesday is the stress test on a tread mill. I will see how that goes. Right now, I am hoping for the Dx of “you’re just out of shape” and “nothing wrong with your heart”. I have a rock wall to build. I’ve been planning this particular wall for two years.
I also have several “pop up” art shows to attend for the summer. I need to hawk my wares. I want the exposure. I will be blogging about those more in the upcoming days. Art is at the heart of my soul.
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My latest projects have to do with resin pour. I had a kit as a teenager but lost interest in the art for whatever reason (I was a teenager, what can I say?). I’ve had the supplies in my locker for a few years now but just recently decided to try some pours with photos of my own art (reduced, considerably) and some molds I have.
The largest (oblong) is 1.5″ long and the smallest (square) is 3/4×3/4″. The biggest issue was deciding how much resin to mix at a time. A full teaspoon was too little, two tablespoons was too much. I also learned to stir the mixture slower as you get fewer bubbles when you do the final pours.
You can easily tell which ones have too many bubbles. Oh well. These were silicone molds (except the squirrel with the camera).
I’ve had these little metal frames for jewelry around FOREVER. It never occurred to me to use resin to seal a photo inside them. The photos started as 3×3″, but I reduced them to fit the frames.
I’m addicted. I’ve started a new line of things to sell. 🙂
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Physical heart issues, I should clarify: Issues *of* the heart can be harder to recognize and I’m still learning.
The past week has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for me emotionally. I noticed I had some swelling in my left leg on (or around) the 8th of February. It raised a little red flag, but the swelling wasn’t severe, so I filed it under “check that out daily”. I knew it could be the sign of a blood clot, but I also knew I hadn’t injured my leg in any way. My brother had a clot in his leg around ten years ago, but he had an injury to his leg that precipitated the clot.
Friday morning, the 11th, my leg was taut and obviously swollen. I showed my husband and he noticed the difference between my legs. We had plans for the afternoon, but I came upstairs to my studio and called my primary caregiver’s office anyway. They could get me in at the same time we had plans for: oops. So we changed plans slightly: doctor first, skip the shopping trip to Home Depot, but go out for an early Valentine’s dinner anyway.
My primary caregiver is a Nurse Practitioner and I truly adore this woman. She examined my leg, tossed out a few scary terms like “blood clot” and “heart failure”. Blood clot was the foremost theory. But you know how your mind runs away with things? Yeah, my mind did exactly that.
I did put my leg up the next few days and the swelling all but disappeared. I called and scheduled a sonogram for as soon as I could get one, which was yesterday. I also let close family members know what was going on (this is important because my parents never let us kids in on any major medical issues whey were having, or they would tell my brother but not me, or me but not my brother: I won’t do that).
Well, I had the sonogram done. I arrived early and was called back to the lab early: no waiting! This just never happens, so I should have taken a hint: “the day is not over yet”. The sonogram itself was interesting: the technician sometimes punched my leg where the vein was to get a stop and flow of the valve (I could hear the “whoosh” of blood on the ultrasound machine). I remember thinking I should have checked to see if there was any arnica in my purse because I was (for sure) going to bruise from all that punching and pressing (I didn’t bruise, I discovered I did have arnica in my purse 24 hours later).
The tech escorted me back to the waiting room while she attempted to call my primary care give and discuss the results with her (which automatically reads: “there are results to discuss”). I had a 2:30 lunch date with an old friend that was looming on the clock in the waiting room. When the tech reappeared, I still had 30 minutes before I had to head north to the restaurant we were meeting at – except…
Except the tech was agitated. She had not been able to reach my primary caregiver. She left two voice mails and was “dropped” by the system once. She was making an executive decision (and if you know me, you know I LOVE people who are capable of making executive decisions that are above their pay grade and they make them anyway. I really hate wishy-washy people who hem and haw about making that decision when it is clearly the only decision to be made.
She broke protocol to tell me mt test results without my doctor being present, and she made the decision that I should go to the ER to be seen (and after reading the MyChart notes this morning, it was the decision my NP would have made. I was, after all, in the same building as the ER). I was escorted by the tech to the other side of the hospital to the ER waiting room where she explained to the receiving clerk what was going on. And left me.
I texted my friend first: cancel lunch. Called my husband next: I don’t know what’s up, but I do have an acute blood clot in my left leg and I am in the ER waiting room and I have no idea what to expect. Texted the people closest to me, including two precious prayer groups. Turned my phone onto airplane mode because I didn’t have a charger with me and I didn’t know when I would have a chance to charge it again.
LET THE WAITING BEGIN. It’s a small hospital with a small ER waiting room. And I digress here from knowing the symptoms (which I pretty much covered in the first paragraph) to people watching. I had no idea how much people watching I would get in. I *felt* fine. No pain, no chest tightness or pain, no struggling to breathe: just a pesky swollen leg (but not too badly swollen) and a Dx of an “acute blood clot). (My brother texted back: “Why can’t it be an ugly clot?” Me: “Because I *like* cute!”)
There were some pitifully skinny teenagers in Emo clothes who came in. One was with her mother. The other was with a girlfriend of friend who wore funny slippers on her feet and outweighed him by threefold. She had a tiny orange plastic purse just large enough for her ID and debit/credit cards which he held onto for her. There was a drama queen, an older guy who complained about the wait and who took to groaning and coughing loudly to get attention (I don’t know, maybe he really hurt that much? How could I know, not being in his shoes? Still, I labeled him a drama queen). A girl who looked five shades too pale, who moped and tried to nap, but still had the nerve to joke with the National Guard guy who was looking for someone. A Hispanic guy who must have been injured on the job, information I picked up from his coworker who kept leaving the waiting room to talk to someone who was calling to check in on the status (a foreman, I would guess, by the snippets of conversation). An elderly man in his late 80’s or early 90’s who fell onto his side and injured (or broke) his shoulder and hip. He was with his daughter who was on the phone whispering and cancelling dinner plans and letting her adult children know that Grandpa was in pain at the hospital. They took him back twice for x-rays.
I waited four and a half hours. I played a few games on my phone. Rued that I didn’t bring my Kindle. Wondered if any of the others in the room had as wonderful a support system as I have. Thanked my support system (mentally) a dozen times. Prayed for everyone else. Concentrated on NOT thinking about myself, but about putting all of these before me (and, indeed, most of them were taken care of before me, except the poor girl who was five shades too pale). She did arrive after me, but nearly everyone else was after me. I guess she & I just didn’t make it up the triage notch. I do hope she got hep for whatever was wrong and that she feels better today.
Around 4:15, I was finally called back to a private room. Until that time, honestly, all I heard coming out of the actual ER was that there ‘were no rooms available, do you mind being in the hall on a gurney while we see to you?” I was kind of embarrassed to get a private room. But, there I was, with no idea as to whether or not I was spending the night or having surgery (not usually how they tackle blood clots) and how much of this was Medicare going to cover (a question I will not have the answer until I get the bill). The nurse drew more blood and ran the same panels my doctor had just run five days earlier, but I guess they needed to see if anything had changed since then).
My husband showed up about that time. He had waited until he thought I would probably be in a room (good guess!) and until the dog was settled enough to corral him in a kennel (you’d have to know the dog). He could at least take my mind off of myself for the last hour of waiting. I really didn’t want to be focused on myself: my imagination can do the greatest damage. I was already living one of my “worst case scenarios” from the night before: being in the ER for the clot!
The denouement: The ER doctor came in (finally). Did I know anything about blood clot treatment? I told him I had enough knowledge to be scared: my brother injured his leg and had a blood clot and they prescribed Warfarin or coumadin. I didn’t want to give up leafy greens or any of my Vitamin K foods.
Fortunately, they prescribe one of those TV commercial medications for dissolving blood clots now: Eliquis. The only side effect is that I could, possibly, worst case scenario, bleed to death. No, really. Thin blood, less clotting ability. Oh, and I would bruise easily.. As in, more easily than I already bruise. As my husband joked, “She already bruises if you just look sideways at her.” As is, I better have that arnica ALWAYS in my purse going forward.
The point of this entire tale is this: if I had not known that the swelling in just one of my legs was not natural, I may not have called my primary care giver in the first place. Then I probably wouldn’t have had an untrasound that eventually led to me waiting for hours in the ER waiting room only to be told, “Take two of these and go home”.
No, the blood clot would have just loosened in the vein in my ankle and made its way into the lining of my lungs, shutting down my ability to draw a full breath and resulting in an ambulance ride to the hospital and God-knows-what-else. Or it would have made its way to me heart and stopped it altogether (only after it depleted my ability to breathe).
Know the symptoms. If one leg swells more than the other and it’s never done that before… Call your doctor. My brother’s was caused by an injury and he called his doctor. Mine is called a “predatory” clot: no injury precipitated it. But I knew the symptoms because of my brother’s experience. And if you have to sit in the ER waiting your turn, remember this: other people are hurting more than you right now.
Be patient. Be kind. Know the symptoms.
I love you.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged blood clots, heart issues | Leave a Comment »
Gung Hay Fat Choy.
That was always written on the chalkboard by the back door in my childhood home on February 2nd. My dad loved Chinese New Year. I think he liked it mostly for the “Fat Choy” part. I never quite understood why it stood out to him but the memory persists even though the Chinese New year always changes dates. It runs from sometime in January or February to the following January or February. I still celebrate it eve though Dad has been gone since 2011 and I can’t remember the last time he uttered those word, “Gung Hay Fay Choy!”
I was born in The Year of the Monkey. I despise monkeys. There was a woman who lived across the street from us when I was in Middle School. Her name was (ironically) Jackie. She had a “pet” spider monkey. Monkeys do not make pets. They have incisors. They fling feces at people. They can be cannibalistic. I hated that monkey as much as it hated the neighborhood children. When it would escape, it would sit on the wires over the places where we would play and it would fling feces at us and bare its yellowed and sharp canines. Our parents would have to call the fire department which, in turn, would have to contact Jackie so she could corral the little monster. If you like monkeys, kindly do not comment. I despise all monkeys.
I had a brilliant idea this year. The Chinese horoscope has twelve Zodiac animals. I painted Zodiac animals for my daughter-in-love, her brother and his wife, and their combined children plus my son’s children by his first wife. They just received the package I mailed (in hopes of arriving on 2/1/22, Chinese New Years’ for 2022). Simple cards.
2022 is The Year of the Tiger Our son was a Tiger.
These were simple cards. I hope my attempt at Chinese characters passes muster. I also hope my grandchildren and great nieces treasure these.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged chinese new year, year of the tiger | 4 Comments »
Jaci Dawn 