Nocturnal Injuries, Self-Inflicted

I have subconsciously always been a procrastinator.  I mean, I don't do it on purpose.  At least not on CONSCIOUS purpose.  Who the dickens knows what goes on in my brain when I'm asleep?  Apparently, a lot.

I've reached the stage in life in which, if I sit down and get quiet for a few moments, I fall asleep.  Sitting up.  Lying down.  Doesn't matter.  And while I'm asleep, bad things happen.  Some mornings, I get up to a sore knee, sore hip, or sore shoulder/neck, apparently related to my positions in bed.  They usually work themselves out in a few days, but what a crock!  

I have noticed that the bulk of my nocturnal injuries, however, happen in my mouth.  It seems that I clench my jaw in the night and grind my teeth.  One morning, years ago, I woke up to TMJ so bad that I couldn't close my jaw.  Chewing was almost impossible.  I didn't seek medical attention because I reasoned the remedies and decided just to be nice to my jaw and see what happened.  It took months, but eventually, the situation reversed itself. 

Many are the times I woke up to having my teeth feel weird.    It seems that they were responding to bite problems in my sleep and were moving.  Seriously.  My teeth were moving in my old age.  Many--MANY--crumbled or broke.  I have never replaced three of them because they are far back in my mouth, and I think that a much larger prosthetic dental situation will need to be performed soon enough.  And this is where my tongue gets involved.

One time, I got up to find the left side of my lower lip swollen and floppy.  Not a single sign of a bite or trauma...but something had happened during the night.  That one took two days to go away.

Last night, I went to bed at 2:00 AM after falling asleep sitting up on the couch.  When I woke up from the snooze on my way to bed, I realized that I had chomped down on the right side of my tongue.  I mean, everybody bites his/her tongue once in awhile, right?  It's never a cause for concern.  I woke up at 4:30 AM with a tongue so swollen and sore that swallowing was a problem.  It took concentration not to choke.  And under my tongue on the left side was what looked like a big blister--also sore.  

The worst part is that this isn't the first time it has happened.  I think this is at least the third time that I have had to wait for the swelling in my tongue to go down before I feel "normal" again.  And that's the only lucky thing about all of this: the swelling usually does go down before the day is over.  What causes it?  Likely missing teeth and mouth tension during sleep.  How to fix it?  I have no clue!

I have met the enemy, and he is me!  (With apologies to Pogo.)    

Robin Steps and Other Critical Questions of the Universe

 Human curiosity is a wonderful thing.  As a species, we homo sapiens have evolved from knuckle-dragging omnivores to so-called civilized and complicated societies due to scientific exploration established to resolve the questions of the curious.  The more we know, the more we know what we don't know, ya know?  

I'm curious about a lot of things on a superficial basis.  I can try to research certain health conditions on the Internet.  Once I get past the articles posted in words an average 6th grader can understand, I need a medical dictionary to slog through the rest.  A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  That doesn't mean I won't keep looking; it just means that learning more may require time I don't particularly want to invest in the inquiry.  

Is any question too insignificant to answer?  Of course not.  In fact, I used to try to disarm my students who were trying to de-rail my lesson plans by asking questions they knew I would answer.  Distractions?  Yeah!  Truth is, I would evaluate how worthy the questions were before giving up the lesson plan in favor of a discussion more appropriate to the kids.  I'm sure there were students who left my classroom feeling victorious that they got one over on the old lady.  What they don't understand is that I always felt there were larger lessons to be learned from our impromptu conversations.  Teachable Moments.

Okay...having said all of that, I need to impart a short conversation I had with my daughter online this morning.  It was her first post to me of the day:  "Just curious...have you ever counted the steps that robins make when they make their little runs?"  Uh...no.  I admitted that I haven't.  Never even thought about it, actually.  In fact, for a second, I thought I was being drawn into a trick question.  I proffered a guess and asked if I won, not even knowing if there was an answer to How Many Steps Do Robins Make When They Make Their Little Runs?  I mean, who asks about that?  Who even thinks about it??  Obviously, my daughter.  She has become a birder who, in a couple of years, has already outclassed my knowledge of birds because...well...HER birds in the PNW are not the same ones that we here in the Midwest have.  Robins are universal, of course.

Apparently Megan's curiosity has caused her to start counting robin steps to see if they are consistent.  She says they are.  Six to seven steps per run.  She wants to know if this is something instinctive with the species.  I have no idea! 

My first thought was, "Only Megan would think of that!"  It really does fascinate me, however.  My dear darling daughter is good at details.  I'm just not.  Meanwhile, there are so many other questions I would like to resolve:

*Do people who commit crimes ever think of the consequences before they offend?

*Do the insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6th ever consider how much they were used and then left out to dry by Donald Trump?

*How do Christians sleep at night if they aren't inclusive of our gay brothers and sisters?

*How can **I** sleep at night if I keep falling asleep on the couch hours before?

*How long does it take for the human body to adjust to one hour's time change twice a year?

*Do hummingbirds have favorite feeders when more than one is offered??

Inquiring minds need to know!

The Medicine Merry-Go-Round

 Everyone loves a carousel.  Round and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows!  I can just hear the calliope playing the familiar circus tunes--every kid's delight, but not so much an adult whose life is being directed by such serendipity.

Over a year ago, I went to my Primary Care Physician to complain about edema in my legs, from the knee down.  She ordered an echocardiogram to check for heart failure and blood tests to check kidney function.  Both of those turned out okay, so I was put on a diuretic.  When the diuretic didn't seem to work, the doc doubled the dose.  Again, nothing was working, and the next blood test showed that my kidney function had taken a nose dive into Stage 3 Kidney Disease range.  I was immediately taken off of my blood pressure medicine (that contained a diuretic) and the other diuretic.  The doc called to tell me to go to the Emergency Room if I began to feel bad.  Define bad!  I'm old.  I feel bad all the time.  I had visions of needing kidney dialysis, so I complied to the letter of what my PCP and cardiologist wanted.  You betcha!  In the absence of diuretics and lots of fluids, my next blood test, just three days after the last one, put my kidney function in the "perfect" range.  Hallelujah!  I was then directed to check my blood pressure daily and call in my results.  

It was probably three days before I checked my BP here at home....but when I did, I called in quickly.  The first reading was 196/87.  The next day, it was 196/82.  Yikes!  Even before the doc's office called, the pharmacy called to say my prescription was ready.  Prescription for what?  My blood pressure meds!  The ones I was taken off for the sake of my kidneys.  Following me yet??

Okay, so my PCP wanted me to check in with my cardiologist just to make sure my heart wasn't involved.  He ordered a blood test that was tacked on to the one I was to take for kidney function just a couple of days ago.  At that appointment, my BP was checked, an EKG reading was taken, etc.  All signs point to a healthy heart...so...now the question comes: WHY do I still have edema in my legs?  The cardiologist put me on a different diuretic.  I am to weigh myself every day (which I already do), and call in the results today.  He also wants me in physical therapy for leg wraps for edema.  That's also in the works now.  

In the span of the last six weeks, I have had five blood draws and three vaccinations.  Peggy feels like a pin cushion!  I've been on and off the same medications several times, to the point that I have had to write down what I am taking at what time.  And for the first time in my life, I've actually had questions.  If I'm on a diuretic, should I be limiting my liquid intake?  I mean, if I'm taking meds to take fluids out of my body, does it make sense to be taking in lots of fluids to keep the kidneys flushed?  I'm beginning to think we are playing Russian Roulette with my kidneys and medicines.  "If the right one don't get ya, then the left one will!"  

My next blood draw has already been scheduled for next week, as has an intake appointment for physical therapy for leg wraps (?)                                                                                                              In summary, over the last 18 months, I have had more blood draws than I can count.  I took an echocardiogram to look for heart failure.  I was referred to a podiatrist who put me on antibiotics because she thought the redness on my legs/feet might be cellulitis.  She also ordered a Peripheral Artery Disease test (which is essentially taking blood pressure in three places on each leg.  I took yet another test (blood draw) looking for heart failure.  I've been taken off medicines that I have taken since 2009's heart attack, then put back on them...twice.  Kidney function goes down with diuretics.  Blood pressure goes up without them.  Even with all of this--EVEN WITH ALL OF THIS--my legs and feet are still horribly swollen, tight, hot, and red, with skin that has become dry, itchy, and like dead leather.

In short, Pin Cushion Peggy also feels like Guinea Pig Peggy.  Round and round she goes, with no answers.  

And to my sister Shari, who is always talking to me about taking care of this or that, I say, "I'm doing all of that.  What's your next idea for me?  Pfffftt!"      

The Screams of Silence

When awake and busy toddlers suddenly become quiet, it's time to find out what they're up to.        When someone you love who is normally talkative stops talking, something's up.                                    When you abruptly have no words to explain how you are feeling or why anyone should care, red flags should fly.  

Sometimes, silence from people virtually screams TROUBLE.  Those who are too far into depression, loneliness, problems in life, or mental illness are experts at hiding what's wrong.  They can be ashamed to appear emotionally weak, or perhaps they are embarrassed to have anyone know their dirty little secrets.  Maybe they have low self-esteem and don't consider themselves worthy of the attention of others.  Not sure.  Doesn't matter.  All that matters is that someone you know, and maybe love, isn't talking.  Where do we go from there?

"Am I my brother's keeper?"  In a sense, I am.  I certainly can't fix the world but I do understand that something isn't right when people uncharacteristically get quiet.  But there is another aspect to this that isn't immediately obvious:  sometimes, when I get a hint of something I simply can't deal with, I don't ask questions because I fear the answers.  My daughter, the one person in my life that I love above all else, also senses the triggers.  She doesn't offer answers to questions I haven't asked because she also doesn't want to deal with the problems that the truth might bring.  Thus, we both remain detrimentally silent about a huge pile of manure in the middle of our virtual living spaces.  I always intuitively know the truth without the details.  When I think I am ready to hear the details, she has already shut me out.  (This is a pattern with the two of us.)  In this case, silence isn't golden.  It's destructive of our trust in each other.  Beyond that, it's an indication that we don't know each other as well as we think we do.  

Truth is--and my daughter knows this--it takes me a little bit to adjust to/accept big changes in the flow of things in life.  When she and her first hubby announced to me that they were expecting, after telling me just a couple of weeks before that they had decided not to have children, I was confused.  That time, it took me less than an hour to switch gears from Mom to Grandma.  And then they gave me another grandchild.  My life was changed forever!  Those children became the focus of my life.  And then...and then...my daughter made a decision I simply couldn't understand, and never will.  It affected all of us, including the children, and I still can't talk about it without tears and heartbreak.  Thankfully, most of that has been resolved but at what cost?  There were months of silence, anger, sense of betrayal, and prayer.  There is no hurt quite as exquisite as coming from the ones you love the most.

Silence doesn't always represent relief or calm.  Sometimes, it screams that all is not well.  I must come to understand the difference.      

  

What the Pandemic Created.

It has now officially been one year since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus to be a pandemic.  World-wide.  It has now officially been one year since the world started to shut down in order to stop the spread of the virus, and it has also officially been one year since the President of the United States (POTUS) decided to downplay the virus and make it a political issue.  Thousands were dying every day.  He was playing mind games.  I was disgusted.

The school district from which I retired years before had a group of teachers, parents, and students touring Europe one year ago.  This was not school sponsored but was offered by a tour company to teachers/students/families interested in a chaperoned tour.  A couple of days before their scheduled flight to come home, they were stranded.  European borders were closing.  Flights and trains and bus transportation were quickly drying up.  Parents and teacher friends in the US were in contact with the group.  They were begging for us to start pulling political strings at home to help them leave Europe.  (They were prepared with numbers to call, etc., making it easy for us to let our Indiana lawmakers, including VP Pence, that they needed help.)    

I was a 10-year-old kid when I lived in Japan (1957-58).  Many is the time that I worried about my safety as an American in 12-year-post-war Japan.  I needn't have worried.  I had the US Navy behind my being there, but who knew about that, then?  Thus, when I got word that 19 adults--some of whom were former colleagues of mine--and 20 kids of middle-to-high-school age might not be able to get home from Europe, I became part of the team to do my part.  Somehow, things worked out.  Embassies were involved and money with which to bribe bus drivers.  The crew reached Frankfurt, Germany, with enough time to get on the last flight to Chicago out of Germany.  Whew!

As a high-risk person in the pandemic's target range, I became a hermit.  No one came in my house, and I went nowhere unless absolutely necessary.  I have a decorative bench just outside my front door.  That bench became the place for me to receive things or send things out.  I am blessed because people did things for me.  I usually didn't even have to ask.  It's not in my make-up to ask for help, but I have learned to accept it with gratitude.

Over the past four or five years, I have learned to keep track of the weather.  When a snowstorm approaches, I have made sure that I go out in advance to make sure that I have everything I need to make it through for a few days.  In short, I've always been prepared to be a hermit for a week at a time, perhaps.  I just never thought about how that would work over a whole year, and counting.

As Christmas of 2020 approached, I became inconsolable.  It had been a year since I last saw my family, and that represented the most time I had ever been away from them.  I became convinced that I would never see them again due to my own failing health, and that destroyed me.  For the first time in my life, I was alone.  Yes, I have lived alone for many years, but I always had the freedom to come and go.  This time, I wasn't the only one restricted.  The whole world was, with no immediate light at the end of the tunnel.  I couldn't even pretend that all was sunshine and flowers.  In spite of all of my presumed strength to make it through, I became uncomfortably aware that I was not okay.  My Positive Mental Attitude no longer existed.  I was weeping all day, every day...so I began to seek help.  I wasn't suicidal, just in so much pain that living wasn't convenient.  I was chiding myself for feelings I didn't think myself worthy to have.    I reached out to my doctor about my "old age depression" made worse by the pandemic.  My doctor put me on low-dose Zoloft, and it has helped.  It doesn't make me happy, but it does level my moods.  At least I'm not crying all the time.

All the while, I have been battling health problems.  Tests.  Blood draws.  Dr. visits.  And finally...FINALLY...vaccinations against the virus.  Which is where I am now.  I am still, perhaps, overly-cautious because I think people are acting carelessly in an effort to make life normal again.  There is absolutely NOTHING normal about life in Indiana or even the US right now.  Thank God we have a new president who is not a narcissist.  We have a lunatic fringe, but I'm seeing more common sense than I have seen in awhile.  Hallelujah!  We have learned a little more about how to take care of each other.  Maybe.  We'll see.

This is not my first pandemic.  The last one I endured was in the late 50s, called the Asiatic Flu.  When I got it, however, I was 10 years old and healthy enough to get over it.  This time around, I was 72 when it hit.  I don't have enough time left to be burning daylight, waiting for herd immunity to take place.  I'm 74 now, with even less time.  I'm considering my priorities every day.  Every day is a new hurdle, but I'm still in the fight!      

 

      

The Gaslight Sisters

 It's true.  Two female siblings from the same parents, raised in the same household with the same values, can remember things differently and/or go in different directions in life, to the effect that they tend to gaslight each other--lovingly, of course, but still with some amount of teasing about who is right and who is wrong.  

As it happens, I have an older sister.  She is 79, and I am 74.  That's a difference of a mere five years, yet we span two separate generation labels.  I am a Baby Boomer.  She is pre-Baby Boom.  She grew up with Elvis.  I was more into folk music and the Beatles.  As kids, we fought like...well...like sisters.  She was married and raising a family when I was still in junior high school, so we missed some of the important things--she because she was busy being a wife and mother, and I because I was a teenager.  In short, we weren't close as kids.                                                                                                                  As adults, we are tight as thieves.  Confidantes.  There isn't much that we don't know about each other.  We both know things about each other and our families that we don't divulge to anyone, because that's what sisters do.  Still, there are ways that we gaslight each other--in jest, I believe--but with a grain of truth to everything.  

For example, my sister was the firstborn child/grandchild of the family.  I have this theory, with evidence, that she got all of the "good genes", and I got the leftovers.  (Not sure what our younger brother got.  He passed before we had a chance to talk about DNA with him.)                                    *Shari (my sister), has a full, non-gray head of hair.  My hair was prematurely gray and thinned out early in life to reveal all kinds of bald spots.                                                                                                *Shari is petite and cute; I am average height and plain.                                                                        *Shari doesn't have high cholesterol, even though she slathers major butter on everything; I watch my fats, but still have to take a statin drug for cholesterol.  She does not.                                                  *Shari always looks like she just stepped out of the dry cleaners.  She irons clothes and has a big wardrobe of trendy clothing and shoes.  I go for comfort; thus, I usually look like the stereotype of a homeless bag lady.                                                                                                                                    *Shari is a "looker".  She takes care of her appearance.  I am the recipient of comments like, "I bet you were a looker in your day."  (Isn't that special!?)                                                                                          *Although Shari is older than I, if anyone looks at us side by side, he/she would guess that I am the eldest. But who's counting??  

I freely confess that I never wanted to be like my sister; I just wanted to look like her.  She was popular with the fellas.  I was just a tomboy.  Still, I had our mom save a couple of my sister's special dresses so I could wear them "someday".  It didn't happen.  Shari and I simply aren't built the same, but I can still see a couple of those dresses in my mind. 

Flash forward to now.  Shari's husband of 55 years died in 2016, of the complications of dementia.  She had done absolutely everything possible to keep him home and provided for, until he became too sick for her to tackle alone.  To her absolute credit, he was so far gone that he didn't last all that long in the hospital where he was being treated for complications of his condition.  After he passed, I told her that she wouldn't be "on the market" long  if she sought companionship, because she is cute and capable and still spry for her age.  She assured me that she flat-out wasn't looking for love.  And then along came Jim.  The rest is history.  I truly have never seen her quite this happy!    

Okay...on to the gaslighting.

Shari and I have running jokes about things...things that drive us both nutsy.  Here are some of the gaslighting issues:

1.  Shari insists that our mother never put mustard in her potato salad (which was to die for).  I insist that she did.  I mean, Shari left home at 18.  I stuck around longer.  I learned to make potato salad from Mom.  How else would I have known to put mustard in the potato salad dressing??

2.  I put onion in tuna salad, egg salad, and in deviled eggs.  Shari doesn't and claims that onions have no business in those.  I claim that they don't taste right without onions.  Who wins??  When I'm at her house, I eat what she serves.  I guess when she's at mine, she will eat my offerings!

3.  Shari has a habit of  opening the refrigerator and/or freezer door to get something out, etc., and keeps the door open the whole time.  We aren't talking a few seconds here.  We are talking about 30-60 seconds, during which all of the cold air is running out of the appliance.  One day at her last visit (a week or so ago), she opened the fridge door, then went to another room for a bit and walked right past the open door on her return without closing it.  Argh!  Drives me crazy!

4.  I'm a slower driver than my sister.  When she's driving on my turf, I try to give directions in time to make things happen appropriately; still, my dear sister approaches cars too close and too fast for my liking.  Visit before last, she missed a turn (probably my fault) and performed a U-turn in the middle of US 40 in the center of town.  Yikes!  I was terrified.  She just thinks I'm silly.

5.  There are things I have had to look up to determine who is right.  We had an on-going discussion about "dry measure" vs. "liquid measure".  She insisted they were different.  I had never observed a difference.  Turns out, there is no difference in amount.  I win!

While setting a holiday table, Shari was setting the knives next to the dishes with the blade facing the plate.  I had always been taught that the blade needed to face away from the plate.  Had to look it up.  I won again! 

The latest one is something I had never heard of.  I had a half-gallon of expired milk and a half-gallon of unexpired milk in the fridge.  The expired milk was close to the REAL expiration:  a week after the expiration date on the carton.  Shari took the expired milk out, shook it, and declared it was still good because shaking it created bubbles.  I have no sense of smell, so just sniffing it wouldn't work for me, but because she declared it was still usable, I used it.  Put it and a stick of butter in the microwave to soften it up before putting in cooked macaroni and cheesy sprinkles.  (Kraft.)  Thank goodness I did that before adding the macaroni and cheese sauce mix.  After 30 seconds in the microwave, the butter had softened, but the milk had curdled.  Neither of us liked the looks of that, so we tried again with another stick of butter and the unexpired milk.  Success!  So much for the bubbling milk test!

I get no pleasure out of being right.  (Well, maybe just a little.)  But I am fascinated by how two sisters raised in the same household can be so different.  Thank God, Shari and I agree on politics.  We can still be sisters!  Ya know, she and I know the best and worst of each other, but we still accept who/what we are.  I think Mom would be so proud!