Water, Water, Everywhere

It took me a while, but I finally managed to get into the habit of making Mary drink a cup of water in the morning before having any coffee. Mom thinks I’m awful, but she won’t drink the water, usually, in the afternoon when you give it to her. When I first moved in with her, she drank a cup whenever she passed the sink and would gladly drink a whole, big glass in the afternoon. Over the years the glass has gotten smaller and smaller.

The other day I gave her a cup of water while I was fixing dinner. (If I giver her water with dinner, she doesn’t drink it except to take her pills.) I heard her talking (it reminded me of a child talking to itself) out on the back porch. She said, “Now, if I drink this, I can have a cup of coffee.” I just about died laughing! That’s what I’m always telling her in the morning (

The dog’s still doing well. The owners dropped off her papers. They paid about $130 for her last March—and then took her to a vet and paid another $140 for various shots and things. Eeks!

Mom gave me some Lodi apples. She planted a tree because Mary always said it was her favorite. They make the best applesauce because they’re so tart. Well, the apples Mom gave me were mostly unusable, so I did some research and found an orchard with Lodi apple trees. You have to pick your own. Mom says she go with me. Cool! I hope I can convince her to drive around to some of these farms to buy some produce. I think Mary would really enjoy that. I wish she could come to pick apples, but I guess I’ll have to get Bonnie to stay with her.

Did I tell you Bonnie’s not coming this week? She’s on vacation with her family. They went to Holiday Land (?) in Santa Claus, Indiana. Argh! For a whole week?! I hope they’re not bored to tears. Also, they took her grandmother and mother, neither of whom is in good health. What are they thinking? When I told Mary, I said, “Oh, no! What are we going to do?” (since Bonnie wouldn’t be coming). She just said, “Well, that’s not a problem for me!” Sometimes she’s so with it, it’s scary!

She’s talking to her Birdie right now. Asking it if it wants to go to sleep and saying, “Yeah, that baby wants to go to sleep.” I guess that means she wants to go to sleep!

It Doesn't Rain, but It Pours

It doesn’t rain, but it pours! I took Mary to three doctors this week: eye doctor, podiatrist, and family doctor. The upshot is that she’s got an eye infection, an ingrown toenail, and a urinary tract infection! So my schedule of treatment combined with my regular schedule of medications is this:

• Morning: round of pills one hour before she gets up, wipe eyes with special toilette and rinse; remove toe bandage, clean, put on Neosporin, put on new bandage; administer shot for osteoporosis; eye drop and pills plus potassium in cranberry juice after breakfast. (I also give her a “breathing toy” from the hospital to get her lungs going before she gets out of bed.)


• Afternoon: eye drop after lunch, antibiotic mid-afternoon.


• Evening: eye drop and antacid after dinner; round of pills before bedtime; wipe eyes with toilette, rinse, apply ointment; change toe bandage; apply vaseline to outside creases of nose and chin (otherwise it gets very dry and cracked--petroleum jelly is the only thing I've found to work).

I’ve had to cut out her vitamins and minerals because I couldn’t figure out how to get them in with the antibiotic, which needs to be taken four hours before or eight hours after any vitamins/minerals or antacids. I have also cut out her breathing treatments because it didn’t seem to be helping and her doctor said the antibiotic would take care of anything causing the cough, if there was anything there, although she didn’t hear anything bad going on.

Another interesting event is that I saw that dog from January wandering around the other day and took her in to keep her from getting hit. When the owner called, she said that the dog (that they had renamed Bella) kept digging her way out of the yard and they were fed up and didn’t want it anymore. She agreed that we could keep the dog for a few days to see if we wanted to keep her. The cat doesn’t like her at all, but Mary and I think she’s really sweet. She gets up on the couch but gets back down when I yell at her. She only dug in the yard once where a chipmunk had been digging. She sat out on the porch with Mary while I worked in the yard and didn’t get down. I took her outside while Mom was here and she took off when she heard a dog barking in the distance. I had to chase her half-way down the street. I took her for a walk yesterday and she did really well. She rarely barks. However, she’s shedding like crazy. I’ll have to vacuum every day. But that’s good exercise. We’ll see.

Life with Auntie Angie

I asked Ange to come over Saturday and to my surprise, she said yes. To my greater surprise, when we got there, she had packed a bag and was planning on staying the night. I had just thought she'd come over and watch an old movie with us and then we'd take her back home. This is the first time she's spent the night since she stayed here and had her stroke.

Saturday night was fine, but last night was a doozie. At 1AM she woke me up because her neck was hurting. She said it was throbbing. She was concerned about it being a vein--ie, having another stroke. She took some pain pills and then two baby aspirins and I gave her a hot bean bag and we both went back to bed. At 4AM she got me up and said that I needed to call her daughter Pat, she was wetting her pants "like crazy" and wanted Pat to bring her another pair of pajama bottoms (!). Her neck was still hurting her. I called Pat (reluctantly) and she told Ange that there was nothing she could do for her but take her to the hospital, so she could call 911 and Pat would meet her there if she wanted to, but bringing her home wouldn't do any good because there wasn't anything they could do for her there that we couldn't do here. I gave Ange a pair of Poise disposable panties and brought her in a clean pair of pants (sort of like yoga pants). We hung up with Pat and she put them on. Angie said she had thought she was going to die. Honestly, I know it sounds cold of me, but I don't understand why people who are so religious are so incredibly afraid to die.

I got her a cold bean bag from the freezer and she said that felt better than the hot one. I sat and talked with her a while. She said she thought they'd know what was wrong with her at the hospital. I told her that she could go if she wanted to, but she wasn't sweating, didn't have a fever, was walking around fine...didn't have any symptoms of a stroke or heart attack, in other words. I thought they wouldn't know what was wrong with her. They'd put her on a hard table, stick an IV in her, run a lot of tests, take x-rays, and keep her in the hospital for days trying to figure it out. Plus, without the "right" symptoms, they might not send an ambulance for her, or at least not immediately. I finally got her to agree to lie down and I went back to bed.

At around 5:30 Mary had to use the potty and Angie came in while I was getting her up. She said that there had been someone knocking and knocking at the back door and when she'd gone to answer it, there had been a young girl standing there, maybe 15 or 16, looked to be black, with short, curly hair, and she'd just grinned from one ear to the other. Angie said she'd closed the door and locked it. I just thought, hmph, because you can't lock our back door. There's a storm door which I keep locked but the lock on the main door is broken. That made me nervous as to whether the back door was open with some deranged person out there. Angie wanted me to go check, but she was too scared to go with me. I told her I was scared, too! But I went to look. No one there and the door was locked. There was a note from the fridge on the floor where Angie must have knocked it off. Personally, I never heard anyone knocking and I sleep rather lightly since I have to listen for Mary, but maybe I'd slept sounder since I'd been so tired.

I got Mary back into bed and then Angie surprised me by saying that she didn't want to go back into "that part of the house," meaning the living room where the couch is, where she sleeps. I said she could sleep with me, of course. I kicked the cat out of my bed and we settled down, but I couldn't sleep. I'm not used to having anyone in my bed with me and I was on the cat's side, which is covered with hair. Plus, Angie was breathing deeply and then started to snore, so I got up. She woke up, of course, and wanted to get up and go back to the couch to quit bothering me, but I told her I was going to go have a cup of tea and for her to go back to sleep. She couldn't believe that she'd been asleep. I think she sleeps a lot more than she thinks she does. She thinks she lies awake all night most nights. I guess that's normal for old people to think that, or maybe anyone who's an insomniac. You dose, but you don't realize it.

Anyway, I got up and checked the back door again. I don't know. I just can't believe that there was someone there. When I asked why she had opened it, she said she thought it was Pat. That answer only reinforced my belief that she had been dreaming or imgining it because there was no way in hell that Pat was going to come here. She should know that. She has a story about someone shining a flashlight in her room about a month ago and says no one in her family believes her; they say she imagines things. I wonder if she still hears the voices. I told her that it might have been our new newspaper carrier. They had been advertising for one and maybe the new one was just some stupid girl who didn't know any better. I don't begin to believe that, but I wanted to tell her something. Odd, odd.

At least I've managed to keep my cool. That's a sign of personal growth for me. Of course, I worry that I'm going to get a migraine now since I've had such little sleep--counting the times I've had to get up to pee, take Mary to pee and give Mary water for her cough. Angie thinks, btw, that I should take Mary to the doctor about her cough, so I suppose I will. I'm taking her to the podiatrist on Wednesday because one of her toes is sore and there's dried blood under the side of the nail. I told Angie that maybe she was having migraine symptoms--from lack of sleep and perhaps more caffeine than she's used to getting. She didn't buy that. She thinks she's cracked a bone in her neck or collar--while lying here sleeping. All I can do is heave a big sigh because that sounds like the biggest bunch of malarky I've ever heard, but I don't want to argue with her. She's proved me wrong many times before. I guess we'll take her home as soon as Mary can get ready to go this morning.