Disjointed and Out of the Blue

Well, it’s been over a week since I’ve posted. We’ve done Thanksgiving, the leftovers which haven’t yet been eaten have been packaged and frozen, I finished the last of the cranberry sauce with my sandwich today and now it’s on to Christmas.  I’m thinking of making Christmas cookies tomorrow. Unless I decide to write instead…

My mother is finally doing well. Though her rehab therapists were supposed to request additional sessions before she completed the 13 her insurance had already approved, they did not.  On her last day they said  they would submit the request that very day and told me to call the next week to find out if they had received authorization. But when I called, the request STILL hadn’t been submitted.  It went out that morning — last week. I got a call yesterday to say the sessions had finally been approved, but by now my mother has been doing her exercises on her own, lifting her leg fairly easily, is getting into and out of my car just fine, walking without a cane and generally able to go about her life again. Now the only reason she can’t drive her car is because we had to forgo the planned cataract surgery back in September and she can’t see.  In any case, the therapists missed their chance and we won’t be going back.

On Monday we saw the oncologist who said that her cancer, seeing as it migrated to her leg, has to be regarded as a chronic illness that must be managed for the rest of her life and that she will have to have another round of chemotherapy. Not a fun prospect. He said she doesn’t have to begin until January. So we have a bit of a reprieve.

The above are only two examples of the myriad details that have lately filled my life:  Thanksgiving, Christmas preps, trying to get new waterbed sheets… They are no longer available in Tucson so I had to try online — which has turned into an ordeal of uncertainty I probably should chronicle on one of those review-our-business sites. They charged my credit card before the sheets were even shipped and after three weeks informed me that they aren’t even being made any more and did I want to get a different kind? I said yes, but then they called to say that the new sheets had been backordered to early December so I have no idea when they’ll come. 

The local termites made a reappearance in our dining room, so we had to deal with that. Javelina are roaming the neighborhood eating peoples’ pumpkins and flowers… and my husband’s strawberry plants. Quigley is Quigley and I have been strangely wordless of late.

I did finish The Black Swan and it’s full of dog-eared pages. The concepts gleaned from it apply to so many things and I still want to write a few more posts about confirmation bias, how we change our memories each time we remember, the narrative fallacy that pervades our news and the pervasive delusion that we know much more than we think we do.

My mother suggested a new treatment to her oncologist that she’d heard about where massive amounts of Vitamin C are infused directly into the bloodstream and so boosts the immune system that it begins to fight the cancer. He said, “When you figure out what exactly the immune system is, let me know.”  I loved it. Things, particularly organic, living systems are so complicated and we’re always trying to make things fit into a box (Plato’s forms?), trying to simplify, homogenize, one size fits all. It’s easier that way. We can’t handle the complexity… but that’s a post for another day.

For now, disjointed and out of the blue as it is, I have a post for today. Disjointed and out of the blue is really quite characteristic of my life these days, though, so maybe it’s just appropriate.

0 thoughts on “Disjointed and Out of the Blue

  1. WaterbedGuru

    Hi Karen,

    It certainly can get hectic caring for aging parents but, hey, how many years have they cared for us?! I’m in a similiar situation so feel what you have been going through.

    I’m sorry to hear about one more hassle that you didn’t need. If you want great wood frame waterbed sheets at a reasonable price without the problems that you had try http://www.AwesomeWaterbeds.com.

    Have a great Holiday. Regards.

    Reply

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