Thursday 19 May 2005
9:29 a.m.
 
Mom and Dad’s home has not been without fresh flowers for virtually more than a day since a year ago, when we were told the dire news that pretty much floored us.

Her friends and family have kept her well provided with floral fragrance and beauty. One such delivery that she remarked on many times -- that it was so pretty and perfect -- was a slim vase with several red carnations in it. It was smaller than the others she’d received, she said, but it caught the eye and could fit on her dresser and not be in the way, not have to be moved all the time. So when I went to fill an order for flowers from Aunt Gladys, I decided on two small bouquets -- one for Mom’s bedroom so she can see them when she is laying down, and the other where she can see them from her chair in the living room.

The lily has an aroma that is almost stunning, and is showy as well. One stem cost $10, and I lucked out because it has several buds that have yet to open. While Mom was away at the hospital for a bone scan and a dose of radiation to her shoulder, Everett (missing school for a doctor’s appointment) and I let ourselves into the condo, put the flowers into two small vases, and placed them where they could surprise and delight her when she came home. This one was set next to her bed:

I'm afraid my photo doesn't do this flower justice at all. It is very large, and absolutely gorgeous.

The other vase, with three dazzling daisies that she loves, would await her near the living room chair where she spends many hours.

Unfortunately, she was feeling so crappy by the time she got back to her bed that surprise and delight didn’t really figure into her reaction. She is a little down, which is natural when you are so sick for a long time. I was there again last night, and asked her, “So you’re feeling pretty lousy?” She nodded yes, and added “If it were all for a reason ...” She is suffering for nothing so there isn’t much point in it, I guess she is thinking. The end result is going to be the same.

It does look as if she may be on the edge of a slippery slope, but my fingers are still crossed that she will improve and be able to enjoy her life again. She did perk up enough to have a small dish of vanilla ice cream with walnut sauce before we put her into her bed; so all is not lost!

email:

~behind the Rotary Centre for the Arts in
downtown Kelowna~doing my stretches~

9:36 pm, election day in BC

Tonight it is warm enough to sit here with the sliding door open and listen to the crickets and the distant traffic through the closed screen. Neither is louder than the other, but the crickets are right outside the door.

Mom has been restless and uncomfortable all day, and not slept. When I arrived at 7:30, she was dozing off in her chair in the living room. Reta and Dad wanted her to go to bed so we settled her in. They said she was anxious about various things, so I asked her. “Yes I am,” she said, “of course.” I commiserated before asking what I could do for her. “There’s nothing you haven’t already done,” she answered. “Leave me alone, I just want to sleep.” I did, and several minutes later we heard her up out of bed, trying to turn off the TV. After a long chat with Dad she was thinking of getting up again.

I felt like sitting by her bed and singing a lullaby or two. But I don’t know all the words to any.

If I’m lucky I’ll be home for a visit during the frogs' spring chorus.

email:

Sunday 15 May 2005
9:38 a.m.

One hour left till the boys and I leave the house free for real estate agents and their clients. I'm not dressed yet but have had my second cup of coffee and am taking some time to relax and write before I start rushing around.

By 1 o'clock we will be back here to greet hungry family. My brother-in-law's mom arrived from Scotland yesterday and is going to stay and live here, so we have planned a little welcoming party for her.

Yesterday I stopped over at Mom and Dad's after getting groceries at the store near their condo. It was suppertime and Mom was in her chair with a plate on her lap, while Dad, Reta and Karen sat at the dining room table.

"You're just in time!" Mom said. "What do you think we're celebrating?"

We all had a chuckle when I guessed, correctly, that she'd managed to go to the bathroom.

She had a blood transfusion on Thursday after Reta noticed how pale she was and indeed, when her blood was checked, it was dangerously low. She hasn't bounced back quite as vigorously as previous times, but has colour in her face again and would like to come over for the lunch today. That in itself is an improvement, for as Scott remarked, she wouldn't even have been considering doing that a week ago.

Oh, and that arm? It's a fracture in the shoulder, and there is cancer in the bone there as well. Next week there will be three doses of radiation.

Mom is content though, because Reta is here. We could not ask for more.

~ ye olde recipe catch-all ~ needs some work ~

Cookies help diners win fortune

By J. Lee, The New York Times

NEW YORK -- Powerball lottery officials suspected fraud: How could 110 players in the March 30 drawing get five of the six numbers right? That made them all second-prize winners, and considering the number of tickets sold in the 29 states where the game is played, there should have been only four or five.

But from state after state they kept coming in, the 1-in-3-million combination of 22, 28, 32, 33, 39.

It took some time before they had their answer: The players got their numbers inside fortune cookies, and all the cookies came from the same factory in Long Island City, Queens.

Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, said the panic began at 11:30 p.m. March 30 when he got a call from a worried staff member.

Since each second-place winner is due $100,000 to $500,000, he said paying the 110 players would mean almost $19 million in unexpected payouts. Of course, it could have been worse. The 110 had picked the
wrong sixth number -- 40, not 42 -- and would have been first-place winners if they did.

"We didn't sleep a lot that night," Strutt said. "Is there someone trying to cheat the system?"

He added: "We had to look at everything to do with humans: television shows, pattern plays, lottery columns."

Earlier that month, an ABC television show, Lost, included a sequence of winning lottery numbers. The combination didn't match the Powerball numbers, though hundreds of people had played it: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. Numbers on a Powerball ticket in a recent episode of a soap opera, The Young and the Restless, didn't match, either. Nor did the winning numbers form a pattern on the lottery grid, like a cross or a diagonal. Then the winners started arriving at lottery offices.

"Our first winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie," said Rebecca Paul, chief executive of the Tennessee Lottery. "The second winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie. The third winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie."

Same story in Idaho, Texas, Kansas, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Minnesota.

Investigators visited dozens of Chinese restaurants, takeouts and buffets. Then they called fortune-cookie distributors and learned that many different brands of fortune cookies come from the same Long Island City factory, which is owned by Wonton Food and churns out 4 million a day.

"That's ours," said Derrick Wong of Wonton Food, when shown a picture of a winner's cookie slip. "That's very nice; 110 people won the lottery from the numbers."

Lottery officials were less pleased. The unexpected second-place winners almost exhausted the $25 million reserve held for odd or unusual situations.

The same number combinations go out in thousands of cookies a day. The workers put numbers in a bowl and pick them. "We are not going to do the bowl anymore; we are going to have a computer," Wong said. "It's more efficient.""

Tuesday 10 May 2005
2:53 pm

Mom looks like a real imp here. I tried to catch her smile when her sister, my Aunt Reta, walked through the door on Sunday. But I missed that and we get a glimpse of Mom reaching for the lever so she can put the footrest down, and sit up.

Methinks one can see a bit of the happiness though.

Sunday 8 May 2005
9:30 p.m.

My day began with scrambled eggs, toast, apple juice and coffee served in bed by Everett. While I ate he sat on the floor nearby and made a card for his grandma; then I went back to sleep. When Scott returned from driving Gunnar (our oldest, age 22, visiting for the weekend; I only get the pleasure of being stepmom, but it's worth a goodbye hug here and there so he must not think me too wicked) to a football camp, it was with roses, carnations, and chocolates. I snoozed again, and awoke to Emil giving me a foot rub. That's when my sister phoned and wondered whether my menfolk were doing anything special for me for Mother's Day. "You are so spoiled!" she exclaimed when I told her.

My own mom was on the upswing today. Karen and I walked in there this morning and as Dad was telling us what a rough night she'd had and that she'd been sleeping for many hours, we heard a noise in the bedroom and voila, it was Mom getting out of bed, chipper as could be. She looked a thousand times better than yesterday, when she'd been pale and listless, laying there listening to we three girls practise a song we are learning (she held the phone up and made Aunt Gladys, calling from Saskatoon, listen to the whole thing; Aunt Gladys's comment was that we could certainly be on the Lawrence Welk Show! Heh).

"She looks a lot better than she did yesterday," I said to Dad. "Look at the good colour in her face."

"That's because she's full of little green, blue, yellow and orange pills!"" he quipped.

We were just over there again for a few minutes so that Everett could deliver his card, and Mom was still looking sharp. Reta is here, that's the big and happy news today.

It's bedtime for the boys, and Scott and I have rented a movie for the evening, so he'll be waiting for me upstairs.

xoxo
etc

~ Kelowna Centennial Festivities begin this weekend ~
~ that is a wine-bottle balloon you see there ~

10:17 p.m.

We had Mom awake for several hours today. I gave her what she called a "bed bath" and we had a little visit while I did so, with an intimate talk and a few tears. She has been so courageous through this, but she doesn't realize it. I told her so.

Dad phoned this evening and said she has taken a turn for the worse; that a pain below her left rib had become unbearable, the methodone wasn't touching it, and she asked for the drug that has been putting her to sleep for the past several days. Better that than the pain.

Her pain management doctor called me this evening and in the course of our conversation said that Mom is a very "tough" lady and that Dad has been "amazing" through this ... "and for a long time, too."

They don't see themselves that way. They think they are just doing what needs to be done in a shitty situation and have no way of comparing themselves to anyone else. Mom doesn't imagine that her attitude is out of the ordinary; Dad doesn't imagine that many husbands might not be able to do what he has done, in taking care of Mom as he does. The drugs alone, that he is handling, are mindboggling.

I'd said to her today, "You know, if Dad has any trouble managing, you can always come and stay at my place."

"Ha! He wouldn't let me out of his sight!" she told me.

Those two are so tight. He'd have to come and stay too. And Mom loves to be in her own home; she wouldn't want to be somewhere else.

Alas, I have an appointment to go see the local hospice facilities tomorrow; to find out what they're like, what their services are, so I can report to Mom and Dad. We don't want to think we're nearing that point, and maybe we aren't, but as Mom said tearfully today, "The time is going to come."

Aunt Reta is flying in from Phoenix on Sunday, several weeks earlier than she planned. When Mom heard that, she cried. With happiness, of course. It's "good news for a change," she told me.

For Dad, it's relief. Not only is Reta Mom's sister and they're close, but she is a nurse and will stay right there with them. She will be a huge help to Dad who, although we girls do what we can, is the one who is always there and dealing with everything on his own, making the decisions that need to be made when Mom hasn't been able. Reta's presence will be a different kind of support for both of them.

8:22 a.m.

The pool table is gone. Since Scott left I didn’t play once; yesterday it was taken to be reconditioned and then moved to the owner’s new house.

After Scott left the TV was never turned on, except to watch a rented movie. I had the cable disconnected. Then he returned and discovered there are still two channels that come through, so the box is often on, again. Will be, while he’s here.

I stay out of the living room. Too easily taken in, am I. I like Outrageous, and CSI, and apparently can still watch them. They have not been missed in the past six weeks, but if they’re on, I’ll get stuck in front of them.

He has taken the boys to the bus stop, and the school, after bringing a mug of Fair Trade black coffee to me in bed. It’s a magic trick that always gets me up.

It is not a regular golf day for Dad, but we’ll go over anyway. A hospital bed is being brought in and we will bring Mom’s bed over here for Everett to use. A couple other items to make things easier (wheelchair, commode) will be delivered, as well. For the past week she has been so sleepy she can hardly stay awake to eat or talk.

Yesterday I stayed with her while Dad went golfing, and held her arm as she walked from the living room to her bed. She takes tiny, shuffling steps, eyes on the floor; lists to one side. She sat on the bed while I helped her into clean pyjamas, and in the process sat her in a rocking chair -- lower -- beside it. After washing her face and applying lotion, I was unable to safely get her back into bed. She had to sleep there in the chair; I sat nearby and read a Maclean’s magazine, keeping one eye on her in case she should slip out of the chair somehow.

When Scott got there we easily moved her onto the bed, which she lay across, sideways. I leaned forward to put my arms under her and swing her around, and she quipped “We need a rotisserie!” Her sense of humour is intact.

The cause of SleepingBeautyhood is probably just the drug she has been taking to deal with nausea that started up a week ago; she thought she’d rather be sleepy than nauseated, and who could blame her. But it has incapacitated her and the palliative care nurse has convinced Dad to start cutting it back.

Otherwise, I fear, changes would be afoot .... Mom loves her home so much that the thought of having to move her out of it in order to provide proper and safe care is not something any of us look forward to.

I called over last night to check in. She’d been awake about an hour and a half, had eaten and enjoyed some supper, and had a tiny bit of ice cream before falling asleep in “her” chair in the living room. Dad sounded heartened. The nurse had been optimistic that the problem was the nausea drug, and so he hadn’t given Mom much of it at the regular dosing time. Our fingers are crossed.

It’s time to phone over and see how their night went.

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When I practise my part to this one song we are learning, my throat hurts afterward. The soprano's too high for me as it is. Now, I just listen to the piano and when the maestro brings it down I'll still sorta know it.

The other two songs we have parts for are great fun to sing, with the one drawback of being songs where I hear every weakness in my voice. Ooh, that's not pretty.

Speaking of pretty ... Almost two o'clock! I'd best start beautifying. Princes are particular.

~ the latest ~

"You can have a very positive attitude and learn alot from cancer, but it's still a pain in the arse and something I could have done without."
~ ~Julia Darling