Monday, April 15, 2019

     

    I hit the snooze button and stayed in bed 10 minutes beyond the alarm.  Then I jumped out of bed and went on a fast walk with Elsa. No time for sniffing. 

    When I got home, I started my oil rinse when the phone rang. While it was an unfamiliar number,  I spat out the oil and answered it. It was Friends of the Earth answering my phone call from yesterday.  I thought I had made a single $100 contribution.  Winds up, I had arranged to make monthly $100 contributions.  I had to put a stop to that.

    I quickly got dressed for Bikram, hopped in the car, and got on my way.  I had another awkward conversation with the same Bikram student I had an awkward one with before.  I suspect it’s a lesson for me.  I’m being instructed on how not to start a conversation. She makes comments about me to initiate conversations that are based on wrong assumptions. I don’t recognize myself in her remarks.  How about just saying hello, how are you?  And see how the conversation flows from there. Yvette has met her for lunch a few times.  She says she does make statements based on incorrect assumptions regularly.  They don’t bother Yvette. She says she just corrects her.  Some people are adults, others are not. Maybe someday I‘ll be as mature as Yvette.

    Jeff, a Bikram student, was finally back. I’ve been worried about him.  He was a regular student as I was.   I was out since January 26 when Mike got sick, and when I came back at the beginning of March, I didn’t see him in class.  I was told he had been ill but was okay.  Winds up, he had a nasty infection, which became septic, and spent 5 days in the hospital and 1 month out of Bikram and is now only slowly recuperating.  

    During the class, I imagined talking to Mike.  He asked, “Why did I have to die?” I wasn’t sure if he was saying, why did I have to get sick in the first place, or given that he was seriously ill and in the hospital for over a month, why didn’t the doctors and I fight for his life? Both questions are upsetting.  I can’t answer the first question.  As for the second, I feel as confident as anyone can be that enough of his body was damaged and shut down because of the kidney disease and the severe acute pancreatitis that he had no hope of surviving.  The choice was to keep him artificially alive or let him die.  I feel confident that he did ask to be released the Saturday before I took him off life-support. But was this just a momentary desperate feeling or a considered one? How do I answer his question, so he is satisfied?  Does he have reason to be concerned that I wasn’t willing to go through his recovery with him?  I was as optimistic about it as I could be.  I knew he was intellectually committed to accepting God’s will. What better opportunity would he have had to learn to accept that will than while in recovery from a prolonged hospital stay when his body was wholly compromised? I wasn’t going to let him sink into a depressed state when he declared himself worthless.  There was a moment in the first few weeks of the hospital stay where he complained that he wasn’t a person anymore.  I gave him what for. How dare he describe himself that way!  But I’m someone who can envision a Buddhist monk living his life in a cave meditating having an impact on the world.  Mike’s visions of what it meant to be a worthwhile human being were more limited.  Also, I had a mother who became a better person while dealing with a life crisis, my father’s death, doing what she had to do for her children.  Mike’s mother also lost her husband in her early 50s. She declared herself no longer a person and beached herself. How’s that for a role model? 

    I did a rinse down after the yoga class in their shower because I had several hours of running around doing chores. My first stop was at Office Depot to pick up fax cover letter blanks.  I have about 15 faxes to send out.  I think it will be easier if I have the cover letters filled in before I get there.  I can read while each fax goes through.

    I was going to stop at the lawyer’s office to see if the Notary could sign two documents that need to be witnessed.   I also wanted to ask the lawyer about the papers that my long-term health care provider was asking for before they could refund money due to Mike’s death. I decided that getting that all done was too much stress since I had to be at the chiropractor’s at 10 am. I went there directly.

    Since I arrived early, I sat in the parking lot in front of the chiropractor’s office, making phone calls.  I called the main number of the convent where my godmother lived and found out she’d died about 2 weeks ago. Holy cow!  On the other hand, she was about to turn 100 and had been asking for death and a reunion with Christ for years. I have never heard of so many people having serious illnesses or dying in my life.  It seems every day I hear of another person with a problem. I’m beginning to believe the rapture has started.  Mike was taken.  It looks like I’m going to be left behind.  Oh, well.  Win some, lose some.

    I called Genworth, my long-term care provider, and found out the since I was representing myself and not the estate, I didn’t need any additional paperwork. I had calls from Judy Shibley from the hula ministry and Judy Glickstein.  The latter wasn’t feeling well.  She asked me what I was going to do for Easter.  No worries. I was going to stay home and suck my thumb. I’m not that worked up over it.  I encouraged her not to think about me because of her own illness. She wants to do a feast at my house.  I told her to have Adam, her son, cook the meal.  He can do it in my kitchen. 

    Kim, my chiropractor, worked on my left foot and calf supporting the work I have been doing in changing my walk.  I also had her work on my left shoulder.  It was injured when I fell down a flight of stairs head first when I was 35 and tore the rotator cuff.  I finally had it operated on when I was 62.  I was glad I waited because the surgical procedure was an outpatient one rather than a slice and dice procedure where the patient had to be filleted to reach the torn ligament. I was so glad when I had it done.  I was not so thrilled when I realized my neck and back problems were caused by the torn rotator cuff. My neck muscles had been doing more work because the muscle weakened by the tear couldn’t pull its own weight and called on the neck muscles.  Life became so much better after the surgery. 

    As you may remember, I am now also delaying the hip surgery to see how much can be accomplished by working on soft tissue change as I had done that with the shoulder.  Remembering additional suffering was caused by my delayed rotator cuff surgery,  I am now careful to notice if there are any consequences of my delaying/rejecting the THR surgery.  I don’t see any. My range of motion is increasing, and my level of pain is decreasing. It sounds like it’s worthwhile pursuing my current course of action.

    I stopped off at Costco on my way home.  I needed a package of salad, but first, I used the Costco gift card I got when I returned the beer to pay for gas.  I don’t have the credit card I need to shop at Costco right now. They only accept Visa cards. It was one of the ones that was under Mike’s name with me as an add on (and the contractor who did the work on our house)  that I had to cancel.  I ordered a new one and am expecting it to arrive any day. I had a list of things to buy and then realized that the items I had listed wouldn’t go on sale until the 17th.  Maybe by then, I’ll have my credit card. I paid in cash.  Who knows of cash?  

    When I got home, I worked on Tuesday’s blog and sent one out. I sent out two credit card check payments.  When I called about his AAdvantage credit card, they refused to give me information about a $37 bill. I was annoyingly persistent.  I think a woman who acts this way is a call the B-word.  Good enough!  But it worked to get me what I want. 

    I got a call from Raymond James.   I won’t tolerate them simply dismissing the documentation I provided because they’ve never seen it before.  My guess is they’re surprised by my attitude and my verbal ability and my willingness to do my own research.  I think I still have to do more.  It is hard to get my questions answered. However, I feel the lawyers dismissed what my lawyer did because of arrogance.   A small-town lawyer in the middle of a rural area in a state that is still considered a third-world country. Unacceptable.  

    I got an email from John Coughlin with videos from the Deacon weekend, where they did a mass for Mike. One was a  video of Mike teaching a class with a slide show showing the wonderful pictures Lina took at the funeral.  The other video was of the speeches some of the men gave commemorating Mike’s effect in their lives. I forwarded it to all the members of the family and Judy. Then ironed as I listened to the videos.  

    I worked on the blog sending two out. Yeah. And I even worked on a third. I did some ironing and finally gave the counters in the kitchen and the bathroom a good cleaning. Then I did more work on the blog.  

    When I saw Yvette, I asked her to make a commitment to check in on me once a day.  She said she was doing that.  I knew she was up here more. Some of that was just because since her dryer broke, she was using mine.  I don’t see the point of her spending the money to fix hers when I rarely use mine, and I have a super-duper service contract with Sears. I told her that I’m concerned that I could be lying on the floor for over 24 hours after a fall. I also proposed that they might only know I was dead when the stench reached the driveway or wafted out over the lanai.  She assured me that they can hear me moving around upstairs.  If they didn’t hear me, they would be alarmed. 

    After a day on the phone with credit card companies, I finally took my shower, followed by my MELT and Tiger Stick treatments.  Then I walked Elsa, came home, had dinner, and watched TV. I probably entered some books into the catalog, but I didn’t make notes about it, so I don’t know. 

    I walked Elsa, had dinner, watched tv, and cataloged books.  I walked Elsa before going to bed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, went to bed, and then said, “Goodnight, Elsa. Goodnight, Mike.”