Damon's 48th birthday.
I was up by five and out the door for my walk shortly after. Thanks to my friends, the Zim's, I bought walking sticks. They are life savers when my leg is feeling weak and cranky.
There's a strap on the handles. John showed me how to wrap the strap around my wrist and loosen my grip on the handle. Because I am using the walking stick so often, I am learning why this is important. When I have a firm grip on the handle, the contact impact reverberates in my wrist. If I don't grip the handle but only have the strap around my wrist, I don't feel that impact when the foot lands on the ground. Repeated impact on my wrist does damage.
Dorothy told me about a friend who is depressed about her breast cancer; she feels her life is completely altered by this event. Her friend's case is 'mild,' a little case of cancer. (Can you imagine? In the sixties, that was not a possibility.) Her friend's tumor lines are clear; her sentinel node was removed was clear. However, she will have to be on a medicine with bad side effects, hot flashes one of them. Many women stop taking it because the side effects are sufficiently unpleasant.
It became clear that Dorothy's friend is having problems partially because she faces her mortality in a new way. I know this sounds odd. How can an intelligent, self-aware, well-informed woman in her seventies not already know she will die one day.
Well, do I have a story about that. When I hit menopause at fifty, I had a surprise wake-up call. Because I had lost a family member a year before I was sixteen, I realized that I could die at any time. But I hadn't realized that death was inevitable. Yes, I knew I was not immortal, but I also didn't know. Today, I thought all the voices in my mind hadn't lined up. There was a stray voice that hadn't recognized my mortality. Indeed, my conscious mind was fully aware that I would die one day, but part of me didn't recognize that. With the onset of menopause, I fully realized that the next major physical change would be death. I wept.
I did some quick work in the yard outside my bedroom because the gardeners were here today. I take care of that area. Not as well as they would, but good enough. I need to collect the palm tree 'leaves' for the gardeners to take to the dump. 'Leaves' is in quotes because a palm tree left is a good four feet long. Not easily raked up as the fall leaves on the east coast. Each frond is a leaf. I also did light weeding before jumping in the shower for my luncheon appointment with the young woman who lived with me for six months.
Did she have a story! She did a round of coffee enemas on a friend's advice and put her health and well-being at serious risk. Now, I have heard that coffee enemas can be very beneficial, but one- occasionally. Also, this young woman does not smoke or do drugs. She is committed to not doing harm to her body.
Her friend advised her to do two coffee enemas a day with two tablespoons of coffee in each one. She felt somewhat odd after the first one and did some checking. "People who are very sensitive should use no more than a teaspoon of coffee." The young woman backed it up to one enema a day with only one tablespoon of coffee.
After a few days of this, she wound up on the beachfront just outside the house, stark naked. She approached people and told them to give up smoking. When they didn't respond, she threatened them. Needless to say, the police were called.
They assumed she was stoned and hit her with Narcan. That shouldn't be used unless someone is on the point of death. It is a dangerous drug in its own right. They kept her hospitalized for two days pumping her full of drugs.
A few days after she got home, she had another event. She found herself stark naked, walking on the double lines of a nearby road. A man stopped and told her to get in the car. She asked if he could give her his shirt; it would look like a mini dress. She was reluctant to get in the car but finally conceded.
As his car came to the stop signs at the top of the road, the police car made the turn onto the street. If she had been caught, she would have been back in the hospital. I don't think the doctors accepted her explanation.
The friend who recommended this procedure felt terrible. Truth be told, she could have died if she had followed the full prescription. Her system couldn't handle an intense chemical change. He said he had never heard of a reaction like that. She had done more research in the meanwhile and found accounts similar to hers.
We ate lunch at a local beachfront restaurant with an excellent reputation. I once had a hamburger there that rivaled Annie's burger. When I requested a medium-rare burger, I got very, very well done the last two times. What the heck? The French fries were out of this world.
I was going to stop at Costco on my way home, but I was exhausted. I don't eat carbohydrates much. I think I was in my own chemical shock. I think I dozed off for a second behind the wheel. It was nap time when I got home. I had an upset stomach for the rest of the night.
When I got up, I called Damon to wish him a happy birthday. He was sitting in the tub, answering everyone's birthday wishes. I sang him "the" birthday song. As some of you may remember, it sounds like caterwauling. We developed it to compensate for Mike's inability to sing. That way, he could relax, enjoy, and let loose.
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