Laughter is the Best Medicine

My mother will celebrate her 75th Birthday tomorrow, March 5. Whenever she is asked her birthdate, she is quick to answer 3/5/35. She was born in the eyes of March. In a little farm house between Enid & Pond Creek Oklahoma.

She has had a tough life but a full life. If you ask her about her life she will tell you, that she lost her mother when she was 2yrs old in Pond Creek, Oklahoma to a blood clot after surgery. She has one older sister and one yournger sister. She was raised by her grandmother and step mom and physically abused by her step mom on a daily basis.

She was married at 16yrs old, had my older brother at 17. My father was in the military and died in an awlful car accident celebrating his 21st birthday, my mother was 19 years old and 8 1/2 months pregnant with me at the time.

She remarried when I was 2 years old, My step father was fantastic and he was the only father I ever knew. My older brother died in a drowning accident when he was 29 years old. I had two other brothers from my step father, who I always considered my real brothers as well as my older brother.

My younger brother died of a heart attack at the age of 41, in 2003. My Step father died of Alhiezmers in Dec. of 2004. I could not imagine losing one child not to mention two husbands and two children. She ask the lord almost everyday why she is still here. I tell her, it is because the lord still has a plan for her and there is still unfinished business on the earth for her to do yet.

She has three grandchildren, and four great grandchildren who love her very much. Tomorrow she will be 3/4 of a century old, and has earned everyone of those years. If I could write down all the knowledge that she has learned and all the wisdom that she has to pass on, how much further ahead I would be in this world.

I have heard the stories of the pranks that she has done to other people growing up in a small town, everything from the Haloween Parades down main street where the local kids have stolen the outhouses from someones property and left them parked in the middle of the main drag to the hang outs at the cemetery and the highschool inititations with the horse collars. And I am so thankful that I did not have to go through them.

Celebrate life with your loved one, tomorrow may bring curves, hills and valleys to go through and you may be left wondering how you got there without the guidance that could be given so freely and easily.

Don’t forget yourself when you are wrapped up in the every day process of taking care of your loved ones. You need to be able to tell your story too….

In talking with a co-worker the other day, I was reminded of one of many of my trips to the hospital with my mother. Since I have been living with her, which started in Sept. of 2003, we have made several trips to the Midwest City Emergency Room which ended up in several hospital stays.

Sometimes you just have to remember to laugh, because life is so serious with everthing that happens on a daily basis, if you don’t laugh you will just bring yourself down and everyone around you. This can really give you a bad taste and outlook on different situations that happen in the course of daily living.

I will start this story by laying the foundation. When I was 16 years old back in the 70’s, my Great Grandmother had to be placed into a nursing home. Three days after she was admitted into the nursing home she passed away. She was placed in there because she couldn’t see well enough to take care of herself anymore, other than that she was healthy. She told my mother at that time that if they put her into the nursing home she would die. My mother made me promise that I would never put her into a nursing home. I have held to that promise, but at 16 I really did not realize everthing that could happen and the changes it would make in my life commitments.

I did have to put her into a rehab part of a nursing home for a very short time, it was only for rehab after a knee replacement surgery. She had one knee totally shot and the other one about half as bad as the other. Part of the program after the total knee repalcement in the hospital was a daily excercise class that she was to participate in. She was in so much pain that she refused to participate and she was given meds like the other patients that had the same thing done. I know that it had to have been very painful, but the exercising would have helped to ease the pain. The instructor warned her that she would take longer to recuperate and would have to go somewhere else if she did not start participating in the exercising classes, but she would not cooperate and was very hateful.

When she heard that she was to go to a nursing time for a short time, she came unglued. I could not leave her at home with an unstable leg to get around on all by herself, and I did have to go to work. I still have my own bills to pay.

They were kind enough to put her across the hall from the nurses station since she was only there for rehab and would be leaving soon, she had a telephone in her room so she could call me. The problem was, they put her into a room with a lady who was permenently bed ridden and not in her right mind. And when you put a another woman in a room that is on pain medicine and not thinking clearly and very upset that she is there in the first place, it makes for a very bad combination. This lady started telling my mother that the nurses were going to take all of her pain medicine and give it to other patients, and when I left she would not get anymore and she would lay there in pain. My mother flipped, I talked to the nurses and let them know what was being said, and they informed me that this lady hallucinates and to not listen to anything she says.

I went back and talked to my mother and she calmed down, but in her mind the lady was crazy and she was in a crazy house. I stayed as late as I could without having slept for two days before I left to go home and take care of our pets and try to get some sleep myself. I had just gotten to sleep around 12:30 in the morning when I received this frantic phone call from my mother, yelling at me to come and get her and bring her home or she was leaving on her own. She said that the lady in her room was crazy and was trying to get her to go into cahoots with her against the nurses. My mother had already called 911 on the telephone in her room, and she was mad as a hornet at them , the police said that there was nothing they could do to help her. I called the police department and apologized for my mother and they acted like this is something that happens all the time.

I went back to the nursing home and told my mother that I would still have to go to work and she would be by herself at home, that she should have exercised with the other knee replacement patients and she wouldn’t be in this predicament. Of course she didn’t want to hear that either. After staying home a couple of days with her at home and arranging for physical therapy to come to the house 2 times a week, she finally came to terms with what she had done and what she needed to be doing. Being alittle hard headed at times is not always a good thing, not to mention some of the pain medicine she was on changed her personality, and made her very mean and angry. Of course since I was the one that was always there, I was also the one that received the blunt of the anger and agression.

I have been there for the knee surgery, three back surgeries, a heart attack, diabetes emergencies high and low, difficulty breathing eye surgeries and other aliments. I am still trying to hold onto the promise I made when I was 16 years old, all the while promising myself that I will never do this to my children. Life is too short and I need to learn to relax and laugh alittle bit more.

I never know what tomorrow holds so I enjoy today and smile, and hope that it puts a smile on someones elses face.

I have found that as the years past by, my mother does not like to leave the house for any lenght of time. If she is away from the house she is out of her element and seems alittle lost or disoriented.

Since the Ice storm of 2007, my mother has talked about having a stationary backup genterator built into our house. We were without power for a week and a half to two weeks, and had to leave the house eventually or freeze to death We stayed with my son and daughter in law. She was very uncomfortable because she was not at her home, so that two weeks felt like two months.

We are finally getting the backup standby generator installed! If you have elderly parents at home and the possibility exits that you could loose power for any length of time, then this is something that you may want to consider.

At Lowes: You go to the Seasonal Dept. and tell them that you are interested in purchasing a stand by backup generator. They carry Generac Standby Units. You pay $75. and arrange for a licensed Generac installer to come to your house and estimate what size of a generator you need. They are very professional and courteous. You can ask him as many questions as you like, he is not pushy or make you feel like you are wasting his time. If you decide to purchase a generator the $75. will be deducted from the total price of the combination installation/material totals.

He writes up a proposal for you according to your needs, and what usage you require, and turns it into Lowes. Lowes will call you with his recommendation. Once you decide on the unit, it takes about 2 weeks for the delivery of the unit. The licensed Generac dealer will bring the unit to your house and he will have it installed in most cases 2 days.

The total cost will include the permits required by the city that you live in, plus the materials needed. I will let you know how it turns out when the job is done

This is not a cheap purchase, but how do you put a price on peace of mind, and security for your loved ones.. If you have some additional funds, or can get a small loan this maybe something that you would want to consider for your loved one.

Peace of mind is a blessing! And a smile is good for the soul!

It is so cold for me, when my mother says she is cold I can only imagine how cold she really is. I know the cold does not help with her arthritis, and the arthritis will only get worse with time. Of course when you have had as many surgeries as she has had and look like a road map where the scars are, you would probably have aches and pains too.

All in all she has weathered pretty well through the cold spells that we have been having. I do hope that we can have some kind of a break in this weather soon though, so she can have some kind of relief.

With her being by herself at the house all day long it can make for some very long and boring days. My mother has been a stay at home wife and mother all of her life, so her best friends have always been the Daily Soaps (General Hospital, All My Children, As the World Turns) when I get home in the evening from work she wants me to sit down at the dining room table, so I can hear what each person did on her daily soaps that day. I cannot stand soaps so I sit and smile and nod my head, all the while hoping that the story will end very soon. But it makes her feel good to tell me about them, so I will continue to endure the stories.

Of course this is after picking up the new package that has been left on the front porch from the home shopping network by the UPS driver. All they have to say is daily special on the home shopping network and she has got to have it, although it will probably be put into a bedroom and never opened, because she forgets what she gets until she stumbles over it 6 months or more later.

With the bad weather, she has refused to leave the house if the electric should go out like it did in 2007. So this Sat. we have a man coming out to give us an estimate on what a stationary back up generator will cost to be installed in the house. She wants it to automatically cut on if we should ever lose power. All this will be done on a house that was built in the 1950’s. But this is her home, and if it makes her feel safe and adds to her peace of mind, so be it.

I will have to let you know how this goes next week after I find out all the details. I will let you decide if it is something that you want to try and do.

Everyday is a new challange at my house, but I have learned to embrace each new challange with open arms, it helps to keep me grounded.

Remember to smile, this could be happening to you!

As I sat watching tv with my mother in our sunroom, I was quietly thinking about the things that I have learned from my mother. I always thought that I was a patient person, but since I have been living with her for the last almost eight years, that patience is really a virtue. I think that the good lord must have been preparing me for my duties at home for quite awhile, and I take every lesson that I learn as a blessing.

As she gets older, she wants to argue, I have mentioned before that I do not argue, I walk away. Now I either walk away or just nod my head and not say anything. This stops her argument really quick, since she is not getting any resistance. It almost ruins her fun.

I have learned that if something goes wrong at the house, it is always my fault. I just say that I am sorry and go on. It is not worth me getting upset or stressing or saying something that might hurt her feelings. I am here to help, not try and hinder.

I have learned to take the roll of two people at our house, the one that takes the responsibility for all important issues and major decisions. And the roll of the daughter, that is the roll that is always in my mothers mind. She will try and run my life if I let her, with no mercy. If I even consider going out with a friend, she will try to sabatoge it on purpose. This could be sudden chest pain, trouble breathing, she heard the dogs barking at something the night before and didn’t know what it was. She does not like to be by herself. I found this out by changing my plans on several occasions and staying home and later realizing that she was just fine. She can be a very good actress.

I may manage to have my own time to myself about two times a month if that many. I tend to forget that I have a life too, because I am always taking care of her needs & wants along with all the needs of the house. I do have other family members that I could  call on to relieve me, if I am desperate for a break, but that is only if they feel they have the time for her, or can deal with her wants, needs or attitude, or if she will let them.

I have tried to not let her be so dependant on me, but when she is confused or agitated or not feeling well, this is not a good mixture. She will be nice to other people, but it will be taken out on me later. I really don’t think that she realizes what she is doing at the time. And yes I get my feelings hurt, but she doesn’t know it.

I have decided that I will never let my children take care of me. If I ever get to the point that I need care, I will move myself into a someplace that I can come and go as I please. I will be happy as long as I have people around me to talk to or do things with. I am a people person.

The main difference between myself and my mother she is, she is not a people person and has no desire to become one. Her extent of interacting with people, is people watching.

She still has days where she is very funny and can say the funniest things, and these are the days that I choose to keep formost in my thoughts. I have learned that aging can be done two ways. One way is to not do it with very much grace and resent it. The other way, which I will choose, is to laugh & smile and age as gracefully as possible.

Remember to smile it may not change anything, but it sure makes you feel a whole lot better.

I remember being snowed in on Christmas Day and how cold it was and how it affected my mother. All she could talk about was the weather in Dec. 2007 the worse ice storm in the history of Oklahoma, and being without power at our house for almost a week and a half. The ice storm was horrible. We tried to stay at our house as long as we could because of our small animals, but my biggest concern was my mother’s health.

I had to start thinking of alternative placement very quickly. My son had gotten married in March of that year, so he and my daughter in law were still newly weds. My daughter & son in law lived in Moore like my son did, but they also had my  three grandchildren, who my mother and I adore, but make her a nervous wreck since she is not around them all the time.

I bit the bullet and called my son, he graciously invited us to stay with them, until the power came back on. I packed several days of clothes, my mothers medicine, oxygen and bypap (sleep machine) and two small animals. It was rough not having her own space like she did at home, but she was warm and she did not get sick.

I still worked and drove home every night to take care of the animals that were still there, (make sure that they had food and water  went outside & had plenty of warm blankets to curl up in) before I went to my son’s house in the evening. My mother was never comfortable at my son’s house, you are  never comfortable when you are out of your own element. But we got through it!

She informed me Christmas when the snow would not stop falling, that she was not going anywhere, we couldn’t go anywhere, I couldn’t even get the car out of the garage.  All I kept hearing was, she wished that she had gotten a backup generator that I could have had installed in the house and make sure that we did not lose power again.

You never think about those things until another emergency comes along, we do have a gas wall heater in our garage to help keep it warm there and protect the water pipes and outside animals. She informed me this time if the power goes out that we, meaning me, will hang some kind of a barrier in the garage to hold the heat in a smaller area so we can stay out there.

I always try and plan ahead, I have plenty of food & water, precription drugs refilled, oxygen, blankets, candles, batteries for the flashlights and radio, I love to camp out, so I try to be prepared. I have a Coleman Stove with Propane so I can at least cook some hot means to make sure that she has balanced meals with protein & vegetables.

If this storm happens like the weather men say it will, it could be a repeat of the storm from Dec. 2007, but hopefully not last as long.

Use common sense and take care of yourself and your loved ones and you should be just fine. Remember to smile, this is another memory, another story you can tell your grandchildren in the years to come.

As we come into the new year there is no doubt in my mind that there will be new problems or interesting situations and hurdles that will come up through out the new year.

It is Jan 19, 2010 and my mother has only made one trip to the doctor and that was for a recheck. So far the year has been good!

With the changes in the weather pattern and the the allergy count rising everyday could be a new challenge. My mother did mention that she would like to go on another cruise. I took her on one in Dec. 2003 and it was quite memorable.

My mother is not able to walk to far before having to sit down so I borrowed a wheelchair for this trip. Now I have pushed a wheelchair many times before but never on some of the surfaces that I was about to push her on.

We drove from Oklahoma City to New Orleans and had reserved our room with Carnival Cruise Lines. I never realized how many floors a cruise ship had, this one had 9 floors. Thank goodness our room was above the water line. I would have been having visions of the Titanic sinking through out the trip and Leanardo DeCaprio was not booked on this trip to save us.

The halls on a cruise ship are not that wide, so the first obsticle was getting down this long hall without running over everybody in my path with this wheelchair. Now if you are claustrophobic you might want to look at a more expensive room, like a suite with a balcony, you know the ones you see on the Love Boat Show on TV. You step up into your bathroom and have just enough room in the shower to turn around like a turkey on a rotisserie.

After we managed to get somewhat adjusted into our room, we decided to explore the ship, I soon found out that the halls were not the only obsticles. Considering that there were thousands of people on this cruise and the elevators were in constant demand, the elevators were big enough to get about 6 people in at a time and if you had a wheelchair maybe 3 people.

Bless my mothers heart, I was an awful driver of that wheelchair on that boat, I think I must have hit or bumped into just about every wall on every floor we went. This trip was to Puerto Vallarta, Cazumel one other place that I do not remember at the moment.

There was this beautiful resort that we stopped at in Cazumel that had beautiful white sand, I realized very fast that wheelchairs don’t roll too well on sand. The harder I pushed the deeper the wheelchair went into the sand, my mother gave me this look of , I thought this was suppose to be a relaxing trip. To make a long story short, we ended up having 4 strangers help me get the wheelchair up on a hard surface again with my mother in it.

We got back to the ship and she was sea sick, I let her lay down for awhile and went out on the deck to people watch. I met alot of new friends and throughly enjoyed the visit. Our next stop was at this Puerto Vallarta and it was time to go shopping! I pushed the wheelchair down the ramp and was met by 3 Mexican police carring machine guns. We were told that this was just for security reasons, we just smiled and went on by. The first store we came to, wsa passing out jiggers of free tequila to everybody who came inside. My mother had never drank and she took a hit of straight tequila, my eyes were stuck on the worm in the bottom of that tequila bottle. None for me Thank You!

We shopped and I quickly learned how to barter and get the best deals I could get. But you really have to watch the checkers when they wrap your packages to make sure that they put the items that you purchased, into the bags and not back on the shelf, a stewardess gave us this information.

We were back on the ocean heading back home when the captain of the ship came over the loud speaker and informed us the President of the United States had just raised our security to Yellow Alert for terrorist attacks. The next thing he said was that the President of the United States is aware that their are 4 cruise liners on the ocean at this time. Now if that doesn’t put a shock wave through you I don’t know what does.

I spent the rest of the cruise watching people and making sure that where ever we were I had a pretty easy exit planned. Its funny how you start watching out for anything unusual on the ship like, I saw some panels unscrewed with wires hanging out, your imagination can really get carried away.

We took the Christmas Cruise so there were special shows for the season in the evenings. One night this entertainer was on stage and he needed a volunteer from the audiance, and he saw my mother and tried to get her to come onstage, now my mother is from a small town and usually very quite and reserved, but her voice echoed through out that auditorium when she yelled No Thank You. All I could do was stare at her and wonder how that big voice came out of that little body.

It seemed after that night everywhere we went on the ship he was there and winking at my mother. I thought it was halarious, but she was ready to roll him over with the wheelchair. He even waved goodbye to us as we left the ship the last time, before we made our journey back home to good old Oklahoma.

We ended up having a wonderful time, and alot of laughs and Great Memories.

Remember to laugh, humor is the best medecine.

Since New Years Eve, I have seen snow or ice just about everywhere I have looked. It is so pretty when it first falls and as time goes on it looks so dirty and nasty. I am ready for the green grass again, even if I do have to mow it.

This weather has been extremely hard on my mother. It seems that no matter what she does she cannot get warm and with her breathing issues it really affects her health. It doesn’t matter what she tries to do to prevent it from happening, due to her weak lungs she will always have chronic breathing problems.

A long time ago I learned how to palpatate the lungs ( which is cupping the hands and patting the back to cause a suction motion) so I can help loosen up the gunk in her lungs, in hopes that she can cough it up and be able to breath easier. From the sound of her lungs last night, she will probably be back in the doctors office again this week.

She hasn’t got the energy to argue with me about anything right now which is kind of nice, but at the same time, I would much rather her be able to argue with me, I know she is feeling half way decent if she does.

I did some major house cleaning this last weekend and I am hoping that I did not stir up anything that is causing her to have breathing problems. I work so hard at trying to keep her healthy, that I would feel really awful if I stired up anything to cause her more problems.

On the up side I am keeping her battery operated scooter charged, just in case there is a chance that she will feel good enough to get out of the house again.

How is love your loved one doing during all of the weather changes? How are you dealing with it? If you have any suggestions on how to handle different situations better, please feel free to contact me and let me know.

I will be glad to post your suggestions on my blog. Remember to smile, it causes somebody else to smile. Have A Great Day!

Now that the holidays are over, my mother is in the best of moods and ready to get out and do more things. She had been under the weather for so long and I had, had a cold so we have been really low key, confined to inside the house.

Saturday morning she informed me that she wanted to go to a Casino. I took her for a hair cut , and off we went to the Casino, Firelake Casino in Shawnee, seems to be less smokey, so that is where we went.

I parked the car and proceeded to get her trusty little electric scooter out and ready for her and the battery was dead. That was my fault, in the excitement of her wanting to get out of the house, I forgot to charge it. So, I went into the Casino to see if they had a courtesy wheelchair that I could use for my mother while we were there. I just knew if they didn’t have one, I would never hear the end of it and maybe never get her out of the house again. I was so relieved when the lady behind the desk told me they did. I must have showed the relief on my face because the girl behind the desk really got tickled at me. I had a smile on my face from ear to ear, I guess I could have lit up a room with it.I took my mom inside the Casino and she had the best time, whether she was playing a game or watching the people.

When we were leaving I noticed that I have 14 missed calls on my cell phone. Now my mother and I were together the whole evening and never heard it ring. I started listening to my voice mails and was shocked at what I heard. My brother, son & daughter had been calling just to check on us. Now it is pretty bad when your kids panic because they are so use to you being at home all the time and they cannot get hold of you when they want to. My brother even had a message on there, telling my mother if she was to leave the house then she needed to call him and let him know.

Now my mother has gotten into this habit of asking me on my cell phone all the time where I am and when I will be home. She did not realize how bad she was until she heard my brother, tellling her that she needed to call him when she left the house.

I looked at her and said, so are you going to start calling him when you leave the house with me? Her response was, I guess I have been really bad and I didn’t realize how bad until I heard his message. NO, I will not call him when I leave the house, he doesn’t call me and tell me when he is leaving so why should I tell him? I looked at her and smiled and gave her a that a girl. She apologized to me and has lightened up just alittle bit, and boy does it feel good.

Right Now, everyday is like the Christmas to me. I feel less stress at home, which is a blessing. We reallly don’t know what another person is going through until we are in their shoes, we may think we know, but believe me until you are standing in the same shoes you really don’t understand.

I am celebrating Christmas everyday, how about you?

Christmas is over and it is back to some form of normalcy at our house.

Beside the the fact that I really don’t know if I am coming or going most of the time when I get home in the evening, it remains to be seen what I will do for New Years Eve to bring in the new year.

I have been thinking about going out on New Years Eve to a casino for a few hours and see if I could be lucky enough to win some of the money that is suppose to be given away, then spending New Years Day watching the Football Games on the TV all day. That is until my mother said, I think I will go with you. Now I never mind taking my mother anywhere and it is always good to get her out of the house, new scenery is good for her disposition.

Now I am forced to plan ahead, instead of just relaxing and having fun. Now the Scooter will come into play again. It has to be fully charged, once we are in a casino there is no recharging it there, the battery is suppose to hold a charge for 13hrs. But of course I will not be in a casino for 13hrs.

I know that she will be people watching, so she will be running people over and running into the the ATM machines because whe will not be watching where she is going. This means that I will be sacraficing myself to stay in front of her and leave with more bumps and bruises than when I came in.

She will have a blast and I will be a nervous wreck. She is not a very good scooter driver, she is a road rage scooter driver. She will tell people to move it or loose it, or too look out she has no breaks. She can be very sweet and fun to be with, but if she is in a cantankerous mood, I’m 55 years old and her daughter and I will want to run away from home.

After about 2 hours she will start telling me how tired she is and will want to leave. The question is, would it be more relaxing and less stressful staying home and watching the new year come in on the TV?

I would sit in the sun room, her on the love seat with her feet up, when you are only 4′11″ tall I don’t care where you sit, if you sit back on something your feet will never touch the floor. I will be in the lounger stretched out with my Yorkie by my side watching probably football.

Her favorite player is Adrian Pederson, she followed him from the OU Sooners to the Min. Vikings. She received one of those snuggies for christmas and it has the Vikings all over it and she cannot wait for the next game, I can see her sitting on the loveseat wearing it and yelling the whole game for AD.

Well I hope that you have a Happy Safe New Year, I will tell you about mine after the fact.

Remember to laugh, it really is good for the soul.