Life is Often Surreal

Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference. -- Virginia Satir

It's not often that I'm able to live my life from a surreal distance - something akin to watching it on a movie screen - but last weeks 3-night hospitalization proved to be just that. Surreal.

Dialysis seemed to go okay but practically immediately when Stacy arrived home she started vomiting
every 10 minutes. Made a phone call to the doctor. "What's her BP? Give her Promethazine and once her stomach settles down give her an additional BP med. and then about an hour later let me know how her
BP is." Yeah, right! Keeping a pill works really well when one is vomiting every 10 minutes . . .

Three hours later at 7:30 we were waiting to be seen in the ER. At 10pm lab tests were finally being run and I knew that it was time to send Mom home before she feel off of the stool. At 11pm it was decided that Stacy's BP, vomiting and migraine needed more attention so plans were made to stay overnight. At 1am we finally rolled into a room, the largest one I'd ever seen in the hospital, and I kept asking where my cot was. Talk about being a pest, but I'd spent most of the day in bed with vertigo and other dumb symptoms and was beyond being able to cope.

After a snack of crackers and peanut butter I fell into a deep sleep and was shocked to wake up at 5:30 in a cot in the hospital. Mom arrived at 9am and sent me home for some much needed sleep. Stacy was moved out of the fabulous suite like room into a broom-closet size room set up for dialysis. Wouldn't you think that dialysis patients required a large room?

Three nights in the hospital, new BP meds that finally lowered Stacy's BP and we were back home. It seemed more like a dream than another blip in the road.

I Love Paris!

Place des Vosges , 1997 - a favorite photo that was manipulated to create how I felt about scene I watched while sitting on a bench. Impressionistic.

I was very happy when the phone rang at 10pm last night and my youngest daughter said, "we're home." I don't like it when they're out of the country. It's more comforting to now that they are only seven hours away. They had a great time at the resort they stayed at in the Caribbean and Jack, three-and-half-years-old, had a good time as well. The ocean was so green and clear that they now realize just how polluted the Pacific Ocean has become. Sad!

The new Sleep Formula I started taking two nights ago is doing too good of a job. I not only sleep through the entire night but half of the morning as well! I came out of a inane dream at about 11:00, had coffee, read the Sunday paper, made brunch and the next thing I knew it was 2:30! This won't do! I think I'll try taking less of the formula. At this rate I'll never get anything done.

From the Sunday Herald - Happy Talk:
Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be. Abraham Lincoln
Some cause happiness where they go; others whenever they go. Oscar Wilde
Whomever is happy will make others happy, too. Anne Frank
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. Helen Keller.
A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else. Bette Davis.

Texture - play

I wish I could get out from under the brain fog and flu-like symptoms that have taken up residence! I feel awful! I'm positive that the stress of the last few months has caused this latest flare-up of the immune dysfunction junk that I've dealt with my entire life, but that doesn't alleviate the problem! There are so many things that I want to do but the focus for the past two weeks has been on how to once again convince my immune system to behave itself. I'm not fond of being on a quest searching through data for things that "might" provide some relief from joint and muscle pain, brain fog, migraines, vertigo and flu-like symptoms. I'd rather be on a creative quest that includes a working knowledge of design elements. That to me is much more productive, but if I don't attend to the physical stuff I will never be able to accomplish anything I've set out to do. I've been putting off taking care of my health issues hoping that by ignoring them they would go away. Experience should have taught me that ignoring the health issues will only make them worse when I finally face the fact that I'm nearly too ill to get out of bed.

So, once again I'm re-thinking the supplements I take by the handful! And for the second time in six months I'm going through a detox to rid my system of toxins and other creepy things that seem to be running through my system. Extracting unwanted visitors does marvelous things to an already unhappy system and unfortunately one of the things it does is to make the ability to concentrate fly out the window. Every thought I have disappears before I even put it down and very little of what I read makes any sense. It's taken me two hours to write these few paragraphs today! And they probably don't make much sense . . . If I had the energy I'd be hysterical, but I'm running on empty or what I refer to as "energy deficit."

Almost French

Paris - 1997 is my attempt at making an antique looking postcard. This was the view outside of our hotel room on my first trip to Paris. I loved waking up during the night to see the Eiffel Tower lit up it in all its splendor. The one thing I didn't like seeing in the daylight, however, were antennaes and satellite dishes on the rooftops! Back in '97 I had no idea that in a few years I would be able to manipulate photographs in such a way as to eliminate wires, cars, people and satellite dishes! If only I had known!

For the past few weeks I've been slowly savoring a book, "Almost French" by Sarah Turnbull. In between the mystery reading marathon I've been on (one book a day) I read a couple of chapters in Turnbull's book and go to sleep dreaming about Paris. Reading this book is almost as good as a decadent dessert. I've walked many of the streets she talks about and can visualize places that she describes and I know that I will be slightly depressed when I've reached the end of the book.

Life being what it has been for the past five years I doubt that I will do much traveling in the future. Sometimes that bothers me and other times I know that I will carry the memories of traveling to Europe with me for the rest of my life. Thanks heavens for books like "Almost French" that help me to relive the experiences and adventures that I had in '97 and 2000.

The Guardian

I think that I need to memorize the following quote:

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every morning I wake up feeling as if I'm at war. The battle being fought is a health issue one and the symptoms are winning! Each day is started with energy-deficit and once the chronic pain is ascertained all I want to do is stay in bed forever! The added stress over Stacy's elevated blood pressure, seizures and renal failure are factored into the day the second she wakes up and then I know for certain that I don't want to face yet another day. And everyone wonders why I don't welcome morning phone calls!

It takes a lot of "self-talk" to turn the day around and there are days when the effort is more than I can handle such as in the case of the current migraine-from-hell-attack that is in its tenth day. At best my brain functions in a pretty dense fog but when a migraine hits a level of 8-10 the brain cells stop functioning and I find that I can't make sense of the world around me, nor do I want to even try.

Fortunately, I've discovered that when my brain has left the planet, and the pain is below an 8, I seem to be able to sit at the computer and manipulate photos. I have no idea how I've gotten to the end result, but at least the hours don't drag endlessly on. That is if vertigo hasn't taken hold making even the thought of a looking at computer screen enough to turn me green.

"The Guardian" is from a photograph I took a few months ago at the mission in San Juan Bautista. I have no idea who the statue is of, (should have taken notes) but he has the look of a guardian about him.