Margm

Both of my kids were diagnosed with bipolar. My son is an artist, and you will find that many of your most intelligent, creative people are bipolar. I picked up any book I could find on this mental condition. I even went to a bipolar psychiatrist because I knew the condition was believed to be inherited. I am just a dull chronic depression person and both of my kids have gifts that I cannot claim as part of my genes, yet, they are inherited from my genes because I know my father was bipolar. Back in his time, you did not go to the psychiatrist, it carried a stigma with it. My mother was terrified of psychiatrists, with good reason. Like I said, I read everything written about this condition. My son does not take medication because it blankets his creativity. He has tried them and they actually make him depressed. His condition was rapid alternating. My daughter has taken so many of the meds, I don't know what her's is. Medications cause a myriad of problems, not sure about helping. Kay Redfield Jamison wrote and co-wrote books on this disorder and with my family's history, you know I followed her up until a few years ago. When I was looking into the correct title she went under, I found out she had written another book that I just ordered for my Kindle. It is Nothing Was the Same. Actually, it is her account of grief after her husband's death. I am anxious to get started on this one. I have read her so much, I feel I know her. I laughed at some of her recounting of things she had done, that a bipolar will do. My son got his first checkbook and wrote checks till he ran out of them. Then, he could not have a checking account, which was good. The author mentions that she went in a drugstore in downtown New York City and because they were on sale, she bought out their supply of snake bite kits. This is my daughter. If it is on sale, if she has the immediate money, she will buy it without any need whatsoever of the item. Luckily, she no longer has a bank account and uses the cards that you can load money onto. Probably kept her out of jail. Just some quirk in the brain. They ask in one of the books I read, if you knew your child had the bipolar gene before they were born would you abort it. Most certainly not. Bipolar people make up some of your highest regarded politicians. Look up a list of who's who for bipolar. You will be surprised. They are your most prolific writers of music, poetry, and books. So many actors and actresses are bipolar. My son enjoyed the manic episodes, they do give rise to being an addict also. With my son, it is life or death. He cannot drink or take drugs or he dies. His liver is not in good condition. His last exam (this week) was okay, but they have to monitor closely for liver cancer. Either because of the drugs he took or because of the hep-C treatment.

Prayers for all of your family. Gracie looks the picture of health and pray that she can fight this off and not be sick again.

I'm so sorry Kat. October used to be my favorite month. We would tour the many forest roads around in Arkansas to take photographs, or for Billy to take them when I'd point out places to him. I have dreaded this month for a year now. I hate the year 2015 also. I feel your pain, we all feel your pain. Nothing anyone can say gives us peace, yet that is what we wish for each and everyone that has to go through this anguish.

Brad, I have a congenital tremor. I also have had a ruptured colon. My shakes go along with how my stomach feels. I think you probably know what I am talking about. Billy used to wake up somewhere around 10:00 a.m. or later.. My shaking and my fear are worse at this time. I usually take a Xanax when this happens, but the efficacy of the Xanax wears off if I take more than I am supposed to.. Today and yesterday I just suffered through the shakes and the fear. I cannot take more than 2 a day, so I don't want to use it unless absolutely necessary. So, it has been over a year and I still have sadness grief, of course, but I have shaking fear grief more than anything else. I have doc's appointment next Friday, but because of the condition of my "innards" I cannot take most medications anyhow. I hate this fear, but I think I am stuck with it.

Most of my grief is fear. I go somewhere alone and I beg Billy to help me. Anything alone, I beg him to help me. I am not afraid of the people, the places, it is just the aloneness that brings on the fear. And sometimes we are alone among a thousand people.

I wear my rings on a double strand necklace. I only remove them to shower. I talked to a woman in the washateria this morning who lost her husband two weeks before he turned 40. He has been gone now for seven years. She says only now does she ever have days that she forgets. I told her I did not know if I had seven years, but actually the little verse under that is, "and I don't care." I'm sorry Amy. Some days I look to the sky when I am talking to Billy. I tell him "and your not coming back." And, he is not, but I have to tell myself over and over that I am him and he is me, so I still have him in my heart. I don't think anything helps really.

My grandson is in his early 30s. He was just arrested, again. His dad (my son) begs the police to keep him. At least we know where he is. Conditions may be hard in prison and it is a terrible thing to wish, but my family has the addictive gene, and I believe there is such a thing. Billy and I gave up our RVing life so our son could get off drugs. He was/is a sweet gentle soul though and my grandson is mean. He threatens his family. There was a place waiting for him to live to get off drugs but he has had these places before and he does not want to get off them. There is a picture of him in a newspaper in California of him pulling a knife on a cop. They may have kept him three days. He is a danger to himself and his family, although now all his family lives over a thousand miles away. He is so handsome, had so much potential. When my son goes to find him he hides. Scott goes into dope neighborhoods the cops tell him not to go in trying to find him. Last time he was out there he gave him his sleeping bag and tent. He sold them for drugs. I don't know if his mind can be fixed now.. I remember him as a teenager crushing even Tylenol to "sniff" it. Our son was a junkie. We moved to a small art town in Arkansas and bought a house to help him. He wanted help and got himself off drugs. I know he slipped off the wagon awhile, but after hep-C treatments and nearly dying he finally got clear of drugs and cannot take a drink either. He was a mean drunk. He pawned everything worth pawning. I lost a beautiful cousin, inside and out beautiful, to alcohol. She died in her 16 year-old son's arms. She was a tragic alcoholic. Our great grandfather was an alcoholic and died in the charity hospital the year my father was born. My grandfather would not let him see his first grandson. I have a sister and cousin who worked the AA program to get clean. I quit speed cold turkey and nearly killed Billy coming off it. I used a sledge hammer on our house on the inside. I went into the hospital. My drug was a prescription speed. It took years before I quit craving that drug. I could no longer get it by prescription and had to go cold turkey. That was back during the years they had weight loss clinics and you had diet doctors prescribe biphetamines, black mollies. My son and his son are bipolar and have a tendency toward addiction anyhow. Having been there, my heart goes out to the widows. I could have killed Billy and still been in prison.. Drugs make different people out of us. I think my grandson's brain is irreparable. My son has cut off years from his life with a bad liver, even after the hep-C treatments. But, he would not touch a drug or drink now. It took years off mine and Billy's lives together fighting this terrible thing of addiction. Billy could never give up the liquid nicotine, which I will always blame for his death. I am thankful for the years he and I had together, but they were not all sunlight and moonbeams. We live the life we were given and try to correct the wrongs, and if we cannot correct them, then we remember what was good, and there is a lot of good. .And there are some people who are on a run-away train going downhill and cannot stop. You cannot see why they cannot stop unless you have been addicted yourself. Unfortunately, in my family, we understand. I'm sorry, I don't go back and read my notes and sometimes I repeat myself. They say if you tell the truth the first time you won't have to back it up. I honestly hope I tell the truth. I told my aunt that my daughter had 106 temperature last week, it was 104.6. When I talked to her again, I asked her if I had told her 106, and she said I had. I hope I don't lie like that on purpose anytime. Sometimes my memory is terrible, but in the back of my mind I could remember telling someone, I could not remember who, that it was 106. This has not been a good year. But, I do not think about my mom passing. Maybe my little brain just won't compute all the stress.

That is why I won't look in the mirror. Love this.

I would like to go to the clinic that was 15 miles from my house in Arkansas. In the clinic I go to here in this over 10,000 population home town the next appointment you can get is November 24th, and then you see a nurse practitioner. I have no dire needs right now, but I would like to have someone to depend on. How do you schedule getting sick on November 24th? What they have you do is go to the ER. I have been that route and they hastened Billy's death. Not imagination, just a fact. My mom waited five hours in this ER and never was seen. I actually do not have an ongoing problem they can fix. I can have a colostomy if the colon ruptures again and only escaped it this time through the ingenuity of the surgeon that "I scared him." GYN cannot fix me. Finding a doctor close that you can depend on just to be there if you need them is next to impossible. I have a terrible fear of traveling back up to where my house is being leased. I know it is a fear of the memories. They were good memories, but Billy left me in Arkansas and I don't want to go back. I know, this is a fear that a shrink needs to look at, but you cannot get an appointment with one of them either. Marty's father, and those family physicians are a thing of the past, a long time ago past.

It took my son four months to be seen in the VA system this time, changing states. Ex-gov Jindal tore our medical system to pieces, along with the educational system and used it only as a platform to run for president. He stayed away from the crisis we are in. Our state hospitals were dismantled, which also involved the VA doctors that share duties with the VA system. There are good doctors out there. My friend has lupus and something else wrong from taking chemo for breast cancer. In the big city of Little Rock, after four months they tried a Texarkana rheumatologist. Could not see him either. What does she do? She fell through the cracks. Billy saw a nephrologist twice a year, lab work was drawn. I wonder why his liver function tests were never looked at? We never got a bill from this doc. He was a home town friend, in the big city, had gone to him for 18 years. Every shrink I have called was not taking new patients. I will go the family practice route again. I need my flu shot anyhow. If you find a real, live, physician that you can see, go to him. In my condition, my surgeon told me I scared him. The GYN doc told me they could do a D&C but if they found anything they could not fix it. My insides are ruined from the radiation that saved my life in 1982. I am now a geriatric patient and honestly, (and I know this from typing H&P's, consults, discharge summaries, and clinic notes on patients in Arkansas, Louisiana and New Mexico,) Big Pharma, insurances (Obamacare), and other reasons, health care is not what it used to be. I found once I went on Medicare I stopped seeing family physicians. I now see PA's, nurse practitioners, and nurses. So, if you find a doctor you are happy with, stay with him, and good luck.

Well again, my 43 years in medicine did not give me a pad to write prescriptions or dispense information. Listen to Kay and do what is right for yourself. I do what is right for me, and when it all comes down to it, that is what we all have to do. I'm sorry if I might have given someone an idea for a medication that might put them in harm's way. Sometimes even the herbal medications can harm you. If you can find a doctor that really gives a damn then you have struck gold. They are out there, I know. I am just used to them prescribing antidepressants that cause diabetes and bowel problems and sometimes they do not even review the list of your medications you are allergic to and you have to be super vigilant and take your health into your own hands. They have the diploma, but you do not see the nurse that is timing each doctor his 15 minutes with each patient. If you can find a Doc Adams in this century, lock onto him.

A friend's wife (all mine and Billy's age) just passed away. Always laughing and smiling. I'm supposed to know how to react, right? I know empathy, right? All I could say was "I am so sorry and no words can help. Again, I am so sorry.

Billy had a condition called tinnitus, he had it for years. He heard crickets 24/7. So at night, we played continual noise of storms, rain on the roof, thunder. This drowned out his crickets and he slept. He used to be a hunter and shot the guns close to his right ear. No ear plugs back then. DJ's get this young too.

When my daughter is on a tear I try the breathing exercises, then I take a Xanax.

I know I should not be dispensing sleeping pills or medical information. So many people cannot take medications. When I was in the hospital last, this was for me, not Billy, a nurse who had just worked a 16 hour shift, and some do this, she had to go by Walmart before she got home. She used Dramamine to help her sleep. I remember working 11pm to 7am. I was too wound up to sleep and I tried a small glass of red wine (I hated the taste, so my choice was Mogan David. One morning a small glass did not wind me down so I drank more, and more and when Billy came in at noon for lunch, I was just plain drunk, still not asleep. When I went to the shrink, I started using the Tylenol PM's. I asked my doc would I get addicted. She laughed at me and said I could use them forever. But, Dramamine, any of the PM's, if you take more than is said for you to take, you will get leg cramps. Anyhow, I usually wake up about 4:00 a.m. and I take one Dramamine and sleep till 8:30 or 9:00. I cannot take aspirin or any of the ibuprofen's,so those are just my drugs of choice. I figure if they help a nurse that has worked 16 hours, they might help someone else. Oh yes, sometimes it also helps to listen to the meditation apps with ear buds. I usually go straight to sleep. We all do our best, but somehow when our best is not good enough we might slip in something that might help. Honestly, I don't remember what waking up after getting 6-8 hours of sleep is without help so I have nothing to compare it with. I don't think I have slept more than 2-3 nights without help since Tylenol PM came out. One time in discussing sleep with a Walmart checker, she said her husband did not understand how she slept so fast and long. She told him that if he stood up on his feet for 16 hours checking groceries he would sleep like she did. Personally, I am a much lazier person. I sat on my behind sometimes for up to 16 hours, of course getting up for breaks. If my mind is wound up, I cannot sleep on my own. I have to "feel my body singing" to quote my mama. We do what we have/want to do.

The only time anyone is going to understand is when it happens to them. And it will. That does not make me feel good or superior. It makes me sadder, but it will happen and that is the only time you will get empathy from people. I like to read books about how other women handle this. I love the fact that Martin Short still talks to his wife when he has cocktails in the evening. We have them in our life still because we keep them there. We cannot see them. And, if Billy ever answers me when I am talking to him, I am sure I will be on the other side with him very fast. Until then we suffer, and we still keep on living. I just told my kids that they better let me start saving some of my money or the time will come when I won't care how things are paid, but they will. I also told them that all the things that are bought in my name, the nursing home or assisted living place will take them. I have found, sometimes old people can take care of themselves. I hope I can keep on.

Ya'll, when it comes down to it, it is what it is, and there is nothing we can do about it. You know, we have not heard from Terri or from Kevin in a long time and Debbi will stay a mystery as well as the south African people, two separate ones I think. So glad Brad is back. Bill does not get on as much either. I hope they are all having it easier than we are, but somehow, I don't think that is the way it is. Thanks Marty, I've loved that verse for so long. It actually makes you feel they are in the wind.

I am him and he is me, forever

“Press on. Obstacles are seldom the same size tomorrow as they are today.” ~ Robert Schuller I slept past his 7:30 a.m. death. Instead I did something weird, I dreamed, got up to go to the bathroom, lay back down and the dream took up where it left off. My dad passed in April of 1984. I have thought about it lots but never mourned like I do Billy. I was fighting cancer myself and my mind was not "just right." Scott and Billy carried me through the funeral, one on each arm. I lost a shoe in the mud at the cemetery. I remember things as they could not have been. I remember this morning in my dream asking my mama how long she knew Daddy was going to die, because in my dream he just fell dead. She never would answer me. I don't remember dreams hardly ever. Yet this one kept waking me up and then I would dream it again, right where I left off. But it was my dad, not Billy. Billy and I both lived 10 years longer than my dad did. My dad was 65. I mourned him in my dream and my mom and I made plans on where we were going to live. It had to be somewhere different, but my mom was never a moving type person. She was a homesteader through and through. Billy was not in my dream. And like I said, I have dream amnesia always. Not today. 365 days today. Just another day without him. No different than yesterday.

Kay, this "second childhood" is more painful than the first but I guarantee you it is just about as crazy.

It could be Karen. It sounds like they were welcoming, like a church should be. I am still leaning toward learning the Catholic faith but I have some misgivings due to my long Baptist upbringing. I admit that the symbolism in the Catholic faith means a lot to me. I have things I question. I worked and retired from one Catholic Hospital. When I was near death there was a nun who would come in and pray holding my hands each day and I kept my eyes on the small metal cross on the wall. I was in and out of consciousness and I kept that cross in my view. When I was coming out of it, each night and day I would pray to Jesus watching the cross. Alfred North Whitehead said "Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration; it is inherent in the very texture of human life." When I visited the chapel at the state hospital and they had taken all religious symbols out of the chapel it bothered me very much. I cannot tell you how bad it bothered me except it was the beginning of my questioning my faith. I realize there are other religions, but I only had one. I was not in a good state of mind anyhow, and I cannot say it has improved that much since then. It is just my journey. Again, Karen I think you might have found the fellowship you needed. I hope so. We all have to find our own path and it is hard doing something alone when we have forever had someone with us. I am proud of you and think you are very brave.

I'm not wanting to at all today Joyce. Fighting taking a Xanax, but I'm gonna give in. Sometimes, and I know we all feel it sometimes, it is just hard to go on when you really don't want to go on. But, I have to think of my granddaughter. I cannot be this selfish. Gotta get my spirits brighter. Cannot bring her down.

Tomorrow will be one year. I noticed the commode was sorta rocky. The first thought was Billy would have already fixed that. Well, this is something I can do. I don't want to, I want Billy to fix it. I rent, so I could get the "fix-it-man" to do it. He already told me to call on him for anything. I won't. I will fix it. I was thinking after this. So many of us women say how much we miss our mate when something happens. Well, we miss them when nothing happens. We just miss them. Now, I think about the men. How many times do they think they wish their wife was here to cook when they get hungry, and so many things we did for our mates. All of this is so foreign. After my dad passed away, there never was a peep out of my mom that she missed him fixing something. That was because if it was broke, she automatically fixed it. If she could not she would call a small engine repairman, AC repairman, etc. When Billy and I were separated for six weeks back in about 1990, or so, I remember asking my girlfriend/coworker, "what am I going to do, how am I going to change the oil in the car?" She looked at me dumbfounded. She said "you go to an oil change place." So, we learn to cope somehow.

Yep, you'd think. She has orders to be admitted should anything untoward happen. I questioned it also. She has two people living with her. I am less than probably a mile from her house. Kay, my doc discharged me from the colon rupture after he pulled the tube.. No followup. Things are not done like they used to be done. I do not understand the thinking of freezing a temperature either. Used to we would have been afraid of pneumonia. Already very ill, turn temp down to 68, allow no cover or socks. But, that is the way they did mine too. Out of my head anyhow, I pulled my gown up trying to keep warm and flashed everyone. Guess I am old fashioned but when you have chills from fever, all you want is to get warm. I don't understand a lot now. Actually, the head of neurosurgery at local hospital called her this morning at 5:00 a.m. She had called about the fever. She told him "don't you know patient's are asleep at 5:00 am." He said, "well doctors are awake at 5:00 am" So, she is being followed and her temp is below normal right now. They told her to take the Tylenol every four hours even if temp is not up.

You know there are a lot of times that I cry to Billy that I just cannot do this living anymore, I am tired of it but I remembered this after hearing it on TV, and I have heard it before. It never meant anything to me at the time other than I felt sorry for her. She had so many children and lost so many children, a philandering husband, but he died too and I know her Catholic faith made her stay with him. She was a little woman, but I now admire her and have somewhat of a belief of what she said. I used to write poetry and stories, but this has taken all the verve from my life and so I gripe and complain on here. But I think, very possibly, I might make it until at least I can get my granddaughter started in a life she can live. I am so proud of her. Kelli is home. Cleveland Clinic flew her first class and Willis Knighton was at the airport to pick her up and she drove home. She came here first. She seems okay. Having trouble with the bleeding kidney for awhile and temp is 102.7 right now. I told her to keep taking that Tylenol, drink the fluids and remember her antibiotics. She has orders for any problems to present to the hospital and will be admitted directly. They say in borderline personality disorder you try to hurt the one you love the most. I think that might be true. I know my son is going through a depression now. He misses his dad so much.