Margm

I knew the numbers and just threw them in, did not know which one was which. I just know that it would seem kinder to give her the oxygen she needs and craves if it would make her feel better. Instead, she has her breathing treatments, and I think three that she uses as needed. She wheezes and praises the doctor. And then he piles on the steroids more and more. Her lungs crave the oxygen she is not getting. I hate for the fur babies to hurt, but when it is friends and family, it hurts so much when you cannot help them. Kelli's veins collapse she is stuck so many times and before Billy left he would accompany her. She has von Willebrand's (bleeding disorder) and will bleed out. They stuck her nine times once and Billy said "no more" and he cried. He was with Scott in the ER one time and was fainting. He said from the smells in the ER, but it hurt him to see any of us get treatment. I'm so glad he did not suffer long, but I sure miss him. The "kids" felt better when he was around.

Gwen, I hate for you to be ill and hurt. I will say my daughter finished the radiation and now has to have immunotherapy three times a week IV but her iron and potassium were so low they had to IV them too. Caused projectile vomiting. Somehow she is handling it. I think maybe when she gets the sickest, maybe the manic side of the bipolar holds her up. Have to plan for angioplasty for Scott Friday at VA. Got to be there at 6:30 and said to plan for all day. It seems we can handle/could handle things better when we had someone to share things with. My sister is better and they won't let her be on oxygen yet, but she sure felt like she needed it. Something about her count being 88 and needs to be 91. I sometimes feel I need an apartment with a triage apartment in the center. Life throws the trials at us one by one and sometimes it almost seems too much. My heart is with you.

Gwen, Billy had raised hunting dogs, Boykin spaniels, labs, golden's, and even tried the Chesapeake Bay Retriever. That dog would not let me and Kelli get in the back yard. None were chained. We had a big wooden fence I could not see over. I took the hair spray out with me one time as I still had clothes lines and that dog took the hair spray away from me. We let him in the house to protect the meter reader and he went directly and pooped in a new pair of Kelli's shoes. Billy gave him to a duck hunting friend. He obeyed orders from Billy perfectly, but that was the meanest dog I have ever been around. Now Bear, he was a danger to anyone that even came close to any of us. He was so over protective (might have been a trait) that we actually were his people, he was not our pet. He would just laugh and come up to us and throw all his weight sideways against us, not jump up on us. He was adorable with that and we loved to love on him anytime he would let us, which was only when he wanted us to. I just loved his quirkiness and when he died, I had the phenomenon of hearing him panting walking behind us, and he was going to show all those big horses that he was boss. That was when I saw him having fun. Otherwise, he was like a Mafia gang boss protector and he was our protector, and yes, he was dangerous. And no, I do not think anyone should own one except someone who lives way away from people and he is used as a protector. His hair was so thick and long and beautiful that when he was a puppy, he would turn his head and he looked like a bear cub. We lived on the lake when we had him and he would stand in water up to his nose to cool off. I was never afraid of him and I actually cry in thinking about him. He is a breed of dog that should only be used as a protector because you can never own him, he owned us. Crazy how much he meant to me. I won't have another. A cat is her own person, pups are devoted, lovable pets. Bear was a different breed.

I cannot take up for the Chow for the aggression because I have seen it and I have seen a personality in a dog I have never seen before. We tried to keep him in the house, but he broke through window and screen. I was never scared of him. I had a feeling this animal would give his life for me and he actually did give his life saving my mother as the raccoon would have attacked her and the poison would have killed her, the very poison that killed Bear the next day. He showed aggression toward Billy and Scott to keep them away from the dead raccoon he knew was deadly. He protected them with his aggression. Would I ever have another one............not if I lived 100 more years. They do not belong in the humid southern climate and they need surgery done on their eyes to keep them from being infected. Yet, he was the most magnificent, most honored animal I have ever had. Do I think they are dangerous. I certainly do. I loved him. He gave his life for my mother's. It was in his instinctive protectiveness that saved her. I can never forget him. This was many years ago and I am sure the man who put the poison out for animals is long gone, as are the neighbors we knew.

Kevin, thanks for the pictures. Love those kids. My great granddaughter turned sweet 16 this month. I've never met her, family problems from ex-husband of granddaughter. Billy would have loved her so much. Congratulations to your son and wife. Keep us posted. Weather in Louisiana is in 90's. That is what we expect.

Really, no one, not family, not close friend what we keep, what we let go, what music we can hear, what pictures we can look at, ones we cannot. No one knows the special knife to the heart incident we face if we do things we do not want to do. My pillow stuffed with Billy's everyday wear that I sleep on each night. His clothes mixed up with mine. The pain I feel of heading anywhere west of the Louisiana line. Some people do not understand, but it is not for them to understand. If you hurt no one else, we keep what we want to, and we keep in our heart the rest. Talking to Billy, yes, it has become less, but I never go out at night without saying "Hi Billy, I miss you so much" to the stars, to the clouds. My business. Your business is your own, should not have to be explained to..............anyone.

💗💗💗 Gwen, just finished talking to my sister. Spent night before last in the ER with her. Accidentally sent note on messenger to my sister that was meant for my daughter. I said she was scared and needed put on oxygen. I will make sure she is sitting at her doctor's office when it opens in the morning. She cannot walk more than five steps without losing her breath and coughing. I told her tonight (since she would not go back to ER) to call 911 and they could get oxygen to her faster than I can come get her. (At night I would kill us both) even though she lives less than a mile from me. Sorry you are going through this. Yes, you were put there to help that doctor. Now, "ain't" that just something, being able to offer comfort to a doctor. You take care. I wish I could eat a real salad, I have not had a tomato or piece of lettuce (loved butter lettuce) since 2014. Tonight I wanted peanuts so bad, and I can have peanut butter. Keep us up to date, you are on my heart. I think we had someone on here who did not like people using the word "ain't" and all I can say is I am really kind of "rednecky" southern, I can use proper English, but I would still "sop my biscuit in surp."

Johnny, both of my kids are bipolar. And, if you think we have not had some fun with that...........ha. But, I knew my dad had to be also. After the cancer I started having spells they called disassociation. What scared me was when I would disassociate, my biggest problem was I did not want to lose this phenomenon. I did go to a psychiatrist for 15 years. Went through Prozac mainly and it would make me where I really did not have unhappiness or happiness, I could not cry. I finally quit them after years. (coasted off them with help of shrink). Before my main psychiatrist (now remember, this was in the 1980's, early,) and we had a new doctor come to town with a rag wrapped around his head. Indian or something. It cost me $125 over what my insurance paid to talk to this man for 15 minutes. His message was "you've got to learn to love yourself." Well, I damn well loved my money more than I did him. I have suffered from sometimes deep depression since childhood and I wanted expert advice and a diagnosis I could live with. Well, I have chronic depression, and I did not get anything exotic like schizophrenia or bipolar. I did have those wonderful scary disassociation spells, but that is a whole "nuther" story. I do believe now though, along with my chronic depression, I certainly have situational depression, that I will have till I leave this world. No pill will cure grief. (Now, this is only my opinion.)

Working in the medical field 43 years, being a patient of many specialties off and on all my life, I have not felt safe with any one of them since our old GP's of many years ago. Many life's have been saved because of the specialized medicine/surgical directions. Somehow though, I hear and see "not my problem" more than real help. That is just me. I have written out not to give me pain killers. I cannot take opiates. First thing they do is write me a prescription for opiates. I am too old for some antidepressants, first thing they do is write me a prescription and give me samples for this new wonder drug antidepressant. I take it to my old clinician for so many years, tell her what it did to me, and she just shakes her head and says "I don't know how they think you could afford this anyhow." Then my working for the staff physicians and the pharmacist reps that came to the office and left a load of samples of the new drug. It was a state hospital. Give the expensive sample to the indigent patient who gets great results. No more samples. So we go back to a generic that suffices, maybe not as good as the new expensive one, but it is what it is. I have become cynical and jaded. Unless you are unresponsive, help your physician out by knowing what you can take, what you do not want to take, and be ready for some reactions you might not expect. Either respect for your opinion, or they fire you as a patient. In looking back (which I seldom do), I find this is almost the same thing I wrote above this post. Hmmmm.........guess I have been taking that OTC medication too long, the one that causes dementia. Has to be Tylenol, all I can take.

I worked for staff doctors at a teaching hospital and one job was to deal with pharmacy dealers. They would give the free clinics so much of these new medications. They may have done a lot of good. The problem was, when the samples ran out the indigent people could in no way in this world afford the new medication. If they lived long enough it would become a generic and cost a lot less, but time waits on no one. I am not doubting a study that says some OTC medication causes dementia. But, the ones that are not OTC, no one can afford them. I begged to not be on an antidepressant. New doctor. She did not listen to me and dumba$$ me took the very mild dose and woke up in the wee morning hours with symptoms I later learned should have been taken to the ER. One small dose pill. The elderly sometimes cannot take what others can and believe it or not, talk to a pharmacist after you talk to doctor. "First Do No Harm" is an oath they used to take. Not sure they do it in the same way anymore.

Kelli washes, dries and folds all our clothes. (And with her being sick too). Her bipolar seems to make her manic when she feels the worse. She is through with her radiation and has to continue the immunotherapy. They gave her some topical steroid (she will have a seizure with IM steroid. Her home doc was really tee'd off cause she is just plain allergic to any steroids. She has so many medication allergies I honestly thought she was "putting on" but then they gave her an antibiotic shot in the hospital and those hives she broke out with were not "all in her mind." They were very real. Anyhow, Scott took Brianna to see "It-2" and I'm alone. I can hear that donkey in Shrek saying "I'm all alone." Got some ice packs for my knee, got two soap opera's recorded, and I am just fixing to sit back. I do get angry, I'm human, but that anger that came toward my sister was not human, it was a demon." I hate that, but just like always, and lots of folks don't believe in this stuff, but I think God is punishing me. I know, my pastor said God was not a punishing God, but my old fashioned missionary, fire and brimstone pastors said he was. So, I'm paying for my anger and it hurts much worse than my dad used to whip me. I know, I know, most people don't believe in that. I think I help punish myself.

I learned right after he left that screaming into a pillow only hurt my head. I will not jump on, yell at, or otherwise attack a family member. I'm not yet sure what the surge of adrenaline anger did to my body, but sometimes you hear that "you don't hurt anyone but yourself" and I did hurt my sister's feelings, she could not help it, the moving part had to be completely on her elderly also shoulders. I'm so sorry I did that. I hurt her feelings and I physically hurt myself. Good enough for me. I remember begging her to get a partner of either sex for companionship, and really, some people do not want that. I had it. I lost it. I do not want a substitute. There is no substitute, but she chose to be alone, I didn't. She is not alone, she has me, and perhaps the weight of that weighed as much as the items I carried.

Colonoscopy would kill me. They know I don't want anything done but my limping and using a cane is bothering my family, but damn, I don't want to go to doc. Said if something GYN happened they could only do a D&C. Well, at least that was a relief from putting my feet up in stirrups. Karen, my granddaughter is looking for her 3rd. I don't think she has let her 2nd know yet though. But think she has found her 3rd. And my Brianna is scared of dating. Beautiful beyond words. At her request, I rescued her from two, one of them I was hesitant, but it was what she wanted.

And Dee, those over 50 years only seemed like a moment in time. Just too short a time. I always said I wanted 54 more. Yes, I am selfish.

Billy will be gone four years the 17th of October. Some part of me died with him, just as we all had some part of us die. I have a redheaded temper, but actually that is a myth, I think. I've stood on my own in anger before, I can be tough, but actually I had rather hide behind someone, watch someone else's anger, and like my sister said, I was always too easygoing to stand up to my parents. I never stood up to them, I just left them. I looked for different ways, we lived in a very small town, no jobs for very many miles, so I got married (and we worked hard at it). The other night I got angry at my sister, and really folks, it was not her fault. She is a victim of circumstances and I expected her, with all her degrees, to be smarter than I am (and book-wise, she beats me to a pulp), but life-wise, she was helpless as a kitten. My response was a horrible anger, lashing out words that made no sense, jumping in and moving three full closets of heavy clothes into my car and then up a length of stairs three times. Anger, RED DEVIL anger. For the past four or five days I have been almost unable to move. Very slowly. I am not supposed to lift, I know it, and my already injured knee is hard to walk on. Inside my head was nothing but mean anger. I'm afraid I might have to go to the doctor with my knee, it is injured. I did it. Only me and horrible (not like me at all) anger. I know anger is a stage and I have had some mild anger, but this was insanity. My body cannot take pain pills. It will kill me, my colon cannot take them. I think this has been building up, but this person was not me. I do not ever want to see her again. I'm not against going to a counselor if they don't give me pills. Anything going through my stomach into my colon can kill me. I cannot take oral antibiotics. I am slow, I am cripple, I don't want to go to a doctor. Really, no matter how I explain myself, they will not listen to me and do whatever they want to. I even have a typed written explanation I give to a doctor before I use one. Can anger be a stage that took this long to show itself? Insanity? That is already a given. Oh yes, and the first thing that doctor will say (believe me, I know), "try to lose about 10 pounds" and folks, it is gonna take more than 10. I have gained 35 pounds since Billy has been gone, I'm almost 5'1" (not quite), and that low residue diet does not offer anything but carbs (I can have meat if it is easy to chew). The thing I have to avoid is much fiber. No raw veggies or cooked either except green beans, potatoes, spinach.

Am not sure I have reached that yet, and then I wonder, and I wonder some more, and yes, it is true, "What a miracle it was that he ever existed in the first place." But, something else I always wonder and it is the same, "What a miracle it was that he put up with me for 54 years." No one else could have.

Gin, I too am frightened, can still wait, (and unfortunately, or fortunately) all my friends have had it done and none of them had any bad results at all. They, everyone of them, tells it like Marty. I took Mama for one side and my sister took her for the other. And, y'all know how I love to read. So did my grandmother, and little country mouse that she was, she did not know about cataracts. She just knew she was not getting to do her beloved reading. Her words "If I cannot read, I just as well be dead." We had one city mouse sister (aunt) that took her to have her eyes fixed and she read for many more years. Young woman cancer, leaving a sponge/instrument in during surgery, sepsis, nervous breakdown before age 30, she lived into a nice old age before another cancer took her out. But she was still able to read. Sometimes we women I think are all ancestors of Wonder Woman, all came from the island of Themyscira, and we were and are all amazonian women and men were used for procreation, then were our slaves. (Ha, well we all miss our slaves don't we?) Sorry fellows.

I'm thinking I might need a shrink. I have actually become mean. I wonder if this is.................well, heck, I don't know what to wonder what it is. I think I do need to go to a shrink, cannot take their medications though. Okay, i deleted my bitch/bitch/bitch. Can I say this on here? Mean people can.

I honestly have more of a backbone than when I started. I used to read "if the solution cannot be found, why worry?" Dammit, I was gonna find a solution. I could not buy as many groceries, I could save some here, some there, I could use all my paltry little SS to help, and then it got to where the problems were too big for me to help with. Mind you, they were not my problems but we had always chipped in. Then it came to me. Your gonna die. Okay, I die, what are they gonna do. Problem this time is more than I can handle, not my problem, so, I have no worry. Cannot do anything, why worry. But, I am getting the cold shoulder............oh well.

Billy left in October of 2015, Mama in August of 2016. I've been called strong also. Strong to me is my friend, who is my age of 77, and she is tearing up a bedroom (by herself), going to hang the sheet rock, or whatever it is called, tearing up the carpet, laying new carpet, and she has lost two husbands with a house that floods (the bottom) when the lake rises. She lives up the stairs that I hate to climb. To me she is strong. I hurt everywhere. My mom used to sew for me and say "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" and she was so full of her quotes, her witticisms that I just decided to be the best sow's ear purse I could be. My friend Hettie, a little older than me, told me when a classmate had passed away "at our age we are going to lose people." That's true, but each death stings. Strong? Strong is the coffee I made this morning. I exist. We all exist on that path that only one person can walk, but I can reach over and hold your hand. My heart, my friend.

I can believe this. We never would have chained Bear. He would have broken any chain. We did not choose him, Kelli brought him in as a tiny puppy. He would look around at us and turn his back to us, as a puppy. He never growled at us until they tried to take the raccoon from him. He was grown by then. And, he (beyond his tiny puppy years) would not be caged up in a house. Like I said, we were his people, he was not our pet. He never left us to roam. He was our protector always. Billy had lots of sporting dogs over the years. The meanest one was a Chesapeake Bay retriever. He would not let me and Kelli come in the back yard. Billy gave him to a duck hunter, and then I don't know what happened to him. But we all loved Bear and his independent nature. He only needed us as "his people" to protect, and he did that till he died. There will never be another like him. He chased the field of horses, so we would try to slip off without him. He could not talk, but it was like he knew "sign language|" or maybe Chow language. We did manage to slip off one time and he saw "strangers" coming back down the road, when we got within eye sight, he quit barking, threw his head back in disgust, turned his back on us and walked away. We knew Chow language. Also, there is an operation that needs performed on their eyes because they are irritated all the time. Kind of like Billy, some things will never be able to be replaced.

We have had so many dogs over the years, mostly sporting dogs, but I don't think we ever had one anywhere near the personality of Bear. Chows can be quite big and stocky and because of a drunk neighbor coming over to let us know Bear didn't like her dog, and she stuck her leg in between them when they were fighting and got bitten by one of them. A friend of a friend knew a woman that raised nothing but Chows. So, since Bear had busted the window (we were to keep him "in jail" for so many days), we took him to her house. and she called us crying. Bear would not let her out her back door. Billy went to get him and he sat his big self right in Billy's lap all the drive home. He was so happy to have his family back. Strange wonderful personality.

I could never have another dog after losing Bear. When he was a pup we left him in the house for about 10 hours going to work (over 35 miles from the lake, one way). He never used the bathroom in the house all day, then we let him out. He saved my mama's life and he died the next day. The raccoon did not have rabies, but he had something that killed Bear. The raccoon was headed toward my mom, Bear grabbed him, killed him, and took him way off and when Billy and Scott came around him, he would growl at them, letting them know the raccoon was ill/poison, I guess. We had a neighbor, not real close to our house, and he put out poison to kill dogs or cats or other animals that came in his yard. I figure it got in Bear's blood from the raccoon. Bear would not leave the area of our house. He did not act strange, he just went off and died the next day. He showed no illness, but he just dropped and that was it. We could not keep him in the house. We tried and he broke through the glass window and screen. It was A/C in the house. Bear would wade out into the water neck deep and stay almost all the time. I can see having one in Oregon, but never down here, and we had him since a baby. We were his people, he was not our dog. The sheriff's officer came down one time (dead end road, right on the lake) and Bear did not bark, he was not a barking dog. He sat at the sheriff's door and the sheriff called to us. Bear would not let him out of his car. When he wanted to be loved on, he would come close and throw his body sideways full force against us. We would love on him. He liked it. When he got enough he said, that's enough, and he walked off. As I said, we were his, he was not ours. I have not personally had a dog since then and still want to cry. Once in a blue moon one comes along. Love on Joe, the deaf Chow, if he will let you. Hug him for me too.

Keep on talking. I have never quit. My granddaughter says if he was to answer me it would scare me to death, so he does not want to do that. I can still hear him and I can feel those high cheek bones and the beard.