Aging and the Strong of Heart

I spent another quiet day with Aunt Yvonne. Listen, Reader. As they say, aging isn't for the faint of heart. I'm 51, and while there are days when I feel as if I've dragged three times as many decades around, there are more where I'm almost blithely unaware of how short our time on earth is -- at least the young part. In the quiet of the room where my aunt's rest is marked by the puff and wheeze of an oxygen machine, I wonder what it's all about, it the operative word. A parade of friends came to visit -- an Indian woman, a Philippino woman, a blonde in a periwinkle sweater, a beautiful Romanian young woman, a Russian Orthodox priest with Alzheimer's in a long, brown robe, a heavy gold chain with a cross dangling, an 84-year old woman who told me she was taking care of her husband with dementia and battling his children in court.

We know what it's all about.

Just outside my aunt's bedroom is an amazing succulent, its waxy eggplant-colored leaves swollen, clusters and clusters of them sprouting from one gnarled branch and in the middle, a cone of yellow flowers so bright and perfect and multitudinous that they made my eyes fill up with tears.

Marie Ange

I was just riffling through a small box, looking for the business card of The Foot Doctor, whose name I can never remember, so that I can make an appointment for Henry, whose big toe appears to be acting up again, not responding to the Epsom salt soaks. Anyhoo. I was riffling through the cards and pulled out the above photo that I haven't seen in years, sent to me by my old friend Mary Angel (or Marie Ange, as we said in our bad French accents).  I'm still a tad sick, as is Sophie, and I'm feeling all whimpery, edgy, like the end of the world is coming and it's all centered around me. Do you know that feeling? I keep reading people's gratitude lists and keep staving off the sinking feeling that --what? Just a sinking feeling, I guess. A sinking feeling that has nothing to do with anything in particular. I could chalk it up to the virus I'm fighting -- these sorts of viruses attack the central nervous system, I think, and push me into mild depression. I guess. I'm not really sure of anything, to tell you the truth, other than that I have a sore throat and a vague feeling of dread and weirdness. Mary Angel is one funny lady, and we shared many laughs during the four years we were in school together, many at the expense of the evangelicals that surrounded us in family, friends and atmosphere. There was no mockery, though, just amusement and solidarity. I guess. She took that photo many years after college, though, when we hadn't seen each other for a long, long time, and while I don't remember where I was when she sent it to me or what I was feeling, I must have thought it funny enough to save and stash away. Today, though, I felt buoyed up when I pulled it out of that stack of cards, buoyed up and out of myself and into laughter. Pierced. Saved. I know.

Thank you, Marie Ange. Body piercing did indeed save my life, at least for today.

How to Figure Out What's Wrong With Your Non-Verbal Child 233***

***This is an advanced class, designated 233 for the number of months said child has been non-verbal. If you have not advanced through How to Figure Out What's Wrong with Your Non-Verbal Child 1- 36, you may not find this class relevant to your life. You can read on for random stimulation but might find the contents upsetting or completely boring. In any case, the above photo is from the other day, during a brief respite from shallow, heaving breathing.

1. Take note of extreme number of seizures on one particular day, but figure it's the lower ratio CBD oil or the moon.
2. Wonder if the extreme number of seizures is actually a portent of an earthquake.
3. Take note of earthquake happening in home state but dismiss as reason given how far away earthquake is from home city.
4. Ponder why child is breathing shallow and hard, constantly.
5. Ask oneself: Is she breathing like this because she is having an asthma attack? Place head on chest and try to discern wheezing. Is she breathing like this because she is now more alert and thinks it's fun? Tell her to stop it right now because the breathing thing is driving everyone insane. Is she breathing like this as a sort of seizure? Observe that after getting higher ratio CBD, the seizures actually stop yet the breathing continues. Notice that she's particularly alert and happy and is once again having no seizures. Is the breathing self-stimulating? Decide that there's no way to tell.
6. Ponder why child is reluctant to drink anything. Force child to drink by dripping liquid into her mouth.
7. Obsess about hydration and constipation.
8. Start worrying about having to call The Doctor.
9. Tell oneself that every time you take her to the doctor, it costs hundreds of dollars, and it's probably a virus. 
10. Last night, during a coughing fit, observe the child to really be struggling to breathe and coughing up some pale yellowy mucous. Observe that she is very agitated and uncomfortable.
11. Worry that she might have aspirated something or have pneumonia. Think about the interaction of CBD and Onfi and wonder if it's all going to kill her.
12. Calm down when she calms down after you apply some Baby Vick's Lavender Vapo-Rub, but call the doctor anyway and make an appointment to take her in the morning.
13. Take the child in to the doctor and try to answer all the pertinent questions despite not being able to really tell the doctor what, exactly, the child feels. Be reminded that the last time the child was on an antibiotic, she was less than three years old when speech was still a viable hope.
14. Help hold the child down so that nurse can get a throat culture to check for strep. Nurse, doctor and you talk in calm and determined voices as you hold the child down on the floor and dodge her flailing legs and arms.
15. Stand up with child, look her in the eyes and firmly tell her to calm down, everything is all right. 
16. Cry a few tears when she throws her head into the tiny Buddha necklace that digs into your clavicle in just the right spot to cause obliterating momentary pain.
17. Feel grateful for the physical pain that can mask the emotional pain of the whole freaking situation.
18. Repeat above steps so that doctor can listen to lungs, heart and get a pulse oximeter reading.
19. Try to explain to doctor what you think might be the problem, and because doctor is so wonderful and states that since she never sees Sophie because she's always so healthy, she agrees and orders an x-ray of her lungs to check for aspiration and/or pneumonia.
20. Feel relieved and grateful that the quick strep test is negative but listen with sorrow to the doctor explain that her throat looks pus- y and that we shouldn't rule out strep until the culture is fully grown. 
21. Feel extra sorrow because this is why she hasn't been drinking. Her throat is sore, and she's unable to tell you.
22. Drive to x-ray place and curse oneself, silently, for not bringing the wheelchair. Apologize out loud to child who is sitting in back seat, less agitated but still breathing heavily.
23. Fill out forms in x-ray office with one leg over child because she won't stay still and you can't tell her to do so.
24. Go into the back of the office, don a lead apron and help the technician to hold the child while another technician operates the machine. 
25. Keep talking to extremely agitated child who doesn't understand what's going on, other than that she's wearing a heavy lead skirt, is being asked to raise her arms and stand in one place without moving.
26. Cry a bit inside.
27. Feel grateful when technician is finished, they get clear x-rays and she helps you to dress Sophie.
28. Feel tearful when the technician kneels down and puts Sophie's shoe on her foot.
29. Feel momentarily irritated when technician says God only gives you what you can handle! like you've never heard that statement before and actually might welcome it, but realize just as quickly that she is a goddess of a technician and who cares what bullshit she says so kindly?
30. Receive the news that the lungs are clear and feel nearly orgasmic with relief.
31. Walk back to the car and feel nearly tearful with gratitude for the valet dude who helps you to put the child in the car.
32. Drive home wondering if you'll figure out what the hell is wrong with child, knowing that she probably just has a virus.

A Rambling Post on Sex, Seizures, Medical Marijuana, High School, Dyslexia, Driving and Death

I think I might have stunned everyone, including myself, into silence with yesterday's post. Musing on sex, marriage and relationships just isn't included in my subtitle, and while there were a whole lot of readers, there were very few comments. Just so you know, it might have been true and it might have been fiction. David Sedaris calls it "realish."

Today, I've been driving all over the dang city -- down to Long Beach for Part II of Oliver's foray into the Irlen Method. What you see above is Oliver trying out different colored screens that will be fitted over clear lenses and will, hopefully, help him to read and address some of his learning problems. I nearly teared up at one point when he began reading quite fluently from the text in front of him. He was the happiest I've seen him in a long time, and we both have high hopes that this school year will be much improved. He picked out a badass pair of Ray Bans that will be fitted with the colored lenses, and as soon as we get them, I'll take a photo and show ya'll the new O. I might even assign him the remainder of War and Peace that I never got to before my fiftieth birthday.

On another note, Henry has enjoyed his first four days of high school, and when I drove up to the school to pick up the carpool this afternoon for the first time, I was struck by so much youthful beauty parading around the campus that it was nearly blinding. The girls all seemed impossibly long and smooth-legged, the boys wide-shouldered and ridiculously handsome. It was 100 degrees in the valley today, and by all appearances, high school is smokin' hot as they say. I don't know what the hell has happened since I was in high school, but I do not remember this at all.

Sophie has been home for a couple of days with a bad cold and cough. She had so many seizures the other day, before she showed symptoms of the cold, that I wondered if her relatively useless medications (Vimpat and Onfi) had completely plateaued and were now utterly useless. I also wondered if it was the Blue Moon, and then I wondered if it was the beginning of the end, and then I spent a fair amount of time irritated that I'm no closer to getting and trying the high CBD tincture of medical marijuana which leads me to truly dark and despairing thoughts that, after having had them off and on for nearly twenty years, causes me to completely dissociate from any emotion attached to dying, death. Does that make sense?

How do we do it? We just do.

The Plague, David Sedaris, Laughing and All That Is

So, the answer to Sophie's drinking strike last week and horrendous number of seizures, including the hideous gelastic ones, is probably a virus. I've been feeling puny and peaked the last few days and am most decidedly not well today. I've got cotton or something in my head and tears pricking at the backs of my eyes -- not the ones of sorrow -- and while I am able to be up and around and doing the daily shit I have to do, I'm ailing. The Brothers went to school, but both are feeling less than perfect, and who knows if The Husband will come down with it as well. It seems like this year has been a bad one for the stealth viruses for our family. I personally haven't felt great since I came back sick from a business trip I took to Washington, D.C. in early January. I think I'm going to blame it on the government.

Last night, I went to hear David Sedaris at UCLA, an annual treat, and as usual he did not disappoint. He read from his new book, told raucous stories, read from his diary and regaled us with the most vulgar jokes you could ever imagine. That man is funny, but he's also incredibly sweet, and I told my friend this morning that I just know he'd love us if he met us. The show was sold out, and the entire auditorium rocked with laughter which, to me, is about the best thing one can do if your heart is aching and you're tired of it all.

The other thing you can do is read a good book, and while I'm making my way through War and Peace, I'm also reading James Salter's novel All That Is. What a book -- the kind of perfect old-fashioned, carefully crafted writing that one rarely reads anymore -- not pretentious and overdone but real Writing. It's not a cheerful book, by any means, and the ambiance is similar to the stifling decadence and glamour of the show Mad Men. I just can't put it down. Here are two lines that stood out the other day enough for me to text them to a friend:

It seemed his manhood had suddenly caught up with him, as if it had been waiting somewhere in the wings.

And:

She looked as if difficulty of any kind was a remote thing.

I can relate to that last one. It's an awesome line, no?

Reader, what are you reading?