My Dad. No Pants.

So, while I was on vacation, I got to spend some time with my Dad.

We are really lucky in that he is not mean or that he does not wander off like many other Alzheimer's patients. He seems to take everything in stride, and although every once in a while one of the pictures that I take seems to show a very angry face, it is not something that shows up all of the time.

On most days, he sleeps until about eight ayem when his care person shows up, (both at the house and at the cape), and she helps him get cleaned up and dressed for the day, then she sits with him for an hour or so and helps to orient him to the morning. The woman who does this was the same one at my brother's house and at the Cape since she lives near to both.

Since I was up several mornings because of my sinus problems, I would see him early in the morning, His new thing is to get up and put something on that covers the top of him and then go out into the rest of the house. He knew that something was going on that was different and he didn't want to miss anything.

I would look up and say, "Good Morning Dad!" "Good Morning!", he would say.

"Dad, you don't have any pants on."

Looking down, "Oh, yes, I don't".

"Well, Dad. I think you should go back into your room and put some pants on."

"Do you think so?" (And he looks at me as if it were a rather odd thing to ask of anyone.)

Dad, I think that everyone will be expecting you to have pants on."

"Oh. O.K." And he would go back to his room.

The other thing is that you can not leave any food around because he will eat it all.

Some mornings, he will read the newspaper for hours. I have no idea if he gets anything out of it, but he pages back and forth and keeps looking at the pages. Considering his extremely short term memory, he could be re-reading the same stories over and over again.

But he is not unhappy and this is probably a miracle; or maybe it's just that he is and always has been a unerringly polite and proper gentleman.

I would be a liar if I didn't leave this time with a sense of my own possible future, one not so far off perhaps. On my Dad's side of the family, his father had Alzheimer's symptoms about ten years later than my Dad. My father's brother, who is older has just now shown symptoms, a decade later than my Dad. On my mother's side, no one.

So I wonder. Do I show up at my retirement dinner with no pants?



durlx

The Simpsons Movie!

I can't wait to see The Simpsons Movie!

http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/

My brother loooooves the Simpsons soooo much! He watches the show every day with the kids, which is something that his wife's family is not so sure about, but they love him and the kids so, well, I'm just sayin'.

I love the Simpsons also; what other show can stay that fresh over twenty years and THEN come out with a movie?

Oh! And another thing! On the show, there is a fast food place called the Quick E Mart which was a sort of stab at seven-eleven. Well, 7-Eleven got it and they converted 11 of their stores nation wide into Quick-E-Marts!


And one of them is right by my house! It's where I buy gas!

They repainted the whole place and inside they are selling "Krusty-oos" and "Buzz Cola" and some of the other stuff from the show. This particular store had not been doing great business, but it has been packed recently. I need to stop by and get some of the Krusty-ohs for my bro, but I haven't been able to get into the parking lot yet. I expect I'll stop by early in the next day or so.

Perhaps you are not a big Simpson's fan, but think of this; this show did a lot to change the perception of gay people in this country. It's true.

I've been ill.

This business with my sinus infection and the really bad allergy problems that I've had has been a rather large problem. I had over two months of intense allergy stuff and finally got that under control, but the sinus infection never really went away over a period of months. From mid-March until recently, it was never really gone and about 6 weeks ago it migrated into my lower jaw, where it really started to cause problems. It was like having several toothaches at the same time and it kept me up for many nights. It was impossible to sleep, because once my head tipped to one side, the pressure on the nerves in my jaw caused intense sharp pain. So, I sat up in bed, sometimes for two or three nights in a row and read, sometimes finishing a novel during the night. And then I would go into work.

This happened to me about nine years ago and I knew what antibiotic worked last time; I went through three and a half weeks of pain that time before an ENT prescribed the right thing. I told my allergist about it, but he had other ideas. So, first it was a short term course, then it was another kind of antibiotic and then a second try at that one and then a third one. All of them failed and especially the last one; so I ended up in the ER and told the doctor there that I needed doxycycline! She prescribed it to me and I it did the trick. If my doctor here had just given me that right away, I would have been fine for my vacation! It's a really cheap old tetracycline drug; 10 days worth costs $3.84. The drugs that didn't work, plus the cost of my ER visit was about $1800.

Now this allergist is rated as one of the best doctors in the city... his picture is on the cover of a recent Las Vegas Life magazine! Under his care, my allergy symptoms improved, but my over all health got worse. And for a really long time, like three months. And as it got worse, he did less. When I mentioned the pain, which was really bad, there was no real response; "Oh, it will get worse before it gets better" was the response that I got when I called his office from the Cape. My brother's wife said, "No. That's crap, I am taking you to the ER."

It's good to have family in the medicine business...




durlx

Cape Cod

It's been a while since I posted anything here and there are many reasons which I will get to as I go along, but first, I'll tell you a bit about my vacation. I flew to Boston on a redeye and took the bus out to Braintree, near my brother's house. He came to pick me up with the kids and we went out to breakfast and then to his house. It was wonderful to see the kids again; my nephew has grown so much in these last few months! No shyness this time, both kids yelled out "Uncle Bunny!" when they first saw me. It was sweet. Once we got to the house and I got settled, I took a nap which I really needed since I had been up for 30 hours, with the exception of a 4 hour nap on the plane.

The next day, my sister and her partner Chris arrived and we went to pick them up at the airport. Once again, my whole family was together in one place! My Dad was around during all this of course, but his story is part of another post. We got home, slept and then got up the next morning, packed the cars and headed down the coast to Mashpee, on Cape Cod to our fabulous vacation rental home.





The house was fabulous! As we walked through it for the first time, we kept saying; "Oh. my gad!, Oh, my Gad!" I finally said that we had to stop this because we sounded like those pitiful people on that home make over show! The house was pretty grand, but the lot it sat on was worth about 2.25 million dollars. Location is everything, of course. We had a 20 by 30 foot deck overlooking a fairly private beach with Martha's Vineyard just across the bay. It was heaven. I woke up Sunday morning and there were a million shore birds singing and the sound of the surf in the background. So relaxing. I love the Cape!


It had recently been my birthday and my sisters partners birthday as well, so we had a cake on Sunday night.


And we had a visit from BatBoy! Evan is incredibly cute right now; people stop and stare at him, but he has this very clever sense of humor.


one evening, I gave all the kids all these lightup things and he loved it, but the glasses were wierd for him, he didn't know if he liked them or not, but he was so patient with us for all of the pictures.

There were more pictures, but they ended up on my brother's hard drive instead of my portable one... oops. Also, this is just the good stuff that happened. I had a relapse on Monday of my sinus infection and ended up in the hospital ER on Tuesday, which sucked hugely. Fortunately, my sister-in-law's mom runs the ER there, so I got VIP treatment, but it totally ate up three days of my vacation. There's more to the story about the sinus infection, but that will be in a separate post.

I flew back to Vegas on Thursday and went right back to work. On the 5 hour ride back, I slept, but during the minutes that I was awake, I must admit to a severe case of disgruntlement. I went back to work the next morning and after an hour I was ready for another vacation!

But more about that in the other posts.



durlx