Thursday, Happy Halloween!

     We are ready the candy bowl is full, I will be teaching but mom and Hubs can answer the door.  Halloween was my favorite holiday as a child.  I think I trick or treated into college.  I was very small and could still wear children's shoes when I was a freshman.  I think I just really loved candy.  Okay I still love candy.

     Mom was sick before bed last night, but I have to say she slept better.  She sis not have a good day yesterday, she burned a cake, and she had a long phone call from a woman in her church who is a retired lawyer.  She is going to work with mom to try to resolve the problems with the boys.  Of course she told mom everything we have been telling her for 45 years and mom could not rudely stop the conversation.  It will be a lot more difficult for her to back peddle with these people.  She also had a harsh call from my younger sister, who repeated the same things that the lawyer had said.  She does not want to hear these things.  She would rather live in an abusive chaotic fiklthy mess and complain than stand up to her abusers.
But we are all so tired of the mess.  We three girls have just had it, and it is hard to see our mother like this.

     Took mom to Costco last night.  She likes to get out at least once a day.  She is going to start making aprons for Christmas.  I love aprons.  She has been doing some of my ironing and is now up getting dinner together.  Hubs has been loving this, a good meal every night and baked treats.  I will be as big as a house if she doesn't stop.

     I simply must get some bookwork done.  I mean really what is my problem?  Don't tell me I am in denial and I can't take the truth right now:)


saga continued:

     In the early years of the studio I tried to keep up my schedule, but it was really hard.  Things started to drop by the wayside and that was okay.  Three years in I was involved with the High School.  We were doing "Guys and Dolls".  I needed to make new hot box dresses.  I also had 28 new and very complicated Celtic costumes to make.  My dancers kept growing.  I just remember being so busy.  Running, running, trying to keep up.  B was a freshman in High School and the flier for her cheer leading squad.  She had developed a bad cavity in an upper back molar and it needed a root canal.  I was really upset with her orthodontist whom I felt was too busy and ran from chair to chair barely looking at his patients.  I would always ask is every thing okay?  He would say yes and move on.  So why in the Hell is there a cavity big enough to drive a truck into on the back molar?  Were you not a dentist first?  You could not see that when it was small and say something?  No he couldn't, it was wasn't his table, like a bad waitress he moved on.

     I had taken B into the dentist and she was in his office all afternoon.  Like four hours.  He was having a really hard time with this tooth.  They had to send other patients home so he could concentrate on B.  When I finally picked her up she was a mess.  She went back to school the next day as Cheer Leading Championships were a week away.  She seemed fine and I continued the crazy schedule, but on a Thursday afternoon the school called and said she was sick.  I went to pick her up.  As I was waiting in the foyer a teacher that I know well came out and we were talking.  He was a resource room officer and I did not notice B had come up behind me.  She must have been there for a few minutes and she finally said, "Mom can we go?"  Her voice was very cranky.  The teacher jumped all over her about being rude to her mother and not waiting while adults talked.  I was embarrassed for her, for me and even for him, as I felt he was over reacting, but then he did work with the worst kids in the school.  On the way out the door B threw up all over the concrete.  She continued getting sick all the way home.  Thanks goodness I had brought a plastic bag.

     All day Friday B was sick.  Vomiting,fever, diarrhea.  I bought orange juice as that is what she wanted.  Yuck? When you are sick?  7-up crackers.  But she continued sleeping and vomiting.  I called the dentist, could this be an infection from the root canal?  He said no his daughter was home with the flu also.  B started to turn red like she had a sun burn, she was blotchy, I continued to watch her and sew.  All day Saturday, we watched and listened and I really needed to go out a get some supplies for the big project I was working on, but I kept putting it off as I did not want to leave B.  Finally at about 7:30 I had to leave so I put Hub's downstairs with her and said I will be back in a while.  I left with my list of errands.  I got to the first store to get milk and eggs, I knew I also had to go to K-mart and Wal-mart.  A voice came into my mind as clear as a bell.  It said not to go to Wal-mart or any where else, but to go straight home.  If B stood up and lost control of her bowels I was to take her straight to the hospital.  How strange,  I really needed those supplies, but I went home.

     I walked into the family room and B stood up in her PJ's and lost it.  She did not know who she was or what she was doing.  Hubby and I were in a state of shack.  I said, " we are taking her in to the hospital."  Now we had to clean her up and it took us forever.  She could not help us and was incoherent most of the time, she kept losing her fluids and finally we just wrapped plastic bags around her and took her to the car.  I remember we put her in the front seat and she reached over and buckled her seat belt.  In my mind I was asking myself how a kid that was too sick to stand, could remember and buckle her seat belt.  We drove to the hospital, it was the height if flu season and again the voice said go to another hospital they will never get in her in on time.  What? Why?  I went across the bridge into Washington to a smaller hospital that just did surgeries on older people.  We went to the emergency room door which was locked as it was after hours.  We were helping B to stand.  You had to read instructions on how to open the door or call for help.  Both hub's and I were too distraught to do this,  however B read them and hit a button and the doors opened.  Again I asked myself, how can she not be able to walk and be so alert?

     Once we got inside I told a nurse I was really worried I said look at her skin, when you press on it she has a sunburn.  The doctor that was sitting behind a desk, practically climbed over the counter.  He was an older Chinese man that had spent many years at a large University health service.  He had retired in Idaho and worked night shift on the weekends.   His immediate diagnosis, Toxic shock in it's final stages.  We were quickly ushered out of the room and could hear the rushing and clattering of many people trying to set up an intensive care unit in a hospital, that had no intensive care.  There were no beds at the other hospital and B's blood pressure was so low she could not be life flighted out to a larger hospital.  They would do what they could.  The funny thing is that it was now about 1o'clock in the morning.  I remember them coming in with papers to sign.  The last one was to harvest her organ's.  The doctor said, " She is in peak physical condition and could benefit many lives."  It was February 13th,  22 years before on this date we had, had the same conversation with a doctor.  How could we lose a child on the same day 22 years later?  I remember Hub's turned and asked me,, "Can lightening strike in the same place twice?"  We were told they would keep her on life support until the girls could get there to say goodbye, but if her blood pressure did not stablalize we were out of options.

saga cont:

Must go teach dance.  Don't eat to much candy!
have a great and productive day.

kim