Doggone It

There are a lot of things about living with dogs that make life more complicated. The most obvious is that you can never just pick up and leave town for a few days. With cats, you could probably get away with that. Not so with dogs. Particularly older dogs with special needs and medications. Then there's the dog hair. It gets every where. It's on your clothes, in your car, in your briefcase, for crying out loud. Like wearing black? Forget about it! And your home will be covered in dust. I always say that I clean twice as often to keep a house that's half as clean. And that's if you never have any behavioral problems, like chewing up books or shoes or other dogs. Then there's always the little accidents. Plan on keeping lots of paper towels, cleansers and a carpet shampooer close by. And don't forget air fresheners. There are not enough in the world to keep the house from smelling like a wet dog on a rainy summer day. Oh, and don't plan on sitting all the way through a movie unless it's at a theatre. There's no way you won't have to put in on pause to let some dog in or out, probably multiple times.

So, why do I do it? Because no one, and I do mean no one, loves you like your dog. They give themselves completely over to you. They believe in everything you say and do without question. They are always glad to see you, and they don't care what you look like when they do. Fat, skinny, old, young, you are the most beautiful human they have ever beheld. They would lay down their life for you. They accept it when you are cross with them and forgive it. They will protect you from intruders, and they will try to protect you from things that intrude into your heart. If they can't, then you can see how it hurts them too. Yes, without doubt, no one loves you like your dog. And, here I am surrounded by a house full of unconditional love.

And all these loving, gentle creatures lived through all of the chaos like the rest of us. They were hardly immune to it. I didn't understand it for the longest time, but we would have occasional dog fights break out. I did know enough to know that certain times would be more prone to setting it off than others: the holidays, for instance. But, sometimes things would be seemingly just dandy and one of them would jump another one. Almost always, the one doing the attacking would be Noelle, the Dalmatian, and the one being attacked would be Ashley, the pit cross. Ashley never started a fight, but she could certainly finish one. Generally Noelle would emerge the worse for wear. At one point, my vet was so concerned, she all but insisted I work with an animal behaviorist. I actually spoke to one and was considering it when Kelsey left for residential treatment the first time. Then a funny thing happened. The fights all but stopped. And not gradually, but suddenly. Occasionally, Noelle would act like she was thinking about it. So, I would separate them again, and every once in a while something would actually break out, like a year ago when the cat knocked a bird out of the tree and all eight dogs wanted it. But, it was pretty immediately clear that the tension in the house centered around the eating disorder, and as soon as it was out of the house, so was the reason to be combative. Noelle did try and challenge Chappy when he first came to live with us. He turned all 85 pounds toward her, raised his ears just a bit as if to say, "You really want a piece of this? Well, bring it on." and stared at her. She literally turned tale and left the room, and has never even remotely challenged him again. As a matter of fact, things have mellowed to the point where Noelle and Ashley lounged on the couch together with me as I wrote the previous post. I still act with caution and generally make sure they are separated when we're not here, and it's still clear that Noelle gets jealous of Ashley if she thinks she's gotten too much attention and still probably wouldn't invite her to a slumber party, but no one ends up with stitches any longer.

At first, I thought they fought for the usual doggy reasons: two similarly sized females, one being introduced into the house as a full grown adult when the other one was already established. But, looking back on it, I think it was more because Noelle is joined to my hip whenever she can be and Ashley was "Kelsey's dog", coming into the household about the same time Kelsey began to slide. As I mentioned, Ashley slept upstairs and spent most of her time with the girls. She would lay on the landing when the girls were down here. I think Noelle came to symbolize the tension surrounding Kelsey's eating disorder with Ashley, maybe even blame her for it. I thought the fights might pick up when Kelsey moved back in, but they didn't. I think I'd had enough therapy under my belt by then to keep my tension level steady, at least in comparison, and they are, after all, older and slower. Maybe it's just too much trouble to pick a fight these days.

I worried again about how the dogs would react on the long horrible flight home after receiving the news that Kelsey had died. Why in the world would I even think about such a thing? The thoughts just kept streaming in, that's why. I could not just shut the brain down, and I worried about all kinds of random things. But, I thought for certain that the old behaviors would emerge with the undeniable tension that was sure to permeate the house. That never happened, I am relieved to say.

I don't remember how they reacted the night we stumbled in from the airport. I was too sad and tired to really pay much attention. But, the next morning and for the next several days after I noticed something odd. It was almost as though they had gotten together and given themselves an assignment to look after us. Seemingly every day one dog in particular would be on duty. That dog would be by my side in particular wherever I went, including poking his or head in the shower, looking up at me solicitously, as if to say, "Can I get you anything?" The first day it was Chappy's turn. The cheerleader. He brought toys to me, sat with me, did little goofy things to try and catch my attention, but I don't think I really noticed what he was up to until my mother-in-law came over. As much as we love her, she made things harder that first day. Her ideas on how things should be handled for the service were different than ours, and certainly not what Kelsey would have wanted, so we were trying to gently tell her no as she cried, so Chappy tried to block her from me. Literally. At one point, she went to hug me, and he slid himself between us, almost knocking her down.

After that, I noticed that one dog in particular seemed to be the one who stayed just a little closer on any given day. Even the blind dog and the oldest, senile dog took their turn. Precious, my oldest, was particularly sweet when she tried to be comforting by leaning her tired, frail frame into me. The one dog who didn't take a turn was Cheyenne. She seemingly could not handle the weight of the grief. I tended to sit outside in the mornings, surrounded by the pack, drink coffee and cry. Really cry. Cheyenne would look at me pityingly, as if begging me to stop, then slide under the deck. Occasionally she would pop back up to see if I was still crying. If I was, down she'd go. If I'd stopped, she'd stay with me. It is as if the level of the grief was just too much for her to bear in her owner. She has always been very intuitive about my moods, trying to cheer me up when I'm sad or upset, burying her head in my leg often and pawing at me, letting me hug on her if need be. But, she became overwhelmed with my being overwhelmed and let the other dogs have a turn looking out after me.

She has returned to her role as my chief care taker, and I have noticed that she always seems worried about me now, doing the head-butting-into-leg-thing often, never letting me wander into the bathroom alone, and making sure she's watching nearly every move, as if she's a little bit worried I'm going to do something drastic. I didn't understand why she seemed to think I was sad now, after all this time, until two people told me recently that I am sad and it's noticeable. I think I had stopped realizing my current state was anything less than normal for me. I guess it is the new normal, it's just not a good normal, and Cheyenne is aware. So, I guess I will know when I come through this when she no longer gives me that sad, worried stare, and lets me have some privacy in the bathroom again.

I know that dogs feel sadness, they grieve when we grieve. I just still don't know if they understand who is missing, and what they think about that though. I watched Ashley in particular for some clue to that, but Kelsey had long since stopped paying much attention to her in favor of Tum-Tum, and Ashley had resigned herself to it with the same quiet patience she generally has shown for everything in life. So, aside from taking her turn in the rotation, I didn't notice a change in her behavior. And, I really don't know if they still recall who was lost even if they once understood it. Do they think she's just on a long trip maybe? Do they care particularly, other than they want us to be happy? Do they miss her terribly and just buck it up so as not to add to our burden? Are they glad she's gone maybe because they know that means so is The Beast? While I can generally communicate with my animals, the deer who come every day included, those are the deeper questions I have not yet been able to discourse with them about. Maybe someday we'll get to that point. In the meantime, I can only ponder. And light a soy candle - it smells like dog in here.

Eight is Enough

So, I've written about my friends and my family, but I haven't really told the whole story of my family because I have not introduced you to the most plentiful members of it; my dogs. I know I have mentioned in passing that there are eight of them. Add to that the two cats and the Beta fish, and it's quite the zoo. Why do I have so many? Well, the answer sort of depends on how you mean the question. I can tell you how they all came to be here, but if you want to know why I ever wanted to gather that many around me, then that's a complicated answer dating all the way back to my childhood. Briefly, like just about every other kid, I liked animals as a young girl. Most of my peers eventually grew out of it, but I never really did. As with many things about my personality, I think it had a lot to do with being an only child in a small town. I just made friends with animals easily, and there were more of them around than there were eligible friends. I tried to be friends with a popular girl who lived behind us. She didn't like me, but her yellow lab did, so the dog joined a circle of four legged companions from the neighborhood who hung out at my house. And in addition to that core little group, I could just attract them. Having some dog or other follow me home was not that unusual, like a nerdy Piped Piper. My childhood friend Nikki was walking with me once and watched as a dog and I became very excited to meet one another. Completely straight faced, she said, "You must have been a dog in your past life." I didn't think that was a bad thing to say to me. Like every dog loving child, I dreamed of being a vet until one day I saw a girl in my class coming in from the playground with a pretty deep gash on her knee, bleeding profusely. As I recall, she was actually fairly calm about it, but I felt a little queasy, my stomach did a couple of flip flops, and I knew then and there my calling lay elsewhere. What I then dreamed of doing was making a successful living and just having as many dogs as I possibly could have. And for a while after we moved into this house and this property, it looked like that might actually come true.

When we moved here eleven years ago, I had four dogs. Three of them are still with us, and the remainder, with the exception of Chappy, joined us our first years here, before Kelsey and Marissa demanded the level of attention and funding that they did. And I accumulated them by reputation mostly. Word got out that I was a sucker for a lost or needy dog. All of the dogs came from either a shelter or were strays except for two, one who belonged to a policeman who had to give her up in advance of being assigned a police dog. One other was from a litter from a Dalmatian that belonged to a friend of my sister-in-law. My husband drove to Fort Worth and back to pick her up for a birthday surprise in 1995. Hence her name, Myrna, for the actress with whom I share that birthday. I got calls from people I knew and people I didn't telling me about a dog under a kill order at a shelter or a stray who needed a home, and I would think to myself, "What's one more? We can afford one more." But then one became two and so on. Who knows where I would have ended up if first Kelsey and then Marissa had not put a stop to it. I eventually learned to say no because I no longer could give them the attention and care they needed, and the money it takes to care for this many animals was competing with the money I needed to care for my human children. Only one dog has joined us since, and his is an interesting story all in and of itself. Actually, they all are. I could devote an entire blog to just these guys alone; they all have unique stories and personalities.

Once things began heating up with the humans, I did consider, I confess it, disbanding the pack and trying to place them in separate homes that weren't as dysfunctional as ours. I never got past considering that move though because I would look at all of their faces and imagine saying goodbye to any one of them, and what it would do to them to split them up, and that would be the end of that. But, in keeping them altogether, they have paid out in the kind of care they deserve. In a group of that many dogs, even in the best of times, some things fall by the wayside. I would try walking them back in the day in groups of twos and threes, but what working woman has time to consistently do that? So, I tried to make sure they at least got run-around time in a portion of our property in the far back, but it has been vandalized to where there are holes that they can slip through, and I've never had the time or funds to fix it, so only certain dogs can accompany me back there. I don't brush their teeth individually and Greenies for that many dogs is cost prohibitive. I don't bathe them as often as I should (that was the girls' job when they were younger). They get a mid grade food, but not the really good stuff. And, as the medical bills piled up, they got less trips to the vet. This year, I got their shots at a low cost clinic held at the nearby elementary school. There was no physical exam and all the expensive bells and whistles that a vet normally does.

For all of that, my husband tells me they are spoiled and very happy. Looking around me now, that seems to be true. They seem content and comfortable. As you may have already gathered, that means I am surrounded by a slumbering group of geriatric dogs. There will be more losses we have to endure over the next few years. We had been steeling ourselves for them. I have lost dogs before and it's painful. In some ways, it's more painful in the short run than losing a human friend or family member because they are so utterly dependent upon you, so the loss is so very personal. Of course, that is before you lose a child, and feel that kind of searing hole in your heart. Then, you tend to put the loss of a pet in a different perspective. Nonetheless, each of my pack holds a piece of me and that piece will be lost when they leave me, so I push those days as far into the future as I can. For at least two of the oldest, there my be very little push left. I take one to the vet tomorrow. Already diabetic and blind, she now has an enlarged mammary gland, and I expect the worst. So, I thought now, while we are still together, I should tell some of their story. Because they are a part of the family and endured what we went through too. They reacted to it like we did: at first, badly, then recouping somewhat and learning to function better with The Beast in the room. It has taken me this long to write about the dogs in particular because I could never quite decide how much they understood about what was happening, up to and including Kelsey's death, and how much they were just reacting to the emotions of their humans. I still am not totally sure. They feel loss, and they know when people they love are gone (I have a number of cute stories about our biggest dog, Chappy, who loves Marissa in particular and his reactions to me and her when she's left for any extended period of time). Kelsey was in and out of the house many times over the last few years, so I'm not sure if they really understand that she's permanently gone or if they just knew that something catastrophic had happened that caused us to be very sad. I believe very much in the intelligence of canines. They understand, I believe, certain things on a level that we do not. I believe they can sense a person's essence and know what is in their heart better than we can. That is why I trust my dogs' reaction to strangers. If they have a bad reaction, then I'm on guard. But, they have limits. Mainly it's a language barrier, if you will. They have to infer from a situation what is happening. When I took Marissa to Alldredge, I couldn't tell Chappy that she'd be home in three months, so he could just relax, for example. So, for that reason, I don't know what they all think. Nor do I know how long they think it. The school of thought is that dogs have short memories, so have they already forgotten who Kelsey is? I tend to dismiss that actually. If that was truly the case, then there would not be stories of dogs making their way across country to find their owners. Chappy after a few days would not have cared that Marissa was gone. Maybe they don't remember which of them left the puddle on my floor ten minutes after it happened, but I think the humans in their lives imprint on them permanently.

I will introduce you to them briefly, in no particular order, as the end of part one of my saga. There is Cheyenne, Mother's favorite and the Alpha dog. She is part Husky and part Coyote. She is a serious dog with occasionally fits of frivolity. She rules the house with a somewhat iron grip. She hates it when I leave, and will occasionally decide to try and stop me by getting in my way to try and block me, or pawing at my shoes so I can't put them on. She is highly intelligent and very intuitive. Noelle, the Dalmatian, is much her opposite - good natured and none too bright. She loves me most of all, and is rarely anywhere but by my side. When she is excited, which is often, she bangs her tale into anything close by and bares her teeth, which causes her to sneeze. People not familiar with the breed are scared of that look, but it's basically a wide grin, almost a laugh. Tawny, who is also known as Weiner Dog and Weinus, is an odd mix of breeds, but we think part dachshund, which gives her the tendency to dig. She is an escape artist, which is how she came to be with me. She was found wandering down the middle of the road in a property we manage. She is highly social, and loves it when we have company. Ashley is part bit bull. To try and calm the reaction that engenders, I call her a terrier mix officially. While her temper has gotten shorter with the other dogs as she's aged, she is a loving and gentle companion to us. She was Kelsey's favorite and Ashley loved her deeply in return. She lived upstairs with the girls during her first years here. Chappy, the class clown. The largest of the dogs at 85 pounds, is a total Gentle Ben. The only dog who likes to swim, he's the one who wants to play, romp and cheer you up. Mryna, a Lab/Dalmatian mix, is the nurturer of the group. Before she went completely blind she tended after the others, keeping them clean. She still will seek them out by smell to wash out ears and eyes when needed. Luke, a collie mix who hates being brushed, is usually a hot mess, but has spent most of his days happily being the only male until Chappy came along. He even pees like a girl. Think of him like the gay friend in the group of women. Then there is Precious (and no, I did not name her that). She is the oldest and is completely senile. She is Lab/Malamute. She loves Greg most of all the humans, having come from a policeman's family where the man ruled the roost. She suffered in my eyes from one cardinal sin, she wasn't my Daphne. She came to us too soon after I lost a dog of similar size and build, and I was still in deep, deep mourning. Until Cheyenne, I never thought I'd love anything the way I did Daphne, and poor Precious has suffered a bit of an attention deficit because of it. Even Mother once commented that she was the best of the dogs but got the least attention, but she has been a steadfast and obedient companion.

There is the cast of characters who were with us when the news hit that Kelsey had died. Next up, how they handled life with The Beast and now without it.

Are You Ready For Some Football?

Okay, I had a full night of sleep last night for the first time since last Sunday. Odd, but it took an entire week to recover the routine following Mother's tirade at the hospital. The main issue was trying to recoup the hours I lost at work on Monday, particularly when I lost more on Tuesday spending some time with Marissa, and then there was the extra preparation for a potluck luncheon and costume contest on Friday. I believe in those activities because they build a sense of camaraderie and teamwork, but the timing, as often happens in real life, was less than fortunate. I just felt like I was climbing up a very steep hill all week. When that happens, self pity tends to creep in and things get ugly.


The house looks like a tornado swept through it. There is mail just about every where, some of it opened, some of it not. I would just drop it on random surfaces. A lot of it is on the coffee table surrounding the lap top. Looking at the little piles, I worry that I'm becoming a clutter bug like my mother. But, not to worry, this is a bye week and we get that extra hour, so hopefully I will have time to right the ship. But, first, as I spent some brain cells wondering why I thought I could actually hold down a job under my current circumstances, I chewed over the vague guilt I had over leaving Mom in Greg's hands for a while last Sunday and marveling at how, through all the chaos of our lives, there haven't been more moral conundrums like it. Because there really have not been. Until last year that is. Last year was a challenge to watch every game while Mother was bouncing from one care arrangement to the next all through the fall. I faced it and overcame, but only with the aid of modern technology and the fact that the Steelers got a lot of national attention with their tough schedule. I worry that the streak won't last. There are too many potential obstacles, I'm afraid, and there will come some Sunday when I have to face up to the fact that my boys will have to carry the day without me. But, before that, even with both Kelsey and Marissa in full blown disarray, Sundays were not a particular issue. So, I wondered about that some this week.

For one thing, granting myself leave to watch the game every week is the one thing I can tell you I have no guilt over. Odd as that might sound given how much guilt I feel over my children's upbringing, and how incredibly selfish it must sound. But, while I believe sincerely that parents need to put their kids first because they made the choice to put them on the earth, and now have to own up to raising them to be responsible humans, they can't do that very well if they completely sublimate their own needs. Think of it as re-charging one's battery. And the kids never seemed to mind it. For one thing, it was a given since they were little and they really knew no other routine. They grew up, like I did, to the trappings of the game. That particular crowd noise on Saturdays and Sundays (listen to crowds of various sports without watching, you can tell what the sport is by the ebbs and flows of the spectator noise) was the background for whatever else was happening, good or bad. For Kelsey and Marissa, it was comfortable, as it had been for me. In all the wreckage, there was that modest amount of normalcy. On Saturday, there were the Longhorns, on Sunday there were the Steelers. Fall Sundays were family days and football was the centerpiece. Mother, until the big blow up in 2007, drove herself over every Sunday to watch with us, and either Greg or I would cook an early dinner. Granted, I know now that there were times when they used the fact that I would be distracted to get away with things, but once they got to the point where they genuinely were trying to recover, there was a comfort in knowing what every week would bring. I think that is born out by Marissa now, who came over last Sunday and sat playing Solitaire on the computer during most of the game. When she wasn't playing virtual cards, she was working on a research paper for school. She spent very little time actually watching the game, but there is something about the setting that is comfortable to her. She could have done both those things at her dorm or her boyfriend's apartment, but it wouldn't have been the same, and there are some traditions that are worth keeping. So, really, I never had to think much about it in the past. They played, we all watched.

A routine repeated in countless households all over the country. There is small wonder that major league sports are such big businesses. One can argue that we could have better spent our time together actually talking to one another, or doing an activity that didn't involve holding down the couch. I won't argue with that, but it was what we did and how we rolled. I still roll that way, and hope to roll all the way to a 7th Super Bowl title. But, we'll see about that.

(By the way, here's my little Kordell getting ready to rep the Steelers in Disney World. Ironically, her favorite player on the current roster wears 10. I'm hoping that her Karma extends to us reaching a 10th Super Bowl someday. Now that would be something!)

Observations from a Different Field

I should not have sat down. The lack of motion is causing the adrenaline to leave my body, and I can feel it leaking out through my toes. And I still have things to do. I hadn't planned on spending the last two days in a flurry of activity trying to juggle my life and work with Mother's care while she spent a miserable 36 hours in the hospital due to an elevated heart rate. She is back "home" now in her other hospital bed at her nursing home, which she could sporadically remember the name of throughout the day. But, she had to make sure she meted out her dose of grief and aggravation before she got back there, that's for sure. She is a notoriously awful patient in the best of times, and her mind has left those times long behind. The natural combativeness of her senility combines with her long held Bad Patient status to become almost a lethal dose of nastiness. At least it's lethal to me. I don't know how, but the nursing staff that was the victim of her constant haranguing ire, seemed to be able to slough it off like the proverbial water of the back of the proverbial duck. I know they receive training in this sort of thing, but when she actually means it to hurt personally, you wonder how it doesn't sting just a little. Maybe it does, but they never let it show.

I have learned some tips for successfully handling someone like my mother in the hospital. Allow me to share. The first thing she will always, always tell you if you're assigned to her is that she is a nurse, so she understands what is going on. Of course, with one look at her you understand that she has not practiced for a number of years, like maybe since the last Ice Age. The next thing you have to understand is that she wants you to address her, not anyone else in the room. Even if that other person is easier to speak to, both because they can hear you and then understand what they are hearing. That other person in the room is not in control of the decisions. She will make that very clear. If you ignore it, you will do so at your peril, and then later at the peril of the other poor schmuck who is stuck in the room. If you are good, you will look directly at her and address her, but then glance occasionally at the other person to verify what she is saying. Hopefully the person who is accompanying her has not tried to crawl under a chair in humiliation at what she is saying and can gesture, nod, shake the head, hold up fingers or whatever they need to do to paint the true picture. It would be better if you are white and from somewhere other than the south and speak with anything other than a midwestern accent. If you are not white, which, in all likelihood you are not, I pray your skin is very thick. Forget what you are taught about speaking softly so as not to alarm your patient. She can't hear a brass band playing right next to her, so shouting is the order of the day, and you will do better if you are leaning in to her while you do it. Be prepared, despite all that, to repeat yourself often. But, you'll be in good company, she will be repeating herself like a broken record. Or, as she says it, an "unbroken" record. She will tell you with conviction that she hates being in the hospital. You will believe that without any effort because she will make your shift completely miserable just to prove the point. And, finally, if you want her to do anything that resembles cooperation, make sure the companion in the room is not her daughter.

Because I learned something this particular trip, in part thanks to the Steelers. When I was not around, she was pliable. She might fuss and complain, but she would eventually do as she was told. With me present, she dug not only a line in the sand, but the line was a total ravine that absolutely no one could cross. I found that interesting. But, first, since I am sure you are curious, let me explain how the Steelers factor into all of this. Now, if I do that, do not tell Mother. She does not know I skipped out on her for this particular reason. My skipping out on her would not bother her really, but the fact that I got to do something she really wanted to do would.

So, trusting you to keep my secret, here it is. There is a cadence to fall Sunday mornings for Greg and me. Maybe made more important by our loss, maybe it was always inviolate and we just never noticed because it was never tested before this past year, even during Kelsey and Marissa's worst days. Whatever the case, there is a routine to our mornings during the season that is comfortable, expected and not easily trifled with, and the day was just getting under way when I got a call from the nursing home. Mother was having chest pains and her heart rate was elevated. God help me, but the first thing I did was look at the clock. I know a thing or two about surviving an emergency room visit and Rule No. 1 is: don't be in a hurry to do anything else. At about 9:30 AM, I shuddered at what that did to my being set to watch a noontime start. But, no real worries. I had already checked and knew the local Fox station had us on the schedule. I'd just set the game to record. Now I knew the choice to show my game in a central Texas market had raised some eyebrows. The Texans, also playing an NFC team at home, were the default to be shown on Fox and there had been some talk radio chatter about the station planning on airing my game instead during the week. Well, I went to set the DVR, and what do I see? You guessed it. They had capitulated at Fox and were showing the Texans. We have Direct Ticket on satellite for this very crisis, but there is no recording of the games with that option. I stood there dumbfounded for a minute, my ten year plus record of never missing a game was in serious jeopardy. I was busy trying to find out a way to stream the game on my laptop when Greg offered to spell me so I could watch the game. This is not his fight, so I couldn't quite figure out why he would do something so unselfish, but he was seriously sincere in his offer. He would trade out for me at 11:30 so I could make the noon kickoff. I had a little debate with myself, the Good Daughter popped up on my right shoulder and told me that I needed to stay by her side, it was only a game. The Bad Daughter popped up, dressed in Black and Gold and her Terrible Towel, and reminded me that I hadn't missed a game this century, and with the unbeaten Vikings coming to town, this was not the one to start. Besides, Greg should know what he was getting into if he really wanted the responsibility of caring for her if something happens to me. The Good Daughter never stood a chance. With that settled, off I went to meet her in the emergency room. I actually beat her there. She had taken her time and eaten breakfast and been dressed (in Viking purple from head to toe, I might add) and then was brought over across the parking lot by ambulance, complaining the whole way that she had to be back before the game started. She continued that rant over and over, along with two or three other points until I thought I would go mad, but she consistently made it clear she had no intention of staying at the hospital. The ER doctor was still running tests when Greg showed up to take his shift, and the Good Daughter popped back up to try and get me to do the right thing again, but the Bad Daughter waved her Towel and off I went, leaving Greg to call me occasionally to ask me questions about her medical history. We told her I was going back to get her mail (which she had pointedly asked for earlier), and it just happened to take three and a half hours to fetch. In the interim, she allowed herself to be admitted to the hospital. I cannot even count on one hand the number of times I have spent excruciating hours in the emergency room with her over the last year since she was brought to Hearthstone, and every time they had wanted to admit her and every time she had refused. I definitely made note of it, but put it down to how much she adores my husband.

My husband, for his part, was more than glad to switch back and go home to watch his game, and then the fun really began. They wheeled her down for an MRI and something happened down there, because she was riled up but good when she came back. They had not been able to do the test because she had insisted they stop, but she had laid flat long enough that her back was hurting her severely. She refused the pain pill I asked for her, and she refused to eat. She began the litany of racist invectives and insisted that she be allowed to check herself out. In case you are wondering, I do not have Medical Power of Attorney, but even if I had, the patient, no matter how senile they may be, has the final say in their care as long as they are able to communicate, no matter how scrambled that may be. I was, in short, relatively powerless to stop her if she was indeed set to leave. On the other hand, if you check out of a hospital against medical advice, you get to find your own way home. In this case, that means me. Finally, at about 9:00 that night, I had taken just about enough of it and reminded her I had buried a daughter earlier this year, and I had all I could take of her games. Then I walked out. That broke her. She agreed to stay. I walked back in, and the nurses got her settled for the night. I was rattled by having to dredge up the memory of my poor lost daughter to shame her into doing what was in her own best interest and determined right then and there that I would not do it again.

Sleep was elusive that night, so I was ragged and tired the next morning as I arrived to a new day of her insisting she would participate in no further tests and insisted that she be taken home. She again refused a meal, meaning that she had not eaten in over 24 hours. The charge nurse worked on breaking her down for a while, using the same therapy inspired speech I'd paid thousands to learn. Nope. Then a female doctor came in, and I thought we were lost for certain. Not only was she Indian, but she was a she. Not a good thing for a doctor to be in Mother's eyes. She said the same things the nurse had said, and in the same good manner, knowing when to let something Mother said that was clearly untrue drop and repeating herself endlessly, while not becoming irritated that she was having the same cyclic conversation over and over and over again. Finally, she got Mother to agree to a stress test, but that was all. The test was scheduled for 1:00, so I gladly went to work for a few hours, admittedly staying there longer than I had originally intended. By the time I got back I found Mother not only happily eating more than I've seen her devour in a single sitting for more than a year, but also having allowed herself to endure not just the stress test, but three others with one more to go! She was flattering her nurse and just pleased as punch with all the attention. Now I knew it wasn't just Greg's charms that had worked on her. It was my absence!

Why, oh why, I asked myself, did she feel the need to be so abusive and stubborn when I was around, only to become pliant when I wasn't? The only answer that sprang to mind is that she feels compelled to show me how independent she still is, and make sure I know she's in charge of her own body. Maybe it's that simple, maybe it's something completely different, but one thing is for certain; we are still, at the end of the day, stuck with one another. There is no one else I can call in to reason with her. Greg went above and beyond, but he has less decision making authority than even I do, and it's not his task. This is a conundrum I have yet to ponder fully, I am way too tired still, but for now, she's back in her own room, safe enough, with three new medications added to the long roster. I have a bye week just in case something else comes up soon, but I'll need all my patience if it does, so I will ponder later and sleep now.

Competing Interests

Yesterday I had a Wardrobe Day. At least once a month for as long as I can remember, I've had one. It's the day when the outfit I had planned on wearing just looks awful, so then you're scrambling to find something else, and nothing fits right or looks right together, and then you can't get the right jewelry, shoes, hair, etc. In other words, absolutely everything about your appearance sucks. And the clock is ticking rapidly, threatening to make me late while I frantically scramble to pull something together. Ladies, please tell me you know what I'm talking about. Long ago, I realized it tied to my period. Not only was I a bit more manic, but I was retaining water, bloated, etc., etc., etc. and things really didn't fit quite the same. Well, I don't have periods any longer, but apparently I still will have to endure Wardrobe Days. There is absolutely no justice. But, as I rummaged frantically through my closet looking for a Plan B, it occurred to me how body image issues have held sway in this house for so, so long. However, I came at my own through a different lenses than my daughters. Either way, I wondered how exhausting all of it must have been for the only human male in the house, my poor husband.

About the time I hit forty some interesting things happened. That was the year that Kelsey really began to struggle and her father and I, as I have documented, were scrambling to understand what was happening and learn how to take the "dys" out of function to try and help her. But, strange things began to happen to me personally as well. I had been, as my mother would say, pleasantly plump during my childhood, but I was high strung enough as an adult to enjoy the ability to pretty much eat what I want and stay at a fairly stable weight. I wasn't thin, I wasn't fat. Almost in line with that big awful landmark birthday, that shifted, and I began to put on weight. I sat behind a desk a dozen or more hours a day, so maybe that's not that surprising, but it was not a happy event when I finally had to concede that I had moved up a dress size. I ate less, and I ate better, but I still gained the weight.

Then there were the breakdowns. Some really scary moments. I won't even go into them, but the worst of them nearly was the last of them. It was as if I was watching myself go completely nuts from someplace deep inside my own body, but could do nothing to stop it. They weren't pretty, and how Greg managed to hang on is really amazing in hindsight. Luckily, I noticed the timing before too much wreckage ensued. I would experience an episode about a week before my period an then another one the week after. I went through about three months of that before I noticed the pattern, but fortunately, once I picked up on it, I could steel myself for it and control it better (hint: one really important tool is to avoid sodium). All of this happened by the time I hit 42.

When I began waking up in the middle of the night drenched in my own sweat, I suspected I was beginning menopause. As it turns out, I was in what's known as a parimenopausal state. Early, granted, but not completely unheard of for women of my age. I was practically a textbook case. The worst part of it was that I still had periods. That seemed the most criminal aspect of it all. But, there's not much to be done about it other than to endure it and not use salt, cheese, chips or about a million other things that taste good. I suddenly had a new respect for women who use menopause as a justification for all manner of crimes.

But, all the things I would normally think to do to combat my situation seemed triggering to my daughter. I couldn't diet. Not in the Oprah sense of the word anyway. I ate smaller portions and tried to eat better, but I was surrounded by friends who were trying this diet or that one, or taking this diet pill or that one, but I didn't dare join in those efforts when we were trying to stop Kelsey from restricting. My father always used to say, "Do as I say, not as I do." Even without a lot of therapy, I knew that parenting philosophy didn't really fly. So, I tried not to obsess over my diet, secretly freaking out about how the less I ate, the more I gained.

As Greg often told me, no diet is truly effective without exercise, and I was quickly learning how true that was for someone hitting that slowing metabolism wall. Same conundrum I faced with any potential diet. Not that I had a lot of spare time to do much of anything, but I was aware that Kelsey's initial treatment program put her in contact with women whose disorder focused mainly around over-exercising. Yes, that is a form of eating disorder, and it can be a dangerous one. You can exercise yourself to death.

And, finally, I couldn't participate in the age old remedy for middle age body image woes, which is to whine and gripe about it. Basically, anything I did that called attention to my own body was a trigger to Kelsey and her struggles with hers. So, I resigned myself to a period of feeling frumpy, fat and miserable, scared to do anything that would make Kelsey's struggles any worse. Was that the right reaction? I don't know. I thought about how odd the timing of it was many times. I was at least ten years ahead of what I anticipated would happen to me as an aging woman. Not that I minded the idea of getting past it as fast as possible, but it was a nasty distraction to what other things were going on in my life. Then again, and I think we would all agree, the monthly visitor - or whatever other cute little name one may call it - is a nasty distraction at any time.

Ladies, we are the stronger gender. Let's just give ourselves a hand right now. I know of no man, even my most revered President Obama, who could have night sweats all night long, yet still manage to get up end stuff oneself into underwear designed to flatten every inch of flab down flat against our bodies, shove bloated feet into shoes that force your toes into unnatural positions and in every way dress ourselves up like a Christmas tree and function. Hear us roar is right! But, in the end analysis, we are also victims, almost all of us. Our appearance matters too much, and we are judged too much by it. How much different our lives would have been if I didn't have to worry about those extra pounds and the places they landed and if Kelsey didn't have images of Kate Moss constantly stuck in her head as the ideal female. Being happy with whatever our genes combined to make us just doesn't seem possible. We have to mess with it, try to truss it up, dye it, augment it, slim it down, make it taller, paint it, put jewels on it and generally modify it on an ongoing basis. I believe that as long as we are that way eating disorders will exist.

A Morality-Mortality Tale

Something happened a week ago that caused the thin ice I've been skating on to crack beneath me, and crack so deeply that I have been staring down into the deep, dark waters that have been threatening to suck me under. I have been trying to navigate through it and ignore it, or at least push it to the back of my mind until at last the fissure seals over. I have blogged a couple of times, I've watched football, I've mowed the lawn, I've gone to work like always, I've even driven to Houston and back to see U2, but really, nothing has helped. This event has overshadowed everything. Finally, last night as I tried to work on a draft post I had started the night before, I found I could not type a word, and I knew I would have to examine this event to be able to move past it.

So, here goes my tale: it actually begins well over a year ago when the banks began to pull back on loans and the economy began to teeter on the brink of whatever that is that happened to it - recession, depression, call it what you will. A business venture I am involved in began to feel the stress, and this once seemingly solid investment began to look more tenuous. Our managing partner tried to refinance the loan, with no success. Our long standing source of income fell away, and our potential buyer could not get financing. Things now look very dire. Our managing partner has lent the venture a considerable amount to keep it afloat while trying to navigate a way through this difficult period. I have lent it a small amount myself, and all of us have hoped and prayed a miracle would happen to see us through and salvage what we had all hoped would be a major source of income for our eventual retirement. I worry about it, but it has definitely been on the furthest back burner for me. Until last Monday that is when I received an e-mail asking me for a bridge loan. When I saw the amount, I felt that loud crack as the proverbial ice shattered beneath me. I thought I had misunderstood, so I re-read it. No, that really is the amount he was requesting. His reasoning was that I could access it through my mother's account.

Now, let me linger here for a moment. In this regard, I have been highly fortunate. My father left my mother financially secure. Since she became a widow in 1992, she has had been able to live comfortably and do just about what ever she pleased, which includes buying some really ridiculous, useless things that sat around her apartment, often never used. I wonder sometimes how much she actually squandered away on such dust gathering trinkets, but she was self sufficient, so I figured it was her own business. Now, of course, her business is my business, and like everyone else, her interests took a rather shocking hit last year. And, now it costs a lot more for her room and board, given that she requires constant care. While she is still secure for the moment, there is a bottom to the well, and I worry about what will happen when we reach it. I worry because I have to at least consider and plan that she will live another several years. And, I want to make sure she is comfortable and her needs are met to the very end of those years. That may or may not be able to happen. The national average cost for nursing home care is $188.00 per day. The median net wage earned in 2008 was approximately $108.00 per day. If our parents don't have their own retirement funds, then it falls to us to pay for their care, and then how are we to live? Well, hopefully, there are several people pitching in, but what about those of us who have no siblings? I had just finished taking the steps to protect her from herself and make sure she could not access her own funds, worrying that she would do something along the lines of purchasing another El Diablo-type nightmare (recall the possessed van sitting in my drive?). What I was asked to lend would involve me liquidating about 20% of her remaining assets. Granted it was a loan, but despite what my partners might try and say, I judged it to be a risky one, and, if she were of the mind to consult about it, she would not approve. So, I said no, and you might think, after fuming a bit over the moxie it took to ask for something like that, I would be able to let it go. But nothing has been the same since. Because for me it opened up a whole plethora of moral complexities.

I have supported the health care reform debate based on our personal experiences. I have told the story about how I had to look at my daughter and tell her I didn't have the money to help her any longer. I know that maybe all the money in the world wouldn't have helped her. But, maybe just one more time in treatment, and it would've all clicked. Maybe if she could have gone back to the specialist who helped her initially, that would have been enough. A lot of maybes, but I'm pretty sure I know one thing for certain. If I had enough money to send Kelsey off for one last month in residential treatment, she would be alive today. But, I didn't. Mother did. So, should I have taken it? Should I have risked bankrupting my mother to save my daughter? What lengths should I have gone to? My mother-in-law used to encourage me to ask Mother for financial help, but this disease is hard for most people to understand. For Mother's generation, the ones who clawed and scraped their way through Depression and war, it's unfathomable. Seeing through to the underlying factors that cause someone to become eating disordered is not something Mother, even before her dementia deepened, could do. Despite that, Mother did help initially. She lent me the initial payment to Kelsey's first eating disorder clinic. She continued to be very generous to Marissa. But, along the way, she grew to dislike Kelsey. She saw The Beast. She couldn't see the girl underneath anymore. She didn't see the pain. There was too much fog there. Even Kelsey never dared to suggest I dip into Mother's assets. It wasn't talked about, it wasn't thought about. It just wasn't a possibility. Now, thanks to that e-mail, I can think of very little else.

Only just this morning could I step back far enough to realize what it must have taken for my partner to ask, and to ponder why he believes he had to. I know he's afraid. He has a lot more at stake than the rest of us. I can, at last, make the case I think he would make to me about why it is a right and acceptable thing to do (he has tried to call since, but I won't even listen to the voice mail). I still won't do it, but I can at last stop being so angry. At him anyway. But, what about at myself?

I had two competing interests in my hands, both as fragile as though they were hummingbird eggs. Did I crush the one to protect the other? And do you protect a woman who is at the end of her journey at the expense of someone who has yet to begin hers? Is the choice I made tantamount to murder? And how do I live with that? I don't know. I really don't.

And the Scary Thing Is!

There are some down sides to the fall. With the fall comes football (good thing) and the upcoming holiday season (bad thing). Already I am being assaulted with reminders of the holidays on the radio and by my mother-in-law. I didn't really need reminding. I knew what lay ahead from the beginning of this awful nightmare. I knew at some point I was going to have to face unwrapping the tree ornaments and finding the one Mother bought for Kelsey her first Christmas, and shaking off the mothballs for the stockings that Greg's mother had so carefully and elaborately embroidered for each of us and seeing Kelsey's there, like a silent accusation.

Candidly, if it were just Greg and I, we'd be off on a trip somewhere over the Christmas holiday. I would fully be planning on our running completely and utterly away from it. Maybe we can face it next year, or the year after that, but we've had enough reality for this year, so... But, it's not just the two of us, so we have to soldier on. This has been weighing heavily on my mind for a while now. But, first comes Halloween. Why is that an issue? This holiday designed for kids and/or adults who have a secret bit of Adam Lambert in them and get to indulge that once a year with no consequences? Well, nothing other than the inevitable march of time that draws us ever closer to the really hairy holidays where Kelsey's absence will be the elephant in the room. But, like a good little soldier, I bought my treats and actually plan on dressing up in costume for work that day to compete in the annual competition. And, it occurred to me when I bought my selections to hand out that I wouldn't have to hide them for the first time in a long while. In year's past when Kelsey was living at home, I would have to squirrel the Halloween treats away or she would binge on them. This year, my only worry was keeping them fresh and little four legged critters out of them. There was an odd sense of relief and sadness when I realized this. The scary thing is, life is in many ways easier without Kelsey around. Her bulimia was a monster that lived in the house with the rest of us and held her in its sway. And it was a hard housemate to live with. And an expensive one. As much as we miss and mourn her, we don't miss it.

Last year, I hid the Halloween candy in my closet to keep it from her. Otherwise, she would have torn through the bags in the matter of a single night probably. At any given time, I had half a pantry tucked away in my bedroom somewhere. Even the coffee wasn't safe. I kept it hidden under the doggie steps next to the bed. If I didn't, she would make multiple pots a day, causing me to worry that her compromised heart would burst with the caffeine. But, I couldn't keep everything from her. I went to the store almost daily to try and replace staples she had sawed her way through. Peanut butter being the most precious commodity and the hardest to keep. On the positive side, it was a good source of protein for her. And that's the argument she used to try and keep it in stock, but the down side of it was that it was easy to throw back up. She put it on everything. Bananas, bread, rice cakes, bagels, crackers, or just straight off the spoon. Oatmeal was another favorite of hers, also easy to regurgitate. We went through at least two large containers of peanut butter a week and one of oatmeal, when I would agree to buy it.

And that's the thing with this particular disease. It is, and she would have agreed, just sort of disgusting. And it was stressful on all of us. Marissa would call me if I was out and beg me to come home, telling me how many times she'd watched her sister march into the kitchen. I would get up on many a morning to be greeted by a sink full of dirty dishes that had accumulated in the middle of the night while she was binging rather than sleeping. The entire upstairs had the acidic and rancid smell of human emesis. After she died, I found a grocery bag of vomit and candy wrappers hidden under her bed. I could tell when she had gone through a bad night when she would come down in the morning with red knuckles and red marks around her lips where she had stuffed her hand down her mouth to force herself to throw up. And why she had to do that, I'm not sure because her gag reflex was so acute, keeping food down was actually a chore. She was disgusted and embarrassed by her own actions, which is fairly typical, I am told, but it was also in complete and absolute control of her. I am reading a book by Ann Rice currently about a family of women who are in control of a spirit who in truth controls them and leads them to ultimate ruin. I couldn't handle reading traditional books on grief, but this book is perfect for me now because I relate completely to these ill fated ladies. Kelsey could have been one of them. At first, she reached out to it to have some control over one single thing in her life, and in the end it controlled her completely, and held us hostage at the same time. If you look closely at my kitchen, you'll see holes that have been patched over the wood frame next to the pantry. That's where Greg installed a latch so he could lock it. He wrapped a bicycle lock around the refrigerator too. We lived for a time in a fortress meant to keep Kelsey from binging. If you asked him why he did it, he would have responded that it was to save his daughter from being able to binge and purge. But, the truth of it is that all it did was alienate all of us. We resented having to make it so hard to access or own pantry, and she hated being treated like some criminal in her own home. I don't think locking cabinets and refrigerators is really the course to take, but I know the kind of frustration that causes a parent to do it. Ultimately, bulimia is a disease that will man handle everyone living under the same roof with it.

I literally have a mental image of it. It's a black, dirty, smelly beast with blood shot eyes and smelly breath from filthy, ill kept teeth. It's hair is black and matted and stinking. I called it The Beast, and it seemed to be the most dominant force in the house. The Beast died when Kelsey died. At last she was free of it, but so were we. I will see that weird mental image probably the rest of my days, but now I don't have to contend with it in my house. And it's hard to know how to think of that. Would I welcome it back if it meant I could have my daughter back with me? If I say no, does that mean I'm secretly glad she's dead? I miss my daughter. I don't miss The Beast. I refuse to believe they were one in the same. But it did live wherever she did, and I hated it. I don't miss it. I wanted it to die. I just wanted it to leave my child behind, like a soul exorcised of its devil. Marissa always believed that would eventually come to pass. The scary thing is, I wasn't sure anymore. What does that say about me?