family

A Stress Test


Stress at a plane with an arbitrary orientatio...

Image via Wikipedia

Our entire summer could easily qualify as pushing the emotional boundaries, but aside from a few ER trips and a two nighter at the hospital, it hasn’t pushed me physically over the edge.

During the years I took care of my late husband, solo-parented and held a full-time job as a middle school teacher, I regularly broke physical stress limits.

I averaged 5 hours of sleep a night, worked out sporadically and ate just as haphazardly. When the body protested – and it manifested its displeasure vehemently – I ignored it.

“Suck it up, Buttercup.” Was my response. And for the most part it did and gave me what I wanted.

Today the old bag of bones is not so willing.

Less than 7 hours of sleep?

I don’t think so, says the body. We will now be sick.

Seriously, my body goes on strike if it is asked to do anything even remotely reminding it of days of yore.

So, this summer’s events have really only pushed my emotional buttons and redirected my thoughts to dark places I remember but have no real interest in revisiting.

This morning the phone rang. And rang. And rang.

Not quite 9:30 and I was still in bed.

Vaguely I recalled Rob getting up earlier and wondered why he wasn’t picking up, so I scrambled across to his side and grabbed the receiver from the nightstand.

“Hello,” I wheezed.

“May I speak with Robert?”

Robert is official. Someone who has business with him calls him “Robert” whereas telemarketers ask for him with a “Mr” followed by a rather East Indian pronunciation of our last name.

“Hang on,” I tell the woman as I scramble into my robe and head down the stairs to hunt up my husband.

He is nowhere but Dee is in the kitchen getting her breakfast.

“Where are the waffles?” she asks.

“Where’s Dad?” I reply.

“Oh, I haven’t seen him,” she tells me.

I have sent her out to the garage to look for him before I remember he had a doctor appointment in town.

“May I take a message,” I ask.

“This is a reminder about his stress test tomorrow with Dr. La at the crack of dawn,” and she begins to ramble off instructions for preparation.

“What?” I interrupt. “He has an appointment tomorrow? I thought it was this afternoon. No one told us about tomorrow.”

“Yes, ” clearly she is annoyed. She is a robo-receptionist and I am asking questions that prevent her from merely vomiting information and moving on to the next patient call on her list. “well, today is the rehab intake and tomorrow is the stress test.”

Which tells me all of nothing and it par for the Canadian medical experience course. In fact, I think the motto of Alberta Health is “information is for the professionals; just listen and obey”.

“He should take all his medication as usual, eat a light breakfast, dress appropriately as he will be on the treadmill and refrain from smoking prior to the test.”

Smoking?

When Rob got home, I told him about the appointment.

“Oh, it’s probably about my back to work release,” he said. “What time do I have to be there?”

“Dawn, more or less.”

“Really?”

We live outside of the city, an early morning appointment – factoring the rush hour means everybody up and ready with the sun – or there ’bouts.

“That’s pretty early for you and Dee,” he remarked. “Assuming you are coming along.”

“I was planning to. Don’t you want me there?”

“Well, yeah, just in case I drop dead it would probably be a good idea.”

“I wish, ” I replied, ” I could say that it hadn’t occurred to me that you might die, but it totally did.”

Why? I mean people take stress tests every day and mainly survive. My near 80 year-old mother just had one in the spring and emerged just tired.

Rob’s late brother-in-law, however, dropped dead after his.

I suppose that’s what they mean by “context”.

I reminded again by all this that I haven’t cried. Teared up once at the hospital the day of the angioplasty when they “lost” Rob for about an hour, but haven’t cried.

It’s like I am waiting for something to cry about because, as it’s been pointed out to me, nothing awful has happened to me.

And the point has been taken. So I suck it up like the Buttercup I am.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation


I sorta went on vacation this summer and didn’t let any of you know about it, didn’t I?

It’s not that I planned anything or went anywhere or even slouched from one interesting activity to a completely slothful and relaxing one.

I simply neglected you, dear readers.

And I didn’t have much to say. Or news to report.

The heart attack aftermath appears to be on an upswing after a fretfully frightening bout with medication side-effects and reactions.

Rob broke into an angry red puffy scratchy rash just after my mother’s visit ended. Much hemming and hawing by doctors followed and finally he was taken off of three meds that he didn’t need anyway, but are “protocol”.

I do not like “protocol”, Sam I Am. It drips laziness, and my own take on medical folk is that if I can Google it – it can’t be rocket science – so work a little, okay?

My mother came to visit? Did I mention she was coming? Or was that just Facebook? I confuse the two, think I’ve blogged something I only updated or updated something I actually blogged. The only people who really know are those who read here and are my friends/family/or people I am merely curious enough about to friend.

It was a good visit, but she reads over my shoulder while I am working. A little thing and I know that many daughters would love to have such trivial issues with their moms, but after a week it grates like moldy cheese.

Half-hearted stabs at stay-cationy stuff were attempted during her visit and in the last week because we needed to cancel our real vacation to Yellowstone. Couldn’t safely be Stateside with Rob’s issues and he still hasn’t been “officially” stamped with the “carry-on” seal of medical approval.

There was the Farmer’s Market in St. Albert, which is no place to take a near-eighty year old woman, an eight year-old and a guy who’s recently had a heart attack.

But we went anyway.

Shopped. And I never do that. Which really came home to me when I pruned my wardrobe for our upcoming garage sale and was startled by how little I had to start with and how much less there is now.

Rob takes up more closet space than I do.

I think I have one pair of jeans, and they are capris and two pair of shorts.

It’s so sad that Rob suggested I snag a pair of yoga pants he saw on sale the last time we were at Costco.

Oh, and I shop for my clothes at Costco and Walmart.

How the mighty have fallen.

Shopping with Mom is like shopping with Dee – it’s all about them – which made it interesting to watch my mother’s reaction to her granddaughter’s completely mercenary non-interest in Grandma’s choice of stores. Mom deals only slightly better with not being the center of attention on shopping trips than Dee does.

But in spite of the amusement, it was wearying.

Having a Grandma on the premises is handy however. A couple of days after she arrived, she manned the deck when Rob needed to visit the ER again. I have never had the convenience of family close at hand during crunchy times. Eye-opening really because being far away all the time, I’ve never cultivated a habit of counting on anyone when the going ups and toughens.

She held up but her age was apparent by the end of the day. She is not spry and fatigues more easily than she would care to have anyone comment upon.

But my, handy-dandy. Such a treat.

Losers that we are, Rob and I failed to take advantage of the opportunity to schedule a date night. I thought about it but remembering that I had to drive, I quickly discarded the notion.

I am not at all sorry that Rob is officially sanctioned to drive again. Let’s just say that the four weeks he couldn’t drive were endured by us both and let it go.

Summer mostly came and is gone. Truly. Fall’s heralds trumpet from the turning leaves to the winged ants squirming from the ground. The thermometer dips below 10c every night and the sun’s angling toward the horizon again.

We took in a few local sites. Visited Fort Edmonton, a historical village where that Brad Pitt movie about Jesse James was filmed a few years ago. Trekked out to Vegreville to see the giant Pysanka, a Easter-ish egg of frightening proportions.

Last weekend we cheered Mick on at the Edmonton Dragon Boat Festival. We hadn’t planned to go everyday, but Edie’d gone camping with her new beau, Silver, and there was drama on the dragon boat team which left Mick a bit stranded in terms of support.*

And today?

School is nearly upon us. Rob – fingers crossed – goes back to work next week. And me? Back to my schedule, which I have missed a lot.

I like fall.

*It will come as no surprise to older folk that the twenties are still fraught with middle school angst. A couple on the dragon boat team is having “issues” and Mick was unfairly painted as “the other woman” for not recognizing that the man half of the couple was probably being more than just friendly in his daily texting of her. The couple is unmarried, together for five years and while she talks of future knot tying and babies, he says nothing. Tragic but hardly something a person wants to get dragged into the middle of. Naturally lines were drawn. Sides taken. Mick as the only single woman in the group was already probably “suspect” and the rest of the hens jumped with beaks sharp and claws ready. Mick for her part didn’t bite and while in a sane version of life that would count for something, it didn’t help her win anyone over. So we hung out. Even Dee managed to hang in though she wasn’t able to suppress  her obvious boredom toward the end.

The Mother-In-Law


She lives.

I know this for a fact because a) I check the obituaries near daily and she hasn’t turned up and b) Dee received a birthday card from her in the mail today.

My late husband’s mother surfaces less than a half-dozen times a year due to the fact that Hallmark insists on making cards available for public consumption. Despite my gentle suggestion that she actually write something in the cards, the woman just signs her name and as the cards are devoid of currency, Dee opens, looks and puts them aside without comment.

My daughter refers to her late father’s mother as “Daddy Will’s mom” not Grandma or Oma or Nana. They don’t have that kind of relationship.

In fact, they have no relationship. Something I am not responsible for because I did try to include her early on, but she made it clear that her preference was that Will and I drop Dee off, go off and have dinner or something and then pick the baby up after. She wasn’t the least interested in either of us and found our annoying insistence about being present during visits a turn-off where the “grandmother” experience was concerned.

Since we didn’t allow her unsupervised visits, she decided not to have a relationship with Dee and discovered that being a marginalized grandparent had its own perks. People were outraged on her behalf. Offered her sympathy. Willingly bought into her fantasy about how I was the root of all evil.

Will’s illness, long decline and eventual death did nothing to improve relations between us, and likely fueled my impression that she was unbalanced and that Dee needed to be sheltered from her influence.

Fast forward, I remarried and emigrated to Canada with my daughter.

I did not tell my in-laws. Anything.

They didn’t know about Rob, the whole getting married thing and I definitely didn’t leave a forwarding address.

In my more perverse moments, it amused me to wonder just how long it would take for any of them to realize I’d sold my house and decamped the area.

It was Rob who prevailed upon me to send them word. We’d been married a couple of months and I sent a letter to Will’s uncle, telling him about our move and marriage. I enclosed a letter for him to give to MIL because I didn’t have her address. Or her phone number.

No, really, I didn’t.

She’d moved a few months before Will died. Sold the house her late husband had built for them and downsized to a trailer. I found out about it by accident. She was in the hospital recovering from a hip break and told her family not to tell me.

After I found out, she’d instructed them not to give me her new address or phone number. I was to contact her via her best friend and her best friend’s mother should I need to get information to her.

This was where our relationship stood.

The hospice months did nothing to improve relations though it did occur to her and her family and friends as the end inched closer that I was likely to cut off all contact after Will was gone. Sugar was applied liberally in the last few days.

But now it’s late August of 2007 and the in-laws are a bit taken aback by the fact that I remarried (so quickly) and left the country without them noticing or telling them.

Digression over. Birthday cards.

They arrive sometime in mid to late August. Dee’s birthday is in July. Early on MIL declared bankruptcy to get herself out of sending Dee a couple of dollars and Dee, being a mercenary, has little use for birthday greetings that bear no cash.

Yesterday the card arrived. Inside it was a small white envelope. No name. This is how she sends me messages. So I knew it was for me, but it’s Dee’s birthday card and she -rightly – assumes it is for her.

A ten-dollar bill tumbles out.

Dee is pleased though not pleased enough to refer to MIL as her “grandmother” when she goes to tell Rob about the money. My mother is her grandmother as far as she is concerned. She has no room for anyone else.

Along with the money was a single sheet of paper that read “for pictures”.

She has tried to send me cash to cover the expense of printing photos and mailing them to her. I send photos about twice a year but I am haphazard about it because I mainly share photos with family and friends on Facebook anymore.

“You could send her a note inviting her to be your Facebook friend,” Rob suggested.*

Which in all honestly would be an easier way to do this because printing pictures and sending them through the post is time and money consuming, but keeping ahead of Facebook’s complete disregard for my right to limit access to my information would be close to impossible. So as there is no way to “friend” the MIL without granting her access to my life at will, Facebook is out.

I also don’t think she has a computer anymore. She did once. Got it during her aborted attempt to go back to college. For the most part, she reveled in her poor widow me identity but every once in a while, she made a grab for normal life. But the computer would be older than Dee, if it still existed.

So sometime this month pictures need to be culled from various cameras and computers and sent off to Costco. Rob usually does that. I sort and mail. I was going to do this soon anyway because the new school year presents a formal photo op and now that Dee is eight, we simply don’t take pictures of her like we did when she was small.

I resent the note though. I lied to Dee. Told her the money was for her even though it wasn’t. The money was a rebuke. I’ve told her not to send money. We don’t need it. And she stopped so this was a reminder that I hadn’t sent photos since February and that she is an abandoned old woman living on a fixed income.

She’s lucky to get pictures at all and she knows it, but she can’t help herself. When opportunities arise to make herself look victimized by my stance on Dee – it being that Dee will not be allowed contact with her until she is old enough to understand what a manipulative, less than truthful person she is**.

*Rob is a tiny bit puzzled by my continued bad feelings toward MIL, but he has always had wonderful MILs who’ve adored him – that one incident where Shelley’s mother and older sister tried to talk her out of marrying him due to his outsider position in the community and his sketchy family aside.

** Like some of Will’s friends, MIL maintains that I was ultimately responsible for Will’s death because I refused to let him have a bone marrow transfer. The truth – which I got tired of repeating – was that Will was too old and his illness too advanced for BMT. It was an experimental thing at best and he didn’t qualify at any rate. All it would have done was kill him sooner. There really are no treatment options for what he had. BMT is actually one of those “cures” that works really well in children and teens but by the time a person is grown, the odds fall off a cliff.