4/15/24

 Monday, April 15, 2024

Mom's 102nd birthday

Lights out around 9:30, awake for PS at 2, and lights on at 2:30.  Lights out again around 4:30 and awake and up for a PS at 5:50. with pain in both hands, both shoulders, baby stepping.

Pain, etc.  Why I despair: I had to use two canes and many bounces to get out of the recliner with two painful shoulders and painful hips and weak leg muscles.  The shoulder pain was relieved by movement: vertical circling, and horizontal back-and-forthing.  I struggled with my balance and almost fell over when I could finally bounce up from the chair, then walked with baby steps to the portable urinal.  I wondered how I would be able to deal with falling down trying to get out of the chair, regretting that the front door was locked in case I needed 911 help to get up.  My wrists are stiff and somewhat painful with limited ROM but I can type with both hands, wondering if this is simple wear-and-tear osteoarthritis I am dealing with and, if so, what in my professorial, lawyering, sedentary, non-athletic life would have caused wear-and-tear on both my shoulders.  I think of Fulton J. Sheen's Life is Worth Living when I was a kid and wonder, is it?  I'll look for it in my memoir. but first work to stand up again, loosen up,  and take a stroll around the house.  I get to the vestibule and think I shouldn't stroll without my iPhone, which I return to the TV room to get.  As I walk, my stride increases from baby steps to longer hobbles and I make it into the living room, dining room, and sunroom, lighting table lamps.  As I walk, my lower back tightens up to go along with stiff hips.  Lilly wakes up during my walk and I let her out at about 3:10.  She stays awake with me for a while, keeping me company.  While I'm on the recliner much of the night, she sleeps on the floor not far from me.  Why do I bother writing this stuff down?  What else does one do with a 2 a.m. reveille for a 'mid-watch'?  I took a photo of Geri's beautiful plant collection in the sunroom.

Life is Worth Living  I went back to my memoir, to the chapter I titled Born in the Bosom of the Church, and found what I wrote about Bishop Sheen:

Until my exposure to Wally and Dave at the liquor store, my world was thoroughly Catholic: Catholic church, Catholic elementary school, Catholic high school, Catholic friends, Catholic (in a manner of speaking) family members.  The ‘best’ hospitals were the Catholic hospitals, like Little Company of Mary.  The ‘best’ old age homes were the Catholic old age homes, like the Little Sisters of the Poor.  The only movies we could attend were those that passed muster with the Catholic Legion of Decency, whose movie ratings were published every week in the archdiocese’s Catholic newspaper, The New World.  When television arrived on the scene, the programs, unlike post-war movies, were family-oriented and non-threatening (Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Howdie Doodie, I Remember Mama, etc.), but on Tuesday nights we all watched Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s network program Life is Worth Living, even though it ran opposite The Milton Berle Show.  Sheen was an auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese of New York, under the powerful Cardinal Spellman.  It speaks to the size and influence of the American Church in the 1950’s that the first national televangelist was a foppish  Catholic hierarch and not a Jimmy Swaggert or Pat Robertson or even Billy Graham.

And in a footnote:

 My mother, who was a devoted fan of Bishop Sheen, would be disappointed that I call him a fop, but a fop he clearly was.  He appeared each week wearing his most dramatic episcopal finery: the basic garment a black cassock gown with red piping and red buttons, topped by a black shoulder cape with the same red piping and an underside of red, all the red matching his zucchetto or skullcap and his dazzling Superman/Batman/Captain Marvel cappa magna¸ a flowing brightthe red floor length cape draped across his shoulders and tied with thin red sashes about his neck, directly above what appeared to be his platinum pectoral cross secured on a long, platinum or silver or white gold chain, while his midriff was secured by a broad red cincture that perfectly matched his piping, his buttons, and his zucchetto.  He was, in a word, DAZZLING!  In the Church’s sumptuary laws, the color red was normally reserved to cardinals, bishops ‘owning’ the color purple.  Why Sheen wore red rather than purple in his television heyday is a mystery to me, but it may account, in small part, to the personal enmity between him, a mere auxiliary bishop, and his superior, the formidable Cardinal Spellman of New York.  In his later telecasts, in the early 1960s, he wore the traditional purple, actually a shade of lavender.  In the pre-Vatican II Church, in the Church before the pre-pedophilia scandal Church, these dazzling, feudal, European, ostentatious displays of capes and cassocks, satins and velvets and laces and brocades seemed to work their magic on the ever-obedient Faithful, who seemed to think it not bizarre to drop to one’s knees to kiss the ring of the episcopal dandies who ruled the Holy Mother Church.  Indeed, to get to kiss the bishop’s ring and to receive his blessings was considered quite a privilege.  How pathetic!

 I went to YouTube and found that all episodes of Life is Worth Living are available still.  I watched the beginning of Episode 41 titled "The Alcoholic Is Not a Pig" from 1968 which is in color and shows Bishop Sheen in all his glory.  I wish I had known of these videos when my dear sister was still aline; I suspect she would have watched, understood, and enjoyed every one of the 100 or 128 episodesl, always remembering our blessed mother, the real flesh and blood woman who nurtured and protected us through such hard years. 

VA Phonso.   The trip to see Phonso at the Physical Therapy Clinic was difficult.  I have a hard time lifting my leg to get into the Volvo and then positioning my body in the driver's seat.  Also not so easy to get out of the vehicle.  I am wondering whether I should let my driver's license lapse when it expires in August.  In my present condition I doubt that I could pass a road test.  I fell asleep in the PT waiting room, a first.  Phonso had to wake me up to start the appointment.  I told him of the increasing problems with joint pain since I started doing the exercises and he mentioned that rheumatoid arthritis is a possibility.  It's hard for me to believe that so many of my joints are just "wearing out" over such a short timeframe.  My right hand hurt so much on the drive to the VA that it was painful and difficult grasping the steering wheel.  I've become a semi-invalid working my way to dropping the "semi-".  Even my butt muscles are painful now.

VA Jill Hansen via Video.  I fell asleep again on the recliner and woke up just in time to connect with my clincal pharmacist Jill  who has become kind of a friend after working together for a couple of years adjusting my diabetes meds.  Today's visit was to discuss the unavailability of Trulicity which I have been injecting for many years.  We'll talk again the day after my visit with Dr. Chatt next week when the results of my blood tests will be available.

LTMW at what looks like a pair of mating goldfinches.  The male's plumage has turned a beautiful yellow.  They are working the tube feeder and a few minutes ago, the male (or at least some male) was grabbing bigs chunks of cotton from the nesting ball I hung up a couple of days ago.  The late afternoon air is filled with birdsongs, the only one .of which I can identify is the cardinals.  I finally got around to hanging up a fresh suet cake which will probably attract the woodpeckers