5/14/24

 Tuesday, May 14, 2024

First things first -

I'm grateful for my wife and life partner Geri who has been my Godsend, my guardian angel, especially during these last days of pain, sickness, weakness, and disability.  In our 37 years of marriage, I have watched her care for so many others, never anticipating that the time would come when she would be called upon to care for me in distress and helplessness, but as with so many others, so with me.  She is more than I deserve.  

When her sons and their families gathered for her 80th birthday, I read a tribute to her after dinner, including in part, the following:

. . . I added her devotion to duty.  It sounds as if I were thinking of a soldier or a 'first responder' but in all of the roles she plays in her life, Geri has an innate sense of duty. 'Sense of duty' doesn't capture what I'm referring to.  As a child to her parents, as a parent to her children, as a life partner to me, as a sister to her brother Jim, and as a friend to her many friends, she is true, caring, trustworthy, attentive, solicitous.  The people in her life can count on her for help, for advice, for an open ear and a ready hand, to respect confidences, to pitch in when some pitching in is needed and to butt out when some butting out is needed.  When my twice-widowed father came to live with us, Geri became his best friend at a time in his life when he so badly needed a real friend.  When her older brother lost his wife and his children were spread out across the country, Geri encouraged him to move near us and she personally cared for him for several years.  We should all have these qualities but not all of us do and few have them as innately, as suffusely as Geri does.  This sense of duty carries into all her undertakings, e.g., as an employee, as a volunteer (ombudsman at a nursing home, child welfare investigator, poll worker) and even to our pets.  When our beloved cat Blanche needed to be hydrated by transfusion every day, Geri turned her ironing board into a gurney for her, hung the hydrating solution from a closet door, and served as her nurse.  And Lilly, . . . words fail me.

. . .  my list is inevitably incomplete.  She is who she is in all her uniqueness.  She is special in large part because she doesn't treat herself as special, as better than or not as good as anyone around her.  But she is very special to me, and she's very special to her family and to her many friends who count themselves privileged to have her in our lives.

What would I say now of her "sense of duty," knowing how she has cared for me, indeed nursed me, through my 'slough of despond', helpless, needy, alone but for her at my side and at my back, literally, pushing my wheelchair around Zablocki?  Her mother could have aptly named her Grace, an undeserved blessing.

[I inserted the photo of Geri, in her  70s, caring for her brother Jimmy, in his late 80s, because it illustrates so well her character as a caregiver.  She was asking Jimmy for his hearing aids so she could inspect their batteries.  She did this at least every week.  Jimmy kept having problems with the hearing aids and Geri kept fixing them, patiently, caringly, and lovingly.  Jimmy has moved on to be closer to his daughter and now Geri gets to care for me.  I think of my sister caring for her Aunt Mary Healy, her sister-in-law Jerri Burns, our own father, Jim's niece Mary, and so many others.  I think of my mother caring for Kitty and me and our wounded father after Iwo Jima, and caring for her father and her brother Jim, and so many others.  I have been so blessed with strong, good women in my life.]

Pain, etc.   Where to start?  Yesterday: I was thrilled when I was wheeled into the doctor's office and saw that the rheumatologist is a middle-aged man, not a young resident.  He is foreign-born, a Pole, Rafal Ryzka, who I learned graduated from Jagiellonian University medical school in Krakow, Poland.  He took a long medical history and had a very high confidence that I had Polymyalgia rheumatica.  I loved the guy.  He prescribed 20 mg. prednisone daily and we were able to pick it up at the VA pharmacy before we left for home to take the first pill.  I took another 20 mg. pill at 6 this morning, after waking up on the recliner at 3 a.m.  I feel much better than I did yesterday, especially the hip pain, and I have better ROM of my shoulders but still some pain.  My hands, on the other hand, are still stiff, weak, and somewhat painful, as is my back.

Before yesterday:  I was crippled and despondent, fearful of an uncertain but dark future.  The worst times were the middle of the night fears about what the future might entail.  In the weeks leading up to the appointment with Dr. Ryzka, I thought of myself as a Dr. Jeckyll/Mr. Hyde, multiple personality character: Miserable, depressed, full of dark thoughts in the nighttime and morning hours, almost normal in the afternoon and early evening hours when the pain abated.  During the night as I sat or lay awake, I thought of the preferability of death over the way I was living, thought each night of suicide if it turned out I was condemned to a life of persistent bad pain over most of my body and limited to over-the-counter medications (Tylenol, Aspercreme, and Voltaren) and painful and ineffective physical therapy.  I feared being unable to lift myself off the recliner when I needed a pit stop, not being able to lift myself off the toilet, and having to call  Geri or 911 if I became trapped on the chair or the toilet.  I wondered whether I should buy a pistol and ammunition "just in case" but always knew I couldn't 'do the deed' in a way that cruelly caused avoidable trauma to Geri, my dilemma or conundrum, perhaps the dilemma facing many suicides.   It was the second time in my life that I regularly engaged in 'suicidal ideation,' the other being 10-11 years ago when I was experiencing severe and persistent pain from ulcers in my bladder.  In each instance, the cause was severe, unrelenting pain and a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.  This is the reason I was hoping so desperately that the rheumatologist would concur with my self-diagnosis that I have polymyalgia rheumatica and needed prednisone, not Tylenol.  It was a terrible and terrifying time.  It brought home to me my weakness, my ambivalence about the blessing and curse of old age.

Major Accomplishments:  (1)  I refilled my bi-weekly pill boxes.  (2) I put on my winter jacket by myself, and (3) walked to the mailbox to gather our mail for the first time in how long?

Big Challenge: returning to my bed to sleep instead of the recliner.  Probably not tonight, shoulders are still iffy, at best.