By now, I'm over it, but since I've told you all that my brother is a jackass, I feel I should explain.
Mostly, I like him. I do. But sometimes, for many months in a row, he's a total jackass, and I just want to punch him in the head. For many months in a row.
Last winter, he had some sort of weird newspaper sales flyer fixation. He called early one Monday morning, and by early, I mean somewhere just after the buttcrack of dawn. I'm not a morning person, and yet, this doesn't stop him. EVER. Add in that it takes WEEKS of telling him over and over again that I have to take the Howler to school now, before he actually hears and retains that information, and I'm soooooo very NOT in the mood to hear from him before 10:30am EVER.
Anyway, he calls this one bright morning and insists that he has to talk to me. My Sweetie had answered the phone, and that just wasn't good enough. So My Sweetie brings me the phone, wakes me up enough for me to be moderately coherent and hands me the phone.
My brother asks if we subscribe to the local Sunday paper.
"Yes."
Did we happen to get our paper yesterday (Sunday)?
"Yes."
He rambles on for a few minutes about getting a not-quite local Sunday edition for himself. And how he was disappointed in the sales flyer selection. He then tells me to go get my Sunday paper, and tell him each and every sales flyer I got in mine, so he can compare the two.
"NO." I hang up the phone.
As if that's not idiocy enough, a few weeks later, he calls me to rant about a specific flyer. This time, he purchased the local Sunday paper. This particular sales flyer was utilizing the annoying gimmick of having the "guys' stuff" printed one way is up, and the "girls' stuff" printed the other way is up. Half and half. He's calling me to rant about how, if he were interested in buying new tires, he can't read the prices, as they've been printed "upside down."
I try to be calming, I try to care. I try to explain that it's a gimmick...he rants on.
To make it even better, several hours later, I discover that he's tagged me in a picture OF THIS SALES FLYER on FaceBook. Captioned by his rant...and MY NAME.
He needs serious help.
Just a few months ago, he again tagged me in a random pic on FaceBook. Some TV newscaster chick.
Considering that two years ago, when we got new kittens, I tagged him (along with several other people) in pics I posted. He ranted at me (yes, special morning phone calls) that those were not pictures of him. The finer art of untagging yourself is lost on him. Several days of phone calls and finally caved & untagged him. He continued to rant at me about it.
But somehow, it's totally sane & rational that he should tag me in photos with accompanying rants about sales flyers, and random newscaster photos.
Finally, next month I am FINALLY getting go to see a musician I have liked for years. When the tickets arrived, I took a photo & posted that on FaceBook. Yeah, I'm that dorky & excited to be going to see him live!
My jackass brother, knowing full well who this artist is, decides to comment on my photo. No, I didn't tag him. Jackass, suck-the-happy-out-of-it comment. I deleted the comment.
In the meantime, he's posted pics of tickets stubs from events he went to in 1987. No, I haven't commented. Why?
Because I may have a brother who is a jackass, but I am not a jackass.
I think he's noticed I'm unhappy though, because when he asked me about the concert, I answered as simply as I could, offering no further information, because he is not going to kill my happy, and I'm not going to respond in kind.
He can be all the jackass he wants to be...and he can leave me the hell out of that loop.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Monday, August 13, 2012
No Title, Just Memory
Some friends and I have been discussing personal experiences with medical insurance companies. During this discussion, the side topic of dying came up, particularly being diagnosed as terminally ill and experiences with insurance companies in relation to that.
I'm not going to write about insurance companies, but I am going to write about what it was like when my Dad died in 1989.
1989 was a pretty stressful year. My son was born, my dad died, my sister was diagnosed with an operable & treatable brain tumor (although she was given no prognosis regarding survival rates. 23 years and 1 month later, she's still here being a PIMA, and no recurrence.)
But that's not what this is about either.
My dad's medical history is that in 1979 ('78?), he had triple bypass heart surgery. He was also a diabetic, although he did not take insulin. At the time, it was just emerging from experimental status, I guess, because they sent him home with a diet to follow and once the incisions were healed, he went back to work and didn't really have any other follow up that I remember. A trip or two, maybe a stress test or two, but that was it.
In June of 1986, he had a heart attack. There was a lot more information available by then about cholestrol and such, and his 2nd open heart surgery recovery was much different. At the 1 year checkup for that, Hamot Medical Center in Erie, PA, found a mass in his lung. Biopsy, and viola! It's lung cancer. They gave him one chemo treatment, and sent him home to die, the bastards.
The local hospital was an up-and-comer when it came to cancer, so he switched his treatments. They did chemo, and pushed for radiation. He did the chemo. He took the radiation.
June 1988: My brother graduated from high school. My parents celebrated their 24th wedding anniversary.
September 1988, when the doctors in Erie (the bastards) told him he'd be good and dead by then, he & my mom went to California for the only real vacation or trip they ever took.
Christmas 1988, he decided that since he had cancer, he only had to put up with the holiday bullshit he wanted to (YAY!)
January 1989, my son, his first grandchild, was born.
He turned 54 on Friday, April 7, 1989. He was admitted to the hospital on Saturday, April 8, struggling to breathe. He died around daybreak on Sunday, April 9, 1989.
We cared for him at home between January and April. He slowly became chair bound (he couldn't breathe if he laid down.) He gradually lost his taste for everything except Wendy's Big Classic burgers, and that last month, he didn't even eat much of those. The world slowly began to shrink: he lived in the living room, and we, his family, bathed him, cared for him, and administered what medicines he could still take. He was not on oxygen, nor was he in much pain.
But on his birthday, he started coughing and couldn't catch his breath. We did everything we could, but nothing helped. We had a tank of oxygen, and even that didn't help. My mom knew--the doctors had told her in January--that his lungs were effectively gone, swallowed up, filled, with cancer.
Yes, we knew he was terminal, but honestly, at the time, we were all living day-to-day with him. Our world had been shrinking too. Around dinnertime on Saturday, he asked my mom to take him to the hospital. She called the ambulance, informing them that he was a cancer patient,
When they came, one of them happened to be my sister's old boyfriend. Yes, he knew where he was going when they got the call. Odd the things you remember. Odd the things you find comfort in, when you watch as they take your father to the hospital to die. (Familiar faces, even of people you don't like, are weirdly comforting during those times.)
He's admitted. My mom verifies the Do Not Resuscitate order. He's in the end room, as far away from everyone else as they could and still have him actually be in the hospital. (Hospice was only just beginning then, and at the time, they had nothing to offer our family.)
During that night, there were people, his oldest friend, the priest, extended family members, who came. We gathered, we talked. We sat with him. His oldest friend, Bob, after greeting my dad, he sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, motionless. Just there, so we would all know we weren't alone.
They gave him morphine. He had an oxygen mask. He didn't like the tube thing. They hooked him up to monitors, volume turned as low as it could go. Nurses stopped in to take BP, or whatever else it was they were doing. Rules were suspended: visiting hours and number of visitors allowed didn't apply.
He wanted to know where "the Bear" was--that's the Toad's real nickname.
When someone started to cry (his sister), he found the breath to tell her to "knock that shit off. I'm dying, and that ain't gonna be the last thing I hear!"
As the hours passed, his breathing became more labored. He wouldn't go. My sister sat with him, held his hand, and talked with him quietly. He would occasionally speak. Eventually, it was clear that he was not talking to us, he was talking to....someone(s) we couldn't see or hear.
Somewhere around 4am, his sister said that she was going to go home, get some sleep and be back in the morning. It hit me then: he was waiting for dawn. The past several weeks, he would stay awake all night, restless, and only rest when he could hear birdsong as morning approached. I told her that, and asked if, as 5am got closer, if we could open the window. We watched him; we watched the clock.
My sister needed a break. Any time my mom talked, or touched him, he would jolt back to the room from where ever he was. I took over. I sat, held his hand, and tried to be as comforting for him as she was.
I can tell you this, corny as it sounds: There is a light. Loved ones who went before you do come to meet you. I saw silhouettes. I could identify those I knew well--my grandmother, our neighbor. I saw, but did not recognize others. There were many. My sister can tell you names, describe faces. She stood in that light, and heard their voices. She heard his last goodbye. (I know she's not making it up, because just a few years ago, when my aunt pulled out old photos we'd never seen before, my sister could name several we'd only heard of, but who had died before we were born, and we'd never seen pics of them before.)
The hospital staff, the doctor, everyone we encountered that night were compassionate. My dad chose to go into the hospital to die. I believe he didn't want our last memories of him to be in our house. I also think that when the time came, he knew he couldn't let go while he was at home.
So yes, I'd have to say that, a terminally ill person should be given as much control over his or her surroundings as possible, including where to die. If they choose to be in the hospital setting, with morphine and oxygen (as in our case, the oxygen tank was borrowed and without hospice or a nurse, a morphine drip was impossible) then that's where he or she should be. I don't remember any problems with insurance paying for things. There were some things about his treatment that were paid out-of-pocket then reimbursed, and these weren't cheap things. It was annoying, it was an inconvenience. But overall? I guess we were lucky. In many more ways than we knew.
I'm not going to write about insurance companies, but I am going to write about what it was like when my Dad died in 1989.
1989 was a pretty stressful year. My son was born, my dad died, my sister was diagnosed with an operable & treatable brain tumor (although she was given no prognosis regarding survival rates. 23 years and 1 month later, she's still here being a PIMA, and no recurrence.)
But that's not what this is about either.
My dad's medical history is that in 1979 ('78?), he had triple bypass heart surgery. He was also a diabetic, although he did not take insulin. At the time, it was just emerging from experimental status, I guess, because they sent him home with a diet to follow and once the incisions were healed, he went back to work and didn't really have any other follow up that I remember. A trip or two, maybe a stress test or two, but that was it.
In June of 1986, he had a heart attack. There was a lot more information available by then about cholestrol and such, and his 2nd open heart surgery recovery was much different. At the 1 year checkup for that, Hamot Medical Center in Erie, PA, found a mass in his lung. Biopsy, and viola! It's lung cancer. They gave him one chemo treatment, and sent him home to die, the bastards.
The local hospital was an up-and-comer when it came to cancer, so he switched his treatments. They did chemo, and pushed for radiation. He did the chemo. He took the radiation.
June 1988: My brother graduated from high school. My parents celebrated their 24th wedding anniversary.
September 1988, when the doctors in Erie (the bastards) told him he'd be good and dead by then, he & my mom went to California for the only real vacation or trip they ever took.
Christmas 1988, he decided that since he had cancer, he only had to put up with the holiday bullshit he wanted to (YAY!)
January 1989, my son, his first grandchild, was born.
He turned 54 on Friday, April 7, 1989. He was admitted to the hospital on Saturday, April 8, struggling to breathe. He died around daybreak on Sunday, April 9, 1989.
We cared for him at home between January and April. He slowly became chair bound (he couldn't breathe if he laid down.) He gradually lost his taste for everything except Wendy's Big Classic burgers, and that last month, he didn't even eat much of those. The world slowly began to shrink: he lived in the living room, and we, his family, bathed him, cared for him, and administered what medicines he could still take. He was not on oxygen, nor was he in much pain.
But on his birthday, he started coughing and couldn't catch his breath. We did everything we could, but nothing helped. We had a tank of oxygen, and even that didn't help. My mom knew--the doctors had told her in January--that his lungs were effectively gone, swallowed up, filled, with cancer.
Yes, we knew he was terminal, but honestly, at the time, we were all living day-to-day with him. Our world had been shrinking too. Around dinnertime on Saturday, he asked my mom to take him to the hospital. She called the ambulance, informing them that he was a cancer patient,
When they came, one of them happened to be my sister's old boyfriend. Yes, he knew where he was going when they got the call. Odd the things you remember. Odd the things you find comfort in, when you watch as they take your father to the hospital to die. (Familiar faces, even of people you don't like, are weirdly comforting during those times.)
He's admitted. My mom verifies the Do Not Resuscitate order. He's in the end room, as far away from everyone else as they could and still have him actually be in the hospital. (Hospice was only just beginning then, and at the time, they had nothing to offer our family.)
During that night, there were people, his oldest friend, the priest, extended family members, who came. We gathered, we talked. We sat with him. His oldest friend, Bob, after greeting my dad, he sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, motionless. Just there, so we would all know we weren't alone.
They gave him morphine. He had an oxygen mask. He didn't like the tube thing. They hooked him up to monitors, volume turned as low as it could go. Nurses stopped in to take BP, or whatever else it was they were doing. Rules were suspended: visiting hours and number of visitors allowed didn't apply.
He wanted to know where "the Bear" was--that's the Toad's real nickname.
When someone started to cry (his sister), he found the breath to tell her to "knock that shit off. I'm dying, and that ain't gonna be the last thing I hear!"
As the hours passed, his breathing became more labored. He wouldn't go. My sister sat with him, held his hand, and talked with him quietly. He would occasionally speak. Eventually, it was clear that he was not talking to us, he was talking to....someone(s) we couldn't see or hear.
Somewhere around 4am, his sister said that she was going to go home, get some sleep and be back in the morning. It hit me then: he was waiting for dawn. The past several weeks, he would stay awake all night, restless, and only rest when he could hear birdsong as morning approached. I told her that, and asked if, as 5am got closer, if we could open the window. We watched him; we watched the clock.
My sister needed a break. Any time my mom talked, or touched him, he would jolt back to the room from where ever he was. I took over. I sat, held his hand, and tried to be as comforting for him as she was.
I can tell you this, corny as it sounds: There is a light. Loved ones who went before you do come to meet you. I saw silhouettes. I could identify those I knew well--my grandmother, our neighbor. I saw, but did not recognize others. There were many. My sister can tell you names, describe faces. She stood in that light, and heard their voices. She heard his last goodbye. (I know she's not making it up, because just a few years ago, when my aunt pulled out old photos we'd never seen before, my sister could name several we'd only heard of, but who had died before we were born, and we'd never seen pics of them before.)
The hospital staff, the doctor, everyone we encountered that night were compassionate. My dad chose to go into the hospital to die. I believe he didn't want our last memories of him to be in our house. I also think that when the time came, he knew he couldn't let go while he was at home.
So yes, I'd have to say that, a terminally ill person should be given as much control over his or her surroundings as possible, including where to die. If they choose to be in the hospital setting, with morphine and oxygen (as in our case, the oxygen tank was borrowed and without hospice or a nurse, a morphine drip was impossible) then that's where he or she should be. I don't remember any problems with insurance paying for things. There were some things about his treatment that were paid out-of-pocket then reimbursed, and these weren't cheap things. It was annoying, it was an inconvenience. But overall? I guess we were lucky. In many more ways than we knew.
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