Going to be away, but here's some fun beforehand!

[Pixie-elf]

Heading to Chicago for 24 days. I'll probably pop online to see how things are going, but I'll miss y'all! <3 Kage is paying for everything, including our gas, so I get to go.

First, my Nanny Violet has Alzheimer's, and, honestly, I'd rather have CH than that. BUT.... We're blessed because she's still functional.

My Aunt Gina watches her about 4 days a week. Usually when she watches her nights, I go, or when I'm not feeling too bad.

Now Nanny has no idea who I am, except I'm someone who keeps her company sometimes, and I love her/she loves me. I'm her Step-Great-Granddaughter, and also her Great Niece. If y'all wanna hear about how that happened, it's an amazing love story.

Gina, she also knows this with but she knows Gina is there every day. Some days she knows who exactly Gina is, what her name is, etc. Some days not.

So, last night we're watching her. And, Nanny is a VERY religious lady. I mean, before she had Alzheimer's, the only bad thing I -ever- heard her say was about one of my doctors. Which was "Well, he's just like a big ol' mean bulldog, isn't he?!" and it shocked the LIVING HELL out of my Mom and I. She never talked about anyone behind their back / gossiped, etc.

She's generally a very proper woman. She's exactly what I think of when I think of a "Lady." She's one of those people who just RADIATES kindness.

We're sitting there, and she has a tube of what I assume is muscle rub, she's got bad knees. My Mom's sitting next to her and she turns to her and holds it up.

She then informs all 3 of us "You know... I thought maybe I should hide this! I bought it thinking it was muscle rub. Then I sat down after I got home and read it. And it says BUTT... B-U-T-T paste. BUTT PASTE! Then I read on the back it was used for babies who have a hurt butt... I tried some on my knee and it helped."

All 4 of us laughed SO DAMNED HARD. It was so fecking hilarious, and she obviously knew it was too.

Now, she might forget a lot of things, and we might have the same conversations over and over, but she still has a damned good sense of humor! Figured I'd share. Every time I had a bad moment today I've said to myself "BUTT PASTE." and it got a hell of a lot better. LMAO.

I love y'all!

Mystina

[Pixie-elf]

I figured I'd put the love part of the story up. Just so no one thinks "WTF?"

My Nanny Cowart, Married to my Papa Cowart, was Nanny Violet's half sister. Their parents met through a newspaper, way back when. Nanny Cowart's Mom had lost her husband and had a few children... Nanny Violet's father had lost his wife, and had Violet to take care of.

So they met up through the mail, and we're assuming they must have liked each other a lot 'cause they had a LOT more kids. 

Nanny Violet was married, and had kids. Lost her husband at some point. As in, he died. That's okay, cause he was a mean bastard from what I heard.

So, she'd go on trips with my Nanny Cowart and Papa Cowart, they were all really good friends.

Nanny Cowart wound up getting cancer. I think it was oak cell? Something similar.

So, she was dying, and pretty fast. Her wish on her deathbed was that Nanny Violet, and Papa Cowart take care of each other. They were already friends. But she wanted them to date, hopefully fall in love, and marry.

After she passed away, they would date. Nanny Cowart died when I was about 2.

Papa Cowart would take Nanny out places, but made sure not to besmirch her name or anything like that.

After a year or so, they announced to the family that yes, they had fallen in love, and decided to get married. Just like Nanny Cowart wanted.

Our half of the family was pretty much okay with it. Nanny Violet's side pitched a fit. They're mostly kind of uptight as all get-out.

Papa Cowart had a lot of strokes, and she took care of him through all of that. He died when I was about 15 or so. Maybe 16. She only put him in an old folks home due to the fact that she had to have surgery on her ankle, and couldn't get up and walk around to take care of him. And I know he was hard to take care of, he had dementia, and a major  temper. In fact, when he got pissed off, you could ALWAYS understand what he said, because it was a big long string of cuss words!

Nanny's just a very amazing woman. I think we're blessed that she's still able to find things that make her happy and all.

[Bejeeber]

Whoa 24 days, very glad to hear it - Kage is da man!!

Heckuva story about Nanny Violet there, and whatta family y'all are for taking care of her like that.

If religion has played a major role in making her such an incredible gal, well then religion just got a couple bonus points in my mind where there were none before. 

[Pixie-elf]

Whoa 24 days, very glad to hear it - Kage is da man!!

Heckuva story about Nanny Violet there, and whatta family y'all are for taking care of her like that.

If religion has played a major role in making her such an incredible gal, well then religion just got a couple bonus points in my mind where there were none before. 

Yes, he is the man! We'd actually planned for April but after more shunt misadventures that had to be cancelled. It wasn't just him getting the money together either. Our friends in Chicago actually first gathered up about half of what was needed to get me there! Almost forgot to put that part in! It just had to be postponed!

Well, I'm pretty sure it's due to her faith that is why she is the way she is. I know after Papa Cowart died I asked my Papa, "How does Nanny Violet deal with it? She's already been widowed once."

"Well baby, she has a very strong faith."

I mean flat out, up until the Alzheimer's got really bad, she never gossiped. (Now she might say something about what someone is wearing, but that didn't happen before. She's about to turn 95.) It pretty much shocked Gina when she heard her say anything like that.

She somehow *has* no temper, and if she judged others, she kept it to herself. I've never seen or heard of Nanny being mad, or hateful to anyone. Nor have I ever seen her try to push her faith on anyone else. She believes in God, but it's not her business if you don't! She's stubborn, but that runs in our family. Bwhaha.

The way we look at it, as a family, is we love her. She would do this for any of us, if the shoe was on the other foot. Hell, she took care of Papa Cowart and kept him alive for so much longer than anyone expected. She might have a disease that's destroying her mind, but she still has her dignity.

She deserves quality of life, for as long as she can have it. She deserves to keep her dignity, her modesty, and get as much joy for as long as she can. We know that in the end she might have to go into a home / treatment facility when things get REALLY bad... But until then, we should do whatever we can to give her what we can.

Gina's the main one that does that, she takes her out of the house every day that Nanny feels up to going, and on days that my Mom is off of work and not in a lot of pain she goes. And days when I'm feeling good I go. (Anytime Gina works at night, I always go as it helps Gina out.) So I can't take a lot of credit for it. But like I said... If it was one of us who needed it, Nanny would be doing it for us, no questions asked.

This also helps Gina out, as Gina has severe depression, so taking care of Nanny helps her get out of herself. Gina might be cranky and have no patience with my Mom and I, but thank GOD she has all the patience in the world for Nanny.

We've also had some other hilarious times.

Nanny absolutely cannot drive. Her car also was made so it couldn't work. She BELIEVES she can, and thinks that she still does drive her own car, but she can't.

Nanny knew it was next door at her son Virgil's house, or suspected. This was one day pretty early on in Gina's watching her.

So, she tells Gina "Let's drive THIS way down the road today." and Gina assumes it's just cause Nanny wants to go a different way... No. Nanny was checking to see if her car was over at Virgil's house.

They get back from lunch, and after a little while Nanny says

"I'm going to walk to the edge of my yard. You just stay in here. Don't follow me."

Gina agreed, but she sneakily followed Nanny out anyways. Nanny walked across her yard over into her son Virgil's, and, this yard is full of HILLS. I mean, tons of them. It was a miracle she didn't fall over.

Gina follows her, and once they get over there, Nanny finds her car, and gets in the front seat, checks for the keys, digs in the back, etc...

Then she turns to Gina and asks her if a locksmith could come out and make her a key for it. Gina tells her no. (I don't know if they CAN, but the answer was NO.)

Nanny dug some more and then they went back to her house, but yeah. Sneaky Nanny. Gina was SEVERELY disturbed by this, while the rest of us all had a good laugh. She told them they needed to get RID of that car, ASAP. They did, thankfully.

If Nanny gets up and leaves the room for a minute or two, I tend to follow. After watching my nephews, I've learned silence = something is happening and there's a 75% chance it might be bad. 

[Bejeeber]

Lordy that Nanny does have a SNEAKY side when it comes to her love for the automobile. 

Good thing you like kids, or at least kids of the nephew variety. 

[Bejeeber]

Just saw a post from you on the CHf appreciation thread Pixie - does this mean you're officially back in town now and back to the forum??!!

We missed ya big time - it'll be so good to have you and your unique color commentary back again.  8-) Some color drained out when you were gone.  ;D

Did you see that next year's convention will be in Chicago? Wondering if that might mean you could fit it in with another one of your visits there? That would be mighty cool!

[Bejeeber]

Mystina, Mystina, where has you been?  :-?

[CHfather]

Agree with the sentiment, but I think you mean, "Mystina, Mystina, gal, where ya been so long?"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzv5KTNU2FU

Got to be OLD to remember this one!   :-/ 

[Pixie-elf]

I have been pretty much out of it since like... Sept 23rd or so. Sorry I haven't been around much!

Been having pain near my tubing and also been pretty dazed and confused at times. (They said everything is fine with the shunt, but I've got some severe constipation going on when I was hospitalized last week.)

I see my neurosurgeon tomorrow to figure out what to do now, since I've been taking a crapton of laxatives, and my tubing still hurts when I move around.

I've missed you guys! <3 Hopefully I'll be back in working order and posting more!

Mystina

[Bejeeber]

a crapton of laxatives

Color now returning to message board ;D, but blugh, sorry to hear about the problems with the various tubings!  Sounds fecking miserable.  :'(

I have an uncle who just had an intestinal blockage from a hospital stay, and the way he describes it, the first scan they did on him for it didn't work, so they ended up giving him another dose of the stuff they were putting in him that lights up in the scan or something, then they scanned him again. Turns out that stuff can have a dissolving effect on blockages and by the time he got the second dose that's just what it did!

[Pixie-elf]

a crapton of laxatives

Color now returning to message board ;D, but blugh, sorry to hear about the problems with the various tubings!  Sounds fecking miserable.  :'(

I have an uncle who just had an intestinal blockage from a hospital stay, and the way he describes it, the first scan they did on him for it didn't work, so they ended up giving him another dose of the stuff they were putting in him that lights up in the scan or something, then scanning him again. Turns out that stuff can have a dissolving effect on blockages and by the time he got the second dose that's just what it did!

Unfortunately I'm allergic to everything they use for scanning EXCEPT radioactive things. It's like "Iodine? Oh hey, let's try to KILL OURSELVES." is it's response.

Doc is going to do a MRI with MRI contrast of my brain on the First to see if there's any signs of the shunt not working at 100%. If there are signs in the brain that things aren't right, he'll open me up and fix it. But as he put it, he doesn't want to open me up JUST to open me up. Or to play around and cause more problems than I had before.

He also said flat out Medicaid is why I got kicked out of the hospital. They basically went "You've done all of the tests, we don't give a damn that she's in pain, tell her to GTFO."

I did have a great moment with the gastrointerologists who came in.

They asked me "Do you drink?"

"Oh yeah! All the time!"

They got the FUNNIEST looks on their faces.

"What do you drink?"

"Water. I don't drink soda very often...."

The look of relief on their faces was so clear, and we had a laugh over it later. They told me "We meant alcohol...."

The hospital also slipped in with my discharge papers a card that says I'm radioactive until Nov 6th due to a shuntogram. No one talked to us about it. Just kind of slipped it in like SURPRISE. YOU'RE RADIOACTIVE.

I was like "If Papa was still alive, he'd so have a geiger counter checking my radiation levels..." Since they'll be able to detect it for a while.