Settling into Hospice and then it's over

21 Nov 24 

Mom is out of the hospital, back at Eventide and Hospice care is in full swing.  I have gotten phone calls and had in person conversations with a few Nurses and Care Team people with Ethos Hospice.  They are all very kind and caring and really want to know how they can serve us best.  They are interested in Mom, where she came from, what she liked to do and who she is.  It feels like a waiting game, that we are just waiting for her to die, but yet at the same time, not wanting her to die.  Tonight, I am taking Dad to a grief support group at my church.  I plan to go with him tonight but would like him to go alone after this.  He needs to feel free to say things that he may not want to say around me. Ethos has also indicated they will provide services to Dad to help with his grief and anxiety. 

Jan 9th 25

I wanted to Blog a lot more, but things went downhill fast, and mom entered Heaven's Gate on December 18th.  The staff at Eventide, and the staff with Ethos Hospice were amazing and along with everyone else in our lives, we journeyed through this together. Her service was beautiful with all of her family there. The family was together for a few days, sorting memories and making new ones.  Our prayers were answered in that she didn't ever have pain and Lisa and Ross made it here before she died. 

Dad is working through his grief, that will be an up and downhill battle as he learns to live life with his new normal.  Hospice is providing grief support and he has much support through his church and the Griefshare group he started at my church and is continuing at another church. He still works at Menards several mornings a week and volunteers at the Dakota Boys Ranch Thrift Store in West Fargo. 

How do you tell your Mom, it's time to die?

 I'm not sure that I will publish this, or any of the following Blogs about Mom's journey.  It seems unfair to put it out there, what she is going through, but I need to blog for my own Sake.

Friday Nov 15th, 2024, we met with a PA from the Palliative Care team at Sanford. My Mom has had several medical issues that have been building for years.  She has an enlarged Spleen that consumes her platelets, so her platelets sit at about 40. (should be at least 150) This leads to a risk of bleeding. Her kidneys have not functioned well for years, right now they are working at about 35%. She has stage 4 liver disease. She has severe fluid buildup in her legs and abdomen and some in her lungs. This all came to a head between Oct 3rd and Oct 18th where a blood clot developed and blocked the portal vein that feeds blood to the liver. Without the blood flow to her liver, her kidneys won't work well. The solution for one is the problem for another.  Due to her low platelets, surgery is not an option. As a family, we all agreed to try blood thinners to help dissolve the clot. After a few days, she had a GI bleed, in the lower GI tract.  Blood thinners were stopped. There is nothing more we can do. 

The Palliative Care PA was very kind and caring, compassionate and helped guide the conversation to mom and us about Hospice and that it is the best option.  After all the discussion, Dad asked Ross, Ross stated that yes, he was leaning to the hospice route, Lisa, after a moment of hesitation also said yes.  Dad asked me, and I said that I believed Hospice was the best thing to do and my main reason is that Hospice will work very hard to make sure mom is Comfortable.  Her being pain free and comfortable is my biggest concern. It was hard to hear mom say, "There comes a time in life that you have to make some choices", Then she said "Well, I guess if everyone thinks we should do this, then we need to do that" I told her I didn't want her to think I was forcing it on her, that she needed to be comfortable.  She said she was.  I was very glad all 5 of us were in the decision-making process. Lisa and Ross by phone and mom dad and me in the hospital room. 

She was going to stay overnight one night to put in a port so the Hospice or Nursing Home nurses can drain her ascites to make her more comfortable.  This was Friday, they were going to try work it in that day. Then they said they were too busy, so they said Saturday. Then they decided that due to her low platelets, they had to wait until Monday.  They need her platelets to be 50, as of Sunday night they were 38.  She is getting a unit of platelets Sunday night and one more Monday morning, and probably FFP before the procedure. 

Me and Dad, and Lisa and Ross, we need this to settle.  For her to get back to Eventide and just settle into Hospice Life.  Tuesday is their Anniversary, 58 years. 

After Bucket List

 On a recent work trip to Syracuse, we took a Road Trip up to Fort Onterio, there were 4 of us who had never been in the area.  We were talking about the things we were seeing and doing and all of us thought it was pretty cool to cross off, The Erie Canal, Fort Onterio, Lake Onterio, and Green Lakes State Park from our bucket lists.  But none of us had those things on our bucket list, so we came up with the concept of an After Bucket List.  Unlike the name might imply, this is not after you kick the bucket.  This is after you do something, something you didn't think you were going to do or see, but it came your way and it was cool enough to be on a bucket list. So I started an After Bucket List. It's gonna be fun to grow it. What has been on your after bucket list?

Life Lessons from my Sophomore year of High School

 It's been way too long since, I Blogged, over 2 years, I keep saying I will make a goal to start again, but never seem to do it.  Reflections on something at work brought me back to High School.

At work a long time ago, my previous manager push pulled and dragged me kicking and screaming into what I could call leadership in a part of our station. ( I'm purposefully being vague because I don't like to directly discuss things from work. )  I'm not even sure he was even aware that he was doing this, (well, yes he probably was aware, he hated this particular area) it was a part of our job that was going ok, but just ok. I reluctantly started paying more attention, taking some initiative to make things better. As time went on, we got new leadership, I was at the point where I had decided to deliberately take the reins of this area and my new manager was not only willing to let me charge ahead, but he supported me in trying new ideas and let me succeed and fail with how I wanted to do things. I think, I inherited some stubbornness, and had decided that I was going to make this work and be the best.  Because I had/have great leadership who let me grow, and even more because I have a great team in which we all deliberately support each other, we have made this area of work into a great success. In fact, within our company, in this area, I will call us the best of the best.  I have stats to back that up. 

I was reflecting on this the other day and part of my high school was brought to my mind. Back in the day, everyone who was anyone was in choir at school, well, lots of us were.  As with pretty much any Jr High or High School Choir, the girls far outweigh the boys.  It leads to an unbalanced choir, plus, in our case, not enough seat in the choir room so the choir had to be divided. It was divided into "Concert Choir" and "Girls Choir" You had to try out for Concert Choir, and if you didn't make it, you were in Girls Choir.  Us in the Girls Choir, we all knew we were second string, and it kind of showed.  At First. The main Music Teacher, didn't have the time or desire to put forth the effort to teach Girls Choir, but they brought in Mrs. Morrison to lead us. She took charge of us and changed how we thought about Girls Choir.  She refused to let us be second string.  I remember how she would push us to be the best. She used to tell us "your not Olivia Newton John singing 'Sandra Dee' in a soft breathy voice, you need to sing and project your voice" We didn't get by with skating by.  When the school provided Choir Robes for Concert Choir, but refused to buy us uniforms, she made us want to have a uniform and we all bought black skirts and white shirts, we had an 'In" at Target and knew they were going to be on sale. We looked awesome. It was a team decision to wear a uniform and a team decision as to what that uniform would be. We all had input and it just worked. We knew we were second string as far as others thought, but we weren't second string in our eyes.  This was because of Mrs. Morrison.  She taught us all how to be the best we can. There was a change in us from the first day of Girls Choir to the night of our first concert. 

I realized the other day that the lessons Mrs. Morrisson taught me, have stayed with me.  Looking back, I've used that "we are not second string" a lot in my life.  Take something that works ok and make it the best.  Teachers today have it tough, but teachers back then did too.  I don't know if teachers realize the impact they can make on students every day, and that those students still live with those lessons over 30 years later. If anyone knows where Mrs. Morrison is, please let her know, she made a difference.

Follow up to the Choir saga, Junior Year, I made Concert Choir and hated it.  The instructor wasn't a team player, he constantly talked down others and yelled at us a lot.  When I called him out and asked him to stop insulting other school choirs and talking bad about them, (after class and in private,) he told me I didn't have the right attitude for Concert Choir and if my attitude didn't improve, I wouldn't make Concert Choir next year.  Uhm yeah, I didn't even try for choir and my senior year was the only year of school I had no music in. The life lessons he taught me, still stick with me, I learned from him and putting others down is no way to raise yourself up, it just makes you look petty.  

Concert Choir was full of talented kids, they made great music.  And So was Girls Choir. 

Follow up to my last Blog

I don't Blog nearly as often as I want to, and these last few months have been full of craziness.  Not gonna touch on COVID or Politics.  7 weeks ago we became grandparents.  Little Miley Elizabeth Clemetson joined Laura and Ryan's family and is the sweetest, cutest baby ever born.  Joshua and Hannah got engaged and plan a small family wedding in December with a bigger celebration to follow next summer. Joshua was laid off and he moved back home, (sounds like he will be called back in the fall) my work hours were drastically reduced, John's job went through several changes.  We are recovering from all of this, John's job is getting back to normal, my hours are still reduced but increasing.  Even today, Laura and Ryan are dealing with massive flooding due to heavy rainfalls along the river that goes through their land.

After the episode I blogged about last time, I was sent to an Electrophyisiology Cardiologist. He determined that the rapid heart rate episodes I had been experiencing was caused by an extra electrical path in my heart that was causing an extra heartbeat and my heart wouldn't get out of the rhythm on it's own.

Today I went to the hospital to get it fixed.  The experience was actually quite awful.  I had been told that I would be under a conscious sedation and that I would be sleepy and groggy and not really with it.  I think they forgot that part.  I heard them say they gave me medication, but didn't feel any different after than I did before, so I would say I was wide awake and not groggy at all.  After being hooked up to about 29 wires with patches all over my body they got the rest of me prepped and ready to go.  There was a whole lot of equipment around me that looked like it cost a lot of money. They inserted wires etc into 4 veins, two one each side and one into my femoral artery.  I could feel the wires moving inside my body.  Really strange.  They gave me some kind of drug to produce a rapid heart rate, it worked, I asked what it was and they said 170ish.  I am not sure what all they were doing, but I could feel and hear my heart rate very fast, then it seemed like they were doing things to change that.  I had really strange and awful sensations.  The feeling of chocking was really uncomfortable. Once they had the info they needed, they started the ablation.  The wires that they had already in place were manipulated into place and to fix the problem, they zapped the spot in the heart. If you think about how it might feel to touch your heart to an electric fence, that's what it felt like.  It was painful. They did it twice to two different spots.  Then to check if it worked, they gave me the drug again to try induce a rapid heart beat.  The drug was quite aggressive and made my arms start shaking, soon my whole torso was shaking, like I was having a seizure.  I asked if this was supposed to be happening and the nurse that was with me said yes.  During this time, due to me being on my back for so long, I had a major muscle spasm in my lower back, bad enough to make me cry out, the nurse gave me some kind of pain meds.  That too ended and soon everything was pulled out and I was wheeled back to my room to lay on the bed on my back for 4 more hours to make sure I wouldn't bleed from the femoral artery stuff.  My back spazed out again and few more times, but I made it through.

I'm home now.  I'm still kind of feeling sorry for myself for the experience, it was much worse than I thought it was going to be.  I'm still feeling really stiff and sore, mostly due to being on my back for so long.  I'm super glad I didn't know what was ahead for me.  I am very thankful that they we able to fix the problem, and honestly, compared to what so many others have to go though with medical issues, it really wasn't that bad.

Every day is a gift from God.  I am so thankful for all of you who lifted me up in prayer, God is the ultimate healer.  For all the craziness on the last few months, there is so much more positive than negative. I love you all! 

So I kind of died yesterday, but not really

Yesterday, Friday,  I had the day off, planned to do some really fun things, including a haircut and shampooing the carpets.  Living on the edge, I know. 
Back track to Thursday night, I was having some high blood pressure issues along with a very rapid heart rate.  When I first checked, it was 138 over 106 with a heart rate of 160ish.  Yes, I know that diastolic number is high enough that I should have gone to the ER.  Assuming this was just caused by work stress, that my home machine isn't entirely accurate, and being a tad stubborn that work stress could cause this, I didn't go in.  This has happened several times over the past 8 months or so.  Ignoring the advice of everyone I know, I would stay home and sleep it off.  Go forward again to Friday morning.  I wake up with the same rapid heart rate and the feeling of intense pressure in my head and neck, not pain, just pressure.  It's never lasted this long before.  My home machine would just error out for BP but gave my heart rate at 159, so, at the advise of my Dawns, (you know who you are) I stopped at the clinic on my way to the haircut to have a BP check.  Great news, BP is fine, bad news, they were not happy that my heart rate was still around 160, somewhat jumpy and wouldn't go down, even after they had me try some really strange things.  First she told me to breathe really deep and cough the biggest cough ever, over and over, then blow as hard as I could through a straw.  I guess, doing those things can kick your heart rate back to normal.  Consulting with a whole bunch of people, they decided they wanted me to go to the ER.  This was going on about 14 hours with a heart rate that is way too high and she said my body can't operate like that safely. 
Then she told me what they were going to do.  To break the cycle of this high heart rate, they were going to give me a drug, Adensonine,  or something like that, this would stop my heart beat.  Then, if it goes as expected, the heart starts up at a normal rate.  Seriously they were going to stop my heart, the one thing that keeps me alive.  Do you have any idea of how terrifying that is?  Someone I don't know or trust, was going to stop my heart.  I guess, it's fairly routine, but not for me.  I called John to meet me at the ER, he works in the same building, and yes, they let me drive myself, and yes the ER people said I shouldn't have driven myself. 
After my second EKG of the day, the ER doctor, thought the problem was Afib, ( the two EKGs, while both irregular, seemed to have slightly different results) and then he decided that yes they would give me the heart stopping drug.  Two reasons, one hopefully my heart would start up at the normal rate, and second, he said that while my heart is stopped he would be able to tell if it was Afib or not.  Doc told me he had to wait a few minutes to do this because he wanted the "cardiac" cart in the room.  Ok, I knew well enough what he meant, yes, I want the "crash" cart next to my bedside when you stop my heart.  No need to pretend it's a 'cardiac' cart.  Agreeing to do this was not an easy thing to do.
The actual experience was very odd.  He told me that once they pushed the drug, they would push saline to get it to my heart faster and it would take about 5 seconds.  When it hit, all I could feel was this intense feeling of suffocating, it felt like someone had their hands around my throat and they were choking me.  It went away super fast, maybe 5 to 7 seconds, my heart started again, no need for that "cardiac" cart.   My heart rate started back at a normal rate, around 100, still a tad high for resting,  in my opinion, but back in the normal range.  Whatever he was looking for to determine if this was Afib didn't show up, so it's not that, at least he didn't think so. 
They did a lot of lab work, all of that was normal and good, actually, my labs were much better than they have been in the past, so that's a good thing. He didn't have much of an explanation as to why this happened, he didn't think work stress had much to do with it, although that could have been a trigger.  (working in an airport during a world wide pandemic, no stress there) But he also said when people have a rapid heart rate due to stress, anxiety or a panic attack, it would not last 16 hours.  So I get to see a cardiac electrophysiologist or something like that at some point.  I also get to add a new drug to the list of meds I take daily, which is already showing signs of causing stomach issues like so many other meds do for me.
Anyway, that's my story.  While this issue may be routine for people who work in the ER, nothing is routine when your the patient.  When someone tells you he is going to stop your heart, even for a very brief moment, it's not routine.  Its hard for me to put my safety in the hands of someone else, and since I didn't even know him, it was harder than ever.  I miss my Grand Forks Doctor.
Thanks to Laura for nagging me to go in, for my Dawns who pushed me to go in and for Andrew who reassured me I wasn't going to die and he has heard of this before, that it wasn't some quack medicine thing.  Thank you to John my wonderful amazing husband who stayed with me through my moment of "death".  You are my rock, my anchor and I don't think I could have let them do that if you weren't there with me. Definitely a test of Faith.

It's been way too long

I haven't written anything here for over a year, wow, doesn't seem like it has been that long.
I had a random thought the other night, and I would like to know how you would answer my thought.  If you had two sentences to describe to someone who has been blind their entire life, what it means to see, how would you do it?  Or likewise, someone who has never heard a sound before, what sound is?  I can't answer my own thought.

Saying Hi to an old {young} friend

Saw a friend at Target today.  Might not seem like a big deal, but when you live in a community for over 20 years, you get used to seeing people you know every where you go.  When you go to Target or Texas Roadhouse, you ALWAYS see a friend.  Now I have moved back home, and I'm not lonely,  my best life long friend is here, my family is here, and I have new and old friends, the town just seems somehow empty sometimes.  When I go to Target or Texas Roadhouse, I just see people.  Lots of people, but I don't know ANY of these people. 
So today, when I ran in to David Snyder, it made the whole town seem a bit more like home.  David is one of Joshua's friends, his parents are our friends and his Uncle Mike was my youth pastor in High School.  I got a hug hello and a hug goodbye and ten minutes of chatting with a friend. And I met his girlfriend, a sweet girl.  I was already having a great day, but this made my day even better!  It's also great to see kids you loved as kids grow up into great adults who you still love as adults. 
So next time you see the new person at work, school or Target, say hi, stop and visit, and smile at a stranger. 

clouds from an airplane Delta Flight July 2018 MSP SAN

The Blue Angels Come to visit/ or what was your favorite thing?

When you plan events or do things with your children, you can never know what will stick in their minds.  Kids appreciate the small things, sometimes even more than the large things.
A few Examples from my own life.
1986 Seattle Washington, our family is at the zoo.  big zoo.  lots of animals we've never seen before.  I was 16, Ross was 13, Lisa was 18.  At one point, all 3 of us are staring at the ground at a slug.  Said slug was not a zoo exhibit, just the biggest slug any of us had ever seen.  We were fascinated.
2007 Miami Took the kids on a trip to the Miami Zoo.  Joshua was 9.  After a day of seeing alligators and Komodo Dragons, Hippos and feeding Giraffes, I asked Joshua what animal was his favorite.  He said the fake ones.  Miami Zoo has cement animals that the kids can climb on. 
Almost as soon as my kids were old enough to put together thoughts, I started asking them what was their favorite thing they did today, or if we went to an event as we were leaving I would ask what their favorite thing about that event was.  By time they were in early elementary school, they were telling me what their favorite things were without being prompted. Many times in the car after going to a park or event, one of the kids would out of the blue say "My favorite thing about ___ was ___.  I would like to think that I helped train them to think about their day and to appreciate something good about that day.  My only regret is that I didn't write down and journal the daily thoughts the kids expressed.  But then again, not everything in life needs to be documented, some things just need to be enjoyed in the moment.
One of my earliest childhood memories included the Blue Angels. (which are flying over Fargo all day for the next few days!!!! I've missed the sound of fighters) I think at one point I figured out that I must have been 2 when this happened, could have been a few years older, the memory is pretty vague.  What I remember is sitting on my dads shoulders in a crowd.  He told me the Blue Angels were coming.  So the Angles came, they flew around, then they went away.  That's my memory.  But, I knew all about Angels.  God sends the Angels to earth to talk to people, bring 'good tidings of great joy' and things like that.  I fully believed that the Blue Angels were God's Angels.  I didn't in my young mind understand they were US Navy F4's.  Even after I found out they were not real Angels,  that was one of 'my favorite things' about that day.
I would challenge you to have those conversations with your kids.  Ask them what their favorite thing was.  You will be surprised.  I was all the time.  Some days we would have planned a big event or trip and the kids' favorite thing was the ice cream they got, or seeing a pretty rock, or playing on a fake animal.
PS: It's not a bad conversation with your spouse either. 

My Cushion vs a Farm

Anyone in the Red River Valley and beyond will understand when I say we had 'a bit of a wind' last night.  I woke up when my phone rang, emergency services warning me of the coming storm, I fell back asleep, woke up again to a sudden massive wind and rain storm.  In my tired mind, I remembered I never retied my sling chair cushion to the chair, and figured when I woke up, I might not have a cushion anymore.  I was feeling bummed and eventually fell back asleep.  We woke up a few hours later to a phone call from Laura telling us they lost their barn in the 80 mile hour wind storm that swept thru the valley.  Chicken coop was tipped over, minor damage to the house, and lots of other wind damage.  All of a sudden my cushion was no longer of any importance.  As daylight came, the damage was looked at and assessed, while there is loss of property, there was no loss of life, Laura and Ryan are safe, Angus (dog) and whatever they named their cat are safe.  Cows, horses, chickens and ducks are safe.  Rumpled a bit, but safe.  It's hard to watch your kids go thru stuff like this, we want to fix it for them.  Please add them to your prayers, there's lots of things they need to do, work with Insurance, Rebuild, Clean Up, they will go on, North Dakota Farm life will survive more than a wind storm.  And when I looked, my cushion is laying on the ground next to my sling chair.

Chahinkapa Zoo 2 june 2018 Wahpeton ND

Eat the Ice Cream

We went on a short cruise this past winter and were seated in the same area each night for supper.  I had noticed a couple who sat in our area each night.  They were around the 60 years old mark and I believe they were probably from somewhere in Europe.  From what I saw, they did not speak English, the gentleman never seemed really happy, just there to eat.  On the last night, I noticed that after they were done eating, the waiter brought him a dish of ice cream.  Served fancy in a silver stem bowl, one scoop of ice cream.  He smiled like a 5 year old at a birthday party, one scoop of ice cream changed my whole perspective on who he was.  He may have been quiet and solemn for most of the cruise, but for one moment, I got a glimpse of the inner child.

Today we went on a day trip to Itasca.  One advantage of empty nesting is that we can take John's Mustang when we travel.  It is such a smooth drive and those curvy tree lined roads in the park and outside of the park are just a dream to drive thru.  If you know John well, you know he loves Huckleberry anything.  Itasca sells Huckleberry ice cream.  The line was way too long to get some, but on the way home we stopped at the Malt Shop in Lake Park and we got our Huckleberry Ice Cream.  Well, John did, I got my standard mint chip, always a good choice. 

Go out, drive with the windows open and eat the ice cream.

Know your Goals

Took me long enough, but here is my first Blog post. 
I decided to call it know your goals, because I am trying to define the goal of my blog. 
I play a game called Gummy Drop, it's a silly mindless game that takes up too much of my minds time, but playing it is a relaxation mode for me. There are different goals for each level.  Sometimes, I am playing a level and I can't seem to win, I try and try, use all three of my 'guys' and still don't win the level.  Then I look up at the goal of the level and realize I have missed the goal.  Maybe I was trying to clear the tiles when I needed to drop the flip flops, or trying to drop the bomb while forgetting to clear the tiles.  The game is much easier if you just know the goals.  Such is life, it is much easier if you know the goal. 
I have decided to make the goals of my blog to:

Talk about my travels
Express thoughts I have at the time of writing
Reflect that Life is Good even on a bad day
Learn from people thru comments and discussion
Be open to adding to these goals

Life Is Good
Christi

BroseProse it is

BroseProse it is.  The start of my new blog.  I have been wanting to do this for a long time, now that I have, I have nothing to write.  In the future perhaps, I can tell you about my thoughts on feathers and rocks, ice cream while at sea, and the many other things that run thru my mind, some are fascinating, some only fascinating to me.