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Health care

Did She Know?

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The murder weapon…

Did the woman who murdered my mother know what she was doing?

Well…there is an element of ambiguity there. Luella was, after all, stupid as a post, a perfect match for her less-than-brilliant spouse.

But Jeez! How hard is it to understand “You must clean all produce thoroughly AND sanitize it, lest you come down with amoebic dysentery, which will put you in the hospital and may even kill you”?

Really, how hard IS that? Especially if you’re sat down in a classroom and made to WATCH the process, step by step, for sanitizing contaminated produce?

Back in the 1950s, American wives who were sent out to Saudi Arabia to accompany their spouses, on contract with Aramco, were required to take classes in how to prepare food safely and how to keep their families well. One point of those classes was to convince you to clean your food thoroughly before cooking it or putting it (raw, as in the case of salad greens) on the table.

There was nothing difficult about these lessons:

*Germs
*Germs make you sick
*Germs make your kids sick
*Germs can even kill you and your kids.
*So you must wash all your food thoroughly to get rid of the germs.
*This especially applies to things you eat raw, such as salad greens.

Does this seem hard to you?

Seemed pretty self-evident to the ten-year-old me. But I do remember my parents’ idiot friend, Luella, standing in the kitchen and preparing a cabbage salad…without ever so much as rinsing off the leaves. And I remember her handing me pieces of raw, unwashed cabbage greens to munch on, as she puttered about the kitchen.

This treat did nothing to me. Not unduly surprising, since I arrived in Saudi Arabia as a two-year-old and, during the time we spent there, was exposed to every Middle Eastern germ known to personkind.

But…that yummy salad made my mother very, VERY sick. Desperately sick.

The company sent her back to New York, where she was hospitalized for weeks and dosed with every treatment known and imagined to beat back the microbes.

She spent a good two or three weeks in the Ras Tanura hospital before the company doctors felt it was safe to fly her back to New York, where she spent the better part of another month in in treatment – drastic treatment.

That STUPID, evil woman apparently poisoned my mother on purpose.

What did she think it would do to her? Probably nothing. She was so stupid she didn’t understand difficult concepts like the germ theory. But she had been told about it. And told about it. And told about it again and again. If she’d had a synapse between her ears, she would have understood that unwashed produce grown in fields fertilized by human feces was likely to make you good and sick. How hard IS that to understand?

To this day, I remain convinced that Luella quite deliberately sickened my mother by quite deliberately neglecting to sanitize the dinner produce. What…A…Witch!

At any rate, my mother did survive, though she was never fully well again. Eventually she did die of a gastric cancer – to what extent it was related to the parasitic infection and the ferocious treatment, I do not know. But…I do remain convinced, to this day, that Luella killed my mother.

I don’t get unconvinced easily, y’know…

Don’t Do This to Yourself…

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Mwa hah ha!  The LAST thing a reasonably rational person needs is a mud-bath in sentimentality…

Seriously: The Internet, being a repository of all things remembered, forgettable or not, presents a serious threat to your sanity. It invites you to wallow in memories best left forgotten,

  • We have my friend Bruce Macalvanah, about a year ahead of me at the Ras Tanura Senior Staff School. We were about in the fifth or sixth grade at the time.
  • Next: my father’s hatred of Macalvanah Senior. I do not know why my father loathed Macalvanah with such passion. They worked together on the docks, both of them harbor pilots. My father considered Macalvanah to be a dangerous idiot…what happened to create that opinion escapes me.
  • Then we had the awful, mean, vicious brats at the school, and the stupid teachers who couldn’t seem to bring the little darlin’s under control. With the exception of the first grade and the third grade, I was freakin’ miserable all the way through the six grades I spent out there, until we came back to the States and the kids and my new school had no idea I was the Weird Little Kid.
  • But let us not forget the kid who lived halfway down the block… Ennis Hatch. The only other little darlin’ out there who didn’t create a hobby of making me miserable.

Bruce was one of the two kids in Rasty Nasty who didn’t torment me. Why, I never understood. When we came back to the states, none of the li’l darlings in the San Francisco school’s sixth grade seemed to know that I was cut out to be a pariah. They were all pleasant to me. None of them made it their business to make me miserable. I had friends. We played together after school. No one seemed to think I was weird.

But in Arabia? Dear God, was I hated! Hated and hated and hated and hated. The little darlin’s out there did everything they could to trash my life…and they were good at it. Over some six years, only three kids out there were not just acidly mean to me. One was a little girl named June B. The second, another girl child about my age. And the other was Bruce MacAlvanah. He was a year older than me…but didn’t seem to recognize that meant he wasn’t supposed to have much to do with me.

For reasons I never did know, my father HATED MacAlvanah, Bruce’s father. The guy seemed like a nice enough fellow to me. But my father thought he was a dangerous idiot. Apparently something had happened down on the docks to inspire lifelong scorn in my father.

They were both harbor pilots, steering tugboats to wrangle tankers and freighters in and out of the docks — one false move, as you can imagine, could lead to a grim and fatal catastrophe.

But where our family was concerned, the one who allegedly was a menace was MacAlvanah’s wife, Luella. She apparently poisoned my mother, and I do believe she did it on purpose: deliberately served up contaminated salad greens that gave my mother a roaring case of amoebic dysentery.

My mother very nearly died from the infection. But oddly…none of the rest of the people at that dining table came down with it. I can tell you that my mother would never have served herself contaminated lettuce or cabbage: she sanitized every single bite that went into a bowl, a plate, or a pan.

As we kids lingered in the kitchen, Luella handed me pieces of the leaves she was cutting up for that salad. I scarfed it all down merrily…and I never got sick.

So…wha???  Either the produce wasn’t actually contaminated, or somehow Luella managed to dip specific pieces of produce into some bug-infested water and then drop them into my mother’s bowl. I dunno. What really happened there, I dunno. My mother was damn near psychotic about raw produce while we were out there: most assuredly, she would not eat anything that hadn’t been sanitized. So…I have no proof of what happened there: only the experience of watching my mother get sicker and sicker in a hospital bed, and almost die as she lay in the hospital.

None of the rest of us at that table got sick that night. So as episodes go, it was freakin’ weird.

***

If you were one of the little darlin’s in the Ras Tanura Senior Staff School during the early 1950s: Be assured that I have not forgotten your meanness — and I never will.

Ohhh well. There’s a lot one should forget but never will.

She Knew. Oh, Yes: She Knew.

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Dunno why, but for some reason my idle thoughts seem focused on my parents, and on their marriage.

My father was deeply, passionately in love with my mother. She was a good, obedient wife, and yes: I do believe she loved him as much as he loved her.

They met in California, where my father – a Merchant Marine officer – shipped out of Long Beach. After they married, he got a job in Saudi Arabia: a handsomely paid one. He figured the salary would allow him to retire good and early. And so off we went to the shore of the Persian Gulf, where we spent ten years in Hell.

During all this time, she smoked.

She didn’t just smoke. She smoked constantly. She smoked and she smoked and she smoked and she….on and on and fukkin’ on. You knew when she woke up in the morning, because you could smell the stink of her first cigarette of the day. She would light up before she even lifted her head from the pillow.

And all the rest of the day, anytime you were in the house, you would have the stink of her cigarettes up your nose. The AC system, the furniture, the carpets, the walls: everything stank of fukkin’ cigarettes.

He smoked, too. But nothing like she did. He might have taken in a half-dozen cancer sticks a day. She smoked constantly. She was never awake when she wasn’t puffing on a fukkin’ cigarette. Made her kid sick? Tough. Puff puff puffety. Word came down that smoking tobacco causes cancer? Nahhh: that’s just Big Brother trying to control us. Puff puff puffety. Made the walls, the AC vents, and the furniture stink to high heaven? She didn’t even notice. Puff puff puffety puff puff puff…..

I’d say it was incredibly stupid – especially after we knew  that for sure, smoking causes cancer. But no.

No worries: just Big Brother trying to control you.

Not surprisingly, the habit killed her. Hideously, we might add. The cancer those fukkin’ cigarettes induced put her in the hospital and killed her in a slow, ugly, agonizing way.

****

The frustrating thing is that she wasn’t a stupid woman. She wasn’t an educated woman, but she wasn’t at all stupid.

She had simply made up her mind that she wasn’t gonna give up her cigarette habit, and nothing anyone said was gonna change her mind. And it literally was true: she smoked constantly. Nor did the fact that I was sick all the time make the slightest bit of difference to her.. She smoked and she smoked and she smoked and then she smoked some more. The first thing she did in the morning, before she lifted her head from the pillow, was light a cigarette. The last thing she did in the evening, before she turned out the bedside lamp, was puff one last cigarette. All. The. Way. Down. To. The. Filter.

And she apparently didn’t care that her miasma of stinking smoke made me sick. I was sick all the time I was growing up, until I left the house to go off to college.

I’d like to believe she didn’t know better – that she didn’t know she was wrecking my health. But she did. You couldn’t miss it.

No: the facts were published in every magazine, every newspaper, on every TV news show. Smoking causes cancer. Smoking makes you sick. Smoking makes your kids sick.

She just didn’t care.

I’ve long thought her smoking behavior was deliberately suicidal. She might not have understood how long it would take for the habit to kill her. Or how much it would hurt to die of that tobacco-related cancer. Or just how much and what kind of Hell it would put my father through. But she certainly knew that smoking would eventually kill her. You couldn’t miss that. Not even back in the 1960s, when everybody who wasn’t a Mormon smoked as a matter of course.

She had watched her mother die of a different self-induced cancer. She knew the agony that cancer can cause, and she knew that smoking was likely to bring it on.

She knew. Of that, you can be sure.

Another (un)Fine Mayo Day

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Ugh! This noon we have to traipse to the far side of the galaxy for another round of poking and prodding at the Mayo.

How can I do without that? Let me count the ways!

Way #1 is simply that I do not believe anything serious ails me. For that reason, this medico-charade strikes me as a fine waste of time and gasoline. (Believe me about that last item: it takes a quarter tank of gas to get out there!)

Meanwhile, other more immediate issues pile up. 

A piece of pool-cleaning equipment fell apart. I need to get to the pool store (walking ten blocks through 114-degree heat) and get it fixed or buy another one.

I need a car i need a car i need a car i need… You can’t live in Phoenix without a car. Therefore, I need a car translates that I either have to go buy one or go rent one.

My son persists in confiscating the Dog Chariot, so I’ve decided to give up and just let him have the damn thing (let him explain that to the insurance company!). To fill its place, I can either walk up to a car rental outfit about eight or ten blocks up the road, or go over to a dealer and buy one.

Theoretically, I’m enjoined from driving. Why? Because I’m old, apparently. Our honored bureaucrats can explain their reasoning (such as it is) to my lawyer.

Complicating this matter, my redoubtable lawyer died a few weeks ago. It appears his partners have simply shut down his office. No one answers the phone. So now I need to find a new lawyer.

It’s been sooooo long since I was married to one of the most prominent lawyers in the state that I now no longer know anyone in practice. The bastards have all retired,  if you can imagine the nerve!

Seriously: no one that I know is still practicing law; at least not that I can find. So somehow I’ve gotta get someone to refer me to someone and then get that second someone to see me and persuade him/her that they want me as a potential client and…ohhhhhhh gawd!

So sooner or later, I’ve got to get off that dime.

And ya know what? I don’t wanna!!! 

Come to think of it…I don’t wanna do anything. Nothin’. Not anything at all.

 

Gettin’ Old

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Just climbed out of the tub. Combed the dripping wet hair. Hauled on the jeans and T-shirt. Dog is fed. Thought is devoted to running the laundry…ehhhh…too much like work!

Gorgeous morning. If I weren’t older than the hills and feeling like Methuselah, I’d take Ruby for a walk. Except Míhito is supposed to show up pretty soon to haul me off to the damned Mayo Clinic, there to be poked and punched: subjected to yet another pointless blood test.

That means I can’t have breakfast…and I’m just about to faint from hunger. Don’t suppose the coffee is indicated, either…but fuckkit! Enough is enough.

Or not enough is not enough….

Looks like I need to renew my driver’s license, another fun nuisance to occupy hours of the day.  Nope….that’s wrong! Doesn’t have to be renewed till 2030…and that’ll be long past my driving days!

So…this is what gettin’ old is all about: one petty hassle after another petty hassle after yet another petty hassle. 😀  I guess the reason for that feeling is that after some years you get just plain sick of all the ditz of daily life in modern times. The ditz translates itself, over time, into “hassle,” and the endless hassles become endlessly annoying.

***

And the news becomes endlessly horrifying. Did you see the reports on the latest ungodly plane crash?

Gosh, I used to hate flying on passenger planes when we lived in Arabia. Every two years we had to fly from Dhahran to New York City. My father would buy a new car there (his reward for a two-year stint in Hell) and we would race across the country in that: first to his brother’s place in Texas; then to my mother’s relatives in California. Then straight back to New York as fast as we could sail along in the thing, there to jump on another plane back to the Persian Gulf.

Even after I reached an age to understand that car travel is far, FAR more dangerous than airplane flying, I just hated those hours in Connies and other passenger planes. Crowded. Uncomfortable. Fukkin’ terrifying! And 12 hours across the Atlantic in those good ole’ days.

****

Wish to gawd my son would show up here and let’s get today’s nuisance/horror trip to the Mayo over with!

Can’t complain,, though: it’s only 6:30. Don’t think their lab opens till 7:00.

Naughtily, I’m dasting to swill a cup of coffee. You know what that will do, right? Screw up their damn test results, of course. So then we’ll have to jump through this hoop again.

Uh oh…shoulda looked it up before leaping off that cliff: NO, you’re not allowed to have a cup of coffee before the hateful blood test.

Goddammit! Now we’ll have to go through this hassle again.

waitwait! Here’s a page that says black coffee has no effect on blood tests.

Let’s hope that’s so. I just HATE the medical crapola, and I sure don’t wanna jump through today’s hoop again.

***

Ten to 7:00 and no sign of M’jito. Maybe he forgot?

Awwwww, wouldn’t THAT be a shame!

>:-D

Well, it’s only a ten-minute drive up to the Mayo. So he’s not yet late, quite.

Meanwhile, I’m fukkin’ STARVING and want to get this circus on the road, so we can have something to eat.

Looks like I need to renew my driver’s license, yet another hassle to cope with… Wait wait! The thing says it’s good until 2030!!!

Woo hoo! Now that I contemplate that moment of glory, I recall that yes, I’ve already jumped through the Arizona Department of Transportation hoop.

Thank goodness: One fewer PITA to dodge around just now.

*****

Seven ayem and no Young Dude. He must have forgotten or overslept

Awwwwww! Wouldn’t that be a shame? 😉  not to say 😀

Well. I should call him on the phone and wake him up. But…

But…

Uhm…

Am I going to?

Going to what? I forget….

😀

Okay, let’s wait til 7:30 and then break out the chow.

All this dorking around means the poor li’l dawg hasn’t had her morning doggy walk. Nor has her Human had its morning trek, either. Ohhhhh well….

****

Parked on the front porch, awaiting His Dudeship’s arrival.

If indeed he’s supposed to arrive.

If indeed he remembers.

If indeed he hasn’t overslept.

😀

One can only hope.

****

WHAT a gorgeous morning!!!

More than acceptable…which no doubt will poison the proposed blood test. But we’re now so late (it will take at least 20 minutes to drive up there from here: more at this rush-hour time).

I starve…  Hmmmm…. Will wait till 8 a.m. and then break out the chow. That’s 38 long minutes from now….

Hmmmmm s’more….  Here’s a news flash: Alzheimer’s may be a product of gum disease! 

Who’d’ve thunk it?

Fortunately, I inherited my father’s Superman-style teeth and gums.

My mother had terrible teeth — presumably the result of malnutrition, which she enjoyed as a child in Upstate New York. By the time I was…what? about 12 or 14, she’d had every tooth in her mouth yanked out. Poor thing.

My father, a variety of Superman, had perfect teeth all his life. No kidding: never so much as a small cavity.

***

Urk! Here’s a messsage from The Kid: “See you shortly for the Mayo trip.”

Dayum!

Well, I do hope I haven’t negated the purpose of this junket by daring to swill a cup of coffee. Boyoboy, do I ever hate this kind of thing!!!!

Ohhhh gawd. Here he is!

Darn it!

Did She Know?

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Did she know what she was doing as she loafed around the house poisoning herself with cigarettes?

Did she know those little pleasure-sticks were, given her family background of cancer death after cancer death, bound to kill her?

Did she know how painful and ugly her exit trip would be?

Oh, yeah. She most certainly did.

If you could read during the late 1950s, you knew that tobacco causes cancer. She may not have understood that she was addicted to nicotine and so would have a gawdawful time trying to stop smoking. If she chose to stop.

  • She did not choose any such thing.

She knew her fog of tobacco smoke was making her little girl sick.

  • She didn’t care.

She knew smoking tobacco had been proven to cause cancer.

  • She didn’t care.

She knew what it was like to die of cancer: she watched her mother die horribly of uterine cancer.

  • She didn’t care.

What she cared about was that passage of minor pleasure, brought to her several times a day by the murdering bastards who grow tobacco and who turn its leaves into cancer sticks.

She saw her mother die horribly of a cancer doubtless brought on by the woman’s promiscuity. So yeah: she knew what it meant to induce a terminal disease in your own body.

One wonders whether she cared about the misery she put my father through, as he tended to her for weeks and months on her deathbed. Probably never thought about it…at least, not until she lay dying.

Well, I can’t be criticizing. Because I do the same thing. 

Not with cigarettes. But yeah: with wine.

As she dared to smoke a cigarette every time the mood struck her (which was often), so I dast to have a glass of wine with dinner every day. And then usually another glass of wine. And sometimes even a third glass of wine.

Horrors!

My cleaning lady (soon to be an ex-cleaning lady, as I’ll be canning her whenever I can find someone to take her place…) grew horrified and beyond horrified at watching me swill wine at mid-day, when I have a serving of meat, a salad, a side vegetable, and a starch (potato, rice, or pasta), accompanied  by a glass of wine. So she pulled a self-righteous little stunt on me.

Come noon the other day, the table was laden with a fine meal and an open bottle of wine. I’d stuffed myself and swilled down a glass and a half of cabernet. She’s slamming around the house, making it impossible for me to accomplish much of anything. So what do I do?

Wouldncha know?

I lay my head on the dining-room table and freakin’doze off. 

This, she takes as proof positive of my unregenerate alcoholism. So she whips out her camera and snaps a photo of me with my head down on the table, snoozing.  And she emails that to my son!

Proof positive: I’m a lush!

My son is abhorred! Not at her sleazy behavior but because I appear to be passed-out drunk at the dining-room table!

So now, convinced that I’m a drunk, he has purloined my car and parked it at his house (so I can’t kill any of my fellow homicidal drivers, right?). He has rummaged through all my closets searching for hidden wine (and stolen all two bottles that he found). He’s taken to supervising my daily habits….which is pretty stupid, because I rarely drink more than a glass of wine a day. Upshot: the only way I can get groceries is to walk to the nearest supermarket, dragging a rolling cart behind me.

***

Yea verily: now I need to get off the dime and find a new cleaning lady. And frankly, searching for an employee is NOT my favorite pastime.

Plus my dear son’s presumptuous superciliousness pushes me toward seeking something other than a new cleaning lady. Like…a new place to live, far far from unlovely Phoenix.

Yeah. I’ve started to think, with something verging on the serious, about moving to Sedona, Wickenburg, Fountain Hills, or Tucson. Or New Mexico.

At this age, the last thing I wanna do is pull up stakes and move far, far away. But on the other hand…this BS makes me mad enough that I’m tempted to do exactly that.

Still thinkin’about it. But thinking seriously….