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Health care

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….

She’s B-a-a-a-c-k…

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You lucky souls! 😉

What can I say? Apparently earlier efforts on my part to get back into FaM  failed because of my superb dork-up powers. Our wonderful Web guru, Grayson Bell, has not only put Funny about Money back online but even managed to teach its proprietor how to get back in.

Probably. We shall see as soon as we hit “Publish.”

One nightmare hassle after another in these parts. Wrestling with the state driver’s license office…over, from what I can tell, absolutely nothing. Finally got them to issue the current driver’s license, replete with a hideous photo. Mercifully (…i guess…) it doesn’t have to be renewed again until 2030. By then I’ll no doubt be driving around Heaven with the angels.

This afternoon, my poor beset son is dragging me clear across the Valley to see a neurologist about the stubborn case of peripheral neuropathy that’s been haunting me for the past several weeks. NATURALLY, as soon as one gets in a doctor’s door, the ailment disappears. The buzzing, tingling, and burning are, as of this minute, about 90% or even maybe 95% gone. Left to my own devices, I’d cancel today’s appointment. But since he’s been worried about this…thing, whatever it is…I’m quietly hunkering down and letting him haul me out there.

Understand: we’re talking about a 40-minute trek (one-way!) through horrible traffic. If that doesn’t set off your nerves, nothing will!

Ohhh well… Just now we loaf on the back patio, soaking up a spectacularly beautiful morning. High cirrus clouds wisp across a gorgeous blue sky. North Mountain, a favorite hiking venue, looms above the neighbor’s house. If I had any sense, I’d be up there on a trail now, racking up an hour of exercise time. But…as we know, I haven’t any sense. 😀

And…A Different Viewpoint

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The other day I was holding forth about my puzzlement over my parents’ loathing of my undergraduate boyfriend. And yes, they did hate him, and hate is the operative term. That post speculates that it was because of his Eastern European ancestry.

Could be.

But this morning it occurs to me that there was a different reason. A better reason.

Paul was the one who introduced me to the use of alcohol. Make that the daily use of alcohol. (I was about 17 years old at the time…)

You understand: my parents were no teetotalers. They generally had a cocktail or two before dinner, and they were known to get extravagantly sh!t-faced on the bootleg booze passed around at gringo parties in Saudi Arabia. But they didn’t give it to me, nor did they invite me to join them in their informal pre-prandial whiskey-swilling, not even as an adult.

Yes: they did drink whiskey, a variety of which we could distill in lovely Araby. My father had a still on the stove and a couple of huge jars in the janitorial closet for that purpose. This was vastly against Saudi law. But nothing was done about it, presumably because the Kingdom was making too much money selling oil to the apostate gringos to make a fuss over their drinking habits.

When we got back to the States, my parents continued their pre-dinner-hour swiggling. At that point, they were never getting drunk. They were just having a cocktail with food and cigarettes, unwinding before dinner.

Meanwhile, though…back at the college campus: Paul and I drank all the time. We would start when classes were over — often as early as 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon — and tipple until we tipped over into the sack. That that meant he and I were drinking a lot more than my parents were, and we were doing it every day.

Once I got quit of Paul, I did quit drinking that much. I continued to have wine with dinner, but I rarely drank hard liquor, and I didn’t swill wine all afternoon.

However, to this day I still pour a glass or so of wine with dinner.

And…Lookee Here!

Turns out chronic alcohol use can lead to neuropathy.

No wonder my hands and feet and lips tingle!

If that article is accurate, my case must be pretty mild. But the booze habit may very well be the source of the buzz in the paws!

Of all those melodramatic symptoms, the only one I’ve encountered (so far) is tingling in the hands, feet, and lips.

Hmmmm…  It looks as though you can make this ailment remit — at least to some extent — simply by going on the wagon. This may or may not work…but apparently for some folks, it does.

I’ll be damned…think o’that!

And how hard would it have been for one of those MayoDocs to simply ASK me how much I drink and then suggest I climb onto the wagon?

Pretty clearly, the treatment is to quit swilling booze every day. 😀

Whether this will stop the current tingle-fest is unclear. But apparently if you quit boozing, you can at least block the neuropathy’s progression.

LOL! Welp, my dear late parents didn’t have the right reason for disliking pore ole’ Paul. But they were right that I should have gotten quit of him as a boyfriend. No booze-swilling boyfriend: no booze-swilling.

😀

Arfa Arfa OUCH OUCH!

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OUCH OUCH OUCH!!!!!!!

Come about six o’clock at night. Nothing will ARF do but what we must ARF a doggy-walk around the park. That’s about a mile’s dog-drag.

Ohhhh goodie…

We start out.

Drag drag yank yank drag drag HEEL, DAMMIT!!! Drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…..

Ohhhhh Hell  Enough is arfing enough. The human commits an about-face and hauls the Dawg back to the house drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…..  And lemme tellya, that HURTS the sore, tired hands.

We trudge back toward the house. The neighbors no doubt feel their suspicions are confirmed: I am nuts. Drag yank drag yank yank yank drag…finally make it back to our front yard. Up to the door. Into the house.

Ughhhhh!!!!!

The feet hurt. The shins hurt. The hands hurt. They all hurt like the dickens: the friction makes the peripheral neuropathy kick in with a vengeance. So we get yank yank hurt yank burn burn yank yank hurt hurt ROAR with pain.

By now the Human is royally pi$$ed. The Dog is dragging with all her wolfish strength.

Sheee-ut! My fingernails are lifting off the nail beds, which makes the yank-fest hurt even more than normal. By the time we get back to the Funny Farm, the Human is uniquely pi$$ed.

Now the feet hurt, the hands hurt, the chronically pained lips hurt… f-u-u-u-u-c-k!!!

Sez here the last time I took an ibuprofen was 2:2o a.m.

Hmmmmm…. Pretty sure I dropped one in the afternoon. Whaddayabet that’s 2:20 p.m. Hmmmm…

It’s after 6:00 p.m. now. So…presumably another one won’t poison me.

Swill an ibuprofen and a B12 pill. EEEEWWWWW!!!!!

I hate bolting down pills almost as much as I hate being stabbed with shots.

Smear the last of the CBD balm on the chronically burning lips. Tomorrow I’ll have to go out and buy some more of that stuff. Ugh!

CBD cream and balm are the only things I’ve found, so far, that work fairly promptly and effectively on the horrid neuropathic pain.

Dunno what is causing this ailment and dunno what might make it go away. All I know is, it hurts like the dickens. Very, very tired of it.

Too early to crash in the sack: it’s not even 6:30 yet. In the unlikely event that I should fall asleep now (give or take an hour), I’d be up at 1:30 in the morning: for the duration.

I hate laying awake through the wee hours almost as much as I hate tingling and burning from fingertips to elbows.

Dammit! Even my teeth hurt!

Re-Battening Down the Hatches…

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{chortle!} We’re told another terrifying storm is on its way, due this evening. Yesterday’s terrifying storm has come and gone. Nary a shingle blew off the roof.

Hmmm… This is innaresting: the villains who have taken over the Republican Party want to dispense with Social Security and Medicare. You won’t mind covering your parents’ medical bills in their old age, right? 😀

What a fukkin bunch!!!

Honestly, sometimes I can NOT believe I used to be a Republican.

A Goldwater Republican.

Yes. Afraid so.

Tellya something: Barry would not put up with the BS emanating from the party these days.

Boyoboy, do I miss Barry Goldwater. Used to work for him on a volunteer basis. In those days, I was a bit young to extract money in exchange for work. But I sure as Hell wasn’t too young for political enthusiasms. 😀

 

She Knew

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Of course she knew.

There was no way she could have not known. Surely not by the time we came back to the States, along about 1958.

By then the fact that smoking tobacco would give you cancer had been discovered; argued back and forth; tested; proven… No. By the time we arrived in San Francisco, after ten hellish years in Saudi Arabia, everyone knew:

Smoking gives you cancer.

How hard is that to understand?

Well. Very hard, if you’re determined not to believe it.

And she was: she refused to believe it.

So she — my mother — ignored all the news reports. She ignored all the scientific studies. She ignored the statistics. She ignored her little girl coughing and gasping as the house filled with stinking carcinogens. She probably never even noticed that the house stank to high heaven.

Okay. Let’s suppose she didn’t believe it. Let’s suppose she thought those news reports and scientific studies and statistics really were shameless propaganda, the product of Goodie-Goodies and profit-driven competitors to the tobacco industry. Let’s suppose she thought the stink of tobacco smoke smelled good: a comforting aroma. The scent of home.

Override common sense with addiction and…uhm…okayyyy….maybe you couldn’t figure it out for yourself.

Y’know, folks…

If it’s illegal to sell cocaine because users can get addicted to it…
If it’s illegal to sell heroin because users can get addicted to it…
If it’s illegal to sell marijuana because the Goodie-Goodie set thinks it’s immoral…

WHY THE F*CK ISN’T IT ILLEGAL TO SELL TOBACCO?????????