The Gluten-Intolerant Family Member and Holiday Food Traditions

One of the hardest things about taking control of your own health is that it often requires that you eat much differently than the way most Americans eat.  It can be extremely isolating, especially when it comes to family traditions, gluten intolerant family members, and celebrating the holidays.

Sharing a meal together is one of the primary ways we celebrate community.  So I have favored ditching old family favorite foods and replacing them with something that everyone can eat and enjoy.

For example, my family, both nuclear and extended, always expected to have a Buttermilk Pound Cake at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Unfortunately, it requires white flour to make it.  This ingredient has been stricken from our kitchen since we learned six years ago this month that Emma is allergic to it.  A couple of months later we learned that she had to strictly avoid corn and rice as well.

Now, the Lighter Than Air Chocolate Cake has replaced the Buttermilk Pound Cake as our go-to celebratory cake.  Everyone loves it, and it is completely flourless.

Just so you know, I have tried baking with white flour for other family members, but the stuff goes everywhere.  You open the container and scoop, and a cloud rises up and dissipates on countertops and appliances.   Trying to clean everything perfectly afterwards to prevent cross-contamination is time consuming and stressful.   And you are expending more precious energy cooking twice.  I finally decided it just was not worth it.  Family members who want to eat white flour have endless opportunities to do so when they are not at home, whereas Emma can eat at very few places away from home with peace of mind.

If there is one place where a person with food allergies should feel safe and supported, it is in their own kitchen.

Believe me, the support is incredibly important, because many folks think that gluten-intolerant people are just selfish troublemakers who want attention.  And they let you know it by their expressions.  The nay-sayers fail to realize that gluten-intolerant people would like nothing more than to be able to eat the white flour with no concern for the consequences!  Giving it up is hard, but being able to function normally on a day-to-day basis makes it worth it.

I believe that a lot of people who are gluten-intolerant don't even know it.  My neighbor down the road stopped in yesterday with his wife to tell me that he had found enormous relief for his interstitial cystitis since I recommended to him that he do a Whole 30 elimination diet.  He had struggled with it for years under the care of urologists, had undergone surgery seeking relief, and had to take early retirement because of it.  I gave him the original Whole 30 book and a companion recipe volume last month, and he told me yesterday, "I absolutely did not believe that this would work, but I was so desperate for pain relief that I started it the day you gave me the books."  He took out his phone and showed me his log of taking serious prescription pain medications and how over the course of the 30 days it diminished to none.  He also explained that his energy has returned.  He is able to work on building his house again, and is now going to drive to his daughter's house in San Antonio for Christmas, a trip he could not make prior to the Whole 30.  His wife is amazed at the change in him.  She is going to do a Whole 30 herself starting in January.

So I encourage you to adapt your celebratory foods to ones that everybody can enjoy together.  Make new traditions.   The family celebrating together is more important than the individual menu items.

You're the Cream in My Coffee

The sacred coffee station at my parents' house

Nothing gets more attention from my mother during her bedtime ritual than making sure that I have prepared the coffee pot for the next morning and set out the cups.  She starts worrying about it in the early afternoon and flips up the lid to the basket where the coffee grounds go in as a warning flag to draw my attention to my serious duty.  It works exceedingly well.  I see the upright lid as a giant exclamation mark and immediately feel the weight of my responsibility to ensure that her next morning will begin properly.  It's kind of like being in charge of making sure the sun comes up.  Nothing predicts a gloomy day and a grumpy grandma more than a sub par coffee ritual.

Recently, a new twist has been added to the defining morning event.  Mom must have cream.  She has drunk her coffee black for at least the past forty years.  But this past June she was hospitalized three different times for a gastrointestinal bleed so serious that each time she had to have blood transfusions.  She has a rare blood type plus lots of antibodies that have to be matched, and so in each case it took a long time to get the blood from the blood bank.  It was rather a harrowing experience watching her hemoglobin count fall steadily while the clock ticked off the minutes and hours with no sign of the replacement.  Oh, and her veins kept collapsing.  There were several times I truly thought she would die.  The doctors never did discover where the bleeding was coming from, but the end result of all this was that we started adding cream to her coffee in the off chance that all the acid she was getting in her morning three cups played a contributing factor in the bleeds.

She discovered that she likes cream in her coffee.  She likes it a lot. Like to the moon and back.  Now, after forty years of imbibing black coffee, SHE MUST HAVE CREAM.  And since she is in a wheelchair, the cream must be easily accessible to her in the refrigerator.  Since she has made it clear how important cream is to the satisfactoriness of the morning ritual, Emma and I have striven to make sure we keep it on hand and in the right place in the refrigerator.

Except sometimes we fail.

I hurried in one morning to cook breakfast for Mom and Dad and was greeted by Mom with the complaint, "This cream doesn't taste right."  Immediately I remembered that I had forgotten to buy cream and that there was none left.  I looked at the coffee station where she sets the cream each morning.  There stood my dad's $50 bottle of liposomal glutathione, which we keep in the door of the refrigerator.  

"No way," I thought.  

Then, a doubt crept in.  Have I mentioned that she has bad eyesight?  I picked up the bottle and showed it to Mom. 

"Is this what you used in your coffee?"

"Yes.  And it doesn't taste right," she repeated.

"That's because it isn't cream.  It's Dad's glutathione," I explained, shaking the bottle to see how much was left.  "And I think you just drank about $25 worth."

"Hmph," she answered.  "Well, I couldn't find my regular cream, so I figured that had to be it."

Immediately I thought of Starbucks and what a lucrative option they could offer to the health conscious:  Glutathione Pumpkin Lattes for $35.  Or maybe they could just sell the glutathione by the shot.

At any rate, I realized that my mom could not conceive that we could let the cream supply fail, and so she looked until she "found" it.  

It could have been much worse.  Thank goodness we don't keep Milk of Magnesia in the refrigerator.

May

This month has been tumultuous for me.  Kind of like paddling my canoe over Niagara Falls.  Lots of roaring and wild descents and outrageous bumps.  That's why I haven't written anything since last month.

I realized yesterday that I totally missed the Ember Week.  :(

And I wonder if life is really supposed to be this hectic, so draining--if I am doing it wrong.  It feels wrong.  That's for sure.  But I can't figure out how to do it differently.  I just keep paddling furiously and reminding myself that most everyone is doing the same.  

I am enormously grateful for my paddle.  I grip it tightly, knowing that despite my trials I am supremely blessed.

A young 20-something friend told me, "At least your life is defined."  Ostensibly, because I am married and have children and know what my duties are, I am in a far better place than he, who is still single and living at home, not knowing if he will find someone to marry, etc.  This is a common concern among my young traditional Catholic men friends.  Much worry is devoted to it and rightly so.  However,  after much pondering, I have to say that although those particular questions have been answered for me, they only bring a new set of questions: Whom will my children marry?  Where will they live?  Will I be able to have regular, in-person, interaction with my children and grandchildren?  Or will they live far from me?  Will there be anyone nearby to take care of me in my old age?  Will I die with the sacraments?

And yet, I know that we should not be solicitous for tomorrow.  Behold the birds of the air...the lilies of the field...

We have the Blessed Mother, too, and her assurance, "Am I not here, who am your Mother?"

Furthermore, we know that God chose for us to be born into this time, this horrible post-Christendom time.  Knowing this I feel a grave responsibility.  Am I doing God's will?  I think He has put a lot of confidence in me to bring me into this world in the dread year 1960.

All of these uncertainties--my young friends' and mine--are symptomatic of the destruction of Catholic culture.  So I think every day about what I can do to restore it.  Is not Christ telling us, as he told St. Francis, "Restore my Church?"

Speaking of the destruction of the Church, I was astounded to learn that "Catholic" Match allows you to choose which of the Church's teachings you believe.  I guess calling the service Heretic Match wouldn't be as lucrative.

Modern Life Is So Disjointed  

I spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to navigate Western medicine for my little family.  I think that is why May has finished me off.   My little engine was already running on fumes.

My dad was hospitalized again this month, this time for a week, and his discharge paperwork included a list of about 20 doctors who saw him during that time, several of whom I am supposed to make appointments with for followup visits.  For the life of me I can't understand why nephrology and urology are two separate specialties!  How dumb is that?  For that matter, why is gastroenterology its own thing?  Why not put those three together into something halfway sensible like an "output" specialist?

After Dad was discharged I canceled two pre-existing appointments with specialists because he needed time to recover from being in the hospital.  He was so weak and disoriented from being there that he fell two times within 24 hours of coming home.  Unbeknownst to us, he spent an entire night on the bedroom floor, freezing under the ceiling fan.  After that he was really confused and thought he was on a boat.  Plus, the hospital managed to let him get another bedsore on his heel, so I needed to get him to the podiatrist to have the dead flesh cut out.

When he was in the hospital, I was making daily hour-and-a-half roundtrips to visit him while trying to keep everything going at home, including taking care of my mother and preparing for Emma's senior recital reception and graduation after-party, and the arrival of relatives for those events.  Thank goodness my sister Beverly came in from Birmingham and took over with Mom.

We got through all that only for our dog to begin a serious decline.  Poor old Cowboy!  His hips refused to keep doing their job, and almost every morning I would find him lying against the back door in his own waste because he had been unable to get up to go to the bathroom in the yard.  Eerily, it was kind of like the night my Dad spent on the bedroom floor.  When I helped Cowboy up, he could walk, but his rear legs would splay out, making him stagger like a drunk.

Finally, my husband Herb dug a hole behind the barn and took Cowboy on his last walk after we each took time to say goodbye.  I watched the old Black Lab's agonizing progress down the sidewalk and beside the barn until he turned behind it to dutifully follow Herb.  Such a sad, sad day!   It was really the end of an era.

We bought Cowboy's mom, Cocoa, and aunt, Genevieve, as newly-weaned pups for Nathaniel and Emma in 1998.  We kept one puppy from each mom:  Cowboy and Spats.  We had to put Spats down last year.  I made the mistake of trying to hold out with him and let him die naturally at home.  Emma and I ended up having to heave him into the back of the car and haul him to the vet to be put to sleep.  I have to say that dying at home at gunpoint on your own grass is the more merciful experience.

When Herb took Cowboy, Emma and I busied ourselves cooking.  I asked her to choose some music for us to listen to so that we didn't hear the gunshot.  She chose a YouTube playlist.  It was all very upbeat music to distract us from our grief.  Strangely, just as Herb returned from his death duty, Danny Boy came on, and my tears began anew.

Surely June will be better.

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Of Wormwood and Black Walnut and Strange Pet Behavior

This clever dish concealed a pocket of herbs--wormwood and black walnut--by which I sought to deliver a death-dealing blow to some parasites that are plaguing our old black Lab, Cowboy.

Doesn't it look scrumptious?

It's actually layers of leftovers, topped with the spaghetti squash seeds that I had just scooped out in preparation for our own lunch.  I had a ginormous pot of bone broth simmering on the stove with lamb, chicken, and beef bones in it, and I decided to top the whole "casserole" with a ladleful of it for good measure.

The herbs are pungent, so I needed all the help I could get.

Or so I thought.

Not only did Cowboy plunge his muzzle into the medicinal meal, Stray Cat did too.  I had to keep grabbing him up to keep him out of it, as I feared the whopping dose of herbs would be dangerous for him.  However, every time I set him down, he dove back in.  What a strange kitty.  Strange dog, too.  I thought he might bite Stray Kitty's head off, but he never even growled.

After Cowboy had consumed the majority of it, I let Stray Cat down, and he proceeded to clean up, even devouring the last bit of carrot.

Our other four cats never paid the least attention to the food.   When I picked up the pan, Stray Cat batted at it with his paws, as if to pull it back down.  Crazy.

I gave the herb combination to Cowboy for three days total.  Next week he starts a once a week maintenance program of a second herb combination.  He has responded well so far.

Blessed Be the Tie That Binds and Other Awkward Situations

Emma and I on Easter Sunday

Last Sunday in Whole Foods, Emma and I were side by side, shopping for produce.  I was wearing one of my favorite skirts that has a lace overlay.  As I was reaching for a bag of avocados, Emma decided to depart for fruits unknown, and suddenly, I felt a tug and saw the left side of my skirt lift . To our surprise, we discovered that some hardware on her purse had developed an attachment for my lace, and it did not want to let go.  So I stood there smiling at all the customers who passed by as Emma worked carefully to separate us without ruining my skirt.  I was ready to slip her purse strap over my shoulder and close the curtain on our embarrassing scene, when Emma's nimble fingers finally worked the purse free from my hip.

"Thank God almighty, free at last!"

Then on Friday, I took my Dad to a specialty surgical hospital to have his third toe on his right foot straightened.  Over the last few years it has curled up, causing him to have to walk on the tip of it.  This caused an ulcer to form that we were constantly having to have cut open and cleaned out.  Plus, walking on that toe was really painful.

On Thursday, a nurse from the hospital called me to give me pre-surgery instructions--nothing to eat or drink after midnight, etc.  I explained all this to Dad.  One of the things she said was that I needed to wash Dad's leg and foot with anti-bacterial soap the night before and also the morning of the surgery.  She also said that Dad should wear shorts.  That night as I was trying to wash his leg and foot, his dog, Cherokee, came nosing around.  I told Cherokee firmly, "No, go away.  You can't lick his leg now."  My Dad looked at me surprised and said, "Why did you tell him that?  He doesn't have any germs."

Sometimes my Dad just makes me burst out laughing.

Dad hasn't worn shorts in years, but I found a pair in his closet, and he was able to put them on himself the morning of the surgery--mostly.  He said they were falling off and asked me to tie the drawstring that was located inside the waistband.  He has arthritis and can't do such things for himself.   So I tied the drawstring into a knot, because I figured a bow wouldn't hold.  I assumed that once he was lying on the hospital bed, it would be an easy matter to undo the knot to get him into a hospital gown.  Then I spotted his 16 ounce coffee cup in the drink holder of his walker.

"Dad, did you drink coffee this morning?"
"Yes."
"But I told you nothing to eat or drink before surgery."
"I know.  I always drink it anyway."
"How much did you drink?"
"The whole cup."
Then my mom piped in, "That's right.  He always drinks his coffee before surgery."
I sighed.
"Let's go," Dad said.

So we took off for the hospital, which is an hour away.  Dad slept most of the time.  He woke up as we were pulling into the parking lot.  His brow furrowed as he looked at the hospital.  "That seems like an awfully big hospital for such a little operation," he observed.

We got inside, and before I could finish the paperwork the receptionist had handed me, Dad said he had to go to the bathroom.  Of course!  The 16 ounces of coffee had kicked in.

Then I remembered the knot.  "Oh, no," I thought to myself.  "How can I get that knot undone discreetly in a public place!"  But before I could think further about it, Dad said, "Grab my shorts.  They're falling off."

Due to the ravages of age on my Dad's anatomy, the part of him that used to serve as a rear brake for slipping waistbands is in full retreat.  So there we were in a busy waiting room, side by side, heading for the bathroom with Dad pushing his walker and me holding up the back of his shorts.

"I am the way and the suspenders," I mused.

We finally got to the bathroom only to discover that the maid was cleaning it.  Dad asked me to get the knot out of the drawstring.  I told him that since the shorts were coming down in the back, he should be able to pull them down without untying the knot.  He insisted that I try anyway.  Between him not being able to stand up straight, his lack of balance, and the limitations imposed by his big tummy, I made little progress.

I cringed every time somebody walked past us.

Dad grew increasingly frustrated.  I was growing a little frustrated myself, as I still needed to fill out all the forms, and we were only minutes away from his appointment time.

Finally the maid came out, and Dad went in with the knot still in place.  A few minutes later he re-appeared and said that I had to get the knot out.  I tried again, all the while conscious of the stares of passersby.  I was again unsuccessful, and he returned to the bathroom, looking like a rapper from the rear view.  Snoop Dog got nothing on him.

During Dad's lengthy sojourn on the throne, he managed by some miracle to get the knot out himself.  When he exited the bathroom, we re-assumed our strange arrangement of me holding up his britches till we could get him seated in the lobby.  When the nurse came to get him, I explained our situation, and she brought a modesty-preserving wheelchair to get him back to the surgery suite.

I was never so glad to see him go!

The surgery was a great success, and on the way home, Dad requested that I stop and get him chocolate ice cream, as is his wont after all medical appointments.  So I got him his ice cream, and I ducked into Chipotle to pick up lunch for myself, as it was after 1:00.  When I returned I found him contentedly spooning in the ice cream while showing off his fashionable post-surgery boot.

The evil shorts had one last hurrah.  When we got back in the house, there wasn't room for me to walk beside him through the dining room, so just as he greeted my mom, the shorts dropped dramatically to the floor, at which point I had him step out of the wretched things and flung them far from me.

Blessed Sani-tea

Especially in the evenings of late, we've been quietly enjoying our new tea station.  I'm sipping a cup of chamomile now.  Just pulling open the drawer gives me a glimpse of order in a world gone mad!  Hahaha!    Or maybe my mind is desperate because we've been living in such chaos for the last five months.

At any rate, between the tea drawer and the new electric kettle I procured--with automatic shutoff!--our tea drinking careers have blossomed.

I have a picture, but I won't show you, of what I did to my my mother's kettle while boiling water on the stove for tea.  I went to her living room to get something and received several texts from my husband and a phone call too.

Did I totally forget about the tea kettle boiling on the stove?  Yes, yes, I did.  By the time I discovered it, it was so scorched, I actually had to wait for it to cool before I could separate it from the burner.  So the next day I bought the one in the picture for our house.  I don't trust myself anymore.

Interestingly, an ex-library copy of My Heart Lies South that I had ordered arrived in the mail today, and it opened to the chapter on medicinal teas that Mexican ladies regularly used to successfully treat various ailments, including menopause.  My favorite one the author describes is

 toloache, a dreadful mysterious weed, which is secretly given to husbands who have strayed too far from home and fireside.  It effectually soddens them and if they are given enough of it, it causes them to sit drooling gently by the fireside forever, while Mama goes out to earn the living.

You just can't beat the early 20th century Mexicans for practicality in the handling of domestic affairs.

A Housewife's Education: Without the Encumbrance of Degrees

An inspiring excerpt from Solange Hertz's Searcher of Majesty:

Ancient monks called Mary "the philosophy of Christians," and spoke of "philosophari in Maria."  Obviously philosophy belongs to the housewife as tent-making belongs to St. Paul.  It's comprehensive.  It's cheap.  It requires absolutely no special equipment but wonder.  One has to study philosophy and invest in expensive books to be a philosophy professor, but not to be a philosopher.  A philosopher is just anyone who's willing to hit head on, with his head, the mystery in what everybody else takes for granted.

Really only housewives have time to grapple in their native habitat with such things as space, time, being, motion, birth, or growth, in order to classify properly why dishes break, or why yesterday can't be lived again, what's up, or just who is my five-year-old.  Whatever the housewife chooses to study at home, she is in the enviable position of being able to go after knowledge itself, without the encumbrance of degrees.  This isn't an inconsiderable advantage, being set free to proceed at her own rate, without grades or classroom, toward what she, and not somebody else, needs to know.

Here I would like to insert that later in the book, Mrs. Hertz talks about women and the cyclical nature of their hormones, which explains their need for stable lives at home, and how our culture demands instead that they run hither and yon.  (I wonder what Mrs. Hertz would have to say about American women now fighting in wars!)  She compares this to how dairy cows are treated, which may seem funny, but it is so true.  Dairy cows lead quiet lives of regularity at home, because if they can't their milk dries up.  This is true of women too, whether it's producing milk for the baby or the milk of human kindness or sharing "the milk" of their wisdom.  I have come in contact with so many young women whose health has collapsed because of how the unnatural stress of college affects their hormones.  

Mrs. Hertz continues:

A mother's knowledge can't be just a series of isolated facts to be tabulated later, like a research assistant's.  It must be coordinated and unified even beyond the power of philosophy to accomplish.  It must be super naturalized.  It must become wisdom.  Wisdom can take unto herself any amount of undigested facts and transfigure them, but in this world this happens only through suffering, through pondering them painfully and deeply in the heart.

Few mothers can take it.  Their college educations rarely become a part of them to that extent.  Ignorant women are the curse of the home, as great female educators like St. Madeline Sophie Barat and Mother Janet Erskine saw only too clearly.  Educated women, on the other hand, can hardly be made to stay home at all!  They can't waste themselves on a handful of children, and a world greedy for their skills agrees only to readily.  Female education today is little more than a way out of the house.

The supernatural education of the young, nevertheless, depends precisely on teachers who are able to "stay home" and transmit to them the painful fruits of their wisdom, the "true knowledge of the things that are."  Wisdom knows, says Scripture, "the disposition of the whole world, and the virtues of the elements, the beginning, and ending, and midst of our times, and alterations of their courses, and the changes of seasons, and the revolutions of the year, and the suppositions of the stars, and the natures of living creatures, and rage of wild beasts, the force of the winds, and reasonings of man, the diversities of plants, and the virtues of roots," for wisdom knows everything, keeps track of everything and has everything, like the good housewife she is (Wis. 7:17-20).

We're Totally PC

Update:  I added a favorite Civil War song at the end of this post.

Panna Cotta forever!  I don't care if I ever eat another dairy-based pudding.  Emma's been making double batches of this delectable coconut milk pudding, using Deliciously Organic's recipe.   Talk about good and good for you!  It features grass-fed beef gelatin powder--we use Great Lakes brand--which is a wonderful source of amino acids.  This panna cotta is really creamy and dense.  I keep telling Emma we need to try it as a topping on this chocolate tart she makes.  Considering how much time I have spent imagining how delicious this combination would be, it's probably best we don't do it.

 The lovely color combination of the fruit on the creamy white pudding inspired me to use some of our recently re-discovered stash of awesome Confederate flag decorations.  Emma and I were so excited when I pulled them out from behind some cookbooks!  We started naming all the ways that we could make use of them, ending with Emma's suggestion of wedding cake.  Oh, yes, she is a Southern girl!  No, we don't believe in slavery, not even the wage slavery that was supported and spread by the North.  We do love the agrarian lifestyle of the Old South and that was more in line with the Catholic ideal.  Plus, we have ancestors who fought in that War of Northern Aggression, so it's wonderful to be able to honor them.

Here's a beautiful rendition of The Homespun Dress (O Yes, I am a Southern Girl)

Turmeric Latte Love

We're on a turmeric latte thang.

I know.  We just keep getting weirder and weirder.  But gosh, Emma and I love them.

Now if I could just make them without creating such a mess.

Between heating coconut milk on the stove and stirring in a couple of spoonfuls of turmeric paste, grinding the spices, and buzzing the whole shebang  in the blender with hot water and a little honey and a few tablespoons of collagen powder, it looks like a turmeric tornado passed through the kitchen by the time I pour it into a cup.

Oh, well.  Life is messy, and most of our life is in the kitchen, it seems.  Hopefully our messy lives will be somewhat less inflamed with the help of all this turmeric.  I got the recipe from Dr. Kelly Brogan.

Her directions are as follows:

In the morning, put one teaspoon of paste in a mug, add a dash of cinnamon, cardamom, clove, a teaspoon or two of raw honey to about a 1/3 cup of almond/coconut/hemp milk (unsweetened Califia Farms is delicious if you don’t want to make your own!). Fill the rest of the mug with boiling water – I love this kettle – and stir!

I dump in more like a half cup of coconut milk and add a tablespoon of MCT oil and 3 tablespoons of grassfed beef collagen powder.   I only add the oil and collagen powder to 1 cup a day.  I grind the cardamom fresh and pour it generously right from the  work bowl of the grinder--measuring spoons be damned--into the pot on the stove, forming a fearsome flavor mountain that soon melts into the luxurious lake of latte lusciousness.   Once it's heated, I whir the heady concoction in the blender till it's smooth and frothy.  It's soooooo satisfying.  Kinda makes you feel all peaceful and serene, too.   And wise, like you are at one with the universe and can solve all problems.  Tee-hee!  Or maybe that feeling comes from singing along to the One Call Away video as I stir the pot, phone in one hand and spoon in the other.

I sprinkle extra nutmeg on top before savoring the creamy goodness.  I find this turmeric latte makes a first-rate breakfast-on-the-go for people who want to glow.

In Praise of the Hands-on Foot Doctor and Other Observations on Western Medicine

A huge blister appeared on the back of my dad's left heel the day after I brought him home from his recent hospital stay.

It popped the same day and became a nasty oozing wound that grew bigger overnight.  I took him to an urgent care clinic, and the doctor peered at it from afar and prescribed some antibiotic cream.  He had the nurse dress it and sent us on our way.

The next day, we had an appointment with Dad's primary care doctor as a follow-up to being released from the hospital.

Again, this doctor glanced at the wound from a distance.  He prescribed an oral antibiotic.

Despite these interventions and my regular changing of the dressing, the wound slowly spread.  Dad has extremely poor circulation in his legs, so I was really worried about it becoming a serious infection.

Luckily, the next week Dad had an appointment with his podiatrist to follow up on some toe ulcers.  The doctor's assistant immediately took pictures of the afflicted heel.  Then the doctor pulled up a chair, took my dad's foot in his hands, studied the wound, measured the wound, and started calling out descriptors to his assistant to take note of.  He said it was a pressure wound from lying in the same position too long in the hospital.  The podiatrist expressed his frustration with hospitals not putting protective heel cups on elderly patients.

I realized then that this wound could have been easily prevented.

He then whipped out some clippers/scissors and began aggressively cutting away the dead flesh, maintaining a running commentary for our education and pausing every so often to make eye contact with each of us.  He explained that if the dead flesh were not removed, the bacteria inside it would continue to eat away at the good flesh.

How my heart leapt inside my chest with gratitude and affection for this doctor!  He was everything I imagined a doctor should be, right down to his well-polished cowboy boots.

The next day, the wound was noticeably improved in appearance and had shrunk in size.  I felt terrible that I had not thought to bring Dad to the podiatrist in the first place.  The other two doctor visits were a waste of time and money.

This whole episode was a major surprise to me, because I thought caring for wounds was one of the most basic things a medical doctor should be able to do.  But it also highlighted something that I had been noticing for a while--that many doctors do not lay a hand on their patients anymore.  There is a fascination with remote monitoring also, as if electronic monitoring equals care.  I remember lying isolated in recovery after having a c-section for my son.  I was exhausted, emotionally drained, and alone.  Then an automatic blood pressure monitor clamped down on my arm, and it made me start to cry.  I needed human touch.  Human caring.  A consoling word.  I was not comforted by the thought that a nurse at some remote location was looking at a screen with my blood pressure results.

This love of remote monitoring is being translated into the consumer market for senior care with the development of "medical pods" that you can put in your backyard for your elderly relatives.  I applaud those people who are looking for an alternative to nursing homes, but it seems this alternative exchanges one kind of neglect for another.  Certainly it depends on how the individual family makes use of it; I'm sure some families who use them provide lots of hands-on attention and loving interaction to the resident family member.  But some of the marketing is clearly geared to those who think that providing a safe space with video monitoring and built-in pill dispensers, separate from the rest of the family, is the ideal, as if regular human interaction is not important.  I read about this one family that spent $125,000 installing a pod on their property.  I thought to myself, "Gee, you could have added on a mother-in-law suite to your house for less than that!"  The article had a picture of an adult granddaughter sitting down at a monitor in the main house, watching her grandma in her backyard pod.  It gave me the creeps!

Having granny as a part of everyday life in her rocking chair by the family hearth is the stuff of fairy tales, I guess.

Attention, European Union Readers

My dear friend Mr. Google has advised me that I am required by European Union law to give its citizens information about cookies.  (And here I thought I was just a simple little mom blog in rural Texas.  I had no idea that my ramblings had drawn the attention of so august a body as the European Union!)

I sincerely regret that I have neglected this serious duty so far and make haste now to correct it:

Dear European Union Readers,

Greetings from America!  I hope that you are well.  It is indeed my great honor to provide you with information about cookies.  Please know that in America we love cookies exceedingly, especially Chips Ahoy, Oreos, and Fig Newtons.  These are manufactured in huge factories with ingredients produced by industrial farming and a variety of chemicals.  This combination ensures that cookies make big dollars for the food corporations but also for the medical and pharmaceutical industries, which in turn bankroll our politicians.  You can see that cookies are an important player in the Gross National Product.  And I do mean gross!

I hope you have found this information helpful, and that this explanation satisfies the requirements of the European Union.  If you ever come to America, please come to my house.  We'll have raw milk and homemade cookies and a lovely visit, I am sure, despite not contributing to the GNP.

May God bless you and keep you and restore Christendom in your land.

Love ya!

Wendy

Your Diagnosis, Please (Part 3, Final)

Continued from Part 2

I arrived at the hospital to find my dad in an ER room, pulling himself up repeatedly by gripping the side rails of the bed, only to drop back breathlessly on the pillow, accomplishing nothing.  His eyes searched the ceiling for curiosities only he could see.  When he did take a break from pulling himself up, it was to reach longingly for these things and to beg me to help him get them.  Then it was back to the heartbreaking pull-ups.  I watched helplessly each time as his abdominal muscles clenched down with the effort.  I drew close to his head and called to him.  He turned his head and focused his eyes on me.  I asked him what he was trying to do by pulling himself up over and over again.

"I don't know," he said, then turned his eyes back to the ceiling, gripped the handrails, and struggled up again.  I asked him to please stop because he was pushing himself gradually off the end of the bed, which had no footboard.  Again, he looked at me when I talked to him and seemed to understand, but as soon as I was finished talking, he resumed the pull-ups and ceiling searching.

Finally a nurse came and collected a urine sample to be sent to the lab.  The results were announced enthusiastically by the ER doctor, "Your dad has a RAGING urinary tract infection!"

I immediately thought of my friendly redheaded EMT.

"And he has pneumonia in two lobes of his lungs," the doctor finished.

After more waiting, Dad was admitted and transferred to a hospital room where they finally began the IV antibiotics he so desperately needed.

I spent the night in the bed next to him, as this tiny country hospital had no aides to help the nurses.  Wearily I climbed into bed about 11:15, only to be asked questions by the nurse until midnight about Dad's medical history but also personal information like his tv watching habits.  "Maybe I am dreaming," I thought to myself.  "No, welcome to the world of government medical care," my rebel self replied.  Finally she finished her questioning, and I fell asleep.  I awoke several times during the night when the nurse came in and talked to Dad.  I could already hear the difference in him.  He could answer questions coherently.  Relieved, I would drift back to sleep.

Dad happily enjoying a cup of coffee before breakfast.

By the following morning, he seemed his old self.  I went home for a while and returned that afternoon.  I had noticed in the ER that one of Dad's sandals was missing.  Now I saw that it had been returned.  I suspected the ambulance crew had found it.  I decided to go look in the ER driveway and see if the redhead was there with the ambulances.  I busily formulated in my mind how I would instruct her--with all charity, of course--in the fact that she was an idiot and a danger to society.  I got as far as the glass door at the exit.  I stood there and watched as the redhead in her manly navy blue uniform repeatedly drew deeply on an e-cig and blasted giant clouds of vapor into the air around her co-workers.  I thought again about what I could say to her, and this time I tried to think along the lines of something that Christ would want me to say.  Confronted overwhelmingly instead with my own weaknesses and failings, I turned and walked back to my Dad's room, determined to pray for her.

I pondered the situation.  Maybe she had returned the shoe herself.  Maybe she had asked the nurse for his diagnosis and discovered how wrong she had been and repented.  I don't know.  I just knew that I was not yet the person who could tell her.  We had had a happy outcome.  I counted my blessings and brought Dad home the next afternoon.

Your Diagnosis, Please (Part 2)

Continued from Part 1

I told the dispatcher the pertinent details about my dad, then told her about our electric gate at the entrance to our driveway and asked if I should go down to the road to open it for the ambulance.  She said, "No, give me the code."  I gave her the code and told her that the EMT's would have to get out and re-enter the code to close the gate as soon as they came in, because we have a milk cow who does not generally miss an opportunity to escape.  She assured me this was not a problem and would be communicated to the ambulance personnel.

With great difficulty, I managed to get Dad across the house and back in his recliner.  Emma arrived, which was a great comfort to me.

The ambulance pulled in, plus one EMT in his own Dodge diesel truck.  Soon the EMT's crowded into the family room where Dad was sitting.  I think there were three guys and one lady.  The lady, a redhead, began firing questions at me.

"What's his diagnosis?" she demanded.  I struggled mightily to figure out how to answer that question.  My dad has numerous health issues.  But she seemed to want one diagnosis that summed him up completely--one neat little label that would de-humanize him but efficiently generate a code and a treatment plan.  At least that is what ran through my mind.

I was at a loss.  Her stressful tactics were making it difficult for me to organize my thoughts.  "I can tell you what medications he is on," I volunteered weakly.  I started enumerating them, and one of the guys interrupted.  "He's also taking these," indicating several prescription bottles that he had rounded up from a basket in the breakfast room.

I went over, read the labels, and told him that Dad was no longer taking those medicines.  But the stress of the questions from the lady EMT, the effort of thinking about the prescriptions, and the sinking feeling I got from realizing that he had gone un-invited into another room and rifled through my parents' things just seemed to suck the life out of me.

Then the redhead asked me more questions and asked for Dad's ID and insurance cards.  I got them.

I began to wonder if the dispatcher had sent a SWAT team by mistake.  Maybe this was a drug raid, not medical assistance.

One of the guys asked my dad what year it was.

"1972," Dad answered.  I remembered that was the year Dad bought my mom a Volvo station wagon.  He gave me lots of talks back then about the built-in obsolescence he was seeing in American cars.  That's why he bought the Volvo.

"Who's the president?" the guy continued.

"Oh, I know," Dad said confidently.  "That colored fella."  I stifled a giggle.  He grew up in Alabama during the Depression.  He never has gotten the hang of calling negroes "black."

I tried to tell the redhead that I thought Dad might have a UTI and that his temperature had been slowly creeping up.  She was dismissive of my suggestion about a UTI and told me that they would now take Dad into the ambulance to evaluate him.

Suddenly, I remembered the gate and asked Emma to go check and make sure that they had closed it. They had not.  Luckily, Fiona had not seen it.

The redhead came back in to give me her report on Dad's evaluation.  "Everything checks out fine," she asserted.  "He is not a diabetic; his lungs are clear; his temp is 98.7.  The only thing wrong is his blood pressure is very high.  Of course, we can't do labs in the ambulance, so we'll go ahead and take him to the ER."

I wanted to tell her, "Why, thank you very much!  The only reason I called you was for you to take him to the ER!"  But I bit my tongue.  I told her that his normal temperature was around 97.4 and that 98.7 was not normal for him.  I mentioned again that I feared he had a UTI.

"Has he had a foul smell to his urine?" she asked.

As Dad has some trouble with incontinence, and I wash all his clothes and clean his bathroom, I knew the answer to that.

"No," I said.

"Any burning while urinating?"

"I don't know for sure, but he has not complained."

 "You know, he's 82.  At some point you're going to have to consider that he has Alzheimer's or dementia," she pronounced authoritatively.

Disgusted, I thought to myself, "Ah, she finally provided the single diagnosis that she was looking for,"

Aloud, I said, "But this is a night and day difference with my Dad.  He wasn't like this yesterday.  And one of the new medications he is on can cause UTI's."

She didn't roll her eyes, but she managed to convey the same idea with one condescending glance.  I felt sick, humiliated, and angry all at the same time.  She turned and left.  Feeling slightly disoriented, I walked to the kitchen window to watch them leave, only to find that they had backed the ambulance across our large gravel parking area and into the soft ground of the pasture.  They were stuck.  Big time.  I walked away, shaking my head.  This was a nightmare.

Later Emma told me that she saw the redhead get out and point to our hangar, directing one of the guys to go in there and get a board to put under the driver's side rear wheel.  He did as he was told, but he did not get the ambulance unstuck.  Eventually the EMT with the Dodge truck, who had left earlier, was called to come back and pull the ambulance out.

The ambulance finally left, and I talked with the guy who had pulled it out while he put away his chains.  Emma jumped on her bicycle to go check the gate.  It was open.  She grabbed Fiona on her way back.  As the guy with the truck was leaving, he met Emma returning, and they exchanged a few words.  She was leading Fiona by the haltar.

I went back in the house to collect my thoughts and the things I would need for my sojourn in the ER.  This took about 20 minutes.  As I drove down our driveway, I saw that once again, the gate had been left open.  The EMT in the truck exited the gate without closing it.  I called Emma and told her.  She couldn't see Fiona anywhere on our property, so as I left for the emergency room, she left in her car to look for Fiona.  What a day.

And it wasn't over yet.

To be continued.

Your Diagnosis, Please

Last Sunday was one firecracker of a day.

At breakfast my dad was extremely agitated--complaining about severe pain in his left shoulder and weakness in his legs.  He was shaking all over.  I took his blood pressure, and it was 210/104.

I was afraid he was having a heart attack.   I asked him if the pain in his shoulder was the usual pain from his arthritis or if it was different.  He said that it was different.  I told him that I was going to call an ambulance.  By his reaction, you would think that I had told him I had made an appointment for him to be castrated.   He got so upset, it scared me.

I asked him if he had already taken his blood pressure medication.  He checked his pill organizer and said, "Yes.  Looks like I took all my morning meds and all my evening meds too."

"Oh. My. Gosh," I thought, as my mind raced.  "What the heck is going on here?" I asked myself.  I mentally reviewed the medications that he takes in the evening and decided he would be ok.  It was just disturbing that he had done that.  He is usually careful about his prescriptions.

I was removing the blood pressure cuff when, before I realized what he was doing, he took a hydrocodone (pain killer and narcotic) and a Clonozapam (anxiety).

Because the idea of me calling an ambulance made him so much more upset, I decided to wait a little on calling 911 and focused on getting him calmed down and comfortable.  I put a Lidocaine pain patch on his shoulder and helped him get to his recliner.  With a little coaching on deep breathing and meditation, he soon relaxed.  I was happily surprised and encouraged by how receptive he was to this.  I'm sure the meds were beginning to kick in too.  He asked me to take his blood pressure again.  It came down about 40 points in ten minutes.  He was quite pleased.  He smiled at me and said he felt fine.

Much relieved, I sat down on the couch near him to observe and wait.  He was watching tv, like he normally does.  After about 30 minutes, he asked me to turn on some lights.  The only problem was, he was pointing at an area where there are no lights.  I explained this to him and offered to turn on the ones that were actually there.  Then he asked me, "Do you see those three columns over there?"  He pointed his index finger at the east wall.  I said, "No, Dad, I don't see any columns, just the two windows."

He began carefully describing the three columns to me, and I repeated what I saw: just the two windows.  I began to wonder if the combination of the evening meds, the hydrocodone, and Clonazapam were making him delusional.  They certainly made him cheerful.  And he assured me that he was feeling no pain.  I sat back down.

Emma, on her way to church, texted me to see how Grandpa was doing.  I told her the latest developments.

A little while later Dad asked me if I saw the numbers on the wall and the ribbon that was woven in between them.  I told him that I did not.  I noticed then that although he had the tv on, his headphones that allow him to actually hear it were in his lap.

"Dad," I said.  "Do you know what year it is?"

"2065?" he asked.

"Oh, dear.  That makes you very, very old," I replied.  Because you were born in 1933."

He smiled.  "I think you need to keep asking me questions like that," he told me pleasantly.

At that point I decided I could probably rule out a heart attack.

Emma called me and said that she had spoken with her friend, Angela, who is a nurse in a geriatric psychiatric ward.  Angela said it sounded like a urinary tract infection (UTI).

"Of course!" I thought, remembering a similar reaction by my mom several years ago when she was hospitalized for a stroke.  But I still wasn't sure.  Dad didn't have a history of UTI's and there was still the question of a possible drug reaction.

I told Emma that as soon as she got home to stay with Grandma, I would take Grandpa to the Urgent Care clinic we frequent.  He is much more amenable to going to Urgent Care than to the hospital emergency room.  I can't blame him.  The emergency room is a nightmare for the elderly.

Soon after Dad got up and walked to the bathroom, using his walker as he normally does.  He was in there a long while.  I went to the door several times to inquire if he was ok.  He assured me he was.

When he finally came out, I saw immediately that he was not ok.  He could barely walk, and he was panting heavily.  I told him to sit down on the seat of his walker.  He did.  Whereas he usually picks up his feet when I push him in his walker, this time he let them drag.

I knew my window of opportunity for getting him into the car had slammed shut.  I called 911.

To be continued...

A Savory Question with a Hint of Romance

"Can I love my broth overnight?"  dear daughter Emma asked me in a text message this evening after she put Grandma to bed.  Emma had a pot of bones simmering on the stove.

"Oh, yes!" I thought to myself.  "Love your broth overnight and every day!  As long as it's grass fed bone broth, my dear!"

Then her question sparked a memory in my crazy head, and I had to go hunt down the old novelty song, Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?

Scary, huh?

But I didn't tell Emma all that.  I just texted back a laughing Emoji.

"Shut up," she said, which made me laugh harder.  She had realized her mistake--that she had typed "love" instead of "leave".  That doubled my fun.

Seriously, though, I don't know how to cook anymore without homemade bone broth.  Give me some  good long-simmered bone broth and some Red Boat fish sauce and some Coconut Aminos, and dang, I can make anything taste good.

My dad got hospitalized on Sunday, and on Monday when I was visiting him, I asked him what he had for lunch.  He said he had some chicken and some carrots and some rice.  Then he looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, "That chicken didn't have any flavor.  It didn't taste like yours."

And I just grinned like unto a Cheshire cat.

Crazy American Fake Beauty

The other day my mom broke two teeth, prompting me to delve into the mysterious world of cosmetic/restorative dentistry in search of solutions.

I was taken aback to see beauty pageant queens on a couple of the websites, lavishing praise on the particular dentist who had made their smile perfect with the addition of veneers, etc.  I suppose they got a discount on their bill for this creepy advertisement.

Immediately I considered checking plastic surgeons' sites for more endorsements from beauty queens, but my guardian angel nixed that idea, and I was saved from indulging my wicked curiosity.  Whew!

Anyway, I am no big endorser of beauty pageants, but my goodness, I thought the contestants had real parts!  Silly me.  This is America after all, where we spend thousands on making our teeth so white that they glow in the dark but buy the cheapest, most de-natured food in the world to put inside our mouths.

Eat Your Vegetables, Starting at Breakfast

Keeping it real: No cropping out the crumb on the tablecloth in the upper left corner of photo.  Actually, I'm just too lazy.

We've been trying to eat more vegetables and have discovered that we actually like them for breakfast.  A big bowl of steaming, braised purple cabbage is a particular favorite.  Today, being Friday, I tried this Sautéed Shrimp and Spinach recipe.  I added grated parmesan and almonds sautéed in butter.  Pretty yummy stuff.  We feel good all the way till lunch after eating this kind of breakfast.

"To-go" plates for Mom and Dad, ready to be whisked up to their house.

On Wednesday I used this recipe, a long-time favorite, to make some breakfast sausage.  After the sausage was cooked, I stirred in two bags of organic cabbage/broccoli/carrot slaw and cooked it till the veggies were tender, then added grated cheddar on top.  I still had plenty the next morning, so I used it as a filling for omelets.  And there is still some left after making four omelets.  When I make it again, I will add a third bag of slaw or maybe cut the sausage recipe in half.  I don't remember how much the bags weighed, but I am guessing there was 2 1/2 cups of vegetables in each one.

My Paleo Lunchable and Kerry Gold Butter Dish

Usually we pack leftovers for lunches, but today we didn't have any.  I grabbed a plastic container and started filling it with odds and ends, and when I was done, I thought, "Hey!  I made a lunchable!"  Guess it was the rectangular container.  I broiled three slices of ham with provolone cheese on top, then rolled them up while hot with a thin celery stick inside.  I added carrot sticks, squash sticks, strawberries, and a container of Ranch dip I made from scratch with homemade mayonnaise.  I love that mayo!  I use a combination of walnut, grape seed, and olive oil, and it's delicious.  As much as I liked this meal because it is tasty, healthy, and gluten/grain-free, I read yesterday about a mom in Canada who was fined for not including any grain in her children's lunches, even though she had packed pot roast with potatoes and carrots, an orange, and milk.  The daycare person added Ritz crackers to the lunch.  Such stupidity.

My darling husband discovered this fabulous butter dish at an antique store recently.  It's wider than normal and perfectly cradles a brick of Kerry Gold.   We've been using the butter in its foil wrapper, which is seriously tacky, I know.   So I wanted the butter dish when he pointed it out to me on a crowded shelf,  close to the floor.   I just wasn't sure if it really truly was the right size.  Naturally, I tried to discourage him from getting it because of that.  Plus it was $12.95, which I thought was high, but after 34 years he knows when not to listen to me, thank goodness.  I have no clue how old this dish is, and I've never seen one like it.  I'm sure if there were a supply available there would be a good market for them.  It's such a relief to have an attractive way to keep this butter.

Trying to Evade The Politically Correct Health Police

(From my draft folder, circa 2011)

I always knew that we would eventually feel the hook in the benefits bait offered by giant corporations to their employees.  Now I'm finally being reeled in.

My husband's employer, Big Corp, implemented a plan whereby to get the best rate on their premium health insurance plan, the employee and his/her significant other (gag) have to earn a thousand points by the end of the year by participating in various "health" programs.   First, I had to complete a questionnaire online and answer a lot of nosy questions about my health history and food choices.  Right away there was a problem because I disagree with them about a few things.  Like butter for one thing.  They think it's bad.  Same with eggs.  And they like industrial seed oils.  I like lard.  It was stressful to complete that durned thing.  I don't think it was good for my heart.  But they didn't care.

Next, I was supposed to have a phone interview with a Big Corp rep so that, based on the results of my online questionnaire, I could be advised of their recommendations for improving my health.  I took the questionnaire in January.  They started calling me and sending me post cards soon after, "encouraging" me to submit to the phone interview.  Hmph.  Call me recalcitrant.  I dug in my heels and steadfastly ignored their reminders.   Last week they sent me a large, glossy post card that said, "Wendy Haught, you have 0 points."  Gee, thanks for the encouragement, Big Corp!

I had been not-so-secretly hoping that my husband would get a job at a different company and save me from having to run this politically correct health gauntlet, but the end of September came, and I realized that I was running out of time for wriggling out of this predicament.  Feeling miserably defeated, I called the number on the post card and pretended to be cheerful, cooperative, and stupid.

The lady on the other end sounded terrible, all congested.  "You have a bad cold," I informed her.  "Are you following all the diet recommendations?"

She said that she just needed a decongestant.  Then she started go over my results.  She said that I was fat and needed to get off my b_ _ t and exercise.  She didn't use those exact words.  She used some soft and cushy words, that would not infuriate me and make me hang up.   I looked at the clock.  Only ten more minutes of chit-chat to get my 250 points.

Would I like to get a physical for 500 points, she asked.  "NEGATORY," I thought wickedly.  Somehow that would be letting them win totally.  I wasn't going to let that happen.  I took the offensive and said that I would take the 3-session telephone coaching option.  She set up that appointment, and two days later I got call from Tom in Minnesota.

He asked, "How many pushups did you do last week?"

"Uhhhh.  Let me count.  .  .That would be ZERO," I said cheerfully.

"Ohhhhh," he groaned in consternation.

He asked me some other questions like that, and I answered them the same as the first one.  He asked me if I was ready to implement some regular exercise into my schedule, and I assured him that I was.  "Oh, yes, indeed!" I crowed.

He wanted to know how I was going to stay motivated.  I said that I expected him to motivate me with his little phone calls.  He laughed politely and asked if there was somebody at home who could help me stay motivated.  I said, "Sure!  My daughter Emma can do it!"

Sounding immensely relieved he asked, "And she exercises regularly?"

"No."

It's hard being such a disappointment to folks who are only trying to help you.

Wendy, Can You Come Down Here?

I had just put my feet up in the recliner after getting home from Sunday Mass when I got a phone call  from my dad, who simply said, "Wendy, can you come down here?"

My dad never calls me.

My parents live right behind me, so I jumped up and ran down the sidewalk that connects our houses.  Inside I learned that my mom most likely had had a stroke.  Her speech was extremely slurred.

Within a few minutes I had Mom stashed in the car, and we were on our way to the hospital.  I should have called an ambulance, but I am so used to taking matters into my own hands, I didn't think of it.

So began an odyssey that continues to this day.  She was hospitalized for about four days, then transferred to a rehab hospital for about 20 days.  She couldn't move her left leg or her left arm.  Luckily, speech therapy quickly improved her speech.

Mom is sensitive to gluten, and I visited every day and tried to bring her real food.  One day in the first hospital, before she was transferred to rehab, she was given a bowl of cream of wheat and ate it, assuming that it was gluten free.  Her entire back became inflamed and itched horribly for two weeks.

I was astonished by the "heart healthy" diet she was put on.  On top of everything being pureed because the left side of her mouth was paralyzed, it was pretty much void of nutritional value.  The kitchen tried to accommodate her diet restrictions, but I discovered that a lot of the items that appeared on her tray had more to do with the hospital's contract with vendors than it did with patient health.  No good fat was allowed.  "Promise", a margarine created from chemicals, was provided.  I even went to the kitchen and asked for real butter.  They did not have any at all, ever.  So it didn't matter whether you were on the heart healthy diet or not, you were given a tub of chemicals to spread on your baked potato or toast.   I learned that the kitchen's priority was to provide a certain amount of calories, so they would round out her meals with packaged juice, ice cream, pudding, jello, etc.  Loads of refined sugar and GMOs were not a problem to them.

These directives all came from corporate.  The kitchen staff, on the other hand, was marvelous.  I talked to the manager on several occasions, and he was incredibly kind and helpful.  He let me provide some things for Mom, but that was soon found out and curtailed by upper management.  During a weekly patient meeting, where the different caregivers discuss the patient's progress, etc., the topic of me bringing food for my mom was discussed, and it was agreed that I should be told no more food from home would be allowed.  They even posted a big sign to that effect in Mom's room.

Other than the food issue, my mother had great care.  We became attached to several of the nursing and therapy staff members.  There were a special few who would come down just to visit with Mom when they had time.  They were so funny and sweet and really helped the time go by for her when I wasn't there.  Mom cried when she got discharged.  She got transferred to a nursing home to continue her therapy.  She had used up her Medicare allotment of time at the rehab hospital and was being downgraded.

The nursing home was depressing.  And the level of care was greatly reduced from the rehab hospital.  I think she saw a doctor only once and that was briefly.  At rehab she had had a team of three doctors that she saw regularly, plus plenty of nursing staff.

 The nursing home kitchen staff seemed totally ignorant and could not understand the "gluten free" concept.  We were extremely blessed to have an amazing speech therapist who would go to battle with the kitchen on a regular basis about Mom's diet--not only the gluten issue but also the matter of giving her adequate protein.  The therapist told them to give her meat with her breakfast every day, but they rarely did unless this therapist confronted them, which she did many times.  God bless her!

The physical therapy department was very good at the nursing home.  She was making good progress with her walking until she had several setbacks of feeling too weak to get out of bed.  It turned out that her blood pressure was plummeting.  There were no guidelines from the doctor on when to withhold her blood pressure medication, so some nurses would still give it to her even if it was 115/70.  Then it would get so low that all she could do was stay in bed and sleep.

At the rehab hospital, Mom had been given breathing treatments several times a day for her COPD.  At the nursing home, those pretty much stopped.  They finally started giving her one every evening.  One night when even that one was missed, I inquired of the RN, and when she pulled up Mom's chart, I was shocked to find out that the doctor's orders said that she was supposed to be receiving them three times a day.  I assume Medicare was getting billed for these treatments that she did not receive.

Close to Christmas, Mom developed a bad cough and was not feeling good.  Again, her therapy progress stopped.  I called the cough to the nurse's attention, and she said that she would start the process for getting blood work done.  Two days later, still no blood work, and Mom had not been seen by a doctor.  At this point I learned that she could go back to the rehab hospital.  Fearing that she had pneumonia, I called the nursing home and told them to discharge Mom back to the rehab.  As soon as the lady from the rehab came and did her paperwork to get her back over there, I packed Mom and all her stuff up, and we left, even though it was already close to 8 pm.

She did indeed have pneumonia and ended up staying at the rehab for another couple of weeks.