Poco a Poco

Poco a poco se anda lejos.(Little by little one goes far.)

I received a big kick in the head a few years ago.  And it set myself and my husband on a new path.

My father at 69 was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer.  It was a huge shock.  His health had been that of a man of 45 and he could out walk and climb most men half of his age on a hunting trip, which he took often.  He easily went through the first 2 years of a radiation treatment and subsequent chemotherapy without much illness of side effects.  He decided (much to our horror) to also lose a little weight.  He believed the entire time that he was going to kick it... and my sister and I believed it too.  

My father is a tough old SOB, a true man's man who always told it like he saw it (even if you didn't particularly want to hear it) and still he had an incredible amount of friends despite that part of his personality.  I never saw a problem that he didn't manage to work his way out of, or anything that he couldn't fix (sometimes with only with his pocket knife and an old piece of wire).  We called him Papa Roach as he entered the 3rd year of treatments.  You know, only Cher and roaches will survive the end of the world.  We all thought that somehow he'd manage to get out of this pickle as well.

My mother, a few years younger than Dad, was an incredibly beautiful young woman who did modeling and fell in love with my father at the age of 15.  By 17, she discovered I was along for the ride, and being the late 1950's, they got married.  My sister followed 16 months after I was born.  Plans and dreams were shelved and life took a different road for both of them.  She was a terrific mother and put up with a lot of shit from my young, hard headed and hard living father.  Despite it all, they were married for 53 years.  

About the time life should have been getting good for them (kids gone, life settling down), my mother was diagnosed at the young age of 40 with Parkinson's disease.  A few years later she received one of the first deep brain stimulation surgeries which controlled her tremors and gave her a decent quality of life, but the disease was silently working on her brain and she seemed to have a steady personality change occurring.  

A few years before Dad's cancer was diagnosed, my mother suddenly seemed a bit "off".  She had strange angry outbursts with my Dad (nothing like having to jump in your car and drive over to talk to the Police at 11 p.m.at night at your parent's home) and she often over mediated herself, going to several doctors for medications.  She started to not bother to bathe or comb her hair, seemed disconnected and tired all the time, and when she bothered to dress for an outing she wore strange outfits and ended up with hairdos that looked like a 5 year old did her hair.  She would suddenly get in their car and drive (scary!) without telling anyone she was going anywhere (sometimes after a squabble with my Dad in the middle of the night) and she started making odd purchases from the home shopping shows on television (hiding them from my father and sometimes bringing them to my house and asking me to help to return them before he saw the credit card charges).  

We took her to be looked at by a few mental health professionals after two intense rows with my father (one of which, she herself asked me to take her to be checked in to the nearby mental health facility and then complained because it wasn't like it was on television).  Another time, we admitted her so they could get her off of what ever she had been taking after an evening with the police and charges against my father of abuse (by her... it didn't happen, she was just pissed and wanted to get him back for not agreeing with what ever silly crap they were arguing about and after I talked to the police, all was well and they left when we put my mother in the car to go to the hospital).  Nobody every came up with anything more than a diagnosis of anxiety and they just gave her more pills.  It got worse when she had barely turned 70.  

One evening, she fell in their kitchen, breaking her hip.  The surgery went well, but the person who woke up wasn't my mother.  Dementia from the Parkinson's and the combination of drugs given during surgery changed her forever.  Dad was much too ill to be able to take care of her and there was no way to care for her in my home with 2 stories, stairs, tile floors and small dogs.  I never asked my sister, and she didn't offer, as she had a job and the situation there wasn't much better.  After getting nowhere with rehabilitation, I knew she would never be able to go home and argued with my father for days.  Dad was convinced she was just being difficult and it took me a long time to convince him that this wasn't normal, this was dementia.  He was rightfully concerned with their retirement money, but with his illness, the severe craziness of her apparent dementia and the distance from my home, there was no way for any of us to take care of her in their home.  I made the decision to take her to a nice small residential care facility near their home where she would receive physical therapy and told my father that "we would see" how she did. 

She fell again in the middle of the night at the group home after only a few weeks living there and broke the hip and prosthesis for a second time and went to the hospital.  Another surgery followed, and even worse dementia set in.  

Unfortunately with the dementia, she continually got up to try to walk on her own, "forgetting" that she had no muscle tone, one leg shorter and virtually no coordination.  She fell at the hospital's nursing and rehabilitation therapy unit 5 times.  They put an alarm on her, and sat her in the hallway in her wheel chair where they could see her.  It was horrible, she was angry, confused and wanted to go home.  After her refusal to do any rehabilitation, we took her to a new group home, confinement to a wheel chair with another alarm attached to it.  I had to tell my father that this was permanent and try to explain the dementia.  Mom continued to think she could walk (and still managed to get out of the wheel chair and fall, or roll out of the special bed that was lowered to the floor each night).  She always thought that she was going home and she believed that her house was just right across the street from the group home, which she was convinced was a church that wouldn't let her leave.  She wanted her dogs, she wanted her life, but she really didn't remember much of it all.  Dad was so ill, that he didn't feel like leaving home except for doctor's appointments and treatments and after only 2 visits, he refused to go see her.  She ached for him even though he pissed her off every time they saw each other.  I think the change in my mother's mental condition was just too much for my Dad to handle.  He constantly worried about the cost for her care at the nursing home and doctors.  I think he also was becoming afraid for himself.

I finally took my mother to see the doctor who was the director of the Parkinson's Research Institute in Sun City, Arizona.  It was confirmed.  Parkinson's related Dementia brought on by the Parkinson's Disease.  Nobody in our family had any idea that this was quite common, and almost a given for those who have the disease.  If Mom knew that it was a possibility, she never shared it with any of us.

My sister and I managed my parents as best as we could.  I spent hundreds of hours on the internet, calling medical professionals, driving to chemotherapy and doctor's appointments, speaking with my mother's hospice nurses and doctors and investigating and approving or refusing the toxic combinations of medications they continually wanted to change on her.  I know more about small cell lung cancer and Dementia than I ever wanted to know.

Into the third year of Dad's treatment, and about 8 months into Mom's illness, Dad passed out at a chemotherapy session and was rushed to the hospital.  After a day of testing, we learned that the cancer had finally won, completely encapsulating his right lung, deflating it and filling it with fluids.  He couldn't fight any longer, and together we made the decision to stop any further treatments and took him to a hospice near my home.  My mother's dementia had gone into high swing just a few days before, and we authorized for her to be taken to a facility to try to regulate her medications.  We told her about his immanent death the day before she was to be released and took my mother from the nursing home to see him.  A few days later, on Thanksgiving morning, November 25, 2010, he passed away quietly early in the morning.  

Mom did pretty well, and maybe the dementia was a blessing.  She seemed to understand he was gone, and she seemed to calm down a bit.  She did well at the funeral and small wake held at my sister's home, being more concerned with eating food than visiting with anyone who was there.  Her caregivers took her home shortly after she ate when she announced she was tired and wanted to go home.  I drank at my sisters house... a lot.

Mom seemed to do very well after the funeral.  The calm she now showed was a bit confusing.  I figured we'd finally gotten the medications right.  We spent Christmas together, there at her residential home.  She was in good spirits and we talked for hours.  That calm.... What I didn't know is that she'd decided to leave.  

January 2nd, a large bruise appeared on her "good" leg and we took her to the emergency room.  Turned out it was a series of vascular clots and the vascular surgeon in attendance told us the only option was to remove the good leg, but there were no guarantees how she would do.  My sister and I looked at each other as a new nightmare enveloped us.  I asked to talk with the surgeon.  I told him her history and asked him what he would do if this was HIS mother.  His face softened and he took a deep breath.  He told us that with everything she was dealing with he would just let her go.

We had her transported to the same hospice that my father had been at only a month and a half earlier.  The staff remembered us, and they were wonderful.  And, my father was there...

My mother sat up in bed and suddenly said "Daddy!" (which she called my Dad all the time).  My sister and I looked at each other from across her bed.  Suddenly, we hear a strange clicking noise.  We turned down the television that was constantly playing at a low volume in the room.  The noise was coming from the battery run clock hanging on the wall.  It's hour hand was spinning around like crazy.  CLACK, CLACK, CLACK, CLACK, CLACK.

I looked at my sister and saw the same wide eyes that I was now sporting.  We both said "Dad...""

She had a time of being pretty lucid, and I thanked her for being a terrific mother and told her some of the stories I remembered from my childhood and life.  She smiled and in a weak voice told me she loved me and touched my face.  With my sister and I sitting on each side of her bed, we watched as she took her last breath on January 8, 2011.  Forty seven days after my father passed away, Mom decided to go find Dad and I know he was there guiding the way.  

A few weeks after her funeral, we thought about the wording for their headstone, which hadn't even been ordered yet, and joked that on Dad's side it was say "GONE HUNTING FOR ETERNITY" and on Mom's side it would read "NOT WITHOUT ME YOU DON'T!"  We didn't do it, but I think they would have liked it if we had.  Now... I kind of wish we would have done it and not cared what anyone else would have thought.

In those 47 days between losing one and then the other, I thought quite a bit about life, and how quickly it can change.  I decided to do a few things now, rather than wait for a rushed bucket list.  My father never made it to Alaska to hunt or took a cruise there (we found a video and brochures in the house when we did the estate sale).  He never became a hunting guide (and he easily could have, as there was nothing in Arizona that he hadn't hunted or fished for).  They never traveled outside of the country and I don't think he went to more than 3 or 4 states to visit relatives or take a short vacation (once in Branson, Missouri).  My mother gave up dreams of dancing and modeling designer clothes for pushing strollers and making clothing by hand for two little girls on a tight budget.  My father trudged to a job he hated every day that never paid well, and retired early on less money because he couldn't take another day with the company.  They gave him a crappy pin with a tiny diamond and the company name on the front of it and a crappy cake the day he left.  He went on a few hunting trips, but my mother's Parkinson's kept them from doing much.  In their 60's they spent their days watching T.V., napping and eating until the unexpected happened and time ran out.

Their life was a huge lesson for me.

My husband and I have had a good life together.  We've been together for twenty five years, married for 20 of those years.  He's not my first marriage (numero 3... 3 is a charm, right?) but he's my best friend, and the one in the world that I trust completely.  I married him a month after he gained custody of his three children, ages 5, 7 and 9.  I figured if I could withstand that and we were still together, I would be able to endure anything with this guy.  When I married him, I also married the three kids and all of their problems and I raised them as my own, doing the best I could with an instant family that also carried along the stinking baggage of my husband's insane ex-wife who was a constant problem in our life.  

Our life hasn't always been a life of roses and golden unicorn nuggets sprinkled with glitter.  In fact, the first 14 years were damn hard.  There really isn't anything that I can think of that I would change though.  The lessons all made me who I am today, and frankly, I like myself just fine.

Now as we've crested 50, we find that while we're better off financially than we were when we started together and took on a full time family but we find that at this stage of life we won't have the richness of family relationships as part of our life "wealth."  Most of our family relationships have changed in the last 10 years and what we expected in our later life is going to be different.  

Very different.  

We won't ever be close to Ron's children now that they are adults, nor will we be spending time with his four grandchildren and our involvement with them all in a second phase of life just isn't going to happen, no matter what we do to try to change it.  I have given up on the idea, and actually I'm okay with it.  I know it is much harder on my husband, Ron, than it is me.  I was mad about it all for a long time (not about how they treated me, but how they treated their father), but I got over it and moved on.  

I found myself protective and less than tolerant of bullshit and drama from friends if it affected my family life around the time I started raising Ron's kids.  I am even less tolerant of all that crapola since I turned 50.  Now it includes family members.  I refuse to participate in drama, lies and games.  I won't forget that I was taken for granted, used or treated badly.  I just won't stand in a room and pretend with those people anymore, regardless if it is a family member or if it is with people that call themselves a friend.  I do give people chances (sometimes 3 or 4, and sometimes I get burned again and again for it), but I find it peaceful and best to just let go when it starts to cause me grief and worry, and later when I look back on it all, I usually find I've learned something from it.  

Surprisingly, many other things have come along to take up that space in my heart and give me happiness and a rich and full life.  I'm grateful for my life with my husband, and with what we have.  I'm also at peace with what we don't have.  Being rich isn't about money, grat wealth is who you travel through life with.  

This has probably helped me to get a grip on this fact and I wish I had known it a lot earlier:

Reason, Season, or Lifetime

People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
When you figure out which one it is,
you will know what to do for each person.

When someone is in your life for a REASON,
it is usually to meet a need you have expressed.
They have come to assist you through a difficulty;
to provide you with guidance and support;
to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually.
They may seem like a godsend, and they are.
They are there for the reason you need them to be.

Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time,
this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end.
Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away.
Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand.
What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done.
The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on.

Some people come into your life for a SEASON,
because your turn has come to share, grow or learn.
They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh.
They may teach you something you have never done.
They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.
Believe it. It is real. But only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons;
things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation.
Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person,
and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.
It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.

— Unknown

To add to the surprises that come later in life, now at an "older age", we are starting to notice changes in our health.  Like most people who manage to climb over the big five-oh mountain in life, we're paying more attention.  My biggest ah-ha moment after my parents died is that (for the most part) good health is a gift you give yourself.  I have not been terribly generous to myself in this aspect.

My husband has been diagnosed with an eye disease that progressively brings his vision into a smaller and smaller tunnel.  We don't know how fast it will progress. (Retinitis Pigmentosa)  He also found out that he had Type I Diabetes and his cholesterol was off the charts.  He changed his diet, lost 40 pounds (I'm so proud of him!) and is off of all medications for both the diabetes and cholesterol.  

I went through a scare with stomach problems which started when my parents became ill (a diagnosis of an ulcer and Barrett's Esophagus) and I have changed how I think about things, how I react (for the most part), and I pay a little more attention to making sure I eat and don't just live on coffee and nicotine like I could do in my 20's and 30's.

I tried to quit smoking shortly after Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer (a miserable time and bout of what I think was probably anxiety and a tiny bit of depression caused by the Zyban the doctor gave me).  I started smoking again and about 6 months later, found electronic cigarettes.  I quit smoking completely for a year, but after things went crazy with my parents, I started smoking 4 or 5 a day for my sanity/mental health.  Not quite perfect, but a mental health gift I decided to give myself in the face of too much stress and a chemical mess caused by the Zyban.  Shortly after that, a mammogram also reveled some bright white calcification areas and gave me a scare.  It required another scan with a new high tech machine, and a follow up 6 months later that showed no changes.   After a year's recheck, there doesn't seem to be any more ulcer and they don't think I have Barrett's Esophagus and the girls seem to be fine and if you ask me... looking pretty good considering their age.  Whew..

During ALL of that above... I also started thinking about some things I wanted to do but never took the time to do. I had also learned that tomorrow isn't a guarantee.  

SE HABLA ESPAÑOL

One thing I had always wanted to do was to learning Spanish.  Living in Arizona, we found it easy and fun to travel to Mexico on vacations.  When we were first dating, our very first trip was to a small town called La Paz and a few years later we went to Mazatlan for our honeymoon.  We have also been to San José del Cabo, Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta and of course, multiple times to Puerto Peñasco (commonly known to all Zonies here in my state of Arizona as Rocky Point and a right of passage for a high school senior here).  

We loved Mexico, but we never bothered to learn much more than hola, adiós, gracias, el baño? and Un más cerveza por favor, along with some of the more colorful dirty words and phrases, mostly picked up by me in high school with my Mexican American classmates.  That has changed...  

While driving the 25 minute drive to my father's home to take him to a chemotherapy session or to my mother's residential care facility, I started listening to the calm repetitive Spanish lessons on a CD in my car, determined to finally start to learn and understand the language.  At this age, it's no easy trick.

Ron and I also decided that retirement early would probably be possible for us, and most likely necessary, considering his eyesight.  We nixed Mexico because of all the drug cartel problems and started looking at South America.  He signed up for International Living magazine and we looked on the internet for as much information from expats as we could find from the various countries.  I also started looking around at free websites to learn Spanish and signed up at Spanishdict.com (free with wonderful video, interactive lessons, dictionary and translators).

FINDING A FRIEND A HALF A WORLD AWAY AND DISCOVERING ECUADOR

In my search for help in learning Spanish, I found an interesting language exchange site with people from all over the world looking to speak and learn English in exchange for helping with Spanish (mylanguageexchange.com).  They required a a fee to join in order to contact their members, but I didn’t join.  I saw a request from someone who gave his full name who lived in Ecuador.  Hmmm.  I got on my Skype, and typed in his name for a contact search and up came Alfredo in Ecuador.  I sent him a request through Skype on November 3, 2010.  I wrote that I had found his name on the language exchange website.  I also invited him to ignore my request if he was uncomfortable with it.

He contacted me a few days later, and we typed messages back and forth.  I told him I didn’t have much time available since I was dealing with both of my parent’s illnesses, but would stay in contact as much as possible.  We had some nice conversations, and I found out that he had been an English teacher until Ecuador made changes in the requirements for certification for teaching there.  He started giving me some lessons, and sending me emails with "homework" and reminded me that learning a new language was poco a poco y paso y paso.  

NOT what a girl (who wants to do everything now) wants to hear, and besides my steps, no matter how small usually end up in some form of tripping over my own feet and a bruised shin.  PUCHICA...  Spanish is hard!!  I continued with my Spanish CD in the car while driving to my Dad's and to see my mother, and hoped that I would have some time for Alfredo's emails and Skype lessons.

After it was apparent that my Dad became terminal that there wouldn't be much time for lessons and Alfredo and I only managed to connect briefly a few times though hurried messages in December and January as my mother's problems continued, and through her final days.  

Alfredo kept in contact and offered sympathy and kind words of support when I needed it.  Through our chats and email messages to me I learned more about his wife and three children, of his mother who lived alone in Guayaquil, about his sister who died suddenly of a kidney disease and left his mother with no one but him to care for her nearly.  He worries that she is nearly 2 hours away from where he lives in Salinas.  He tells me of his half brother and father that he rarely sees.  I learn that he started teaching himself English at the age of 12 years old.  He managed to find a job with an airline in Ecuador where he could travel and had been to Italy and New York City at 21 years old.  He was funny and personable and I liked him immediately.  We exchanged pictures of family and asked each other a lot of personal questions.

He asked me when would we travel to Ecuador to finally meet him?

Ecuador?  Okay.  That sounded doable.  More research.  We knew nothing about the country at all.  It seemed to be quite diverse, beautiful and according to magazines and websites, fairly inexpensive to live in.  Alfredo told me a lot about his country, sent me photos and I found an expat Facebook group with hundreds of people who had moved there.  https://www.facebook.com/groups/EcuadorExpats/  The country runs on the US dollar.  Yeah, doable.

My husband has his own business, so it is a little harder to plan vacations or getting away.  Matter of fact, we hadn't gone anywhere in FOUR years.  Four years?  What were we thinking?  So, I dug in to learning Spanish, studying on line every day and Alfredo gave me lessons and encouragement as he could on Skype and via email.  I participated in his English class with employees at the Barceló Colón Miramar Hotel in Salinas via Skype a few times.  His students asked me when I had last visited Ecuador.  Ummm... No, Nunca.  Then, they asked WHEN I was coming to Ecuador.  I knew it was time to start making plans and my husband agreed.  We booked tickets to travel to Ecuador for a two week trip.  We were set to leave on August 26, landing in Guayaquil and driving in to Salinas.  We'd return on September 7th at midnight from Guayaquil.

Two aging dogs make it difficult to go away and is probably an additional reason (along with my parents) why we haven't gone anywhere in 4 years. When animals have health issues, it's even more difficult.  Just a few weeks before we were to leave, we noticed our Yorkshire Terrier suddenly was having trouble seeing and seemed to be gulping water and peeing all the time.  A trip to the vet and some testing gives us a 99% idea that it is Cushings and seems to be definately SARDS (which causes blindness).  The SARDS is also causing Teddy anxiety (understandable).  My house sitter/dog sitter is a dog person and was bringing her new baby Rosie with her (a dachshund puppy that is a ball of fun and affection).  The "Beastie Boys" love Rosie and have had Joan stay with them before.  But then, Teddy could always see and recognize everyone in the house.  I just had to hope that they would do alright while I was gone and Teddy would be alright while adjusting to his eyesight challenges.  

I set up the house sitter with Skype on her laptop and downloaded Bobslead in order to make phone calls from my iPad.  I have 6 pages of instructions and emergency numbers including plumbers, pool and air conditioning repair people and vet numbers for her.  I had to have faith that we were supposed to go on this trip.  I worry anyway... But I am (over) packed and we are ready to go.

Hurricane Irene almost changed all of the worry about leaving...  The day before we are to leave, we received an automated phone call from American Airlines.  After an hour and 15 minutes on hold, we find out our flight is cancelled and we scramble to make a new flight, call the dog sitter, contact Alfredo in Ecuador to change the day he meets us at the airport and we say a little prayer.  We manage to get reservations for the following day but because the direction and speed of the storm is unknown, there are no guarantees that it will not be cancelled again.  We put our suitcases by the door and we are ready to go or change our plans once again depending on Miss Irene.

Irene decides to blow through Miami 3 hours before we're scheduled to land and we leave from Phoenix on schedule.  We flew from Arizona to Miami and from Miami to Guayaquil, Ecuador on August 26, 2012, with just one day lost from our trip.  

Meeting us at the airport was my first and best Ecuadorian friend Alfredo with a big smile on his face.  He was a sight for sore eyes (and a sore ass) and I hugged him like a long lost brother.  Ron gave him a big handshake and a hug and we walked out the airport doors.

We all walked together to the awaiting van he had borrowed to collect us and I shook my head in amazement.  I rub my sore bum and step up to settle in to the van.  Ron and I look at each other and grin.

We were actually IN ECUADOR.  

(to be continued... más pronto)

See the world, before you leave it...

Nos vemos,

Hellen