CAT SCAN WITH BIOPSY

Arlene, Judy and LaDon
Photo taken by Robin Barnett 

We waited in a small waiting room for my mom to finish her CAT Scan with biopsy.  My sister in law met me in the front of the hospital and we had coffee and chatted about things.   We kept looking for my mom and her friend Arlene to walk through the front door of the hospital.  They must have come in right before we did and we finally walked back to the CAT scan department and there they were.

We waited for them to finally take her back for her CAT scan.  Today is the day that they inserted a needle into her back and took the fluid out of the syringe to look at under the microscope to give her a diagnosis of cancer.

When I was going back to see my mom after the procedure I saw a nice gentleman, my husband goes to lodge with, Ben Hagen was in the bed right next to my mom.  It was such a surprise to see him and he thought for a moment that I had come to visit him.

She was finally released from the CAT scan and we decided to go to Canton's for lunch afterward, my sister in law went and got her daughter Monica and we shared a late lunch.   Now it's a wait and see thing.  She has had some pain and has a band aide in her back where the needle puncture was.

What doesn't kill you makes you stonger...

So here I am in my garage and a random thought comes over me, I think to myself, you know my kids have never had head lice, not one of them.  I stood a little prouder as if this were an accomplishment of mine and
I somehow deserved an award for this.  I actually reveled in the glory, of the shallow thought, for a few minutes. It passed and I went on with whatever I was doing, which was probably laundry, because the washer and dryer is out there in the garage.

No more then a week passed by and I made an appointment for my girls to be seen by the doctor and planned to go shopping out at the base and  brought my mom along for the ride.  We check into the pediatric clinic and we are called back and I explain that Olivia had an allergic reaction to shrimp on new years day this year and ever since then she has been itching her head.  My husband had asked me to look at her head to make sure she didn't have bugs there and I parted her hair and casually looked; but didn't see anything, so I just dismissed it as a residual side effect from the allergy.


The Doctor comes in, he is an older Filipino man, he looks at Olivia's head and says: "She has fleas."  I am incredulous! I said to the doctor: "Are you sure?  Fleas really?"  He shakes his head up and down and motions for me to take a look. I part her hair and sure enough she has bugs all through her hair. The very moment he says that, Olivia throws her head back just like a pez dispenser and starts to bawl.  It was so cartoon like, we all burst into laughter.  I felt so bad for Olivia.  The whole time my mom is sitting right there getting the news too.  Her jaw was tight and you could tell she was not taking the news well. 


Now if you know my mom well, you will know she is freaked out by the thought of bugs.  We lived in Ivanhoe as a child and one time. a big black cockroach scurried out of a box from the garage and I thought my eardrum was going to bleed because she let out such a shrilling scream.  I also remember having scabies when I was younger and she almost boiled my sheets because she was so creeped out by this.  My older boys got scabies and having suffered from them as a child; I was totally familiar with the routine. You slather cream on from head to toe and wash your bedding and all is fine.  

we did a lot of nit picking in the gill home

The doctor looked at Samantha's hair and found eggs and I asked him to check me and he said he didn't see anything in my hair. I was upset.  We had fleas! Then the doctor leaves the room and comes back and informs us no those aren't fleas, they are LICE, and just then, the whole scene in the garage flashed through my head, where I was bragging to myself about this not happening to my children as if they were somehow better then the rest of the world.  I was talking to my mom about it in the parking lot and she actually hushed me because she was embarrassed someone would hear us say the word LICE.  Who cares what total strangers think!  

They had to order the shampoo it would be in the very next day.  We were lucky enough to find it on sale at the Navy Exchange that day.  I didn't want to wait one more day.  I was in a hurry to get home and take a shower and get those creepy bugs off my girls.  We also had Savannah to think about too.  

We dropped my mom off with a bottle of NIX shampoo just in case and on the way home, Samantha and I discussed how we would just be sick if we found bugs in our hair too.  We rushed into the bathroom and started combing my hair out over the sink and almost hurled when I saw the fist bug fall out of my hair.  Samantha found some too in her hair and so did Savannah.  Samantha said they had "Jazz hands" as they waved to her from the sink.  

We all washed our hair with shampoo, that kind of smelled like hand sanitizer and stripped all the bedding and put the pillows in the dryer on high heat; to kill all bugs and their eggs.  My mom went back to her apartment and we drove over there, after all the hair was treated and dried, to share our lice killer spray, we had purchased.   She didn't let me in her house, you could tell that she was shaken up.  I learned later that she told her friends at the senior housing and my sister in law.  

I think about that situation and it reminds me of a bible story I once read about David in II Samuel 24: where  King David decides to count his army and the bible says; God was so mad at David for doing this.  When I had read this years ago, I couldn't understand what the big deal was.  So what! I thought, he is the leader of the army,.the king wants to take inventory.  Oh no, that wasn't Davids intention at all, David was being haughty and boastful and he was being a bully by counting his army.  God sees the heart always.  God was angry at David because it was not his army to count it was Gods Army.  Even though David was remorseful of his sin against God  gave David a choice of three different punishments which included: 1. Seven years of famine.  2. Three months of fleeing from his enemy 3. Three days of plagues.  Which if you look at it the third choice seems like the easiest but it wasn't  David lost 70,000. men in one day.  

The fact that my kids had never had lice wasn't  my accomplishment as a mom, it was God protecting my children from a pesky parasite.  The chances that these bugs were alive and well, in our hair at the time that I had had these thoughts, are pretty much 100%, what I should have done, when this thought came to mind was to thank God that this has never happened to us and for him to protect us from it happening in the future.
   I learned what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!

(Here is some information I have just learned, because when we got home my husband was convinced we had given our dog lice too and would need to be treated.  We called our friend Tony, who works for Petsmart and he told us that Dogs don't get lice they get fleas, people get lice they don't get fleas.  I don't know why the Doctor at the Naval hospital didn't know this. I suspect he googled it and found out, but was too embarrassed to admit he'd been wrong about the fleas.)

A call in the night...

A call in the night... We were watching (Ground Hog Day) and my cell phone rang, it was my mom.  I had thought about her off and on all day long and decided to let her get a hold of me if she needed anything. She said,"Would you mind coming over and spending the night?"  I said, "Mom, is everything OK?"  She assured me it was, she just wanted my company.  I told her I would get some stuff together and be over in about an hour.

My Mom and I

When I arrived at her place, it has a security front door, so you have to pick up the phone and call her and then she buzzes you into her building. I called her and was surprised when she met me at the door and gave me a big hug and told me how happy she was that I had come over.  We walked back to her apartment and once inside the door she turned to me and said, "I am starting to think that the Doctors are right about this being cancer" This is the first time she has ever shown any emotion.  She got a little teary eyed and we said something that made us both laugh and it cut the tension.

I took a shower, while she tucked herself into bed.  When I got out of the shower and got my pajamas on and she had me climb into her tiny little twin bed, and we just talked.  She wanted to make sure David, my husband wasn't upset about my coming over to spend the night, I reassured her he wasn't mad at all.   She asked me to make her a drink and then complained about her feet hurting her, so when I brought her drink to her, I offered to rub her feet.

I pulled up a chair at the end of her bed got some lotion and just rubbed her feet and we talked and talked.  She finally had talked herself to sleep and I just sat there in the dim light of her room and watched her breathing.  I can hear her wheeze as she breathes in.  I sat there for a long time, I said a little prayer, thanking God for this moment with my mom.

Welcome to Walmart...

Walmart day: I called my mom and told her hey mom I am on my way to come take you to the Walmart.  I was in the car and on my way to her place.  I thought for sure she would be ready and waiting for me to arrive and take her considering how excited she was about going to Walmart.

I arrive at her place and look all over for her.  She wasn't in her apartment, or on the back yard area and then a little lady in the lobby tells me she is in the laundry room.  I go into the laundry room and there she is putting  the last shiny quarter into the machine.  She talks to me as we are walking back to her apartment and once we get inside, she tells me that she cannot leave with her clothes in the washer.  Oh this was so frustrating! I thought to myself, well we have been talking about going to Walmart for four days now. She says to me, "You go on ahead and go without me to Walmart."  I told her, "Mom you wanted to go to Walmart, I don't need to go to Walmart.  I am here to take you to Walmart"  After a few tense moments she finally decides that she can trust Lori the lady in charge of her senior housing to transfer her clothes to the dryer and put them in her house.

Off we go to the Walmart.   I am too busy helping her push the cart I didn't see it until we almost tripped a guy with her cane.  We get inside and  start our shopping and I remember that I left the stupid list back inside the car.  So I told her to just wait for me and I would hurry back to her.  I went to the car and sure enough there was that list sitting right on the front console where I'd left it.  My mom has limited sight because of cataracts since birth and a stroke inside her eye, that left her good eye with partial fields of vision.  That is what requires her to use a cane.  She was able to go to a state funded center so she could adjust to her limited vision and stayed there a good part of a year, a few years ago.

We go down her list and get everything she wanted.  She was so happy to get those horrid bright orange circus peanuts.  My grandpa used to eat those and I tried them when I was a little girl and have never liked them.  I am surprised to find that she is a big fan of those orange candies that are shaped like a peanut on one side.  We got her stuff all to the cash register and she checked out.

Our next stop was to Hobby Lobby to get flowers to put on Michael's grave.  I wrote a few days ago that it was on Saturday the 21st but realized it was Sunday the 22nd.  I don't know how I got that date wrong.   She was a little disappointed that they didn't have red carnations and shared with me that Michael had gotten her a bouquet of red carnations when he was a little boy.  That was always his favorite flower.   We found another bouquet for my grandparents and their little baby boy Rickey that was born and lived for just one day.   Michael's bouquet had several nice red roses mixed with different colored flowers.

We stopped at my bank and got some money so I could put gas in our car.  I was on the "big Iguana"  The big empty we used to say that, when the kids were little and laughed when we realized Iguana wasn't spelled with an e like it sounds.  Anyways we ended up at McDonald's because my mom had to go potty, and while we were there had two yogurt parfaits and a soda and just chatted.  We talked about how thankful I was to have the grandparents I did.  How they lived their lives making a monument for themselves in their children's hearts.

We got to the cemetery and the dark sky started to just sprinkle rain on us as we went from grave site, to grave site, putting flowers on graves and remembering our loved ones.    My mom mentioned that she wanted some donuts and I took her by Scotty's on the way home and she got a dozen to share with her friends there at her senior housing.

I kissed and hugged her goodbye she told me that she was planning to go to her bible study tomorrow.  I told her to call me if she needed me and I would come back over.

Sunday Supper

I got a message from my mom's friend Kelley Hannah Joslin who was planning on going over to visit her on Sunday.  I was going to wait for a while before going over to her house so they would have time to visit.  I finally went over to her house around 4 pm and she was busy chatting with Kelley.  Kelley is a sweet girl she has brown hair cut right below her neck and the prettiest round brown eyes.  She's about my age, late forties, who has been a close friend to my mom, ever since my mom worked for her family cooking hamburgers at Hannah's Triangle over 30 years ago.  My mom was in her wedding twenty years ago and still has her dress that she proudly announces is a size 8.

The plan was to go to Walmart and then over to the cemetery to place flowers on Michael's grave.  We got busy just chatting and even though Kelley left soon afterward. We decided that we were going to put off our trip to Walmart for another day.  I told my mom that I had put a prime Rib in the oven before I left and invited her to come to my house for Sunday Supper.  My mom was very excited to come over for dinner and we left and headed to my house.

The prime rib turned out wonderful~  All these years I have been searing my roasts in a pan on the stove with hot oil and seasoning and then cooking in the oven.  The trick to a tasty roast is to bake it at 550 degrees for 20 minutes and then turn the oven down to 350 degrees and bake for the remainder of time to pounds ratio.

I walked  through the door and whipped up a side dish and angel food cake and brownies.  My mom visited with our friends who are staying with us and my daughters while I finished dinner. We were getting ready to carve the roast and I think my mom was so hungry she could have eaten it off the bone.

We served up my husband David, on a TV tray, who couldn't leave the television or the 49's would surely loose.  It sure was a close and disappointing game.  We all sat down around the table gave thanks to God and ate our meal.
There was the normal table talk with lots of chatter.  Yelling and moaning came from the living room, where a field goal leveled any chance for our 49'ers to go to the Superbowl.    Dinner was soon over and the dishes were cleared and desert was served.  It was time to go and my mom went to find her purse and cane and it wasn't where she thought she put it.

We looked and looked, all over the house. I thought where in the world could her purse have been put? She swore up and down, her purse was around her neck, when she was tasting the meat.  Everyone was a part of this search party, we looked in baskets, in the car, on the hook, that I place my purse on when I walk through the door.  That purse was no where to be found.  I said to my mom, "You know mom we are both blondes"  I told her about the time that I could have sworn I left my purse at the dog groomers and called the groomer and asked them three to times to please look again for my purse, each time the lady would come back and tell me that my purse was not there.  I was so sure it had been left there, I was in shock when my husband went home to find it on our front porch swing.   I told her, "You probably left it your house."  She says, "I am platinum, you might be a blonde, but I am platinum.I am positive I had it here"

So, after looking again I convinced her that we go check and see if its at her home and if not, we would come back to my house and I was prepared to tare it apart to find it.  My friend Lynda volunteered to drive us in her rental car, because her car is still in the shop.  I was a little relieved because if we had to make a round trip it would be cheaper gas for me.  Her little rental takes way less fuel then my "Ford-a-saurus"  Excursion

We walk through her door and what is sitting on her counter?  Well it was her purse.
 We had a good laugh. What a relief!  I cannot begin to tell you how happy I was to see her purse.  I will say that through the whole saga of the missing purse my mom was very calm cool and collected the whole entire time.  I would like to know who this woman is and what did she do with my mom! ~smile~  I hugged her and told her to call me when she wakes up I am taking her to Walmart tomorrow finally.

Surrounded in love!

Brendon Gill, Great Grandma Ju-Ju, Jacob and Christina Gill 

I woke up this morning and waited for my mom to call and finally mid-morning, I called her and got to hear her outgoing message, we made the day before.  It made me chuckle.  I left a message for her to call me and then my son Brendon started to text me, to find the best number to get a hold of her.  I was glad to hear he was going to keep his word and go visit her today.  I know that this will make her happy and she needs to be surrounded in love by everyone that loves her.
My mom called me back and her first words were, "I've been missing you!"  I told her that I was waiting for her call and then told her Bren and his family were coming to see her.  I told her that when I talked to Brendon, I let him know where she lives and how to get there.   My mom moved after my dad died, to a senior housing that was just newly built, she has just lived there a little over six months.

Michael Barnett 

Today is also my brother Michael's birthday, he would be 49 this year. This day comes every year as a bittersweet memory of what was. Michael took his own life 14 years ago. I always try to call her and let her know I am thinking of her on this day. Even if your child is gone, you still are their mom and your love for them and their memory never fades . Happy birthday Michael!

Memories

My mom decided to add remote voice mail to her phone so she can at least have people leave a message when she is on the phone.    I was really proud of her because she was proactive in ordering this service, but she became frustrated when she went to set it up.  I came over to bring her my homemade noodles and meatballs and visit for a while.  She greeted me and then told me how frustrated she had become with setting up her voice mail and asked for my help.

I took her directions that she had written on a piece of paper and tried and tried to follow it when setting up her voice mail.  Then we decided that I should go online to figure this out, well at my mom's housing place they have internet and a community computer for anyone to use.  I asked one of her neighbors if she wouldn't mind if I just popped on for a few minutes.  This took, I am not exaggerating, three hours.

I discovered that there needed to be a pin number, but that number had to be mailed to her.  I called four times and was told my call would be answered within a minute.  This minute lasted over 20 minutes long. I told my mom that we need to have AT&T tell us what time she has left on this earth, because whatever the number is; its going to be lots, more time, by the way they measure it. We all laughed!   When we finally got this all settled and done with a recorded outgoing message it was over four hours of googling, typing and calling.

The nice lady that gave up her computer to me, was kind enough to bring me homemade peanut brittle!  She had just made the peanut brittle that morning.  So that was my bonus.  My bonus was also the precious time that we got to spend together today.  We got to touch briefly on what she wants and we talked about her desire to stay in her own home until she dies, and then we took a trip down memory lane.

Isn't it funny, that we can share a memory and have two different memories.  She started sharing the story about when my mom was on a bridge, over a dam and being attacked by a bee and since she allergic to bees; she is afraid of them too.  She freaked out and flung her white shinny, patent leather, purse over the side of the bridge.  I remember distinctly that we looked over the bridge and watched her purse floating in the water below but, we had no way to get there to retrieve it.    Her memory is I was a small infant and she had just passed me to my grandmother but I remember the whole thing and I was about four or so.   We both insisted that our memory was the correct one and then she said she,"Well I am just going to  have to ask Mamma and Daddy when I get to heaven and see who's right"  We both chuckled, and I said, "Well mom, were are going to have to figure out a sign to let me know you were right" and she said wistfully, "You know I think all this stuff isn't going to be important.  I think we are going to be too focused on worshiping Jesus."  We both got quiet and agreed.

Her phone rings and its the Dr's office she has an appointment for the CT scan its January 31st at 8 AM, she is not to take any blood thinners or aspirin and she is to eat a light breakfast that morning.  So now the waiting begins...

Of course, I am torn in fifty directions, so while I was there; I got a text to pick up ice and knew that my family would devour the tasty meal that I had prepared for them, without me, if I didn't get on the road.  I told my mom that I would come back tomorrow and see her just give me a call when she wakes up.   We kissed and hugged and then off I went to the store and then home to feed the hungry masses.