B12 O.D.? LINK Reference on Minerals and Supplements

B 12 overdose... Like not everyone can be a speed freak... but sometimes the slow, gets really slow... And technically there's an intestinal parasite that works really hard in the mature, elder body from 4:30 am to 6:30 am eating up all good probiotics created in the lower intestine.  And then there's a need for added B12.  Oral or a big old shot...

YET - be aware there's a place in time, where not getting the blood test before taking a supplement can be really, really bad...  It can actually make you and your elder be ill, depressed, and a plague of other issues no one ever tells you about when they recommend without a blood test, to put that little B12 ball under your tongue or next to your gums...

Check the total intake: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminB12-HealthProfessional/#h2

Read: https://www.nutrition.gov/dietary-supplements/questions-ask-taking-vitamin-and-mineral-supplements

Read: B12 Specific:  https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminB12-HealthProfessional/

See:  http://www.viapath.co.uk/our-tests/active-b12-holotc
See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3127504/

Ask around about signs and symptoms of b12 deficiency, but also, look at each supplement jar and start adding up the B12 added.  Then take that total to very max needed each day.  Make sure, you and yours are NOT O.D.ing.... 

SAVE this LINK for reference on Minerals and Supplements:
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/list-VitaminsMinerals/

Ground Up or Down

Prices for the ground never seem to drop dead.  I went out looking for cremation space.  Not tossing the lot in the air, and buying airspace, no I was shopping for ground space for the urn.  The family already has three full size lots purchased and paid for since the 1970's.  Yet, that doesn't count, or give one space.  There's more to being down under that just the digging. 
Living and learning with the fashion of remains to plant the "cremains" or "cremaines"  or "cremanes" is EXPENSIVE.  Nothing but expensive, sans the burial luncheon, a headstone or the new methods of planting the remains of the cremains (the correct spelling).  Under, over, with others, with or without container, with or without markers (formerly known as headstones)... and then who, what, where and when.
Options are endless and growing dying.  Odd as that sentence may be; I might not be the first to pay the insurance policy for cremation( about $2,000 twenty years ago), but the planting expense I leaqrned was not included in that budget.  Prayer cards, newspaper notices, and all the items and actions that were socially correct, are not negotiable now, and possibly useless to have one hundred prayer cards for the new-age, Buddhist and agnostic.  Hopefully, someone will look at the Obituary tab to know, since there was no consideration given for email notification of the deceased Contact List at the time of the contract creation. 
What else should I plan for?
The other  unspoken costs are increasing and the situation will render lots of time to decide how.  With or without.  The current budget for this section of the activity ranges from $1,200 to $2,200 (as of this writing). 
Is this where I decide to actually pay for the 'view' or pay per view?

Bank Bill Pay v U.S. Postal Service

I don't lick, stick or put anymore - stamps that is. My postman/postwoman is a wonderful individual with all the gusto, perseverance and so very trustworthiness I could compliment their service daily when the mail arrives.  I bless Ben Franklin for the active idea of the Post Office.  Yet, I am a time-saving trader.  I could pen those household bills and mail a hardcopy check with the return slip, place it  in the provided return envelope, with my U. S. Postage stamp with my selection of art work, glue or not.  But I don't.  I don't inform the utility companies that I don't need their return envelopes either, since I don't mail them anything, I can not check the box for choosing the 'electronic billing' option. 

I believe the paperless, e-tronic method has hit the speed bump from the past few years and bottomed out.  I can hear the scrapping instead of licking and sticking.  There's not enough staff in the utility company's billing department to check for cost saving measures.  As well as no one to implement them, so the bump in the road has low decibel ripple from this little stamp dip following the former economic bump.  The idealism of the great economic times now inhales, deeper and deeper.  Where did the save a tree, e-pay instead 'save a tree, save the environment' movement go?  Hold that breath!  Meantime, my postal personal worker is turning blue while waiting those few short years till retirement exhalation, and my bank pays the postage if there is any at  all.  Oh, now I exhale as it a crime for to save my approximately $25 per year that used to spend on the stamps to mail the bills. 

It ripples, only I don't see that my postal person now has double the load, higher demands from the bosses, all in shorter hours?  Apply which excuse to: 1.) Sacrifice to save a tree, 2.) Easier for me, 3.A.) Tired of it being tougher for one 3.B.)  Or tougher all around for all?  4.)  Has a simple bill paying operation of a household now made a different system of service of money all around? 
Yet we really have to oil the machine. That one that bespeaks to the element of operational flow, "It Takes Money To Make Money".  Who takes who and where and when?

Communication - Karnack the Telepathic

Bring home pink instead of brown? Square instead of oblong, and hear all the commentary and endless criticism from the parent on your purchase or decision? The easy thing, the parent forgets is that you really don’t know them like their spouse or partner did/does. You are not privy to what they usually purchase, get, have, or use. You like myself, never really wanted to know that much, or didn’t care to know if the brand name was better than the generic store brand in their taste pallet for breakfast cereal. Each of us stands in wonderment of what we have to do next. Return the bad product and get the right one. This is where the feeling of being treated negligently enters in. We make the effort – which most often never gets any credit, since we did the wrong thing to begin with. Therefore, in the parent’s efforts toward the house daughter or son, we don’t deserve acknowledgement. We did the wrong thing. We really did what we could, but we are not mind readers. Yet the generation who’s entertainer, Johnny Carson had a character, Karnack the Magnificent, who was a comic mind reader on this late night television show might have originated with a wife or an elder’s shopping adventure in Mr. Carson’s personal home. It pleases me relate the Karnack character to my own unfortunate experiences and lack of telepathy in such situations. Although I will give up my after hours of work, drive in traffic, deal with store return policies, hunt down the correct product or model, purchase it, drive back to the house, and pull up so hard on my bootstraps to present the replacement item – that I’d really rather not do anything at all. Yet, I try, with amour mounted on my chest, my heart, my ego – deliver the replacement goods. For better or worse, in sickness or health, I have done my duty to my god and my country, all over a piece of merchandise that wasn’t quite right. Allow me to remember this when I get old. I can forget my address, my own old age telephone number, but this lesson, I must keep. And that is: I speak, I must describe the good and the bad, and I must give a range of options in sizes, shapes, colors, and state why, to the annoyance of the person tasked to achieve this product, about why I need it and want it. Savings? A lifetime of woe and self-doubt। Priceless because I can fire Karnack the Telepathic!

Ride not Walk

Is there a time to steal your sister's advertising mail, and buy the mom a Scooter chair? It was just, too appealing, and the mom wasn't walking all that well after three rounds of physical therapy. She was severely limited in the range of the small, city backyard she could manipulate the four-wheeled rolling walker with the handbrakes. Why there's more space out there. Let's call them!

I did, the process was detailed, but easy. Have the insurance information, and all health care prior year of annual cost handy. And the process moved along - so to speak.

Amazingly, it arrived within days. A padded chair with a joy stick. Man, is it fast if you know how to drive with a joy stick! Or slow,as the mom had the technician work the variables. Armrest comfort, take-off, turning radious to adjust the speed in addition to the hands-on dial control, and driving/riding/handling around curves of this 13 mile distance riding machine. It's not a motor cycle, min you. And I would need a lift on the car (it's 180 lbs) to take her, and the chair anywhere really important. Yet, meantime - steal the mail and dial the 800 number. And wonder if they are licensing golf carts for in-town use, maybe this is next. If I can get her to use it! Know this, on month 14, she owns it. And every 5 years, she can get brand new one! Yah!

Eye Glass Debate

After the longest time, and several over-the-counter reading glasses for the parent, I finally gave in and began the search. Not completely in the mood to spend the big bucks, such as $500 and more in addition to the eye exam, I shopped the cheap side of sight. The mom agreed that I was nothing but cheap. Then I remarked about her history of eight return visits to the prior optometrist to get the vision right. The former never did get it corrected to her satisfaction, and I heard about that expensive $800 adventure for years. Now, I settled for Sam's Club.

Although, the mom said she would be dead by April, that's two months away, she found a light pair of big, light weight frames that suited her taste. The tech that fitted her was patient and tolerant as he said to me that he "took care of his mom also".

Perfection, Sam's Club hired the right guy for the job. As the order time was fast for the price - eight days. Additionally, that I could bring her in, since I picked up the glasses first, myself for her to try out; up to two months. After two months she could return them and get new lenses, if she wished - ones without the lines for the very large bi-focal she really, really wanted. (Just in her 'I will be dead shortly time frame.)

Time will tell, but shopping around really paid off. Now she's knitting up a storm, and I have six other pairs of over-the-counter reading glasses to store or pass on. Hummm!

Changing Doctors – New and Used

When you least expect it, and you just put all those MD’s telephone numbers in your cell phone for emergencies, they change. Some doctors retire, others increase or decrease their practice. Others decide to specialize and basically you get booted out of their practice for now. Seeking another MD or specialist to oversee your parents ever-so familiar case is a hat trick.
First consider seeking another “in-network” physician from their insurance carrier. You might have to go online, and look up ‘Providers’ for the parents specific type of replacement care. I found out, not all listed will gladly take new-used patients from other physicians. Once I started in the specialty doctors, it was even harder to find someone to complete the five-year re-check-up exam. The physicians don’t well to re-working other doctors work. Yet, when I, the caregiver stand in the exam room, with the parent and the doctor, nearly on my knees after a month of waiting for this appointment, with my hands raised to sky pleading, ‘What else was I suppose to do. The parent is in pain, so hey. Can ya help? Please.”

The grueling task of begging receptionist for an appointment for this new-used patient is a hat trick too. You will need, like I had to do, get the appropriate form to transfer the parents former medical records to the new doctor. There’s a time lag between filling out the form, the parent signing it, faxing or mailing it to the first doctor to send the records to the new-second doctors office, in ample time prior to the actual appointment. And I hear they won’t fax the history either. Snail mail should be in the time plan for this, prior to the visit.
What do I know, as to the contents of the ship list of medical records to be copied and forwarded to the new physician? It may be everything, (x-rays, MRI’s, test results and more), or only partial, and it’s basically me and the parents’ best guess as to which boxes to check on the list. Since the new-not-yet-used medical office couldn’t really help me with what they needed to achieve, since my parent is not-yet their patient.
Instead of throwing up my hands in disgust, I check all the boxes for all the records, since I didn’t have to pay for the postage. Darn good reason for electronic records to enter our world.

Ah - The Master Calendar

What constitutes the Master Calendar? It’s just MD, classes and situations I that have to deal with… or in short - whatever someone else makes me do. It’s the blend of my life, and someone elses’ for this moment.
It’s a record that I did not sit on my butt all day, all week or all month. It’s my rational to realize, I didn’t put the last 5,000 miles on the car by nor for myself alone. And that it needs an oil change shortly, put that on the calendar.
The master calendar tells me that I am present, requested and validates my existence. It shall not make me money, but may rather – spend my money. It’s rarely my calendar of planning my time. More of fitting my time around someone else’s appointments and needs.
It’s the time and place of surrender. It’s where it’s not about me. It’s like a tithe, a gift, a point of service that I do, usually for another. And I wrote it on the calendar, so I am not allowed any hissy fits, bad moods or allowed to forget, either that I still have work to do after this, somehow, now that this days’ light is fading to a close.
It’s the only way to get anything done and completed peacefully, because if I didn’t surrender to the writing in the time slots, I would just scream. And nobody likes a whuss.

Property Tax – Discounts

The parent's home may be carrying a mortgage, and there may be property tax discounts available. Have you considered looking into getting those discounts yet? Hate to be a nag, but a penny saved is a penny not spent. But you may have to spend some time seeking out those programs.
If you are not familiar with your parents home mortgage and their property tax bill because it’s been wrapped into the payment book for decades, now is the time to look at the payment book. See what the annual property taxes are for their house. Know the value and know the tax amount in dollars.
If there are applicable discounts that you and the parent may file for at the state, federal or county level. Speak with the parents income tax accountant, or financial advisor and inquire if this benefit may be applicable or for additional guidance.
After filing, and acceptance for any property tax discount benefits, you may need to speak with the escrow company and advise them to expect a letter stating a drop in the property tax. Note that the parent/homeowner will receive a letter also explaining the drop in property taxes due, stating when the discount will begin. You may have to re-file for this benefit annually in specific season of the year.
I have been told that the escrow company will have to recalculate the monthly percentage of the property tax collected. So there may be a dollar value change in the house payment monthly. Or the escrow company may offer to credit back the overage back to the owner or apply it to the principle.
It may pay off if the parent is fully disabled, or veteran or both just to save money with a little effort towards discovery of any options not taken advantage of.
Consider contacting to know what is available in your state, or county:
County Assessor
Department of Aging
Department of Veterans Affairs

Compare the Momma’s

Do we ever? Have you noticed friends to friends when discussing the conditions of the parent in casual conversation that we rarely get egotistical and practice the art of one-ups-man-ship when discussing them comparatively. Camaraderie, is more the key word here. Somewhere in the social mix of life, we seem to grant compassion to each other for the different and separate situations we individually face. The conversation tends to be more of fact-finding missions, suggestions for conflict resolution, suggestive in nature and always with an open stance to the interpersonal communications. Opportunistic availability lends a learning forum for all to exchange in. That’s friend-to-friend, stranger on the street to another stranger.
Yet in complete opposition is our own conversations with our own sibling family members. Some of which may have matured in body and stature, yet maturity and confidence sorely lags behind. Within the family matrix, the ego thrives, striving laboriously to make it’s will known. Perhaps deriving it’s ceaseless energy from unresolved fights of youth, conjuring up more intense intended torment via means of persecution of the ego as it rears its ugly head. The competition begins to compare what was, to now what is. Who in the sibling pecking order has the right to make the sole decision to impact the end may only have the greatest of robust egos. The wording changes, vision of the outcome disappears and it is no long about the parent, but about each individual.
What can occur between siblings, cannot ever truly be discussed without a therapist in the same room. It is history, living in the moment and taking all the air, water and breeze and whipping it into a tornado of emotional confusion and terror.
That’s why family’s have a medical doctor overseeing the best for the parent. Discuss your position with him, and things might be well decided based on norms, science and repeatability. Elvis has left the building.

Hygiene -Sad Scent

Lost between two women, somewhere in the shopping day, it was time to stop by my friends parents house and say hello.
If a candy bar wrapper has special messages inside for you, ‘to escape your world’ after reading them and eating the chocolate, this was the time to test it out.
It is to assume the purpose of ‘escaping your world’ so that one can see and assess themselves better by stepping out of the norm. With some intent to reflect back on the qualities left behind. As if those qualities could be changed somehow upon the return.
What if no amount of candy wrappers changed the individuals repose? All the wise words packaged to make things pretty and perfect that just didn’t work were piled up in one place to rot.
Hard words for hard thoughts, and a great deal of embarrassment for my friend whose parents couldn’t seem to clean their home. The pungent lingering of the usual kitchen trash turned ripe would be a phase in the day of any homemaker living in a warm climate. Which this was – a warm summer day, with an air conditioned house that just plain reeked of the very, very bad stuff of life.
Nancy had told me, that she had tried to get a housekeeper in for her mother. But her mother wouldn’t have a stranger in her home. So adamant were her parents about not hiring a cleaning woman, that Nancy saw her comments to clean up the living space much like a teenagers revenge.
“You tell me to clean up. So I am gonna leave it a mess.”
Yet, that was far from the case. Her mother had the burden of seriously over-weight self, and more alone with her husband, a recovering triple by-pass patient newly returned home from hospital.
Mother is the caregiver, round the clock, with no car, dependant on her gay son and his partner living a mile away for transportation. Nancy tells me that the reverse mortgage was being spent before the bi-pass surgery at the Casino, gambling. The van from the Casino picks them up, takes them to the casino for as long as they like and then drops them off at the door to this home.
Nancy looks at me in disgust, “Hey, mom! We’re leaving.” And escorts me out the door towards the car.
It’s a thing, the sad scent, no one speaks of when it’s their own parents to any stranger. Yet in the company of the oldest of friends no topic is off limits. Who else will hear each other out about our thoughts and feelings on the subject of ‘house-a-tosis’.
“What are we gonna be like when we get old?” she warped the words with melancholy memories of when this wasn’t the way it is. “They need to be in assisted living.”
“What got you this time?” I asked with an open deck and a few of the cards to listen to the distressed adult-child in the game of ‘Go Fish’.
It’s the self-respect, the environment not of the planet, or the world, or the country or the state, or even this urban city they live in. It’s their own environment, that was tragically upsetting Nancy.
Topics rolled out her mouth, as licensed beautician, she knows the rules of proper sanitation. She knew chemicals and stench. She knew rot. She lived on her own ranch. And it wasn’t pretty to hear her speak of how much, how long and how helpless she felt about the stench.

“It’s somewhere in the rot of just plain trash and urine.” She paused to know, “and my brother won’t help her take out the trash, but she could take out the trash. It’s the urine, I can’t understand how they live with that stench of urine. It like a foreign language of scent. They could fix it, but I don’t’ think they can smell it. They are living in it all day and all night, and can’t even smell it now.”
Exasperated and demanding, “Clean it up, wash it out, and she won’t and he won’t care to tell her to clean him up, wash the clothes right away. No the pissy laundry sits in the hamper to reek. I would put gloves on to touch any of their clothes to put them in the wash. I would. I would have to put on plastic gloves and an apron just to move them from where they are to the wash. And you know, they would still have a stink in them after they were even dried. I would just bag them and throw them out. It was never like this before. It only got worse since he came home from the hospital and she’s caretaking him all day and night with no rest for herself. And now she stinks, too! I can’t do anything about it. I spoken to her about getting in some help, but it has gone too far. They just can’t be in that house by themselves. I won’t go back there for another few months. Even if I took them out of the house, they would smell. I just can’t see them. I’ll call her once a week on the phone, but I just can not go there again. And my brother, he won’t help, he and his partner can’t do anything. Or won’t do anything. They need to be in assisted living, and no one will listen to me.”
The statement inside the candy wrapper most definitely wasn’t working now. ‘Escape your world’ the given command of advertising and the images we should seek. As the daughter, the child who couldn’t bring themselves to recover from this worsening condition of their parents accepted living condition. Turning to authorities wouldn’t hurt, but right now it wasn’t going to help Nancy cope with helplessness. Turning away for this moment was coping. Turning on the acknowledgment of her own helplessness to help them created a burden, a tinged photograph to a clear life of her own. A chip on lense, a scratch on the mirror that couldn’t be rubbed out.

Shoes - Snow Shoes

Somewhere in the 40’s, 50’s, or early sixties, there was a mom who got divorced with children. We, maybe you or me is the product that former union, with a single mother as head of the household – which was not socially acceptable. The mom had one of two professions; nurse or teacher. The mom worked full-time, and the kids ran wild. There was trouble to be had in those days and single moms were taken to task for it. The mom had enough or not enough money to feed, clothe, and heat the house. Usually it was less money, and if there was money, the mom bought her kids stuff like bikes, skateboards and more skis, with poles, warm clothes, and boots.
The mom just didn’t manage to get the new furnace, the new stove, the kitchen sink she needed and wanted in her home. It never came to pass. Now that the mom’s retirement kicked in along with social security, the mom still has the same house, now paid for in full. The stove was replaced but not the water heater, or the TV which was still on rabbit ears antennae, the floor furnace is original, and the fireplace seemed to work quite well, accept for the ash toting routing. Energy star appliances escaped the radar in this house.
The twenty-first century common luxuries such as cable TV, forced air heat, a non-leaking roof, dead bolt locks, a double well kitchen sink and tile over linoleum floors never seemed to have reached this mom’s house.
Still, on a winters day, this mom is splitting wood in the back yard for the fireplace. Same boots as twenty-five years ago, since they never seem to wear out. The wood basket is slightly worse for wear, but it will do these days. And no one ever got this mom an answering machine with a ring loud enough for her to hear, or buttons large enough for dialing the telephone that she could see. So she rarely answered the telephone, rarely put on the other pair of glasses for dialing the telephone numbers to her adult children, and just re-adjusted the rabbit ears to watch the world events on the five p.m. news not CNN or MSNBC.
When the kids came to visit in their new cars with all the bells and whistles. Making calls back to their homes on their cell phones. Taking notes on their PDA’s or connected their laptops in bakery coffee shop down the street did they ever think to speak to their mother about cable TV, a dishwasher, let alone central heat or air.
One day on a visit, they missed their cable news program. And they really put up a stink about it, that their mom didn’t have it. And so the story goes, the mom put up a fight for a moment and then told them, you buy it for me, and then I’ll have it.
By the next Christmas visit, there was cable TV, cordless telephones in three rooms, a new furnace, and not one of adult children had a newer car than before. The mom even got a new washer-dryer and very nice pair of winter boots.
I guess, all you have to do, is inconvenience them and they wake up.

Death of a Loved One - Anniversary Day

You don’t often remember, or maybe you do. My mom definitely remembers the birth as well as the day of passing of her close family members. Parents, husband and some of her sisters, which when I was younger I thought it quite strange. Yet, the more I lived, the more I also lost friends, and special loved ones, even public persons, and became more like my parent in this way.
It’s not that I am more like the parent; I am more like my culture, my tribe, my community. The elders are there before us, so it appears that we are taking on their traditions. When more likely, the human being marks time and events with age or the passing of time. Like great individual corporations, we each have our milestones to meet and greet annually, whether we like it or not.
In the face of these benchmarks, their appears to be a possible window, with the memory of the passing of a loved one. My mom notices a specific month, when many passed out of her life. The parent often has a connection with the deceased, in dreams, feelings, or the memory of those individuals during the entire month.
I am not sure if she feels the aloneness, the one left behind, with little common ground in the present to express herself. I wonder, yet I also know and work to forget the number of years since my father has passed. Now the benchmark is over thirty years with a single parent. Something to consider a success, sometimes my loss of my own life, while tending to her retirement, relocating, health plans and problems, pensions and all the rest.
Often I wonder what my own life would have been like, if my other – male parent, my father had lived longer into my mother’s retirement years. I wonder what would that freedom may have or not have done for and to my own life. Yet, there is no going back, no changing what the psychic palm reader told me about this time for my life.
So it is written. Nevertheless, can someone tell the persons on the other side of this life, ‘I think you are not forgotten to those who have known you.’

Communication - The Hairy Replacement

You may find it easier to watch the soap opera of the hour, but when it’s your life that you displaced for living arrangements, and then are replaced by a dog is a smile with friendly relations still okay?
This House Daughter didn’t know whether she was right or wrong to move back in with her aging mother. She moved back in with her mom with the understanding that she would have the peace and solitude to finish her dissertation writing section for her PhD. Yet after months and months of nit-picking by her mother she just had to move out. Yet, she remained in the same town that her mother lived in.
Close enough, but far away made the goal even harder financially. She would have to work part-time, help her mother part-time, then write and research the other twelve hours in a day. Already in-debt with student loans over $100,000.00, from working toward this task, the light at the end of the tunnel was dashed. Now she was turned on her ear with limited funding even for food.
Low and behold a month after departing her mothers house, the old family dog died. This House Daughter grieved and petted her cat, knowing everything is terminal to begin with.
Then, out of nowhere, her mother gets a puppy. Not an elder dog that is calm, trained, and well mannered. This is a demanding, infantile black lab puppy. Her mother has to wean, feed, walk, dissuade from chewing, biting, and pooping anything in her 5,000 square foot home.
Now that This House Daughter’s mother carries on about how alone with the responsibilities of a puppy. How it limits her foreign travel, and how she must take the puppy with her to the office and how much attention
the new puppy dog needs.
This House Daughter looks over to her mother and says, "it’s someone for you to bitch at; who can't bitch back." So there.

Exercise - Gramma Gets A Puppy

The grandson wanted to travel over the Christmas – New Year’s holiday, so he asked his grandma to watch over his new medium sized, pound retrieved puppy for the holiday. His cunning was very good, with the reasoning that she – ‘Brigitte’ would keep Gram company and protect her. The grandson didn’t know quite enough at age nineteen about sex and the seasons. You recall those seasons of physical evolution that are different from male and female. Similar though between dog or human. It had slipped Grandson’s young mind, that Brigitte wasn’t spayed at the pound. So with all the Christmas colors available, Brigitte was suddenly spotting red. Here and there, amidst the holiday green. It took Gramma a moment, and then she set about curing the matter in the way only a lady could. Undergarments were augmented for tails, a Christmas pin for tightening and an absorbing paper product was hidden in Brigitte’s dual-purpose animal-human panties. Lest we say, the short walks in the backyard in the winter air was good for Gram. Brigitte was a bit crampy, but came around to bond. Holiday joy had returned now that the woman-to-woman thing had been resolved and where fresh baked holiday cookies were good from the table or the floor now. Her Grandson would have an ‘it’ when he returned.

Pharmacology - Unexpected Events

Independence suddenly reins, and you no longer go into the room with the parent at the doctors office. Nothing better you think than being cut-out. You think less responsibility, more of the parent taking on the responsibility of themselves and breathe a sigh of extra freedom. And, nobody says that that is a bad thing for either party. Wrong!

Suddenly the medication – the pharmacology prescribed by the MD, that you pick up at the pharmacy, only has the Pharmacist to ask questions of. You – yourself, have used this drug, and know that’s it’s a serious one in the categories of weak to serious. You do list the current medication, and they tell you the computer looks out for interactions. Ok. You ask about their age, and their current drugs and any known side effects. None, but take with food, and minor items. Ok.

Not okay. Next morning, you have side effects to clean up after. There an incontinence mess, or vomiting mess, or a dementia mess, or an arguably factor that has arisen. The parent won’t eat and suddenly you know that independence you were hoping would pan out, just went flat.

The work is now yours; the mess is not serious enough to call the MD or is it? Thinking alone, as you clean-up the parent, clean up the floor, the bed, the kitchen. Make food that gets only nasty comments. Run the washer and the dryer, and miss a day of work – again. The head scratching continues to think, ‘this is medicine? This re-action will make someone better?” As the work begins all over again.

Communication - Karnack the Telepathic

Bring home pink instead of brown? Square instead of oblong, and hear all the commentary and endless criticism from the parent on your purchase or decision?

The easy thing, the parent forgets is that you really don’t know them like their spouse or partner did/does. You are not privy to what they usually purchase, get, have, or use. You like myself, never really
wanted to know that much, or didn’t care to know if the brand name was better than the generic store brand in their taste pallet for breakfast cereal. Each of us stands in wonderment of what we have to do next. Return the bad product and get the right one. This is where the feeling of being treated negligently enters in. We make the effort – which most often never gets any credit, since we did the wrong thing to begin with. Therefore, in the parent’s efforts toward the house daughter or son, we don’t deserve acknowledgement. We did the wrong thing. We really did what we could, but we are not mind readers. Yet the generation who’s entertainer, Johnny Carson had a character, Karnack the Magnificent, who was a comic mind reader on this late night television show might have originated with a wife or an elder’s shopping adventure in Mr. Carson's personal home.

It pleases me relate the Karnack character to my own misfortunate experiences and lack of telepathy in such situations. Although I will give up my after hours of work, drive in traffic, deal with store return policies, hunt down the correct product or model, purchase it, drive back to the house, and pull up so hard on my bootstraps to present the replacement item – that I’d really rather not do anything at all.
Yet, I try, with amour mounted on my chest, my heart, my ego – deliver the replacement goods. For better or worse, in sickness or health, I have done my duty to my god and my country, all over a piece of
merchandise that wasn’t quite right.Allow me to remember this when I get old. I can forget my address, my own old age telephone number,but this lesson, I must keep. And that is: I speak, I must describe the good and the bad, and I must give a range of options in sizes, shapes, colors, and state why, to the annoyance of the person tasked to achieve this product, about why I need it and want it.

Savings? A lifetime of woe and self-doubt. Priceless because I can fire Karnack the Telepathic!

Postal Services - Byte This

In the land before bits and bytes, the postal service delivered all the mail, the magazines, communications with the outside personal world of wee-human beings. Now, I don't receive very much mail,
and I did sign up for the 'No More Junk' mail blocking service to save a tree. Yet, when I look at my parent's mail, she gets much more paper than I do. In the form of companies requesting donating dollars for little trinkets have a market with the elderly and their non-mobile disposable
income:

Political groups
Environmental groups
Humanitarian groups
Ethnically underserved groups
Elderly Associations
Religious Associations
Health Awareness Associations
And more....

The most important part of getting money, giving some trinket to the donor. A pin, a sticker, a photo, a calendar - large and small, a rosary, a pack of Holiday Greeting cards with envelopes, book markers, maps, ethnic related cultural items such as dream catcher, a chain with medallion and more.
My mom opened a drawer of trinkets filled with things she couldn't really toss out in the trash, as many were useful, cute, and very different. Moreover, what could she say but, 'they sent it to me.'
Then, my mom felt compelled to send them something in return, in the form of a check. And, I just got her off the publisher's sweepstakes buy-to-win jag.

TV - The Idiot Box

The idiot box phrase began somewhere between color tv without a remote when 'Lost in Space' was a date weekly not to be missed and PBS was just starting their kiddy programming in the mornings. One with the alphabet and number learning I already knew, so I was bored and stared at something else. This is all when it was really still safe to play outside, with anyone or be outside alone and wandering with the dog. The idiot box was her consternation about abandoning real life and its experiential learning. The idiot box phrase entered my mother's mind and came out her mouth to me as a child and as a teenager. Now, I wanted to say it to her. "Turn off that Idiot Box and get a life!" Yet, she had the full tilt, news to sports, music to history channel cable tv on most of the daytime. Radio reception was moderate for variety, but the TV was always on. And my mom began to parked in front of it each waking hour. Fully outfitted for leisure with the telephone nearby, cup holder, side coffee table and the remote control. Entranced by the cooking, home-making shows it became our conversation sharing touchstone. It was a place to wave our flag of commentary how they were doing, just like she did before they invented that new fangled machine. Then I caught myself, and didn't say, 'turn off the idiot box,' because she already knew she should. Yet couldn't get out for real experiential living. It was her window to travel, health, mechanics, absurd people and lifestyles, psychology and coaching, movies and news. I would watch my mother absorb the terrorism, the natural disasters, the financial debacles and ask her about the latest news when I got home from work - in summary form. "What happened while I was working?" And I would be brought up to speed on the world I missed while I was out in the world living. I wondered who had the better in this life?

Hearing Aids - Say What?

Somewhere along the way, when the hearing aids became a fixture in the life of a maturing human, they do omit to clean their ears of wax after a shower or bath. They get stuck, not necessarily in their ears, but stuck up with wax. Or a different way to say, ‘plugged’. And they do, they simply stop the hearing aid from working like it should. I started my mom using Q-tips again, somewhere along the way that part of good hygiene had gotten lost for her. Sort of a dumb thing to write about, yet when the TV volume looms larger than the voice of a baseball park announcer when passing by on the sidewalk, and when they don’t hear the telephone ring, it’s a sign to reach for the box of Q-tip’s to control the volume.
Then there is cleaning the wax from the actual hearing aid appliance. I find maturity brings more appliances into our lives, ever notice that. Dental, hearing, other ones also – but back to appliance wax impeding hearing aids.
Today was the appointed day to take this very expensive and required appliance back to the seller for a tune-up. The warranty was still in-force, so this visit was free. The former visits had been tune-ups via adjusting tone qualities and range of pick-up of sounds. This was quite fun to observe the tester and my mother. High end squelch, and lower pitches and the resulting facial expressions of pain or pleasure.
This visit was an exploratory mission for me to learn – why the volume on the TV was back to the loudest possible setting. Viewing the problematic – baseball park announcer situation was quickly solved by this tooth pick like tool, inserting and removing one filter of the hearing aid – of course it was filled with wax. Then replacing the same itty-bitty, teeny-weeny little white round filter with another from the opposite end of the toothpick-like apparatus.
Now she hears. No tuning required. Wax is gone. New filter is in place, and the toothpick tool filter replacer thing, comes in a box set. Who knew? And the baseball park announcer, he’s on hiatus!