I was pulled into the world of MySpace because my nieces and nephews were incapable of just sending an email or picking up the phone to call. I then went over to Facebook because that was the new new thing, and suddenly I found my own friends as well as my family alive and well there. But increasingly with my busy schedule, the emails would filter in from Facebook and annoy me – whether it…
Yesterday, when mom was asking me to put out her imaginary cigarette, I told the nurse – oh, and she also smokes. Mom looked over at her and said “Triple whammy.” Kicking Cymbalta, alcohol and cigarettes ain’t easy.
I was trying to soothe my mother’s anxiety by prodding her into telling the nurses about her wardrobe and about how she had won beauty contests when she was younger. A week ago a friend had written and said that she remembered my mother fondly. And I try to focus on those aspects of my mother, the ones where people know the big hearted woman, who was as fragile as a flower. Later, that same…
I was sitting in the hall waiting for the bed linens to be changed when I was standing by two people who were catching up. One was an elderly gentlemen who began talking about his days in Cuba with the other guy’s father. I joined their conversation reminiscing about Havana and post Castro and whatnot. The elderly gentlemen said in some ways Cuba has progressed further than us in medicine and education, and yet they…
When a friend of mine was dying of AIDS, he was surrounded by his friends who sat hospice with him and helped care for him in his final weeks. His family was almost restricted from being there as they were of no help. One of the many things he said during moments of lucidity and not was that he was a detective, a gumshoe, who would always got his man. At 3AM this morning, my…
My mother was prescribed Cymbalta for her peripheral neuropathy and depression two months ago. You have to love a drug that says on the front page of its website, we don’t know how the drug works. But what about a doctor who prescribes a medicine that clearly states you should not drink alcohol with it – prescribed to a woman who is an alcoholic. He says she told him she quit drinking. Side effects: When…
Monday morning and I slept like the dead last night and woke into some groggy clarity that I had been through a hump – in the midst of what should be a summer lull there have been too many deaths, too many festivities, too many problems with my mom – so I sort of woke this morning and took a deep breath. Loca and I were on our typical walk through the park when we…
There is ample room to learn how to be discerning in life and if there were a list of desires I would like my child to learn, one would be knowing how to discern what is best for them and others. But unfortunately, a lot of times it takes choosing poorly to get to choosing wisely. And a lot of times when we sit in judgment of others it is also out of ignorance or…
I have been a dedicated Oil of Olay user and have defended using a drug store skin cream by offering my own skin as a testimonial, but enough is enough. I went to the drugstore to get some more Regenerist night cream and there were so many different line extensions and brand names under Olay that the confusion turned to revulsion of the product. I tried to write them on their website but because I…