Today is a Milestone

Today I start publishing the entries from Mom's final journal (Book 6). Coincidentally the stats on my blog also show I just passed a milestone with my blog. I have just passed 25,000 hits. Thank you to my faithful viewers for hanging in there with me on this journey. Please feel free to post comments here. It's always nice to get feedback.

Tuesday January 12, 1993

Didn't sleep well at all. Don't feel well when I get up at 7:00 but feel I must go to the driving class for the second day. By 9 I'm ready to go. I'm really tired, but make it through the 3-hour class. We go to Coco's for lunch. I enjoy fish and chips. At home I rest and try to take a nap.

Frank goes to Gary's to turn on the heat and make popcorn for Joe and Junior and 4 of their friends.

At 2 p.m. I go to Fantastic Sam's to get a perm. They say my hair is damaged and could not have a perm. They cut and conditioned it.

Not hungry for dinner, we go to Gary's with Junior's birthday present. Frank has cake and ice cream with Gary. We come home after 1-1/2 hours. I'm tired and go to bed at 9:45.

It's no wonder Mom's hair is damaged from all the chemo drugs running through her veins and hair follicles. Surprisingly she has not lost any of her hair yet.

Why Is She on Quinine?

Monday January 11, 1993

I awake feeling good. I didn't take the Quinine last night or Saturday night. Maybe that was making me ill. At 9 a.m. we go to a 55 Alive Driving class. It's over at 12:00. I still feel good. We go out to a Mexican buffet lunch. I eat alot. I still feel good.

At home, after some shopping I give Frank a perm. Boy did he need it! He looks handsome now!

One piece of pizza for dinner and I feel well enough to go to the square dane to sit and watch and visit. I feel really good but am tired at 9:30 and ready to go home.

What!!? Why did the doctor put her on quinine? No wonder she felt awful, as if battling cancer isn't bad enough! I looked up quinine to see what it treats and according to Mayoclinic.com it is used to treat malaria caused by a parasite in the bloodstream! The most common side effects of the medication are nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach cramps. It also causes fatigue and chest pain! Thank goodness Mom had the good sense to get off this stuff! She must have felt great to give Frank a perm. The smell of perm solution is enough to make anyone nauseous!

This is the last entry in Journal 5. I now begin Journal 6, her last.

My Brother Is a Good Man

Sunday January 10, 1993

I awake feeling better. My chest doesn't hurt but I feel nauseous. I go down for a pancake breakfast. I don't really enjoy it but it fills my empty belly. I lay in bed all morning. Can't think of a reason to get up. Finally, I'm up, showered and made up by 1 p.m. I eat a hard boiled egg. That tastes good. I eat another. Later a cookie and banana. At 5 a.m. I ate a cup of yogurt.

I call Gary at 4:45. We go over to visit awhile. Frank helps them prune some rose bushes. We come home and order pizza. I manage to eat one piece. I still feel pretty good. I eat some ice cream later and go to bed at 11 p.m.

I met a women at church a few weeks ago and we had a nice personal chat. I told her about Mom and how I regretted not spending more time with her those last two years when she was sick. She told me when her sister got sick two years ago with cancer, she quit her job, moved to Missouri to be with her sister, and took care of her until she passed away. In January 1993 I was on maternity leave with my 6 month old son Derek. What would my life have been like if I had dropped everything to be with Mom in Simi Valley? Would I have been able to extend my leave or find another job? Would Mom have even wanted me to come down? Perhaps if I had known she would be gone in a few months this would have been the time to go down to be with her. Because she was always so upbeat and confident that she would beat the cancer, I believed her, and never thought it would take her away from me.

In spite of the fact that I lived 400 miles away, my brother Gary lived just 3 miles away in Simi Valley. He is such a kind man, a generous man, and very easy-going. I'm so glad Mom lived close to him so they could spend time together. We just visited Gary and Maria at their home a few weeks ago when we went down for a family wedding in Pasadena. I had not seen my brother for 6 months and had not been to their home for 5 years. The photo above was taken July 20, 2013 at the wedding which took place in my Aunt Cathy and Uncle Gene's backyard, as so many other weddings and celebrations have. The wedding was so fun and beautiful, but I especially enjoyed spending time with my brother and his wonderful wife Maria. I promise Gary to come down more often! Time passes so quickly, our children grow up, get married, move on. I read an article recently in Parade magazine about siblings. It talked about how important it is to be close with our siblings, for we share a longer history with them in our lifetime than another other person on earth. I'm so lucky my brother is a good and kind man!

Sick Today

Saturday January 9, 1993

I didn't sleep well last night. Awake with my chest hurting and feel sick all over. I take a pain pill. It helps alot but don't feel well enough to get up and dressed. I spend the day in bed, sleeping off and on. About 5 I dress and come down for dinner. I thought leftover Chinese sounded good but manage only a feeble attempt to eat. Still no appetite and nothing sounds good.

Today I had toast and orange juice and yogurt. I go to bed at 10 p.m. and sleep quite well.

It will be just a few more months before Mom passes, and her bad days will begin to outnumber her good days. It is becoming more and more difficult for me to read her journal and I find that I am posting less frequently than when her life is fun and going well. Partly it hurts me to to hear about her suffering, and partly I don't want this blog to end. Even though it took Mom just over 2 years to write her journal, I am in my 4th year of publishing it. It helps me feel close to her and to remember her. Of course I want to remember the good times though, and not so much the painful times.

More Movies For a Rainy Day

Friday January 8, 1993

Awake at 7:00 we make love. I feel pretty good today. Not as good as yesterday. My energy level is down and I feel the pressure in my throat. We have a sausage and egg breakfast and go out to In N Out for hamburger lunch. At 1:00 we go to a movie. Frank goes to the bathroom 3 times during the 1-1/2 hour film. His bladder is really acting up today. Later we have a yogurt and watch a rented movie. We've had lots of rain this week. A good time for watching movies.

I'm not hungry for dinner. I eat some tangerine. At 11:30 I'm hungry so crawl out of bed and go down to eat some soup.

Poor Frank. For many years he had to hurry to the bathroom every 30 minutes or so due to an enlarged prostate. He finally had surgery a few years ago: problem solved!

Mom doesn't say what movies they watched. I guess it wasn't worth mentioning. I find it hard to watch more than one movie. It's difficult to sit still that long. I would much rather read where I can take a break every half hour or so.

VHS Movies

Thursday January 7, 1993

I slept 9 hours and feel much better this morning. I'm ready at 12:00 to clean bathrooms and make my bed. Later, I go to the bank and pick up a couple of movies.

Frank went to the valley this morning to have breakfast with Marty and Robbie. Then they spent the day working on Marty's trailer brakes. By 4 p.m. Frank is home and we watch the movies together.

At 6:00 we take Smokey to the vet for a shot. I'm hungry, real hungry! By 7:00 we are eating dinner. I really enjoy the salmon, baked potato and zucchini. It's great to be eating dinner. I felt great all day til bedtime. It was a good day.

Just like reel-to-reel home movies are a thing of the past, VHS movies have been replaced by DVDs. What will be the next technology? My kids were raised on Disney VHS movies, but DVDs have been around for almost 20 years now, and the quality is much improved.

Ric and I just got back from a vacation on the Oregon coast where it was foggy, cold and windy all week, so to pass the time, we rented DVD movies, which is something we rarely do at home. I wonder if Mom and Frank agreed on the movies they would watch, because whenever Ric picked out the movie it was dark and violent while I prefer a good romantic comedy. When my movie was being played Ric would leave the room within 10 minutes after quickly losing interest. 90% of the time though Ric picked out the movie, and even though it was his choice, he would fall asleep halfway through and I ended up being the only one watching it!

Home Movies

Wednesday January 6, 1993

Didn't sleep well. Lots of wind and rain. I get up at 7:20. We leave for the doctor at 9. I ate a bowl of cereal and took a pain pill. I get my lab work done and briefly speak to the doctor. I speak to a lady who had the pump and did very well. Now she's back to probably go on it again.

We head for Frank's folks. We all go out to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. I eat about half and bring the rest home. Back at their house we watch some home movie video from the 1940s. It's great. We head home about 3 p.m. I am very tired. I lay on the couch all night. I cannot eat dinner. I feel so full and have a stomach ache. About 9 I feel better and eat some yogurt and apple.

When I was 12 years old my Mom went to work in order to have her own career and interest outside the home, but prior to that she was a typical 50s Mom just like the one pictured above. She was very involved in the lives of my brother Gary and I. She took us on trips to the beach at Santa Monica every summer and she took us to the library in Panorama City every 2 weeks for more reading material, which contributed to my love of reading (and writing). One of my favorite memories as a child was when Mom would set up the movie projector in the hallway, close all the doors so that it was very dark, and show reel after reel of home movies against the wall at the end of the hallway. The movies were of our vacations, birthday parties, and other activities. It was alot of work threading the film through the projector, and each roll only had about 5 minutes of video. My brother has boxes and boxes of those small reels of video. A few years after Mom passed away, we stayed up til the wee hours of the morning watching them in his living room, just the two of us. It was wonderful to relive our youth. One thing I remember clearly though was that Mom is in almost none of those movies, because she was always the one holding the movie projector or the camera. I hope some day to put those movies on DVD. Maybe when Gary retires in a few years I'll make a special trip down to Simi Valley to organize those movies together and send them to Costco to make DVDs, maybe one for each decade.

I remember on one trip to visit Mom and Frank they showed a DVD that Frank had made from old home movies. I'll bet it was the same movies that they watched this night. It was the first time I heard that Frank, who I always thought was an only child, had a sister who died very young. She was in some of those videos.