Recovering

In a post I made in July, I described how ill I had been and my long hospital stay and return home. Now, almost a year later, I am still struggling to regain strength and breathe well.  It has been disheartening at the very least and seems insurmountable at times.  I long to be well and "back to myself" again.  I long to regain my singing voice and my ability to speak for long bits of time without running out of breath.  I think I will ultimately have to see a pulmonary specialist to truly resolve my breathing issues.

It's been a tough year.  Because I got sick in December, we were hit with two out-of-pocket deductibles and wiped out our savings paying as much as we could as quickly as we could.  From $12,600.00, we have less than $5,000.00 to finish paying now.  The Lord looked after us by helping my husband with a job situation that allowed him to make quite a bit more than he had been making most weeks and I was, thankfully, able to quickly move back to working full time.  But it's been tough on me.  I have little to no energy for anything else. And I think it has slowed my healing completely because I am so tired all the time.  It's frustrating.

I no longer use a cane and I have just now started to walk our dogs again on short trips.  By the last stretch of the walk, though, I am breathless and my thigh muscles are burning.  So upsetting from where I once was!  But I'm still determined to recover.  I will go on fighting!

Healing

So now our beautiful boy is healing up.  He really has had a rough time of it.  There are scrapes all over his body, one toenail on a back leg is missing, his face and chin have some skin missing.  He's tired and sore.  He's continuing on his antibiotic, muscle relaxer and pain pills.  He still has a bandage on one front paw where his skin had split open.  It was looked at again on Friday and we go back in a week to see how it's doing.  Until he is well healed up, there is no dog park visiting.  But there is a lot of cuddling and love going on.

Darkness

A poem I wrote for one of my writing groups. The subject was depression:


Darkness crowds me
Takes my breath and crushes
I reach up but feel only pain...
And pressure
Hands offered are unseen

The darkness so encompasses me
"I cannot save myself"
My spirit cries
Not this time
Not from this pain

My mind betrays me
And brings only self-loathing
My body, my enemy
In this cave of silence
From which only I scream
Shall I ever walk in lit streets again?
Shall I ever see the joy I know stands outside this prison
A prison deep in my soul?

And yet, one does finally break through
He is light, peace, and joy
Finally, I lay my pain down
And walk away until it rises
Once again

By Kerri Gray Jesmer

Copyrighted.  All rights reserved.  Do not use without permission.  This is the sole property of the author, Kerri Gray Jesmer.

Taken

Dreams of myths and fairy tales
You come and strip my flesh away
You pull at my sinew and tear at my veins

You arch your brows in delight
Of the pain you inflict
I cry out for not!
You take such pleasure
In the pain and sorrow of others

By Kerri Gray Jesmer

Copyrighted.  All rights reserved.  Do not use without permission.  This is the sole property of the author, Kerri Gray Jesmer.

What I've Learned About Love And Pets

Love comes in many sizes, colors, times in our lives, species, and from all over the world.  I had a first love when I was a teenager and thought I'd never love anyone like him again.  But I did.  In fact, I love this man more than I ever loved any other man in my life.  And so I married him.

I've had the love of family my whole life.  Sometimes it hasn't felt like it in our world of imperfect beings, but I've had it.  Sometimes the love is nurturing, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes just not what you need.

I've had the love of my child.  A child wanted for 35 years before I was finally blessed with her.  And then I knew what love was really all about.  And every parent I'd ever known who wasn't beyond the moon about their child or children, I could not understand.

I've had the love of pets.  And with that love so often comes great heartbreak as they leave our lives far too soon.

My first pet was a dog named Frisky.  I don't really remember him except in pictures and stories I'm told.  He was a dachshund and would growl when I was laying on the floor crying if someone tried to pick me up.  They had to scold him to get to me.

We also had a cat named Bluebell when I was in early grade school and a dog named Jason - a Norwegian Elkhound.  He was sweet and cuddly and so proud looking when he traipsed through the yard.

We had a Great Dane named Lady who was huge, protective, and a wonderful family pet.  We had Sadler and Smoker, both cattle dog/Australian shepherd mixes, and Hilda, a Saint Bernard.

And we had a lot of cats then - Blue (my boy), Butch (my younger sister's), Misty (their not very motherly mom), Moon (the mom to all the kittens), and Sweetheart (Moon's actual kitten).

As a teen, I got "my" dog, Damascus or Dac, for short.  I asked my mom if I could have him and she said, "See what your dad says and if it's okay with him, it's okay with me."  So I told Dad that Mom said it was okay, so he said okay.  I got my dog!   I was in my early 20's when I admitted how I manipulated them into letting me have him.  They'd had no idea.  That dog was so precious to me. He was often the only one I thought loved me in all the world.  I was in my late 20's when Dac passed away and I thought I would just die without him.  I wasn't married, wasn't even dating at the time, and wasn't around my family much.  It was a tough loss.

After our daughter was born, she begged and begged for pets.  Two quickly deceased Beta fish later, we got Lacey, a beautiful tortie cat.  She was my girl, sitting on my lap while I rocked her like a baby. She hid around the corner of our hallway and when I was coming down it to do laundry or out to the kitchen to make dinner, she stalked me and jumped at my ankles when I approached.  I would fake scream and she would jump up excited and run to the next "attack" position.  She was my baby girl up until the moment she left us, after 15 years when she crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

Many years before we lost Lacey, we added Daisy, a dog with a serious tissue habit.  By tissue habit, I mean that she loved to eat them!  She would do drive-by grabs right from the box (when she couldn't land a used one someone "forgot" to throw away).  She was our Frisbee girl, jumping up to catch them but never bringing them back as she waited for the next one to be thrown.  We only had her until she was 10 years old and it was a heartbreaking loss for all of us, but especially my husband whom she loved like no one else in the world.

And before Daisy left us, we had already added Babey, a gray and white striped cat.  Currently, at 12 years old, she's our reverse Houdini.  She opens dresser drawers and pulls everything out onto the floor. But somehow, she never manages to shut them, of course.

So when Daisy, then our sweet Lacey left us, Babey seemed lonely.  She was used to a house full of pets.  So, we kept talking about another dog.  We got a cat that a family member no longer wanted, instead. Yuki is a lovable creature, orange and white striped, and loves being out in the backyard (now that we have a dog door from our next adoption).

One day we were driving along and my daughter spotted a sign for adoptions at a local pet store.  I told her we'd pull in if we had time on our way back home as we were headed somewhere.  Daisy had passed in 2011, just three weeks after my mother died.  Lacey had been gone for almost a year.

We did pull into the parking lot of the shopping center on our way home and there were only two medium/large size dogs.  All the others were little.  But those two big dogs spotted us the moment we got out of our car and stared at us the entire time until we reached them and started petting them.  To us, it was a sign.  They were meant to be ours.  We adopted them both then - a white shepherd named Tristan and an Australian shepherd named Tyler now (although his name was Husky then). We got our boys the very next day.

They are polar opposites in behavior.  Tristan is a puppy at heart and is now two years old.  He was a stray and had a tough start to life.  He's fast as a bullet and the dominant boy over his brother.

Tyler is the Gentle Ben.  We've talked about training him as a therapy dog because he couldn't be more gentle and sweet.  He loves to be loved on - all the time!

Today, Tristan was hit by a car.  He wiggled out of his harness and a car going too fast hit him.  He's alive, thank God, but my poor baby is suffering in a lot of pain.  He has bruising on his lungs, had a little blood in his abdomen which appears to be re-absorbing now, abrasions all over his beautiful body.  And I just keep thinking, this boy suffered so much as a stray, why did this have to happen?  I will be so happy to have him home soon - hopefully by tomorrow evening.  But my heart is so heavy with his suffering.  I wish I could take it all upon myself to spare him.

There is no love like the love of a pet, especially a dog.  There is no creature more faithful and giving than a dog.  How anyone could even lift a cruel hand to an innocent - be it an animal or a child or an elderly person - is beyond me.  This boy of mine will continue to always know how loved he is by this family.  I feel empty armed until he's home again.......    







  

Back From The Brink of Death

It's taken me a while to feel able to write about this.  The reason is that it was a truly frightening experience.  I literally came very, very close to death.

For approximately three weeks, I'd been wheezing and feeling exhausted.  But we had just adopted to rescued dogs in early November and I thought my body might have to adjust to having dog dander around again.  However, I'd not started wheezing when we first had them.  And the exhaustion?  Well, it was almost Christmas.  I'd been busy at home getting ready for the holidays.  At work, December indicates tax season is right around the corner, so I was working a lot of hours trying to get us ready.

A moment of truth here.  I'm a bit of a workaholic.  Okay, I'm a serious workaholic. It's been my MO all my life.  I can work most people under the table.  Well, prior to this illness I could.  Now I don't know what the future holds in that regard. But in December of 2015, I was working A LOT of hours at my job.

On December 22nd, I started to really feel bad.  I ached everywhere, was exhausted to the point I knew I could not work that day, and then nausea started.  I called the doctor's office to see if they had anything open but it was right away and I hadn't really gotten out of bed yet.  On top of being a workaholic, I am a clean freak.  No way would I present myself at the doctors looking like a bus had just run over me.  I put it off and told the receptionist I would call the next day, a Saturday if I didn't feel better.  But that night I truly regretted that decision.  I spent the whole night throwing up off and on with little snippets of sleep in between.  I was really sick.

What I am most thankful for is that my husband, a truck driver, was home.  He took care of me and took me to the doctor's office that Saturday morning.  He had wanted to take me to the Emergency Room during the night, but I am all about saving a buck here and there when I think it's unnecessary. I should have heeded his advice.  We often don't realize just how ill we are, even when those around us see it.

On the morning of December 23, 2015, we arrived at the doctor's office.  He immediately put me on oxygen but he could not bring up my oxygen level, which was at 70%.  He called an ambulance and they put forced air oxygen on me.  They were truly wonderful EMT's. They reassured me, the lone female in the group held my hand because, by that time, I'd become very frightened about what was happening to me. And they got me to the hospital I'd chosen quickly, Parker Adventist Hospital.  And here again, I must say they were wonderful.  Well, they saved my life.

In the emergency room, I remember a nurse holding my hand for a while as they explained to me that I was very sick and they needed to get me a room. I had pneumonia. Not only that, it was staph pneumonia and I had sepsis. My body wanted to shut down.  I heard my husband tell them my vomit had looked like blood and I hadn't eaten for at least 40 or more hours.  I was just too sick.

This is where my memory fades and I only have them here and there.  They had to intubate me, which meant I could no longer breathe on my own. The ventilator would be doing that for me - for sixteen very long days. A great blessing and a curse came to be that they put you on drugs that cause your memory to fade.  Of course, you do not want to recall the horror of being intubated.  But the drugs don't fade completely away after.  I have struggled a bit with my memory since then.  They also put you on paralyzing drugs and tie your hands down to prevent you from struggling or tearing out the ventilator tube.

I don't recall being taken to a room in ICU but I do remember some of the very kind and loving nurses that cared for me.  One was named John and though I cannot explain what it was about him, he made me feel safe.  He was a big man and he would hold my hand and talk to me. Having your hand held when you are frightened can be a huge comfort.  More than I ever would have expected it to be. He told me he had been in the military and although I don't recall his rank, I thought to myself, "what a gentle man for having been......" whatever the rank was, which I knew at the time. There was another nurse who I called Carolyn, but that was not her name!  I think it was something similar to that.  Ultimately, she left a day or two before I was moved to a regular room to go to her home state and care for her ailing mother and brother.  She was such a sweet woman and helped me get through the two-day wait when the doctor had said he might have to do a tracheotomy after the removal of the ventilator.  That was terrifying to me and I wondered if I would ever be able to do my job again; if I would ever have any semblance of my previous life after this illness.  I had difficulty sleeping and kept asking if I was breathing okay.  She always reassured me.  She spoke softly to me and reminded me of how strong I'd been to have come through what I had.  Listening to her as I calmed and fell asleep, I recalled her voice during the whole ordeal.  They give you a sponge bath and dry shampoo every other day and I remembered her washing my back and saying, "doesn't that feel wonderful, the warm water on your back?"  And it did.

One more nurse that stood out for me was Rosa.  She would dry shampoo my hair and then take the time to braid it so it would be out of my face and away from the ventilator tube.  She was kind and made me feel well cared for when she worked.  She was also the trigger of a calming aspect to some nightmares I had, a side effect of the medications I was on.  I do not normally have nightmares.  My sleep, in general, consists of several awakenings during the night when I look at the clock and then roll back over to sleep.  But while in ICU, I had many nightmares, but only two or three that I recall clearly.

When we are stressed, our minds help us release some of that intensity by allowing us to have nightmares.  That was what my mind did for me.  At one point, I dreamt that the hospital was trying to kill me.  I didn't know what it was that I knew, but it was something I wasn't supposed to know. Who to rescue me but my brother who had rescued me from whippings as a child.  He played football in high school and college, had planned to go pro, was scouted by the Broncos, Bengals, and Dolphins.  He even had signed on with the Broncos but trashed his knee in a college game toward the end and was given the choice of playing for a year, at best, and being a cripple for the rest of his life or finding something else to do with himself.  He chose the latter and became a Special Education teacher for high school-aged kids and he coached.  So when I was in trouble, and needed to escape but was too weak to do so myself, who should rescue me in my dream but Kevin.  I told him what was happening and he scooped me up and tucked me under his arm like he would carry a football and ran. We ran all the way to safety.  A nightmare that ended in a positive way.    

But one nightmare repeated itself again and again.  It was about "the Calabra".  I have no idea where the name came from but this was what they were called.  They lived in an underground cavern below the hospital.  Somehow, I ended up in that cavern several times.  They were giant spiders made of jewels and clicked as they moved across the wall.  I don't recall ever seeing one on the floor, always on the walls.  They would watch me, but not really approach me.  This seemed even more threatening than if they had chased me.  As I tried to leave, seeing a light at one end of a large tunnel-like area, I started to pass what I perceived to be the "mother" of them all.  She was not particularly large and she was not jeweled in any way.  She was gray and looked like she could easily be smooshed.  But that was not my thought.  I was just afraid of her.  She smiled with a closed mouth that spread largely across her face, a round shape attached to a round body that had many, many legs.  She began to unfurl them slowly, hundreds of them.  Once she was done, a smaller face that looked exactly like hers was contained within.  Suddenly, it made a sound.  "Nee, nee, nee.  Nee, nee, nee" and I ran from the cavern as quickly as I could.

Ironically, when I finally left the hospital on January 18th, I was barely able to walk or stand.  And could not at all without support. I was sent to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Aurora to recover and spent 10 long days working as hard as I could to come home.  I did, using a walker for a few days, then a cane for about one month.  Finally, I am walking on my own, though still suffering from weakness everywhere that I can not seem to improve much.

That brings us to the continuing issues of my recovery.  I have frozen vocal cords from the intubation tube. Although they extubated me within a week, I was not able to breathe on my own.  So I was reintubated for an additional ten days.  The vocal cords are paralyzed close together so while I am able to speak, I have a hard time breathing. Our vocal cords separate as we take in air when they are working normally, but mine doesn't.  Due to this, I am unable to walk long distances without a cane and rest.  I struggle to breathe when I move around, especially climbing stairs.  And so my fight goes on.  But I will overcome this, just as I have overcome death this time around.  And I will gain back as much of my former life as I can for those I love and for myself.

My Mom and Dad

Today, especially this afternoon, I've been thinking about my folks all day long.  I miss them so much!  I wish I had more pictures of them in my house to pop up on the wall, especially from when they were younger.

I have a sensitive nose, so smells are sometimes a powerful memory for me.  Mom wore Passion perfume. The stuff absolutely stinks on me, but it smelled wonderful on my mom.  I loved the smell of her skin and hair after she showered, too.  It was nothing special she used; it was just 'my mom'.  Mom and I had a rough time when I was a teen.  I have anxiety now that I take medication for and I very much believe it caused me undue stress and depression growing up, too.  But that was not at a time when mental health issues were talked about.

When I grew up, we became much closer.  I loved to go shopping with her and then out to lunch.  I loved being able to buy things for her and be the one who paid when we went out to eat.  But my favorite moments with her were when she started talking about her life - growing up in the '30s and early '40s, how she and my aunt and cousin Betty all hung out together, how she met my dad.

My grandfather owned a Ford dealership and my mother sat on the lap of Henry Ford when she was a little girl. She also worked for the father of writer Kurt Vonnegut and tells a funny story about when he returned from college.  He was known for pulling pranks in the office building.  In those days, they used a pulley system and Kurt put a mouse in it and sent it up to one of the secretaries.  When she screamed, his father hollered, "Kurt!"  because he knew his son was up to something.

I loved hearing about how she and Daddy moved all over while he was in the Army.  In fact, my oldest brother and I were both born in Germany and although we returned Stateside when I was only 6 months old, my three older siblings have lots of memories and stories from the stay in Europe.  I hope one day I can return to see the place I was born.

Dad wore Old Spice aftershave.  When my husband wears it once in a while, I think of my dad.  I loved to hold his hand.  They were big hands with thick fingers and my long, thin fingers would get a little squished, but I loved holding them because it made me feel safe.  I remember talking to him about books I'd read and listened to him discuss the ones he read, too.  He loved Louis L'Amour, Robert Parker, and Isaac Asimov.  Dad smiled a lot.  Usually, he was cracking some kind of joke.  He liked pun wars and most of us are pretty good at them, though I don't really do it much anymore.  Dad was a big man in my eyes, around six feet.  I grew to be just shy of 5'11" and he shrunk from chronic back degeneration, so in the end, I thought of him as a little gnome with his bald head.

Mom died on March 30, 2011.  Dad followed on March 22, 2012.  They'd been married for 65 years.

Today, I sit here wishing I had them around to talk to about my health issues.  I have to start using oxygen at night and I hate the idea that I cannot just be well.  I know they would reassure me in a way that no one else can, like no one but your parents can.  It doesn't matter that I'm over a half-century old, I still miss them.