Daily Archives: October 25, 2012

The Third Bunch Of Thank-Yous For Al’s Cards

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English: I took this picture myself.

English: I took this picture myself. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An example from 1949.

An example from 1949. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I wanted to come to you once again and say a huge thank-you to all who have responded to sending my brother a get well card or any of the other many wonderful cards that have been sent.

He loves them and his eyes got so big today, even after the ordeal at the dentist. He received four cards today, and boy, was he excited!!!!

So a big thank-you today to:

Tara

Diane

Jo

Ivonne

 

You all get my blessings for helping to make this day brighter for Al. May God bless each of you!

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I Had To Talk Back!!!

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English: GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba – Navy Cmdr. Geo...

Back in the early spring, I walked down this same road, and now today, it has come to take me back down the familiar path. I had to take Al to the dentist. It is not a pleasant trip at all. He is fearful, as most dental patients are, and when he is afraid, the tremors quadruple in numbers. It is like watching several hummingbirds go from feeder to feeder.

As the last time I took him to a dentist, I could tell, even though the dentist did not come out and say it so plainly, that he was afraid to work on Al’s mouth. The tremors, the tears and the attitude just aren’t very appealing to strangers.

This time I took him to a brand new dentist. A place highly advertised with the most gentle of care and a friendly atmosphere. We did not have to wait long for an appointment, only three days, and it was fairly close to home. Al had told me that last evening it took him three hours to go to sleep from the pain.

I am surprised that he feels pain in any area, with the amounts of pain pills he is on, but this is what he said. He also asked me if this was September or November, and he said today was the 13, instead of the 25th. It is alright, he snapped out of that partially and did tell me today was Thursday. I blame some of this on his medications and the rest I always dump on the disease, Parkinson’s.

We get called back to the x-rays within  15 minutes, and Al does very well with these, because he has had them before. Then we are led back to the dental chair. When I see it for myself, I call it the big monster, that is going to hurt me! I am the biggest baby on earth when it comes to a dentist.

As soon as they get him situated in his chair, the technician leaves and they leave us in the room about twenty minutes. Now this is just enough time for Al to start going frantic, and he did. I had purposely asked when calling and making the appointment, to have an experienced dentist for Al’s type and to not let him sit, that he needed to be taken care of immediately, as the longer he sat, the worse he got.

No one paid attention to my request, so by the time the technician had come back and she and the dentist, (which, by the way, looked the age of 21, like a brand new dentist) looked over Al’s x-rays, Al was a big old mess. Tears galore, shaking tremors, lack of comprehending, you name it,  he had it going on.

It did not matter how I tried to soothe him, his memories were pain and needles. The dentist rambled off all the things that could possibly need to be done, and just from her talking, I could see dollar signs spinning quickly in my head. I think my eye balls were like spinning tops.

I gently explained Al and his conditions for the second time and also that he was in his fifth stage of PD, and that Medicare does not cover any dental work, so for a lot of reasons, we needed what had to be done, the easiest, and moderately pricing included. She looked at me and smiled.

This tiny young-looking girl, with no pimples or scarring on her face, and her leather knee rise boots on a sunny warm 78 degree day and her short little dress, looks at me and says, his teeth are dirty. He has two teeth that need to have root canals done plus caps.

I looked at her and smiled my dirty white teeth at her and said, I just told you he does not have insurance and his PD stage, so there is no way we can afford the couple of thousands of dollars you are talking about.

She flipped her pretty dark hair over her shoulder and smiled back at me and said, well you can just have his two teeth pulled, and he will have to figure out how to eat. You had his other side of his top two teeth pulled and he managed to find a way to eat, so he will have to do it this time also! smile, smile!

I asked her how was he to eat if he didn’t have the proper chewing teeth on either side, and she said,he’ll figure it out! She said that they had an oral surgeon that would take them out and he comes there once a month at the beginning of each month.

I calculated in my head how far it was to the first week of the new month, and the fact that the dentist was prescribing him some penicillin, and also remembered the fact that they advertised the best deals in town, plus the biggie was, they had programs for the poor, that allowed big discounts.

I told her alright, let’s find out what you can do for him. We left him sitting in his chair and walked over to the principal’s office, actually the manager’s office where they give you great deals on work needing to be done.

My goal was to get the penicillin started in Al right away, and then get those two teeth removed at a price he could afford. We sit and talk and the soonest they could get him in was November 19th. What happened to the first week of the month? Oh well, it fills up quickly. The price was over $1100.00 for two teeth for IV sedation. This dentist that saw Al said she did not have the experience to deal with Al, so she did not want to pull his teeth. Thanks so much, and I believe I requested a dentist with experience.

The price made me gulp, and there was no great deals, because the deals only come with general dentistry work, even if you are poor or disabled and have no money or not much. The time of the appointment was too far away. Who wants to suffer for almost another month?

I then asked them to call the oral surgeon and get the x-rays faxed to them and set up an appointment for him to have them pulled where I had taken him in the spring. At the previous dentist office, they did all the dirty work for me. They called the surgeon, faxed the x-rays, and set the appointment. Not here! The comment made to me when I asked for their help was, we don’t do this service if you feel you need to go somewhere else.

Now I was pissed off, and it is not good to get sister Terry pissed off. I have  a brother who is in his last stages of PD, and he is sitting in the opposite room crying and freaking out, and it is hard to get him to anywhere in this world, and you can’t do this for me? What? I told them they were down right rude, and I was going to make sure I told anyone who asked that this placed sucked donkey you know whats.

Their eyes popped out of their head. They obviously had not been treated this kind way of mine before, but I was not going to drag this brother of mine back to the car, take x-rays over to another dentist, drag him back into another dentist office, watch him freak out even more, just to set up an appointment. I stood up from my chair, and I told them, you ARE going to call this place and you will set a time, and I will take the damn x-rays myself, so go get them for me! She picked up the phone in silence and made the call. We are now scheduled for November 13th, for a little less than a thousand dollars.

She then went and got the x-rays and put them in an envelope, and I took them from her hand, and went over and helped my brother out of the monster seat, and we began to leave. As we passed by the manager’s office, she was still sitting there in shock at my treatment back to her, and I poked my head in and with my biggest dirty tooth smile, I said, You all have a nice day now, ya hear????

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Grandma, Memories, and her Dressing at Thanksgiving

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Apple pie

With the holidays coming up, this  brings stress to me this year as it won’t be easy to get out to buy gifts or groceries, but the house will be pretty near darn perfect in cleanliness, since I have been home so much, I am an almost perfect maid!

Along with this, I thought I would mention a little bit about the wonderful holidays I have memories of. Let’s go back in time to when I was a young kid. We would all go to grandma’s house, and at that time, it meant all the families on that side of the family. Cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, brother’s and sisters. There were no excuses as to why someone could not come, it was just a known fact to be there.

Stores were not open, not even gas stations, the world became quiet for one day. The lady of each house would take along at least two side items and so this added to the already wonderful smells when you walked into grandma’s front door. Mmmm, I can still smell the aromas.

All of us kids would go outside and play tag, and run and play. There were no video games or television on. We used our imaginations to have fun. We rode our own bikes our parents brought, or there were always spares to ride.

When mom would open the front door, and yell for us all to come in, we would wash our hands and find our assigned seats at the kids table, and the adults would sit at the grown up table, then some adult would stand up and say a prayer of thanks for our great meal.

Grandma would always make her famous chicken and dressing. She also made fried chicken, and home-made yeast rolls with apricot preserves and lots of melted butter. Along with this she always had peach, and apple ,mincemeat and pumpkin pies, and if we were really good kids, we could have that advance to pie with ice cream on top. There was always a big ham that our uncle would bring and he would slice it and give us each a nice, thick piece, and of course all of us kids fought over the drum sticks and wish bones of the biggest turkey we had ever seen.

There was corn and green bean casserole, and the famous seven layer salad, pickled eggs, lots of sliced cheeses and crackers. A humongous bowl of mashed potatoes with a few lumps in them, and lots of slithering gravy to pour on top, and a big pan of sweet potatoes with lots of brown sugar and marshmallows on it. There were also sliced carrots and bread and butter pickles, red beets, green and black olives, which I always managed to keep going back and snatching another green one.

These were the days, the best of times. Now, today, I have to email my own kids, tell them the date and time of the Thanksgiving meal. Ask them to bring one side dish, and wonder who will and not will show up. Every business in the world seems to be open, so work schedules get in the way, plans with friends by grandchildren are sometimes made, causing some to come, eat and run. I wish I could keep the tradition alive of what was expected and happened so many years ago, but thank goodness I have my memories.

This was my grandma’s favorite recipe for her chicken and dressing, and I still use it today, and now you can try it!

Cook up a whole chicken, cool and de-bone. Put small pieces of chicken in a big bowl, and to this add four to five eggs, and stir. Then cut up  small bits of celery stalks, and add some bits of onion, according to your taste. Next, add one loaf of bread, whole wheat or white, that has been tore up into bite size pieces then salt, pepper, and celery salt, and stir. Next add one can of cream of celery soup and one can of cream of mushroom soup and stir. After all this is nicely stirred together, start adding the chicken broth until you have a nice bowl of bread that holds it shape. Pop into a 350 degree oven for thirty-five to forty minutes.

This was a recipe for a big family of 20 plus. You can down size the ingredients to make it the size you need for your family. This is a simple recipe that is moist and makes you want to go back for more. Easy to make as you can cook up your chicken the day before and store it in the refrigerator. There are so many varieties of dressings out on everyone’s table at this holiday, but I always return to the super good recipe of grandmas.

Thank-you grandma for giving me some of the best memories of my life. Grandma is still alive and kicking and no longer bakes those huge, soft, home-made sugar cookies, and no more pies and big chocolate cakes, and no more dressings. In January, she will be 97 years old and she is now taken care of by a very nice nursing home. She was a hard worker, in her day, a farmer’s wife, killing and cutting her own chickens, butchering their own beef, and eating out of her own garden. We could always count on getting good food at any time of the day or evenings by just visiting grandma. I love you grandma.

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