A woman in Port Charlotte Fl is using my name. Last2cu, as her blog and for posting picturs on Photobucket. It is not me. I own the Copy Write and the Trademark for last2cu under the United States Patent and Trademark Office Office.
I have sent her three cease and desist emails. So if you see anything from her; it is not from me. Thanks until I get this settled.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Shades Of Black
This was written by me after a funeral in 1986 of one of the first AIDS patients that I had.
Polyester Black,
Knit Black,
Silk Black,
Cotton Black.
All for the same purpose, all for the same reason.
Wet smoke creeping around our legs, hanging at our waist.
Waiting.
Incense.
An Orthodox preist. Watching an old man's trembeling hands
holding golden candles
many candles,
mourning a dead son and his dying memories.
Cold October rain
dripping
off
his
ear.
As the wet smoke hangs at our waist, waiting
Praying and chanting in a forgein tounge
Forgien faces,
Forgein customs
Beside his grave.
Eating the honey dipped bread and not knowing why?
Remembering the day we that we brought him here.
He was the first one who just died. Right then , right there.
I walked into his room, he took my hand, he nodded and then he died. They beleive that through my body and part of it stayed.
They are right.
but, not just him.
All of them.
This is where I gain my strength
To carry on.
They give me more than I give to them.
They give part of their souls
To me.
The part they want to leave behind.
He was tired.
He was ready.
He waited for me to arrive.
I did.
Now, I would go and tell his mother.
She would not understand my words.
My forgein tounge.
She would see it in my eyes.
He would tell her.
He did.
I was there,
I am here again, today
Different shades of black.
All with the same meaning.
They miss him.
Wet smoke hangs in the air.
I watch it slowly creep about those standing near.
It visits.
It waits.
They are unaware.
Cold October rain.
Dripping, dripping of of mother's hat.
Black eyes
Black wool
Black
hole
in
her
soul.
Polyester Black,
Knit Black,
Silk Black,
Cotton Black.
All for the same purpose, all for the same reason.
Wet smoke creeping around our legs, hanging at our waist.
Waiting.
Incense.
An Orthodox preist. Watching an old man's trembeling hands
holding golden candles
many candles,
mourning a dead son and his dying memories.
Cold October rain
dripping
off
his
ear.
As the wet smoke hangs at our waist, waiting
Praying and chanting in a forgein tounge
Forgien faces,
Forgein customs
Beside his grave.
Eating the honey dipped bread and not knowing why?
Remembering the day we that we brought him here.
He was the first one who just died. Right then , right there.
I walked into his room, he took my hand, he nodded and then he died. They beleive that through my body and part of it stayed.
They are right.
but, not just him.
All of them.
This is where I gain my strength
To carry on.
They give me more than I give to them.
They give part of their souls
To me.
The part they want to leave behind.
He was tired.
He was ready.
He waited for me to arrive.
I did.
Now, I would go and tell his mother.
She would not understand my words.
My forgein tounge.
She would see it in my eyes.
He would tell her.
He did.
I was there,
I am here again, today
Different shades of black.
All with the same meaning.
They miss him.
Wet smoke hangs in the air.
I watch it slowly creep about those standing near.
It visits.
It waits.
They are unaware.
Cold October rain.
Dripping, dripping of of mother's hat.
Black eyes
Black wool
Black
hole
in
her
soul.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Stueart's Last Journey
Last2cu presents:
Most of us have a best friend, if we are lucky...Someone who has known you since childhood... I have one, Marcia Hudson...Marcia and I have been through heaven and hell together but the operative word is through... We have made it to the other side...We survived and are happy with ourselves... And most times you have favorite friends, people who don’t know everything but would remain your friend just the same... Stueart Pennington was one of my all time favorite friends...
Stueart owned the most exclusive men’s clothing store in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Oaklawn Sportswear He had the very best from suits to casual wear... a couple of things Stueart hated was Dockers, blue jeans and stupid people. He also had a smaller store in Downtown that I managed for him. I don’t remember never knowing Stueart. He came from an old family here and knew something on almost everyone... If I needed to know who someone was I’d just call Stueart. If you didn’t have anything to do you could sit and talk for hours with him...He used to say that he knew of people who loved Hot Springs as much as he did but didn’t know of anyone except me who loved her more. He was fiercely proud of his only child Erin Pennington Wood. He had a piece of paper on His father’s very old cash register that had his toll free number on it so that Erin could call anytime she wanted...Every time you went to the store he would show it to you.Stueart was married and divorced and married again, and then he found Frances, his wife who loved him till the end.
He wasn’t the life of the party he WAS the party! Everyone I know loved Stueart... Downtown Hot Springs had been run down ever since the speakeasy casinos had been closed down by Governor Rockefeller in 1968..Until then Hot Springs was abuzz with activity.. Gambling was wide open and the police let it be as long as the people who needed to pay, paid up. They bought and wore the finest clothes. Life was good. Stueart graduated Hot Springs High in 1967, went to college and came home to the family business where he was until the day he died. As I said, Hot Springs had gone downhill since then pretty bad. Then the downtown merchants association revived down town and it was lively and the place to be...Stueart was a big part of that renewal. Hot Springs is nestled in a narrow valley only four lanes wide. You can Google it and see how beautiful it really is. Hot steaming water flows down a mountain at 147 degrees.
Stueart moved his business downtown in the 1990’s. After a few years the mountain collapsed and the buildings had to be evacuated...just before Christmas...Stueart survived... When the oil money dried up Stueart survived. Stueart had damn near survived everything until that fateful day on
September 8, 2005. It seems that this carpetbagger had come to town and was going to work magic downtown. He was going to make downtown 5th Avenue in New York...Yea, right. So he made a deal with the man who owns most of the buildings...he would collect the rent and choose the renters...He was a wheeler and dealer…A shiny man, shark skinned suits etc... He lived in a house with the whole downstairs walls of glass so that you could see all of his poison’ snakes...each snake had its separate cages, you could hear them strike at the glass and rattle, the lights were low and it was creepy. He was creepy. Dennis Magee was his name. He had gained control of everything and he had a score to settle. He demanded more money for the deposits on everyone...He even raised one family’s deposit over one thousand percent. They had a Chinese restaurant and Dennis put them out on the street with no place to go and no warning.
He went to Stueart and demanded that he double his deposit and rent. Stueart was furious...It was the beginning of the fall season that led into Christmas. Stueart had been there for about 10 years and he would be there forever along with a beautiful bath shop, a fabulous antique shop and an upscale gift emporium. People couldn’t help but to stop in for a visit...Life was good, minus the Dennis fiasco… We had all stood behind Dennis when his restaurant burned to the ground...Stueart headed up a drive to raise money for Dennis... Some say his mortgage and insurance papers started rubbing together and caught on fire...Who knows? Dennis went back to Stueart and Stueart tried to talk some sense into Dennis...Just wait till the first of the year and he would pay...No Way! He demanded it right then or he would padlock the door... Stueart decided to move to another location down the street...So he did just that...It was right before Labor Day which is a big tourist’s day... On the evening in September 2005, Stueart was carrying boxes into the store and he fell flat on the floor dead... Stueart had died of a massive coronary right then and there. He died in the store that he loved so much. A man on the street came by and saw him so he called an ambulance...Frances, his wife, arrived at the emergency room, then his daughter. They took Stueart to Intensive Care and put him on a ventalator. There was no hope...The doctor told me that his heart just exploded...the only thing keeping him alive were the machines... I stood at the foot of his bed crying, holding his feet in my hands and said goodbye. He had been there for about five days not changing one single bit. I had talked with Stueart about death many years earlier...just a casual conversation. I knew what he wanted ..Frances tried so very hard to not let him die She made a brave decision.
The next day down at the store Frances was in the back...friends were everywhere putting the store together...The way Stueart would have wanted it to be. I went to Frances and we started talking... She asked my opinion of how I thought Stueart really was...It was very grim. Stueart wasn’t there in that body...Sometimes people just have to hear it from the right person. In this case it was me. She decided to ask for one more CT scan to see if there was and glimmer of hope...sadly, there was not. They made the heart wrenching decision to let Stueart go...He had been gone the whole time...they just could not believe it….No one could. He was only fifty six...too young.
They had a beautiful memorial service at the First United Methodist Church which held 500. The sanctuary was packed, standing room only and they were flowing out the doors. Grammy Award winning song writer Randy Goodrum played music and he spoke. He told a story of being in church for a youth meeting when he and Stueart snuck upstairs to play Great Balls of Fire on the pipe organ...full blast...That is the kind of friend Stueart was, Fun...
Stueart LOVED Lake Hamilton... People used to ask him “How can you stand living on the lake in the winter...It is so dreary and depressing” Stueart said “ looking at the lake in winter is like looking at a black and white photo You just have learn to appreciate it"...And he did. In April the next year Frances decided to have another memorial to send Stueart off. I knew what they had in mind beautiful sunset, beautiful music, a few drinks with friends... Stueart would drift off into the sunset...It was April and I knew what the weather and currents would do and it wasn’t pretty. I could imagine Frances sitting there at the the end of the day and there goes Stueart drifting by… or getting stuck in someone’s dock... The day of the service I ordered a tropical urn wreath and had it delivered... I was ill and could not attend…. It was way overcast and the winds were blowing from the west into the bay not away from it. They took a boat out into the middle of the small bay and poured Stueart’s ashes onto the wreath and let it go to drift into the sunset...Frances sent me photos and it was a beautiful ceremony. Life went on...
In late May we put the boat in the lake and I decided to go visit my friend, Marcia. She lives about six miles up the lake from me then you turn west off of the main channel and go a few miles. I was talking on the phone with my friend in Florida, Pattie King...Just chatting my way up the lake when I decided to go up the main channel to the 70 West Bridge where Stueart lived. No reason just had the urge to go up there. And what to my wandering eyes did appear...? Stueart, sitting there hung up at the 70 west bridge! About one hundred feet away from where he was set adrift. It was about three miles out of my way. When I got to the bay I looked around and there was Stueart and his wreath stuck against the bridge embankment...I was floored... I told Pattie King that I had found Stueart...Six weeks after he was set adrift...It was exactly as if he had called and said that his car had broken down or he had had too much to drink, come and get me. I pulled the boat up to the bridge and waded out to pick up the wreath, ashes and all. I told Pattie King what I had found and she was speechless. I hung up. Stueart had been washed up on that spot six weeks earlier and what are the chances that I had found him? He was only about one hundred yards from his house and his house sits directly on the shoreline. I put Stueart on the back seat of the boat and headed off to Marcia’s again...As I was pulling up to Marcia’s dock she looked at the back seat and said “Noo! I can’t believe it where did you find Stueart”? I told her the whole story and she just could not believe it either... But, yes, it was the wreath and Stuart’s ashes... What are the chances that I would find him?
I visited with Marcia for a while and then I told her to fix me a scotch to go... As I was pulling away from the dock the sun was setting over the lake and it was a spectacular sunset. I am not sure that anyone loves Lake Hamilton as much as we do... it was a slow cruise...As I turned into my bay the sun crept lower. When I got home I asked my husband to drive me to the cemetery downtown where the Pennington Estate is located, he did. The sun was going down pretty quickly now and I knew I had to hurry. I gently laid Stueart and the wreath on his mother’s grave and said a prayer and said goodbye to my friend for the last time. During the next few weeks people said that they would spot him going down the lake. Then someone said that they saw him at the dam...I just smiled...His cousin was at a yard sale at Marcia’s and said that she saw him at the cemetery.. Marcia called me and we had a quiet laugh...We knew that Stueart would just love this story...Espaciall since it was about him!
Most of us have a best friend, if we are lucky...Someone who has known you since childhood... I have one, Marcia Hudson...Marcia and I have been through heaven and hell together but the operative word is through... We have made it to the other side...We survived and are happy with ourselves... And most times you have favorite friends, people who don’t know everything but would remain your friend just the same... Stueart Pennington was one of my all time favorite friends...
Stueart owned the most exclusive men’s clothing store in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Oaklawn Sportswear He had the very best from suits to casual wear... a couple of things Stueart hated was Dockers, blue jeans and stupid people. He also had a smaller store in Downtown that I managed for him. I don’t remember never knowing Stueart. He came from an old family here and knew something on almost everyone... If I needed to know who someone was I’d just call Stueart. If you didn’t have anything to do you could sit and talk for hours with him...He used to say that he knew of people who loved Hot Springs as much as he did but didn’t know of anyone except me who loved her more. He was fiercely proud of his only child Erin Pennington Wood. He had a piece of paper on His father’s very old cash register that had his toll free number on it so that Erin could call anytime she wanted...Every time you went to the store he would show it to you.Stueart was married and divorced and married again, and then he found Frances, his wife who loved him till the end.
He wasn’t the life of the party he WAS the party! Everyone I know loved Stueart... Downtown Hot Springs had been run down ever since the speakeasy casinos had been closed down by Governor Rockefeller in 1968..Until then Hot Springs was abuzz with activity.. Gambling was wide open and the police let it be as long as the people who needed to pay, paid up. They bought and wore the finest clothes. Life was good. Stueart graduated Hot Springs High in 1967, went to college and came home to the family business where he was until the day he died. As I said, Hot Springs had gone downhill since then pretty bad. Then the downtown merchants association revived down town and it was lively and the place to be...Stueart was a big part of that renewal. Hot Springs is nestled in a narrow valley only four lanes wide. You can Google it and see how beautiful it really is. Hot steaming water flows down a mountain at 147 degrees.
Stueart moved his business downtown in the 1990’s. After a few years the mountain collapsed and the buildings had to be evacuated...just before Christmas...Stueart survived... When the oil money dried up Stueart survived. Stueart had damn near survived everything until that fateful day on
September 8, 2005. It seems that this carpetbagger had come to town and was going to work magic downtown. He was going to make downtown 5th Avenue in New York...Yea, right. So he made a deal with the man who owns most of the buildings...he would collect the rent and choose the renters...He was a wheeler and dealer…A shiny man, shark skinned suits etc... He lived in a house with the whole downstairs walls of glass so that you could see all of his poison’ snakes...each snake had its separate cages, you could hear them strike at the glass and rattle, the lights were low and it was creepy. He was creepy. Dennis Magee was his name. He had gained control of everything and he had a score to settle. He demanded more money for the deposits on everyone...He even raised one family’s deposit over one thousand percent. They had a Chinese restaurant and Dennis put them out on the street with no place to go and no warning.
He went to Stueart and demanded that he double his deposit and rent. Stueart was furious...It was the beginning of the fall season that led into Christmas. Stueart had been there for about 10 years and he would be there forever along with a beautiful bath shop, a fabulous antique shop and an upscale gift emporium. People couldn’t help but to stop in for a visit...Life was good, minus the Dennis fiasco… We had all stood behind Dennis when his restaurant burned to the ground...Stueart headed up a drive to raise money for Dennis... Some say his mortgage and insurance papers started rubbing together and caught on fire...Who knows? Dennis went back to Stueart and Stueart tried to talk some sense into Dennis...Just wait till the first of the year and he would pay...No Way! He demanded it right then or he would padlock the door... Stueart decided to move to another location down the street...So he did just that...It was right before Labor Day which is a big tourist’s day... On the evening in September 2005, Stueart was carrying boxes into the store and he fell flat on the floor dead... Stueart had died of a massive coronary right then and there. He died in the store that he loved so much. A man on the street came by and saw him so he called an ambulance...Frances, his wife, arrived at the emergency room, then his daughter. They took Stueart to Intensive Care and put him on a ventalator. There was no hope...The doctor told me that his heart just exploded...the only thing keeping him alive were the machines... I stood at the foot of his bed crying, holding his feet in my hands and said goodbye. He had been there for about five days not changing one single bit. I had talked with Stueart about death many years earlier...just a casual conversation. I knew what he wanted ..Frances tried so very hard to not let him die She made a brave decision.
The next day down at the store Frances was in the back...friends were everywhere putting the store together...The way Stueart would have wanted it to be. I went to Frances and we started talking... She asked my opinion of how I thought Stueart really was...It was very grim. Stueart wasn’t there in that body...Sometimes people just have to hear it from the right person. In this case it was me. She decided to ask for one more CT scan to see if there was and glimmer of hope...sadly, there was not. They made the heart wrenching decision to let Stueart go...He had been gone the whole time...they just could not believe it….No one could. He was only fifty six...too young.
They had a beautiful memorial service at the First United Methodist Church which held 500. The sanctuary was packed, standing room only and they were flowing out the doors. Grammy Award winning song writer Randy Goodrum played music and he spoke. He told a story of being in church for a youth meeting when he and Stueart snuck upstairs to play Great Balls of Fire on the pipe organ...full blast...That is the kind of friend Stueart was, Fun...
Stueart LOVED Lake Hamilton... People used to ask him “How can you stand living on the lake in the winter...It is so dreary and depressing” Stueart said “ looking at the lake in winter is like looking at a black and white photo You just have learn to appreciate it"...And he did. In April the next year Frances decided to have another memorial to send Stueart off. I knew what they had in mind beautiful sunset, beautiful music, a few drinks with friends... Stueart would drift off into the sunset...It was April and I knew what the weather and currents would do and it wasn’t pretty. I could imagine Frances sitting there at the the end of the day and there goes Stueart drifting by… or getting stuck in someone’s dock... The day of the service I ordered a tropical urn wreath and had it delivered... I was ill and could not attend…. It was way overcast and the winds were blowing from the west into the bay not away from it. They took a boat out into the middle of the small bay and poured Stueart’s ashes onto the wreath and let it go to drift into the sunset...Frances sent me photos and it was a beautiful ceremony. Life went on...
In late May we put the boat in the lake and I decided to go visit my friend, Marcia. She lives about six miles up the lake from me then you turn west off of the main channel and go a few miles. I was talking on the phone with my friend in Florida, Pattie King...Just chatting my way up the lake when I decided to go up the main channel to the 70 West Bridge where Stueart lived. No reason just had the urge to go up there. And what to my wandering eyes did appear...? Stueart, sitting there hung up at the 70 west bridge! About one hundred feet away from where he was set adrift. It was about three miles out of my way. When I got to the bay I looked around and there was Stueart and his wreath stuck against the bridge embankment...I was floored... I told Pattie King that I had found Stueart...Six weeks after he was set adrift...It was exactly as if he had called and said that his car had broken down or he had had too much to drink, come and get me. I pulled the boat up to the bridge and waded out to pick up the wreath, ashes and all. I told Pattie King what I had found and she was speechless. I hung up. Stueart had been washed up on that spot six weeks earlier and what are the chances that I had found him? He was only about one hundred yards from his house and his house sits directly on the shoreline. I put Stueart on the back seat of the boat and headed off to Marcia’s again...As I was pulling up to Marcia’s dock she looked at the back seat and said “Noo! I can’t believe it where did you find Stueart”? I told her the whole story and she just could not believe it either... But, yes, it was the wreath and Stuart’s ashes... What are the chances that I would find him?
I visited with Marcia for a while and then I told her to fix me a scotch to go... As I was pulling away from the dock the sun was setting over the lake and it was a spectacular sunset. I am not sure that anyone loves Lake Hamilton as much as we do... it was a slow cruise...As I turned into my bay the sun crept lower. When I got home I asked my husband to drive me to the cemetery downtown where the Pennington Estate is located, he did. The sun was going down pretty quickly now and I knew I had to hurry. I gently laid Stueart and the wreath on his mother’s grave and said a prayer and said goodbye to my friend for the last time. During the next few weeks people said that they would spot him going down the lake. Then someone said that they saw him at the dam...I just smiled...His cousin was at a yard sale at Marcia’s and said that she saw him at the cemetery.. Marcia called me and we had a quiet laugh...We knew that Stueart would just love this story...Espaciall since it was about him!
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Last2cu: Writers Block
Ever since I had my stroke I have major writers block and stage fright. Has anyone else experienced anything like this before and what do you do about it?
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Last2cu: Meux Cemetery Cemetery Will No Longer Keep Her Secrets
Paunch Rowe died late last month, he was 86 years old and he was the only other person who knw the name of the man who calously threw all of the tombstones in the newly formed Lake Hamilton so he could sell the most prime lake property on Lake Hamilton. Pauncho and I are the only people who knows the name of the man who did it and i feel that the time is now to come clean and tell the truth..Over 200 people are buried in this toney subdivision on the banks of Lake Hamilton.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Last2cu: My Life In The Day Of A Stroke
On the evening of April 9 2010 I had a stroke.I am only 51 years old! I knew exactly when it happened..I had gotten a sudden excruciating headache and I could not talk. I took an asprin that they said saved my life..an asprin! I have absolutely no family history of stroke.. in 2006 I had a virus hit my heart and thought that I had finally recovered from that..I had lost 55 pounds and life was good. Of all the ways to die, I thought that I would be shot out of the saddle.
I was scared.. .really scared. Dr. Tuttle came in and said right off the bat that I had had a stroke. My smile was lopsided; I was weak on my right side and I was having a hard time answering questions. They immediately took me for a CT scan that confirmed it, they admitted me, took me straight to a room and there I was. They didn’t hook up IV’s or anything. Just watched me. Everything smelled of musk, my least favorite thing. My smeller was working over time. My friend, Marcia Hudson was the first one there. I cried when I saw her. She told me that everything would be ok..If Marcia tells you something it is true. No one on the face of the earth did I want to see than her. Her friend, Theresa, drove her up to the hospital and then Theresa checked on me for the next two days..She is a respiratory therapist at St Joe. All I could say was a few words that didn’t make sense. So people politely said uh huh. Jeff and Amber came on Sunday and they stayed all afternoon. We had a great visit and I will be forever grateful because that is just what I needed. I needed to talk to someone for a while just to practice and with someone who knew me and had the patience to listen to me. It was very hard.
It is funny but, I understood everything that was being said to me. I just couldn’t communicate.. Mitch was very worried but, he held up like a champ. Having a stroke was very interesting, to say the least…I have never been at a loss of words, my daughter says that I talk to everyone and I do!.. So , to not be able to talk or write was devastating. But, I knew it would change, and it did, for a while. Then blood pressure medication became a bad thing.. I woke up one morning itching my head off from head to toe. So we changed that. Then came the antidepressant. It didn’t work and had some very bad complications so I was out on a different one and it was brutal. I cried all of the time and felt like the world was ending..I do not fear death. Since I write about cemeteries I had always wondered what it really would be like to die..not in a morbid way just curious.. all I could do was cry and I knew it was the antidepressants and I could work through it. Depression is a major issue with a stroke.. I had backslid to the point that I could not talk to anyone at all. Mitch had some friends come up from Dallas and that was very trying..I felt that I couldn’t keep up with the conversation. I felt like I was fading away….I felt stupid.
Last Wednesday, I was in Jeff’s office crying my eyes out, again.. I could not write and the key board looked like a jumbled mess, I couldn’t keep up with a conversation, I felt stupid for the first time in my life, I was just a mess. Jeff said that it was the Wellbutrin. He had tried to reactivate the part of the brain that was damaged and it didn’t work. I felt hopeless. Depression is a brutal thing in case some of you are lucky enough to never have had to live with it. It sucks you in and you buy it. Still, I could understand everything. I just felt stupid and had no chance of it ever getting better. I felt that had lost everything and that nothing I could say would be of any interest to anyone. So, I went home and quit taking my Wellbutrin. I was scared at having to wait for the new antidepressant to work and I didn’t know how I could wait didn’t know how I could make it, it felt so permanent. When you are in the hospital the staff never tell you anything about a stroke..NOTHING! So you have to have your wits about you to ask the perfect questions and they still don’t tell you anything..The Doctor didn’t do much better. I finally got strong enough to walk the halls and I noticed everyone in the rooms.. I felt like it was a scientific experiment. There was one lady who motioned for me to come in and turn her lights off..I couldn’t talk and neither could she.. But, there is a silent language between stroke patients.. She could not move, so I turned them off and stood there holding her hand. Our eyes met and she tried to talk to me.. Funny, but I understood everything she was saying. She had been hit hard by the stroke..Her right side was paralyzed, mine wasn’t. She asked me to pray with her and I did. I left and walked down the hall and saw an elderly man who was completely paralyzed and wasn’t going to make it through the night not a flower or person in sight the next morning he wasn’t there. I realized that I was one of the few to have another day. They call this one a warning stroke and I hate that. And the statistics say that if you have a TMI (transient ischemic attack) you are at a 60% risk for getting another..But, it doesn’t tell you what to do to keep from having it. I called the American Heart Association and the National Stroke Association and they said that I would feel much better if I sent them money. I am sure that it would. lol So, no one tells you what to do. You are left to try to figure it out yourself so here I go. I take an aspirin every day and you should too. It is the single most important thing anyone can do for themselves. And I take my blood pressure medicine everyday! I delegate stressful things to others.
I have begun talking on the phone more even though friends stop calling whenever something bad happens. I don’t know why since it is when you need them the most. I think it is because they believe that you may be resting and they don’t want to bother you and some just simply don’t know what to say, then you have some that just simply are not friends in the first place. A stroke weeds them out in a hurry! Mitch isn’t much of a talker so practicing is a bit hard.
And if this wasn’t enough we were in the smack middle of a move to a new house! Mitch handled everything; all I could do was just sit and point. I felt really bad for not being able to anything but realized that I had always had to do everything myself..When I was forty I moved all by myself to Orlando, Florida with no map and no job to start my life over. From a rown of 35,000 to a city ov over two million people. Lived through four category 3 and above hurricanes in six weeks. I have lived through horrific floods in my home town. An epic ice storm, with no power for over two weeks. The death of my aunt, my uncle and my mother six months apart.. Raised a daughter all by myself after her father died in an auto accident, when she was in the second week of first grade. I was a pioneering HIV/AIDS Advocate, when AIDS was not a popular disease, starting with my first patient in 1983. That was two years before they had a test for AIDS. It was still called Gay Related Immune Deficiency. I have worked on a Hollywood movie set nad been kissed by Antonio Bandaras. I have been to two Presidential Inaugurals, been a guest at the White House. I have ridden a camel up to the great Pyramids of Giza…Floated on the Nile and stood on the hill where the Sheppard’s saw the star..The Star, professing the birth of Christ. I have been to the tomb of Jesus and stood at the place of his birth. And I have a daughter and have been blessed with three beautiful grandchildren. So if I am in that sixty percent don’t feel sorry for me..I have had an amazing life, and I know it. And if I am lucky enough to be in that fourty percent then God has granted me a repreive, great friends and an even greater life!
I was scared.. .really scared. Dr. Tuttle came in and said right off the bat that I had had a stroke. My smile was lopsided; I was weak on my right side and I was having a hard time answering questions. They immediately took me for a CT scan that confirmed it, they admitted me, took me straight to a room and there I was. They didn’t hook up IV’s or anything. Just watched me. Everything smelled of musk, my least favorite thing. My smeller was working over time. My friend, Marcia Hudson was the first one there. I cried when I saw her. She told me that everything would be ok..If Marcia tells you something it is true. No one on the face of the earth did I want to see than her. Her friend, Theresa, drove her up to the hospital and then Theresa checked on me for the next two days..She is a respiratory therapist at St Joe. All I could say was a few words that didn’t make sense. So people politely said uh huh. Jeff and Amber came on Sunday and they stayed all afternoon. We had a great visit and I will be forever grateful because that is just what I needed. I needed to talk to someone for a while just to practice and with someone who knew me and had the patience to listen to me. It was very hard.
It is funny but, I understood everything that was being said to me. I just couldn’t communicate.. Mitch was very worried but, he held up like a champ. Having a stroke was very interesting, to say the least…I have never been at a loss of words, my daughter says that I talk to everyone and I do!.. So , to not be able to talk or write was devastating. But, I knew it would change, and it did, for a while. Then blood pressure medication became a bad thing.. I woke up one morning itching my head off from head to toe. So we changed that. Then came the antidepressant. It didn’t work and had some very bad complications so I was out on a different one and it was brutal. I cried all of the time and felt like the world was ending..I do not fear death. Since I write about cemeteries I had always wondered what it really would be like to die..not in a morbid way just curious.. all I could do was cry and I knew it was the antidepressants and I could work through it. Depression is a major issue with a stroke.. I had backslid to the point that I could not talk to anyone at all. Mitch had some friends come up from Dallas and that was very trying..I felt that I couldn’t keep up with the conversation. I felt like I was fading away….I felt stupid.
Last Wednesday, I was in Jeff’s office crying my eyes out, again.. I could not write and the key board looked like a jumbled mess, I couldn’t keep up with a conversation, I felt stupid for the first time in my life, I was just a mess. Jeff said that it was the Wellbutrin. He had tried to reactivate the part of the brain that was damaged and it didn’t work. I felt hopeless. Depression is a brutal thing in case some of you are lucky enough to never have had to live with it. It sucks you in and you buy it. Still, I could understand everything. I just felt stupid and had no chance of it ever getting better. I felt that had lost everything and that nothing I could say would be of any interest to anyone. So, I went home and quit taking my Wellbutrin. I was scared at having to wait for the new antidepressant to work and I didn’t know how I could wait didn’t know how I could make it, it felt so permanent. When you are in the hospital the staff never tell you anything about a stroke..NOTHING! So you have to have your wits about you to ask the perfect questions and they still don’t tell you anything..The Doctor didn’t do much better. I finally got strong enough to walk the halls and I noticed everyone in the rooms.. I felt like it was a scientific experiment. There was one lady who motioned for me to come in and turn her lights off..I couldn’t talk and neither could she.. But, there is a silent language between stroke patients.. She could not move, so I turned them off and stood there holding her hand. Our eyes met and she tried to talk to me.. Funny, but I understood everything she was saying. She had been hit hard by the stroke..Her right side was paralyzed, mine wasn’t. She asked me to pray with her and I did. I left and walked down the hall and saw an elderly man who was completely paralyzed and wasn’t going to make it through the night not a flower or person in sight the next morning he wasn’t there. I realized that I was one of the few to have another day. They call this one a warning stroke and I hate that. And the statistics say that if you have a TMI (transient ischemic attack) you are at a 60% risk for getting another..But, it doesn’t tell you what to do to keep from having it. I called the American Heart Association and the National Stroke Association and they said that I would feel much better if I sent them money. I am sure that it would. lol So, no one tells you what to do. You are left to try to figure it out yourself so here I go. I take an aspirin every day and you should too. It is the single most important thing anyone can do for themselves. And I take my blood pressure medicine everyday! I delegate stressful things to others.
I have begun talking on the phone more even though friends stop calling whenever something bad happens. I don’t know why since it is when you need them the most. I think it is because they believe that you may be resting and they don’t want to bother you and some just simply don’t know what to say, then you have some that just simply are not friends in the first place. A stroke weeds them out in a hurry! Mitch isn’t much of a talker so practicing is a bit hard.
And if this wasn’t enough we were in the smack middle of a move to a new house! Mitch handled everything; all I could do was just sit and point. I felt really bad for not being able to anything but realized that I had always had to do everything myself..When I was forty I moved all by myself to Orlando, Florida with no map and no job to start my life over. From a rown of 35,000 to a city ov over two million people. Lived through four category 3 and above hurricanes in six weeks. I have lived through horrific floods in my home town. An epic ice storm, with no power for over two weeks. The death of my aunt, my uncle and my mother six months apart.. Raised a daughter all by myself after her father died in an auto accident, when she was in the second week of first grade. I was a pioneering HIV/AIDS Advocate, when AIDS was not a popular disease, starting with my first patient in 1983. That was two years before they had a test for AIDS. It was still called Gay Related Immune Deficiency. I have worked on a Hollywood movie set nad been kissed by Antonio Bandaras. I have been to two Presidential Inaugurals, been a guest at the White House. I have ridden a camel up to the great Pyramids of Giza…Floated on the Nile and stood on the hill where the Sheppard’s saw the star..The Star, professing the birth of Christ. I have been to the tomb of Jesus and stood at the place of his birth. And I have a daughter and have been blessed with three beautiful grandchildren. So if I am in that sixty percent don’t feel sorry for me..I have had an amazing life, and I know it. And if I am lucky enough to be in that fourty percent then God has granted me a repreive, great friends and an even greater life!
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
On The Evening of April 9, 2010 I Had A Stroke
In a few days I will post another story. I had kinda lost many of my stories. It takes some time for me to write but, will soon! Thank you for all of your support.
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