Good-bye, Miss Farr

I recently learned of the death of one of my nursing instructors from Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing.  Her name was Mary Farr,  "Miss Farr" to students.

 Mary Farr was the prime example of what a Hopkins nurse should be.  She herself graduated from Hopkins in 1941 and went to war with the Hopkins nursing contingent.  She taught nursing at Hopkins from 1951-1969. She was proper, professional, intelligent and always perfectly groomed.  She expected the best of her students - no, demanded the best from us.   She left no stoned unturned in the care of patients; her value system embraced excellence, integrity, compassion, thoroughness and dogged determination to "get it right" on behalf of patients and colleagues.  She knew everything there was to know about medical nursing.  She knew all the diseases, all the medications and their side effects.  She would grill her students endlessly about the care of the patients that had been assigned to the students.  She reduced me to tears on more than one occasion.  The first time was after she had subjected me to a great many questions about my patient, his diagnoses, his medications, nursing care indicated.  After she was done with me (and she kept up the questions until you got one wrong) and I had walked off, she followed me and said something to the effect that "I should remember that you are only 18 years old".  At which point I burst into tears.  I don't remember what triggered the other cry, but it came during a one- on -one session with her, maybe an evaluation.   We learned from her, the doctors learned from her.  She made an impact on everyone who knew her.   She could be formidable (something she didn't remember in her later years ), but I certainly learned a great deal from her.

Aging in Place

I worked for many years in long-term care.  I know that a big reason that many seniors have to leave their homes after a fall or an illness is the stairs.  After all, Grandma or Dad is already old and how much longer are they going to be around.  Why go to the expense of putting in a first floor bathroom and turning the dining room into a bedroom?  Let's look at nursing homes.  So slightly more than 10 years ago, my husband and I bought our current house.  Everything I could possibly need is on one level, and that includes the washer and dryer.  We actually bought the house for the view but the one-level living has been a big plus.  The only things in the basement are the hot water heater, the furnace, some old paint cans and the electrical panel.  I could go for a very long time and never need to go down or up those stairs.  What I didn't take into consideration, though, is the property on which this house sits.  When this house was originally built, it sat on 25 acres.  A previous owner sold off 20+ acres, leaving us with a little more than 4.  Four acres of grass and trees and bushes.  We now own a riding mower, a push mower, a garden cart that attaches to the riding mower, a cart that is pushed by a person, a leaf blower, a chain saw, two hedge trimmers, an edger, various pruning instruments and a newly acquired snow blower.  And let's not forget the rakes and the shovels.  Still, I am not sure it is enough.  There are bushes to be pruned, leaves to be raked and dead trees to be cut down.  There are limbs and branches all over the yard after every winter.  Right now there is a pile of brush, downed limbs and such, from Superstorm Sandy, just waiting to be burned.

And this is just the stuff that has been piled up.  There is plenty more still waiting to be picked up and carried or hauled to the pile.  There are millions of leaves still on the ground.  My advice?  Once you get to that age of retirement, you might want to look at condos- without stairs, of course.

Old age is not for sissies

For years, I have suffered some general GI disturbances.  I don't want to go into too much detail here about all of that.  But I did decide I must have a gluten sensitivity.  From time to time, and not for long, I try to avoid gluten.  Sometimes it seems to help but I never stay off the gluten long enough to be sure.  So recently, when I was having a routine colonoscopy, I mentioned to the doctor that I thought I had a gluten sensitivity and I gave her my reasons for thinking that.  So I got a couple of biopsies, lots of new blood work and I had to drop off a stool sample.  Yuck!  She told me that I had a moderately inflamed small intestine and it looked like I might be deficient in B12 and folate.  How could this be?  I take vitamins every day.  She suggested a form of colitis, perhaps Crohn's disease.  Do I look like someone who is losing weight?  Well, it turns out that the specimen revealed an infection - C. Diff to be exact.  This is a disease of old people who live in nursing homes or have been in the hospital on antibiotics.  I may be old but I haven't been in a nursing home in more than a decade, I haven't been on any antibiotics and I retired from working at the hospital 18 months ago.   Tomorrow I pick up my 10 day prescription of Flagyl.  We will see how or if that helps and take it from there.  There may be more going on than just C. Diff.

Wakes, viewings, visitations or whatever

A favorite indoor sport in this part of the country seems to be going to wakes or viewings or whatever one calls them.  It doesn't seem to matter much if you truly knew the deceased but, heck, you never know who you might see at the funeral home.  Everyone signs the guest book and then murmurs condolences to perfect strangers, goes up to the coffin and says, "Doesn't he/she look nice"?  There seems to be no way out of this.  But I want to go on record as finding all of this a bit barbaric.  I don't see how it is the least bit helpful to the bereaved.  There are better places to catch up with friends from high school or cousins you haven't seen since childhood.  I don't want anyone staring down on me in my coffin saying, "Didn't Phillip do a nice job"?  And the flowers - don't get me started on the flowers.  What a waste of money!  So when I die, I want to be quietly cremated.  Send out a little card in a few weeks letting people know if you want.  Then get my ashes, borrow a boat and and scatter my ashes into the Atlantic ocean.

A Good-bye to the Breastfeeding Nazi

Wendy was the breast feeding Nazi of Family Beginnings, although we did not call her this to her face.   When I first started working there she was the lactation consultant and the maker of the work schedule (good to be her friend).  As lactation consultant, she was always admonishing the rest of us not to succumb to the cries of hungry babies and pleas from exhausted moms for more sleep.  If we gave a breast baby even a little water during the night, it could be considered assault.  I never knew her in her younger, more agile days.  By the time I met her, she was already disabled to some extent by severe rheumatoid arthritis.  She had had numerous joint replacements.  Her hands were twisted and gnarled.   But she worked full time and kept her family together.  She had a mischievous sense of humor and a smile for everyone.
The beginning of the end, I think, was surgery on her right hand.  The wound got infected and she spent months with a drain and on antibiotics.  She worked mostly from home, writing with her left hand.  Then there was a fall and another fall.  Every time she seemed to be on the road to recovery, something would happen.  One day, several vertebrae collapsed and she could no longer stand, let alone walk.  Weeks in the hospital were followed by nursing home placement.  She developed a horrible bedsore while in the nursing home and was unable to sit.  Another drain, more antibiotics, weekly trips to the wound care center, lots of pain.  I would visit her from time to time, not often enough.  She never groused or complained.  she never lamented the state she was in.  She was ever hopeful that she would walk again or, at least, be able to stand and pivot so she could go home.  Yesterday she died.  She was 53 years old.

Betty (the cat)

Betty spent most of her first 3 years of life in an apartment in New York City.  She was the runt of a litter of kittens that my daughter fostered.  The other kittens found homes and Jessica kept Betty.  Her head was so much bigger than her body, she earned the name Betty Boop.   Betty apparently had an eating disorder and would eat anything in front of her.  She did not graze; she gobbled.  Soon her body outgrew her head.  Eventually, Jessica moved to NJ to a studio apartment she owned there.  She hoped to fix the place up and sell it.  Betty and all her paraphernalia overwhelmed the place.  So Jessica decided to bring Betty to the mountains of Pennsylvania to live with me.  I only agreed to do this because I was sure Betty wouldn't last long.  She would do what all the other cats do;  find her way to the highway and get hit by a car.  We already had a cat (Maybelle) that had survived such an accident and now stays away from the road.  Both of her sisters managed to get themselves killed.  
When Betty first arrived, Maybelle approached her as though she wanted to be friends but Betty was having none of it.  It was downhill after that as far as friendship goes.  Maybelle was terrified of Betty and would growl and hiss whenever Betty was near.  Betty made herself right at home and took over as alpha cat while Maybelle cowered under tables and chairs.  Betty was a smart cat.  She could open the cupboard doors when she was looking for food.  She could open the door to the linen closet and jump up on a shelf.  When I moved Maybelle's food to a shelf on a bookcase, Betty got up there and ate it.  One morning I got up and found the bag of dry cat food sitting on the kitchen floor, upright.  Betty had managed to open the door and get the bag out without spilling anything.  Betty would sleep on the bed with us and she preferred to be right in the middle of the bed.  Did I mention she was a big cat?  She was a high maintenance cat, always wanting attention.  She didn't sleep like other cats; if I moved an inch, she would be up and awake, looking and hoping for food.  By her second summer with us, she was more comfortable with the outdoors.  As the nights got warm, she started staying out at night.  She would come in to eat but at 9PM, she was ready to go out for the night.  Then in early September, she wasn't at the window at 6 AM meowing loudly for food.  I last saw her the evening before headed towards the woods on the other side of our driveway.  We haven't seen her since.  People have told me about cats that were missing that turned up months later.  But Betty wasn't the kind of cat to wander off for weeks or months at a time.  I doubt if she found a new home  There aren't that many right near us anyway.  Even though she was a PIA cat, I miss her.  I wish I had taken better care of her.

Hosting

I had been asked in the past to host a foreign exchange student and I said "No" because I was working and I have no kids living at home.  I couldn't imagine why I would want a foreign teenager living with me.  This year, since I am retired, I said "yes" to hosting the chaperone for the exchange students.  She is 32 and thus able to legally drink alcoholic beverages.  I had no idea how much fun it was going to be.  Having Sabine around is like having a daughter with no boyfriend, husband or kids - a daughter I can have to myself.  She has gone to the Y with me, we went biking at Ohiopyle together, she helped me with my 4th of July party and she joined the FBBC crowd when we went to dinner and a movie.  I hope she is having as much fun as I am.