thanks...

Thanks, Kate.

I did probably jump the gun and go to the worst possible place with my thoughts about my loved one.

She called me up yesterday afternoon and said, "I know you worry about these things so I want to reassure you; I had no memory lapses yesterday evening and none today, and except for some fuzziness about that one hour after I came in from cleaning the gutters, I am fine."

(She is 72 and she goes out on a ladder to clean her own gutters. I told her to hire someone - hell, I told her to hold off until I visited in July and *I'd* do it - but she insists on doing that stuff herself. Well, we both have another relative who was going up on her porch roof to repair it when she was *80,* so I guess there's some precedent...)

The only test that remains is to ultrasound her carotids to make sure there's not a blockage (which could have caused a TIA). But she said the ER doc listened to both with his stethoscope and said the right one sounded just fine and there was maybe a little whooshing in the left, but that could just as well be a heart murmur. (She has had one off and on over the years).

It also seems that a TIA is unlikely because she had NO other symptoms - no weakness, no numbness, no fleeting facial paralysis - that TIAs can cause. So I'm cautiously hopeful that it was just some funky thing and maybe she just needs not to go up on ladders any more, or at least drink some dang Gatorade or something if she works out on the yard.

I'm wondering now - or maybe it's just rationalizing - if she maybe let herself get dehydrated (I asked her and she said, "Well I had only had a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee at breakfast that morning, and no, I hadn't drunk any water before going out to work") and it was a 90* day. And she was working with her arms up over her head, which I know when I do that (like when I had to cut some tree limbs this winter) screwed with my blood pressure (caused it to drop) and made me very woozy and lightheaded.

This person has NEVER had high blood pressure in her life - if anything, her b.p. is borderline low. And she doesn't drink alcohol - her idea of taking a "drink" is splitting a can of beer with her husband on a hot summer day. And the only medication-type thing she takes (other than the aspirin regimen she's started now, just to be safe) is allergy meds.

So I'm wondering - given the fact that she was 100% lucid, 100% back to her normal self when I talked to her yesterday - if it could have just been dehydration.

Oh, I still appreciate the prayers. And if it turns out there's an artery blockage requiring surgery, I'd appreciate more on her behalf. (If it helps, I guess I'll come out and reveal it - I don't think anyone TOO close to me reads this - it's my mom.)

I think part of the reason I kind of freaked is all the deaths that have happened around here this past year - a couple in my church (including Mr. W.'s very sudden death last week) and my department chair's husband. And when that happens, I get very tuned in to the fact that everyone around me is mortal, and that I'm going to have to accept the fact that I may lose them sometime.



It's funny - at least at this point in my life I do not fear my own death so much (I figure then I'll get to see what's on the other side. Not that I look forward to it, understand, but it's not something I'm so terrified about happening someday) as I am having "everyone around me dying and I have no one left to talk to." And yes, that's exactly how I imagine it. Most of my good friends are older than I am (for some reason, I relate better to people a generation or two removed from me than I do to people of my own generation, a lot of the time. I don't know if it has to do with the fact that so many of the 30-somethings I know are 100% caught up with kids - which is as it should be, I suppose, but it means they don't really have time for friends-without-kids - or what, but I've always related better to people a little older than I am.) And so, I take it hard when I lose one of those people, because it just feeds in a little more to that worry that someday, I'll be the last one standing. (My dad is the oldest one of his immediate family still alive, and I think that thought haunts him a little.)

And I also got the news in the evening. Bad/worrisome news in the evening is ALWAYS harder on me than it is in the morning. I don't know why - whether it's some kind of neurotransmitter thing or if it's just tiredness. But stuff I can cope with okay in the a.m., sometimes not so much in the p.m.

But anyway. My mom reassured me that her "brain wasn't broken" (like me, she's a SpongeBob fan - actually, I turned her on to it), and everything seemed okay. So I'm tentatively saying a prayer of thanks and breathing a sigh of relief.