While going through paperwork yesterday, I found the business card of the geneticist who was so rude to us after the amniocentesis that confirmed Scooter would have the genetic anomaly her sister had. She was highly offended and accused us of wasting the government's money, because we hadn't considered abortion an option, if we found out Scooter was going to have the same chromosome rearrangement her sister had.
I was curious as to whether there were complaints lodged against this doctor by patients, so I googled her name. I found out she died in 2005 of a brain tumor that was cancerous.
I just feel sorry for her family. How torturous for her 3 sons and her husband to watch her succumb to something so heinous. And for her parents to lose their daughter.
I found that her father died just 3 years after she did. He was 77. She was listed in the obituary, along with 2 brothers, as having preceded him in death. It made me wonder, if maybe the brothers were why she went into genetics in the first place. Perhaps they had some sort of genetic disorder that resulted in their death, and she went into the medical field to try and find an answer to keep it from happening again. The information I read concerning the brain cancer was that it occurred more readily alongside certain genetic conditions.
Maybe this was all on her mind that day in 1993 when we saw her after the amniocentesis. Maybe she felt an urgency to find answers to try and stop whatever it was that killed her brothers. Maybe she was trying to find a cure, so she could save her own sons from this terrible thing.
I'm not sure what happened.
I just know my heart breaks for her family.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
I may just live forever.
While finishing sorting through a box of paperwork today, I came across a couple of things that made me laugh...
The first is a plastic placard that can hang on a mirror or a window with a suction cup that still has the price tag on the back, in spite of the fact the suction cup is missing. It's got a cartoon from Cathy Guisewite's, "Cathy", comic strip on it. Cathy is on the phone with her mother. She's wearing her robe and red slippers standing next to her bed, which is heaped with clothes and hangers. The mother asks, "Are your clothes laid out, Sweetie?" to which Cathy, rolling her eyes, replies, "My clothes are laid out, Mother."
I obviously found it funny and could identify with it when I bought it in the first place, and I find it funny but somewhat unsettling now. I think I may have been trying to tell myself something when I bought it, but I wasn't able to hear what that was. But it's still funny, because I see myself, Bugster, Hopper and Scooter all in it. However, I don't find it funny enough to keep. It will go in the donation box, unless someone wants me to send it to them. Email me, if you want it.
The second thing I found was a photocopy of a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon. Calvin is scowling with his shoulders hunched over, and the caption under him says, "God put me on earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die."
Looks like I've got a long life ahead of me.
The first is a plastic placard that can hang on a mirror or a window with a suction cup that still has the price tag on the back, in spite of the fact the suction cup is missing. It's got a cartoon from Cathy Guisewite's, "Cathy", comic strip on it. Cathy is on the phone with her mother. She's wearing her robe and red slippers standing next to her bed, which is heaped with clothes and hangers. The mother asks, "Are your clothes laid out, Sweetie?" to which Cathy, rolling her eyes, replies, "My clothes are laid out, Mother."
I obviously found it funny and could identify with it when I bought it in the first place, and I find it funny but somewhat unsettling now. I think I may have been trying to tell myself something when I bought it, but I wasn't able to hear what that was. But it's still funny, because I see myself, Bugster, Hopper and Scooter all in it. However, I don't find it funny enough to keep. It will go in the donation box, unless someone wants me to send it to them. Email me, if you want it.
The second thing I found was a photocopy of a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon. Calvin is scowling with his shoulders hunched over, and the caption under him says, "God put me on earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die."
Looks like I've got a long life ahead of me.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Mack Attack!
Last night while minding my own business, my voice got up and left. I think it was bored with the conversation. Then, when I woke up this morning, I not only felt like I'd been run over by a Mack truck, but I felt like it had backed up and decided to try it again.
Twice.
We've got the crud that's going around, although it hasn't hit my lungs just yet like it has Scooter's. I have just been hit with overwhelming fatigue. Hopper has had the fever and the fatigue (she slept 21 hours the night before last and 16 hours last night), but she has no cough just yet. The Hubster missed 4 days of work from it last week, and Frank had it a few weeks ago. Bugster's lungs have been zapped with the crud, and she sounds horrible on the phone. So far, it appears as though the only one who has escaped unscathed so far is Bubster. Hope he doesn't end up with it, too.
I'm trying to take it easier physically. I don't want this crud to get the better of me. So I decided to work on paperwork.
A couple of weeks before Mom left to go home, she helped me in the garage. That's where we found all the extra boxes of laundry, after I thought we'd gotten it all done a few weeks prior. We cleared out at least 1/3 of the garage. We have this huge empty space now and can actually see the back wall of the garage. Before, we could barely make it out of the kitchen, and there was just a small path out to the porch.
The clothes that were out there have been sorted, washed, thrown, donated or given away. I mentioned the other day that we donated 49 bags of clothes that had come in from the garage and 23 bags from the laundry that I'd been working on for the last 9 years or so. What I failed to mention is that I sent at right at 60 bags home with Mom for my sister's family, and I probably threw at least 50 bags, if not more.
The clothes that are still here are either going to be sold, worn, or put away for Bugster to go through to see, if she wants any when she has little ones of her own. They've been sorted according to size, folded and neatly put in some of the rubber totes that I emptied out and scrubbed with bleach. The totes will be stored in the garage inside large plastic bags, so there's absolutely no chance of bugs, mice or dust getting them dirty, so they'll take up a little bit of that free space we opened up.
What won't be taking up the free space is paperwork. After I dusted 2 dozen or so boxes of paperwork in the garage and brought them into the kitchen, Mom wiped them all off with a bleach-soaked cloth to disinfect them. Then she stacked them all neatly in the study for me to sort through. I started on them today.
I got through one box fairly quickly. It was full of proofs of purchases for items I was going to send in for rebates or special offers. There were soup labels, yogurt lids, cereal box tops, and the cardboard pieces that are torn away on boxes of tissues, so the contents of the box are accessible. The box was full to the top, and 99.9% of it went in the trash or in the shredables. And as tempting as it was to save the soup labels and cereal box tops for the local schools to send in for credit, I allowed myself to throw them away. To let go.
Then I started on the next box. It's a hard box to sort through. There's a lot in there I need to save. The medical records from many of the visits back and forth to Virginia are in the box, as well as the results of Bugster's genetic testing we had done 20 years ago. She's going to need that in the next few years, so I'm glad I came across it.
I'm about halfway through the box and I'd like to finish it before I go to bed, but I'm okay with it, if I don't get it finished up until tomorrow.
I can feel a caravan of Mack trucks lining up to run me down.
Twice.
We've got the crud that's going around, although it hasn't hit my lungs just yet like it has Scooter's. I have just been hit with overwhelming fatigue. Hopper has had the fever and the fatigue (she slept 21 hours the night before last and 16 hours last night), but she has no cough just yet. The Hubster missed 4 days of work from it last week, and Frank had it a few weeks ago. Bugster's lungs have been zapped with the crud, and she sounds horrible on the phone. So far, it appears as though the only one who has escaped unscathed so far is Bubster. Hope he doesn't end up with it, too.
I'm trying to take it easier physically. I don't want this crud to get the better of me. So I decided to work on paperwork.
A couple of weeks before Mom left to go home, she helped me in the garage. That's where we found all the extra boxes of laundry, after I thought we'd gotten it all done a few weeks prior. We cleared out at least 1/3 of the garage. We have this huge empty space now and can actually see the back wall of the garage. Before, we could barely make it out of the kitchen, and there was just a small path out to the porch.
The clothes that were out there have been sorted, washed, thrown, donated or given away. I mentioned the other day that we donated 49 bags of clothes that had come in from the garage and 23 bags from the laundry that I'd been working on for the last 9 years or so. What I failed to mention is that I sent at right at 60 bags home with Mom for my sister's family, and I probably threw at least 50 bags, if not more.
The clothes that are still here are either going to be sold, worn, or put away for Bugster to go through to see, if she wants any when she has little ones of her own. They've been sorted according to size, folded and neatly put in some of the rubber totes that I emptied out and scrubbed with bleach. The totes will be stored in the garage inside large plastic bags, so there's absolutely no chance of bugs, mice or dust getting them dirty, so they'll take up a little bit of that free space we opened up.
What won't be taking up the free space is paperwork. After I dusted 2 dozen or so boxes of paperwork in the garage and brought them into the kitchen, Mom wiped them all off with a bleach-soaked cloth to disinfect them. Then she stacked them all neatly in the study for me to sort through. I started on them today.
I got through one box fairly quickly. It was full of proofs of purchases for items I was going to send in for rebates or special offers. There were soup labels, yogurt lids, cereal box tops, and the cardboard pieces that are torn away on boxes of tissues, so the contents of the box are accessible. The box was full to the top, and 99.9% of it went in the trash or in the shredables. And as tempting as it was to save the soup labels and cereal box tops for the local schools to send in for credit, I allowed myself to throw them away. To let go.
Then I started on the next box. It's a hard box to sort through. There's a lot in there I need to save. The medical records from many of the visits back and forth to Virginia are in the box, as well as the results of Bugster's genetic testing we had done 20 years ago. She's going to need that in the next few years, so I'm glad I came across it.
I'm about halfway through the box and I'd like to finish it before I go to bed, but I'm okay with it, if I don't get it finished up until tomorrow.
I can feel a caravan of Mack trucks lining up to run me down.
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