Well, it’s finally sunny, and warmer, too. I was hoping the weather would clear up, since we’re getting a visit this evening from the wonderful Brian (also known as fabulous Candi’s fianc?), who has a few hours to kill before his late-night flight home to his sweetie. I always feel bad when people visit and it’s raining and/or cold. So hopefully it will stay clear until sometime after midnight. Seeing Brian will be the most fun we’ve had all week!
It’s been raining the past couple of days. If I could control the weather, I’d only have it rain when most of us were asleep — say, between the hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. Seems completely reasonable to me, but I’m sure it wouldn’t seem that way to confirmed night owls.
It was raining hard enough that I took the bus in to work this morning. Every time I take the bus, I remember why I stopped taking it in the first place. The waiting. The stinkiness. The crowdedness. The boring conversations. The breathtaking rudeness of one’s fellow passengers. Note to self: walk or take a cab.
Yesterday, I had about an inch and a half cut off my hair. Good-bye, trailer trash split ends! I hadn’t had my hair cut since June, so I had to fill Mauro in on all my bad news. He was really sweet — he lost his own father a couple of years ago, so he understood and just gave me a big hug.
Mauro, on the other hand, had wonderful news. He’s getting married next year! The last time I saw him, he was bubbling over about his new girlfriend, a fellow (sister?) Brazilian named Juliani. He’s dated a *lot*, and even then I thought “This one’s different.” And so it is. Of course, since it’s Mauro, there is a tiny bit of scandalousness attached to his getting engaged to a lovely, church-going girl. She’s 20 years younger than he is. Despite my mother’s disastrous second marriage to a guy half her age, and Hollywood grandfathers teetering on the edge of the grave fathering children, I do think that in some cases it’s the person and not the age. I hope these two have a lifetime of happiness ahead of them.
Well, yesterday was a horrible day. My stepmother sent in a formal complaint to St. George’s Hospital, where my father died, and so did my sister Beth. The gist of the complaints is that we feel their neglect and incompetence led to Dad’s death. The hospital finally got back to my stepmother with a “we’re sorry, but we’re covering our asses” letter. She wrote back, dissecting each point that she had asked for a response on originally. She faxed me these letters yesterday, and while I understand she wants to keep me in the loop, reading them was a nightmare, especially when you’re at work.
My feeling is, we should just give up on the whole thing. Beth has talked to a lawyer about bringing a wrongful death suit, and the lawyer said we’d probably win, but it would take a fair amount of time and money. It seems to me that if we keep fighting this, the people it will really hurt is us. We’ll have it in our faces all the time, re-living the pain and the horrible details, and I think it would better for our mental and emotional well-being to let it go. Nothing can bring him back.
In addition to this, my mother was absolutely hysterical yesterday. She has placed one of her two foster children with another family. The other one is doing 90 days for assaulting Mom with a deadly weapon. She’s OK and since he’s 15, he’s in juvenile detention instead of real jail. But obviously he can’t live with Mom once he gets out. So she has agreed to give them both back to the foster care system, which has a home arranged for the one who is now in jail. The other one can stay with the family he’s currently living with. Sounds good, right?
Well, the boys’ birth mother, who gave them up years ago, came over to Mom’s place with her current girlfriend and demanded the boys’ belongings. Mom thought she should hand them over to foster care instead, since the kids don’t live with their birth mother, and she has no legal right to them or their things. While this argument was going on, one of Mom’s cats got out of the house, and was killed by a coyote. Mom found the remains yesterday morning.
The same day, she got a $300 phone bill because the kid in jail had been calling people in Korea (he was playing some kind of videogame with them). Mom just lost it. I bought Megan a plane ticket, and she’s heading to Mom’s this afternoon. Jonathan located a lawyer in Mom’s neighborhood and set up an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. At this appointment, we will: get power of attorney, so we can straighten out Mom’s tangled finances and put her on a budget; get a new will drawn up (her ex-husband is still listed as her executor, and I feel sure that if something happened, he would somehow manage to get everything); and find out what we can do about getting Mom’s ex to pay up. The court ordered him to pay interim support, and he hasn’t. Mom gets $700 a month in welfare, and $250 from our godmother. If she didn’t have that $250, she’d be penniless after paying for rent, PG&E and her car (trust me, the car is a necessity). It just amazes me that the state expects anyone to live on that, and there is apparently no other source of support for a 70 year old woman who has never worked.
I know it’s really bad that I haven’t had a check-up, including a Pap test, in three years. Basically, since I no longer need a birth control prescription, I don’t go. My niece, on the other hand, at the wise old age of 19, had an appointment scheduled today for her very first Pap test. She lives in England. Here’s her e-mail to me describing what happened:
“You won’t believe this. I went to see the nurse today for my Pap test and she said she wouldn’t give me one because I’m too young. She said that I have to be 21 to have a Pap test and that when I’m due for it I’ll get a letter in the mail. You are basically only allowed a test if you’ve had the letter or you’ve been referred by your doctor because you’ve had some unusual discharge, etc. She also said you’re only allowed to have them every three years.”
Now, here’s a young woman who is trying to take care of herself and is being refused care by the national healthcare system (NHS). Apparently they are unaware that cervical cancer is a young woman’s disease — I know two women who got it, and they both got it before the age of 25. They both also discovered it through, you guessed it, their annual Pap test. And both women had it treated immediately, and years later, have no recurring symptoms. The American Cancer Society suggests that a woman start getting Pap tests at the age of 18, or upon becoming sexually active, whatever comes first. They further recommend that everyone, including me, get a Pap test once a year.
My sister Beth, who is my niece’s mother, asked her doctor about getting a mammogram when Beth was 37. That year, our mother had a radical mastectomy, and gave all three of her daughters the medical records, so Beth brought them with her when she met with her doctor. Her doctor told her that she couldn’t get a mammogram before the age of 50, no matter what her family history was. Compare that to what happened to me. I was 35 at the time. I went to my doctor with the same medical records, and she scheduled a mammogram for me that week. She said the guidelines in the US recommend getting a baseline mammogram before the age of 40, and having them every 1-2 years until the age of 50, when they should become annual. Given how bad my mother’s cancer was my doctor felt it was wiser to err on the side of caution, and I’m thankful for that. By the way…my Mom’s fine and has even finished her chemotherapy.
It just blows my mind that all English women, including my sister, are getting this kind of misinformation and poor medical treatment. Come to think of it, my niece’s boyfriend’s mother died of cervical cancer before the age of 40. Someone should get the message to these women that the English healthcare system is completely unacceptable. But what can they do, since the healthcare system is government-run?
It’s been too depressing inside and outside to update this for the past few days. All tragedy and no comedy makes for a boring little blog, n’est-ce pas?
It’s been pouring ever since Friday afternoon. Our (fortunately hilly) street looks like a young river, with the water rushing down it faster than the cars, and the area outside our building’s basement is flooded. The power has been out for two days where my brother and sister live, so everyone’s been congregating chez Jonathan, because he has a generator. I can imagine them all sitting by the fire, playing cards and listening to my old Atwater Kent radio. They could be living 50 years ago.
Here the wind is howling outside, so strong that there are warnings about crossing the bridges. There are high surf advisories, too, and the rain just keeps on coming. It’s dark all day, so we have just curled up with the cats and watched Stephen King miniseries. Yesterday, it was the appropriate Storm of the Century and today, The Stand is our scheduled matin?e. It’s probably an upopular view, but I’d rather have this Charles Addams type of weather (the caption to this cartoon is “Just the kind of day that makes you feel good to be alive”) when it’s the weekend and going out into the elements is optional. I hate being at work all day in storm-tossed attire. Damp nylons are especially unenjoyable. So I hope the storm goes to spread the wealth somewhere else by tomorrow morning. In the meantime, it’s showtime!
