A Story On a Bottle

Recently I found an old pill bottle in my dresser drawer with a small, broken, red and blue bead necklace inside. On the outside was a story.

Payless Drug Store

Methergine

12/18/78

Dr Patchin

Payless at Mall 205 is now a Home Depot. I had no idea what Methergine was. The doctor’s name was only vaguely familiar – possibly a partner of my OB/GYN, Dr Harsany…. Yes, Peterson, Patchin and Harsany. I had no doubt about the date.

I looked up Methergine:

Ergonovine and methylergonovine belong to the group of medicines known as ergot alkaloids. These medicines are usually given to stop excessive bleeding that sometimes occurs after a baby is delivered. They work by causing the muscle of the uterus to contract.

That I do remember.

Andrea was born December 4, 1978, with lots of strawberry blond hair and, using my motherly methods, I could tell she had blue eyes. Bob’s mom had come to watch the kids while I was in the hospital for five days and Bob was at work. She left, I think, the day after I came home from my third of four, once-every-two-and-a-half-to-three-years, C-Section. December 18th was the day before Aaron’s birthday. It had been painful - almost impossible - to walk much for quite a while before the delivery and we still were not ready for Christmas. By then it was only seven days away. We went shopping.

After supper, we took our 5 ½-year-old Alyssa, our almost 3-year-old Aaron and our two-week-old Andrea with us. In the 20/20 vision of hindsight, this was not the best thing for me to do two weeks after my latest bikini-cut. The surgery was healing just fine. However, all of the walking disturbed my insides. On my way home I began to have excessive postpartum bleeding – so much so that we ended up in the Emergency Room back in the brand new Portland Adventist Hospital. They told me to go home, take the pills and rest.

The next day was Tuesday, December 19, 1978 – Aaron’s third birthday. I definitely remember this day. I remember that I explained to a disappointed Aaron that I was not able to make his birthday cake but we would go to Safeway and buy one – and he could pick it out. I’m not sure how I got to the store, but since Bob was working nights, he probably drove, with our two littlest ones strapped to the back seat of our blue VW Dasher. I’m sure Alyssa was at school in her kindergarten class.

This was a major change for me. Other than my wedding cake, I never had used a ready-made, store-bought, frosted and decorated birthday cake before. Most of all I remember Aaron’s choice. Of all the cakes they had, the particular one he wanted had huge, red, artificial poinsettia ‘flowers’ decorating it. I think I was successful in keeping him from getting a clue that this big-for-our-little-family, ¼-sheet, white frosting covered chocolate cake with large red poinsettias was a bit unusual for a three-year-old’s Birthday Cake. I still smile about it today. We then had “Aaron” added in red along with the “Happy Birthday”.

After we got home and had everything unpacked, I was in Andrea’s bedroom changing her diaper. My little Aaron was so excited about his cake. He wanted to look at it. He kept asking over and over if he could see his cake.

Whatever rationale I used, being tired from the previous evening, being postpartum, taking care of a new babe, with whatever assumed reasoning I had left, I decided he could. I didn’t ask myself why he thought he needed permission to look at something sitting on the counter. I told him, yes, Aaron, you can go to the kitchen and look at your cake all by yourself.

I will never know, one way or the other, but I don’t think it would have made any difference if I did or did not spell out exactly how he should do it. This was one strong little boy – both in will and body – and he was a thinker. It hadn’t occurred to me that it was in a box and he couldn’t just go in and look at it. I thought that at the most he might get a near-by kitchen chair so he could climb up and get a good look.

The next thing I knew I heard something come crashing down from the direction of the kitchen. Aaron started crying. When I got to my little kitchen, there was the cake – on the floor, beyond pretty.

His idea of ‘looking’ was to reach up from where he was standing in front of the cupboard it sat upon, grab the box from the counter and lower it to his newly-three-year-old level. He later told me couldn’t see it because of the box so he wanted to hold it. It was mostly still in the box but crumpled chocolate cake and bright white frosting decorated the floor. We salvaged enough for candles. After all, when you turn three, you need a cake for your birthday.

I kept the poinsettias. Not too long ago I found just the flowers from some artificial poinsettias and wondered why in the world I kept them... now I think I know.

Time Travel Via E-Mail

I had the strangest thing happen tonight. I have had problems with my computer so I rolled it back a week.

When it was finally back up, I discovered this message from my yet to be born first child letting everyone know about my recently arrived sixth grandchild.


-----Original Message-----
From: Alyssa ………..
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 1970 7:13 AM
To: ………………..
Subject: It's a Boy!

Come see my handsome new nephew...
http://ernstopia.blogspot.com/ --
Blessings, Alyssa
*****************************
Tuesday, January 6, 1970, 7:13 AM.

If this was central time, I would have two minutes to get to my desk in the Personnel building at Eglin AFB, a Systems Command Air Force Base near Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Five weeks and two days, my husband and I will pack up and ship our earthly possessions and our 1969 Austin America (our first and last new car) would be filled and ready to drive out the gate to go out into the big unknown world.

I would grab my coffee cup, checking to make sure nothing was hiding in it then go across the hall and wait for the red light to come on indicating the coffee was done and we had to get to work. I would check off my ‘Short’ calendar – thirty-six more days and a wake up. In the next few weeks I would finish buying every McCormick’s spice I can find at the Commissary. Thirty-seven years later, I probably still have a couple in my spice drawer (contents replaced, though.)

Some time this morning I would walk over to the BX (Base Exchange) and meet Bob to pick up mail. He might pick me up for lunch since we would often go out to a bayou to eat. At 1515 we would go back to our duplex, jumping through the front door to avoid the scorpions that lived above it, then change into something more comfortable.

Dinner could be a lovely yellow meal - mac & cheese, corn and cornbread muffins or something quick out of my Cooking for Two cookbook. We might take a walk with the neighbor's Irish setter who loved to catch things we threw out in the water even when it was cold (Florida cold).

If I knew then what I know now, I would not turn in my wonderfully soft, blue Air Force blanket and I would not sell all of my uniforms to ‘Ma’.

I would take more photos – lots and lots more photos. Photos of the different places we lived, places on the base, the little beach we would walk to a couple of blocks from our duplex, the beach – the sugar-white sand and the teal blue water.

I would also learn how to change the film in Bob’s camera. That may have prevented not having one photo from the time we left New York until we arrived in Tacoma six weeks later. He thought I was changing the rolls and I thought he was. It turned out that the film didn’t catch when he changed it just before we left East Patchogue.

We clicked and wound and clicked and wound as much as we wanted and not one of those clicks did anything. We lost the photos of his cousins, uncles and aunts in Akron and Indianapolis; the blizzard in Iowa City Iowa, amazingly rugged cliffs in Wyoming, slots in the restroom in Elko?, Nevada, shots of Alcatraz , Sharon, my best friend from high school, the Siskiyou mountains and all that in between.

I would look in the mirror and really see how much in shape I am.

I would get to know Bob’s relatives better that we visited on our trip. I didn’t know that we would not be back to see most of them.

I would try to sell our foot-long Plecostomus instead of crowding it into a one-gallon tank and carrying it thousands of miles cross country.

Most of all, I would try to live more in the moment and not be quite so concerned about the “What if….s” that often kept me from saying “Yes!”

Nighty Night on NW 22nd

I spent Thursday night one block from NW 23rd, the trendiest area in Portland where it is next to impossible to get a good parking spot. Unfortunately, I arrived a bit before 8 p.m. and was home before 9:30 the next morning. So much for shopping....

Almost anyone who knows me also knows that I am always tired. Even when I was young and lived in the barracks in the late 1960’s I would often come home from work and take a nap – and it wasn’t always because I had been out until 2 in the morning. A few weeks ago I went to Dr. Blessing about several things and he decided I need to have a sleep study done. It had been suggested before by someone else I had seen but with Dr. Blessing it wasn’t a suggestion. He made arrangements for me to be seen before I left the office.

I went to see Dr. Fromherz, the sleep specialist, and after a long question and answer time and reading the questionnaire I had filled out at home he scheduled me for a night’s sleep study. Thursday night was the night.

It was quite an experience. Two other women were also there. One was expecting her first-born in April and the other was probably about my age. We were each sent to our rooms and a technician explained the process. Since my ‘normal’ bed time was the latest, I was wired up last. They gave me some juice and popcorn and I had a TV in my windowless room to watch while I waited. The bed was adjustable but that wasn’t very comfortable even for watching TV. Next to the TV was an infrared camera focused down to tape and watch me through the night.

Hooking us up took at least 20 minutes each. They first marked me with a non-permanent red felt pen then they began attaching the wires. I had wires taped on my neck, my chest, my face, my legs, gelled onto my head and one that glowed red was slipped on one of my fingers – shades of ET phone home. All these wires were plugged into a terminal that hung around my neck until bed time. I was so cute. I thought of bringing my camera but didn’t. What a missed photo opp!

A bit before 11 they came in to hook it all up to the computer. It wouldn’t read all of the connections so they spent quite a while trying to fix that. They had already unplugged the heating pad I use on my shoulder every night because they knew that would cause a problem. They finally discovered the lamp that was usually on the other side of the bed was causing the problem. Lights were out and I tried to snuggle on my pillow. That wasn’t really possible since the head where all of the wires connected was tucked under it. They wanted me to lie on my back and really had no choice.

After the lights were finally out again I had to do some testing – move my eyes up and down, side to side, breath, hold my breath, curl my toes and a few more. I hadn’t taken my wake-up pills for a couple of days so I was very tired. It wasn’t hard to get to sleep. I did wake up a couple of times during the night. I thought about making a trip to the bathroom but I would have had to wake up enough to find the button to call my tech so she could come and unhook me.

Before I knew it, it was 7 in the morning and they were waking me up. She took all of the wires off and I went to see myself in the mirror. Pretty – not! Red marks from the felt pen and red marks from where the tape had been on my neck decorated me. My hair, well, it had been gelled with stuff and I didn’t fully comprehend it. I was too slow, or so I thought, to take a shower before I came home so tried brushing it the best I could.

By that time, the doc was in to see me with some preliminary results. He showed me some of the graphs that had been produced during the night. He said that I was fine for an hour here and there but the rest of the time my breathing slowed way down and occasionally stopped. This was on an average of once a minute for about 30 seconds at a time. I didn’t really snore very often and that wasn’t the problem.



The chart is 5 minutes worth from the polysomnogram. On the bottom you can see the SAO2 which is the oxygen level. It should be in the high 90's but it slips down below 90 when my breathing slows down. You can see all of the things they had me wired for. The arrows point to where things slow down.

I do have Sleep Apnea, with apneas (when breathing stops) and hypopneas (when it slows down) and will have to come back to be fitted for a CPAP which helps keep you breathing. Under some circumstances they do that the first time you come but that didn’t happen. I am also going to be checked to see if I need something done to enlarge my upper nasal passages that would make it more effective.

I came home, planning to hop into the shower but I was too tired. Andrea came over and let us know the baby is breach and that they will try to turn h/she Sunday Morning. It was then time to take Bob to get zapped. I had forgotten about the gel in my hair and was so tired I didn’t really care. He started chuckling on our way to the radiation lab and said, “Do you remember the movie, “There’s Something About Mary?””

The Ant Time of the Year... or month or day

We've had ant problems in this house for longer than I can remember. It got much worse when we had the sewer put in. This morning Bob was noticing more ants on the right side of the sink than usual. He moved the coffee-maker and discovered a repeat of Alyssa's computer hub infestation (pictured at right).

Hundreds of the buggers were outside, under and inside the coffee pot. The fact that it is black made their presence more difficult to discover. By the time I got involved there was a definite dead-ant odor at the sink. I took over shaking them out and finally took it to the utility sink in the back porch. There was a little puddle where I had set it down. When I went back to look at it a bit later there was at least 50 ants floating in the puddle. I've drained it a few times and each time there are a lot more.

Those little dots in the picture from the utility sink are a few of the ants. Tiny, prolific, irritating ants. Our auxiliary nest just might need to be replaced since there aren't any screws that will allow us to open it up to clean it out.

Addendum... The pot is gone. There was no way to open it up so we could destroy the ants. There was a screw that held the whole thing together but we didn't have a screwdriver that would fit. As I began trying to pry open the bottom to see what we could see it smelled 'anty' - not the way breakfast is supposed to smell. Bacon, now that wouldn't be bad but odorous ant - ugh.

I finally got the bottom off by taking the small hammer Bob has had since he was a kid and whacked at the plastic around the screw. I could then pull off the bottom. Outside some more ants, it was surprisingly empty. I expected to see some sort of debris like I've seen in ant-hills outside. There were still some ants in there but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a cavity I couldn't get to where they were more entrenched. I thought I saw one ant with an egg but, unless there was some place where there was the normal nest, I not so sure now.

I ended up turning the hot water on and filled the pot and the sink with hot water. Hopefully we have eliminated one cozy ant home.

It looks like we will need something else to use to make coffee in. We had been a bit frustrated with this one. Bob had made comments just this past week about how he didn't like it. I couldn't easily see the filled mark and overfilled it a couple of times and it didn't have the capacity to pull the pot out and pour a cup while it was dripping. It did make good coffee, though, had an insulated carafe and fit under our low upper cupboards.

Happy V Day

I had a fun time with grandkids today. Bob has about an hour or two before and about a two hour window after he has his radiation treatment until he starts feeling lousy again so anything that keeps him away from home longer than that just doesn't happen. I dropped Valentines off for Becca and Alexis yesterday but they were napping so I missed seeing them.

Today after our trip to get Bob glowing, I drove out to the Ernst abode. The fog/low clouds were still hanging on when I got there so I knew I didn't want to be out there with no street-lights after dark. It was fun getting hugs from Zander and Natalie. She sat on my lap for quite a while and wanted me to "tell me stories about when _____ was little" as usual. She is sweet and consistent. I sometimes think that story-telling is a dying art but I think she may single-handedly keep it alive. We had gotten the kids little boxes of sweets. After chomping through one piece, they wanted to taste each others' and then wanted to share them with me.

Alyssa gave us one of her cookie-hearts. I just realized that I forgot it in my purse when I got home so I guess we'll have to share tomorrow. After a bit and a couple of "I'm hungry"s Alyssa got out her cookie cutters and sandwich fixings. She cut hearts out of bread and spread them with raspberry-cream-cheese (MMMMMM! good), topped that with raspberry jam which was then capped off with another bread-heart with a little heart hole cut into the middle so the pink/red inside could peek through. She made enough for everyone, but the eating came after photos for her blog. What fun she has with her bloggin.

Hayden was napping until just before I had to leave. He takes a while to wake up but I did get a smile out of him before I left. I took pictures (of course) but am about ready to crawl to bed now so they will have to wait.

On the way home I stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up some things for Bob. All of those things we are supposed to avoid were in my basket: white bread, Velveeta, 'white' macaroni.... You get the picture. All of the things you are 'supposed' to eat are to be avoided: whole grain anything, fresh fruit and vegetables, any thing in the cabbage/broccoli family, nuts, most milk products except for yogurt and buttermilk and Velveeta since they don't have lactose. He never has liked white bread.

When I finally got home he had already fixed some leftovers for himself. I made myself an open-faced toasted Velveeta sandwich in the toaster-oven... memories of childhood. We didn't have a toaster until I was in high-school or later. Mother made toast in the oven by toasting it under the broiler and Velveeta was the only yellow cheese I remember. The other cheese was Gjetost which is made from goat's milk whey. It probably would have tasted better with whole-grain bread like I had growing up but I went with what I used to consider to be the ultimate treat - store-bought sliced white bread. You toast the bread with the Velveeta slices on it and finish it by broiling it until the cheese bubbles up and browns a bit. It sticks to your teeth and probably doesn't appeal to many but I made myself a second one before I was done.

It wasn't the "Valentine's Day" one would necessarily dream of but it was a good day.