July and October reports...and in December, the end of this era

[kaoden39]

Molly, I am so sorry that she is treating you like this. I was just saying to Scotty yesterday that if I was told thank you by my daughter Kacy or my mom I would be in shock. Kacy had the nerve to complain to me the other day because someone didn't thank her. I told her off, I told her that I felt that she was one to talk. I take her to school and to work. I am not asked, I am expected to just do it. My mom doesn't ask either. She will tell me "we have to go...." or "we have to...." I feel your pain. And temple is such a big thing and my feelings would be hurt. I am glad to hear that Robert and his brother stepped in. I never let Scotty step in because I know that in the long run I will bear the brunt.


I think your dinner sounded wonderful!

 

[bumbershoot]

She thanks me when she doesn't feel well. But when she feels better it's back to normal. I just need to keep those thank-yous in my mind and KNOW that she is grateful.

Not sure if you could tell , but I was really overwhelmed the last few days! I got some good sleep last night and feel umpteen times better today. Made even better by not having to go to the home health visit today.

Just a couple days ago it really seemed like assisted living was the way to go, but when I get some sleep I can't define what it would do for her. I wish she'd start dating and maybe have someone there at night, wink wink; when I was there for her stroke/ministroke/TIA when she was actually at the hospital, just having someone there to tell her who she is and where she is, etc, helped her tremendously. I think having someone there right there with her would be good. But that's not even the case with assisted living, or even a nursing home, because you still have to hit that call button. Heck, right there in the hospital we hit that call button and the nurse arrived just as it lifted and she was better (sobbing, but better). If only dating after widowhood was allowed in Korean culture! (or at least in her family's culture)

 

[6Smiles]

Molly -

I'm so sorry you have to go through all of this and for the way you are being treated. Kudos to your husband and brother-in-law for stepping in. The human brain is one of the biggest unknowns in the human body and so many conditions have similarities to other conditions. I hope and pray that things start getting better sooner than later.

Here's a flower to help brighten your day!

Kris

 

[bumbershoot]

Thank you Kris!

 

[bumbershoot]

Not sure what I was going for here.

Breakfast at Tomorrowland Terrace.

From afar:

 

[kaoden39]

It will get better Molly. When I had my stroke I was in ICU, my nurse I had didn't realize that I had the stroke. Unfortunately it wasn't until the next shift that they noticed. So even in the best circumstances (or worse depending on your view point) there is no fool proof way to have someone see it all the time.

Wow! They sure give you a lot of fruit on the fruit plate don't they? That looks so amazing to me right now.

 

[bumbershoot]

It will get better Molly. When I had my stroke I was in ICU, my nurse I had didn't realize that I had the stroke. Unfortunately it wasn't until the next shift that they noticed.

Wow. How did they figure it out? Did you know it at the time?

I think MIL has forgotten the one I witnessed. She's saying "uh huh" when I talk about it, but she gets a look when she's not telling the truth....



Got two ambulance bills and I'm dealing with them. Even though Robert watched them copy down the insurance card info the first time, and I watched them the second time, they magically have NO insurance info. Also, for one trip they went 3 miles and for the other trip they went 2. From the same place TO the same place. Amazing, eh?


ETA: got off the phone with her home health nurse. Even SHE doesn't know if MIL should change her living situation. The doctor requested that a social worker be sent to assess the situation. Sigh. THIS part is not my decision, though. It's a decision of her children. Unfortunately, with Robert being the POA, he has more say in it than the others, and that brings us right back to me being involved.

 

[kaoden39]

I was so doped up I lost nearly a month and that was during that month. I had a nurse that was really on the ball and she noticed that I looked different. Scotty was there and she called the Dr right away. Had they caught it right away they may have been able to fix the damage.

Are the strokes affecting her mobility at all?

 

[bumbershoot]

Oh, major hugs for you!



They aren't affecting her body at all, except for in the moment. So far they are just hitting her memories. It's all very weird! And since they aren't affecting her body after the fact, they are considered mild and mini...which I don't think she appreciates, LOL. But I know that if she really considered the alternative of what it *could* be doing to her body, she wouldn't feel that way.

I think I'm going to order Rosetta Stone to learn Korean. This whole communicating in a language she doesn't use clearly thing is making me crazy. If only she believed in teaching kids Korean, Eamon could have been fluent by now, and HE could be the translator! As it is, no one is ever sure what her answers to complicated questions are.


(which makes it hard to tell if she just doesn't understand the question OR thinks she's answering it just fine but WE are mixing it up, OR if she doesn't remember...since a social worker might be evaluating her, getting GOOD communication going is vital! so at her next dr visit she IS getting a translator there)

 

[Sherry E]

Molly -

I'm amazed that, given all of the stress you're dealing with, you still find time to post photos!

I love the little popcorn-turning dude! I also love that fruit plate! What a bounty of fruit!

The picture of E and Pluto is adorable.

When you rode Autopia, were other cars breaking down around you? That seemed to be the 'thing' a while back - cars stalling in the middle of the track/road. At first I wondered if it was suddenly part of the ride! Disney has a way of making anything seem fun - even a car stalling! But then the CM's would have to come out and get it going, so that theory was shot down!

 

[kaoden39]

The Rosetta Stone sounds like a good idea. I am all for teaching a child a second language. They are little sponges for languages.

 

[bumbershoot]

Sherry, today I was on the Dis, fielding phone calls from pharmacists, home health nurses, the doctor's office...making phone calls to the ambulance company, etc etc etc. The photos are my little respite. Yesterday I was so stressed out while at the hospital that I asked to see the care manager for myself, to calm me down! (not in her room, of course)

This time the responsibility has been almost all on me, and I'm feeling (no one thinks this but me) like it's all on me, like one false move and it's all over, like every decision I make it HUGE. The reality is that I'm just the one *there*, and that no one feels that I'm messing up (I *feel* like I am, like I'm missing something...apparently I think that I have some knowledge that no one else in 4 hospital systems has? that I am Dr House? ) and I just need to STOP it... But yesterday I was having a really seriously major hard time with it! So it's my respite.

Michele, if only she felt that way. Now she has two sons who can communicate with her in basic ways* and a daughter who lost any Korean she had. A grandson that doesn't know the language at all, and a DIL who is so fed up with the communication that she's about to just learn it!

*the oldest was born in Korea and lived there for 9 years, so it's sort of hard-wired into his brain. his grandmother basically raised him until moving here, so the language is actually from her. With the younger two, she spoke Konglish, a combo of languages, so that as kids no one was fully fluent in ANYTHING. Robert's English skills have improved since we started dating! At 28 when I met him he was still, really, not totally fluent in English. Which is really wild, when you consider that he was schooled almost entirely in the US, and his schooling outside the US was at an American missionary school where they ONLY spoke English apart from the Chinese language class.

But she and her husband were too-old-school, and thought that learning two languages as a child did nothing but CONFUSE them. Which is weird, because SHE was taught Japanese as a child (no choice, living in an occupied country), and still remembers it. So if anyone would know about learning a language as a child it's her, but I doubt she has EVER put those two things together...


that was a long "PS".

 

[kaoden39]

My maternal grandma spoke only German when she started school because they spoke no English in her home. She was so embarrassed because other kids made fun of her and she refused to ever speak German again. My mom's grandma on her dads side reverted to German as she got older and would only speak German. I am afraid that is what your mother in law is going to do. Maybe you and E could do the Rosetta Stone together, it would make learning easier I am sure if you have someone to study with.


On a side note Loren's bff is Hispanic and his grandma and grandpa would not let their kids learn Spanish. It was an embarrassment for Belen because like my grandma she spoke no English when she started school. She refused to let her children speak anything other than English. Also this gave her a way to talk privately with her husband. It's funny how life changes because the grandson she is raising is taking Spanish becajuse she made him.

 

[bumbershoot]

That was really interesting, Michele! Isn't it amazing how strong feelings about language can be?

My half-sibs grew up in a school district with a LOT of kids of migrant workers (Santa Cruz...of course you know where that is, LOL). Not only do they have ESL classes galore, but they have a very tolerant policy for kids who don't know English yet, and they even have a very long December break, so the families can go home to Mexico to visit family. I *love* the school district for being so open-minded. And it's GOT to make it so much easier on the kids, who might not know English when they get here, but can so relatively easily learn it, while not being shamed during the process.

If MIL had put huge efforts into becoming fluent, it could be more easily "forgiven" (that's not really the word I'm going for, so soften that word in your head when you read it), that she didn't teach the kids to be fluent in Korean. But she just never did.

And we, too, are worried that she's going to lose all English. It's happened 3/5 times so far with the strokes. No, 4/5 times. If one of those clots or bits of plaque hits the area where English is stored, it's not going to be good. Sigh.

Now they are talking about upping the warfarin dose, since it really freaks them out that she had two more strokes while in the right "INR" range.

 

[bumbershoot]

I'll talk a little about where we ate at this point in our story.


I'd already talked about the French Market on the 29th (there was starbucks that morning after weigh-in).

The evening of the 29th is when we tried to get the order of coffee going for the 30th, and even though they had to do a rush order, we did have that. Then the TTerrace breakfast.

By 1:15 that day we were heading to the hotel, which I know because I see a Haagen Dasz receipt. Mmmmm.

I believe there was some swimming, and then we decided to go out to dinner (and to Vons). We chose Souplantation, which is related to Sweet Tomatoes where we always go at WDW. Relatively fresh and "healthy" food, it's a buffet, you can make good choices there. Tasty goodness. However, the travel, the heat, etc, all caused poor E to get a headache the instant we got in the car to go to dinner. At that point all you can do is get good food and lots of water into him, along with lots of hugs, so that's what we did. Then we had a quick stop at Vons and then back to the hotel to rest and relax.

This time we put out the door-tag for coffee (no soymilk for E b/c he didn't like it, and we'd gotten little boxes of almond milk instead) AND called them to let them know we'd done that. This was WELL before midnight, I mean a couple hours before.

As we did every night, we tucked our wee boy into bed, got him all cozy with his stuffed critters, turned the lights and music on, hugged and kissed him more, and he was out like a light. And so were we! It was a sleepy trip that's for sure!

 

[bumbershoot]

October 1.

We had ordered coffee to be delivered inside a time period of 6:30-7, I believe. It was delivered at 6. Dragging us out of sleep 25 minutes too early. UGH.


It was still good, though. Headed over to DCA, and Robert convinced me to go out the back/side of our tower and to go through the Grand, even though we were going to enter via the main gates. Seemed to work OK!

I don't know why, but I always take pictures of this. Each time it surprises me how easy it is to find this hallway.

E allowed me to style his hair today. Yay!

The line to the right of our line had very obvious red lights around the sign. But people just kept lining up there. By the time it got a bit far back, of course, people just thought it was the right line. Never looking UP. On this day there was no one getting in ahead of time, which was annoying, and then our line was ridiculously slow, which was MORE annoying, and then people who had, all on their own, lined up at a RED light entrance, decided that they had the right to be in front of us. People who had gotten into line AFTER us. It really peeved me.

So look for the GREEN lights!


After RSR's SR line once or twice, Robert got to ride Luigi's.

And then we tackled the padding-free Mater.

No padding:

Eamon sitting WAY forward to as to take no chances.

When we left Carsland, we saw the "backside" of rope drop coming down the street. A bazillion people slowly walking behind a rope carried by the CMs. It was weird to see, that's for sure.


Breakfast at the wharf. A bacon-less boule, and evil-ness on a croissant. This order was not a problem. Today.

From there we did various things, but no TSMM. That ride was not ridden on this trip, because there were so many other things pulling us away, and/or it was just too hot to think about being in the ride.

There was a request to play some games in order to win a prize, so we conferred, figured out what Eamon did not yet have, figured out what he didn't have BUT could NOT fit in our luggage, and went for the Dumbo. Our strategy was to play the "fire ladder" game where you shoot water into a target and move the person up the ladder. This could only be played by R&E, because the same person had to win twice, and we couldn't chance someone else winning, LOL. So we waited until there was no one around, did two quick games, Eamon won both times (the second time he won righteously), and when she went to give him the second little mouse from Dumbo she asked if he wanted to trade up (trade two little prizes for one medium at that game...it's all spelled out on the sign for each game) and he did. And so he got a Dumbo stuffie.

Realized he'd left his sunglasses at home (he thought he was putting them into the "staging area" for packing, but I don't know why he thought that spot was being used) so E got yet another pair of sunglasses and I got yet another tiny park bag (shoulder bag or even waist pack with California Adventure ALL over it).

About this time we deflated! We went on Ariel's on the way out, but that's what we did...went out. Maybe we swam. Probably we rested. Then later we went back to Trader Joes for more water, and I don't have records of what we had for dinner.

This time Dumbo got the primo sleeping position in E's arms. A dream is a wish your heart makes......

 

[bumbershoot]

Showed that picture to Eamon (of the bread-bowl-of-eggs) and he moaned about how I was torturing him. Showed it to Robert via gchat, and he did this: because we only got a week of peace before this happened with his mom again.

And I should mention that Eamon didn't really like that song when sung, the dream-is-a-wish one, because he has some SCARY dreams sometimes, and doesn't mean to wish them!

Good night for now. I'm wiped out.

 

[bumbershoot]

More pictures...

While shopping for the sunglasses etc, I found these fun boxes of candy. Disney has made some extremely recent kid's menu changes in the interest of better "options" for children. Those changes were not good for E. But if they are making changes, I wish they would make their candy less crud-filled. None of these boxes contained anything that my family could eat; either gelatin, colors, or corn syrup based sweeteners. Bummer. But cute boxes.

This is how we found E's stuffed buddies when we got back. Notice Scabbers up there. Actually Eamon calls him Max, because how can you explain him (Eamon as Ron) having Scabbers still?

You can see the "fireworks" even in the daytime.

We went outside for some reason that evening, as I caught this one semi-decent (compared to the others I took) picture of the little waterfall area outside Frontier tower.

Oh, yes, we went to get the little trivia challenge papers. One was a photo challenge, and the other was trivia about Small World.

We wandered around the hotel and giftshop, me and the kidlet. Robert was either needing to work, or he wasn't feeling terrific by then.

 

[bumbershoot]

October 2. Late start.

Just me and E today. Robert wasn't feeling well. Breakfast of champions (well, we'd had snacks at the room much earlier) at the Jolly Holiday. They have a terrific binder consisting of lists of ingredients (not women, LOL). And at least for this item, instead of one big long list, they copied the ingredient info bits (literally put it in a copier) for each part of the cookie. Helpful. And they brought it out very quickly and happily! Therefore, we knew that this was OK.

So...it was HOT that day. It had been sickeningly hot the day before (I remember only seeing 102, but wunderground says it was 105 that day, which explains the early quitting on the 1st), but 96 isn't that far off. We were so hot.

Since the heat wasn't letting up, we experimented with face-painting at the Dia de los Muertos face-painting station. (was I supposed to tip them?)

Went on Big Thunder without FPs, but it was a shortish line.

Went back to the Halloween Festival, or whatever it's called. Randomly ran into...

I'm not sure if you can see the heat waves in these pictures, but if you can't, mentally put them in there. It was SO hot back there. I mean, sick and wrong. I'm not sure either of us was having fun, really.

Weird, random little games.

Fun music. They did Devil went down to Georgia.

 

[bumbershoot]

Had a little drama that day, as Eamon lost his sunglasses. At breakfast. We had gotten all the way over to some other far away ride, when we realized they were gone. We retraced steps, and maybe I was having a quiet tantrum, since this was his 5th pair that he had lost. Replacing sunglasses was getting annoying and expensive.

Got all the way back to Jolly Holiday (this is before we did anything but eating from the pictures above), and while one person said they had seen them, they weren't behind the registers or anywhere. We were sad. I was mad. E was bummed.

On the way out, I saw a janitorial CM. Totally randomly, I asked if he had seen a pair of kid's sunglasses. He went to check after getting the description. And brought them right out to us. He had seen them on the cream/sugar area (which is where another CM had seen them) and had put them in his janitorial closet area! Yay him!

So that all happened before most of the above.


E decided he wanted to meet a villain. So we waited under the one umbrella for the villain tent. Neat pumpkins.

Inside the tent.

Random villain shows up. Happened to be Cruella this time. Eamon was not impressed. I only had Photopass shots done of their meeting, so they'll be posted at a later date, but seriously, he had NO interest in being there.


Finally called it quits at the Carnival, and headed over to New Orleans Square. Decided to get a coffin popcorn bucket, and as we waited I noticed the OogieBoogieMan.

Not to mention these guys:

OH and I haven't shared with you, because they are on my phone and not my camera, the fact that by this time (around 1pm) the facepaint had come entirely off, and landed (b/c he was wiping his face with his shoulder) on E's shirt. Not a good experiment!


But because it was already off, E and I choose to ride Splash. We got the BEST ride photo, which I can't wait to share with you. I actually don't look weird, but look happy, and Eamon is hilarious. Since we had been flanked in line by two other groups of two, we were all in the same boat, which makes it almost like we were with friends. The line said 40 minutes but it was absolutely longer, as they were doing the "take 50 FP holders for every 20 standby people" method of line management that day. I normally don't complain about that, but I was getting mighty irked while standing in one place for 3 minutes at a time, just watching the FP line stream on by...and that happened throughout the line, even once we reached the spot where the lines mix.

It was fun, nevertheless.



We got some food for everyone to go, which is NOT easy to do at the parks. E's kid's mac and cheese from French Market (surprise) and Veggie Po'boys for each of the adults make for very laden hands as you make your way out of the park and to the hotel room where the Sick One has awoken with some hunger. Nevertheless, once we got there, it was tasty-goodness.

OH, and I didn't make it easier on myself, as I had gotten a Mint Julep, which I now REALLY like.


Later that day there was some swimming, there was a visit to the DLH Coffee Shop, there was a much later dinner from Tangeroa, and while at the pool there was some very serious envy of the Cabanas.


That night we ordered our coffee by phone for the next morning, setting up strong delivery time guidelines.

Dream, wish, sleep.....