Archive for the ‘ Henrietta ’ Category

The long awaited Henrietta Update


A couple of weeks ago, on the 17th, a Wednesday, I believe, Henrietta had a visit from Darnell, her P.A.. She came out to see her because I had begged asked her to since she was turning into such a shrew and cried, (multiple times), almost everyday  about… who knows what.

So Darnell shows up and visits with H for a good while. Asks her all kinds of concerned questions, listened patiently to what I’m sure felt like dozens of stories about things that happened 40 and 50 years ago, and I finally decided to rescue her and went on in H’s bedroom.

I plopped my happy ass down on the bed and we discussed all the goings on of late. H was sitting there watching and we were talking loud for her to hear. I said she needs to be on an anti-depressant and Darnell agreed, whipped out her drug book and commenced to look up the perfect concoction for H.

Lexipro. OK, great. She’s taken it before, a few years ago, and it worked just fine. So she sat there and wrote out a script for it and handed it to me. I went to great lengths to get that rascal to the pharmacy that day and John picked it up on his way home.

I took in her pills that night. One in each little pill giver cup because she insists she can only take one at a time and will drop the pill or the cup or anything else close to her if she has to dig one of the two pills out of a solitary cup to take it. So here she is with three cups instead of two. OH MY. Her eyes grow big. “Krissa, what have you done?” She’s peering into the cups and sees that there are two little white pills, (her Ativan and now her new Lexipro pill), and a little brown stool softener in the third, as per normal procedure.

“I can’t take two Ativan’s Krissa! I’d overdose!” Looks at me accusingly as if I am trying to kill her.

“No, Henrietta, this is the new pill that Darnell and I were talking with you about today.”

“Whaaaaa? What’s it for?”

“It’s an anti-depressant, remember? Because you keep crying.”

“NOOOOOOO, Krissa! I don’t need that! You tell him that I won’t take any of his drugs!”

Of course I immediately know who she is talking about, but act like she is off her rocker. Which she clearly is, by the way. Don’t think that this has escaped my attention.

“Who are you talking about, Henrietta?”

In a conspiratorial whisper, “Gilbert!”.

Oh shit, here we go.

And we did. Round and round. I finally convinced her to take the damn thing and that Darnell had prescribed it right there in front of her. She just kept saying that she thought I was getting a refill on her Ativan.

So she took it and the next evening told me that she had had a stomach ache the whole day that day and she just couldn’t take that pill. It didn’t agree with her digestion.

I have been mashing it up in her oatmeal every day since then and the difference was amazingly fast and remarkable. She has completely stopped crying and is so much nicer! She makes no bones about hearing all sorts of voices that she says are Gilbert and he is always doing things he shouldn’t but she no longer sits in her room yelling down the hall all sorts of things to Gilbert while John and I are trying to sit in there and watch a movie. For the two hours(ish) that John and I sat and watched The Blind Side the other night before the new pills were working, she sat in her room and yelled all kinds of things at Gilbert and just generally made the movie watching an unpleasant experience. No amount of visits to her room to tell her Gilbert wasn’t here and hadn’t been all day made a difference. And yes, I know what you’re thinking. I asked her to let me push her into the living room and see. Multiple times. She wouldn’t have it. And she wouldn’t shut up.

She’s still nutty as a fruitcake, but no longer is as paranoid. She’s happier and easier going.

Last Saturday I was changing the third of four shitty diapers she would have that day and, out of the blue, she said, “Krissa, does John have BM’s?”. Swear. To. God.

I was a bit stunned and waited for her to complete the sentence with something like, “on a regular basis?”, or “every day?”, or something like that. No, she just wanted to know if he has them. Period.

I said, “Henrietta, everybody has B.M.’s. They have to.”

She waved that away like it was rather unimportant and said, “Well, yeah, but he doesn’t eat, anymore.”.

So I told her that of course he ate. He’d be dead if he didn’t eat, and she just looked at me like she was trying to determine if I was lying or not.

I called John later and told him what she had asked me and he about fell over laughing. He told me I should have told her no, he stopped having them months ago.

That is something he would have definitely done. 😉

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And in the really BIG news…

Keelan has been saving money like mad and has bought her first car! It is adorable, and I got to drive home from Buffalo, Texas with her in it. She found it online up in a town close to her Nana and Pop’s house in Decatur, (Mither and Pop), and they went and looked at it and drove it and what not and she took care of the down payment over the phone with her bank card and all that. Then the dealership Fedexd the papers to her and she signed and sent them back.

It was all very slick and went without a hitch. Mither and Pop drove down to meet us about half way in Buffalo and she was so excited she was beside herself.

Heh, me too.

Now tell me is this not the perfect little car for a teenage girl?

Here she is with her boyfriend, looking like The Shit!

Just as cute going as coming!

Now, how’s that for adorable? 😉

Do not be alarmed. And by that, I mean be prepared to be alarmed. The photo I am about to show you are not photo shopped. I mean come ON, people. If I knew how to do that shit, my blog would kick butt!

Please note the length of H’s legs as opposed to the height of her body.

From the tops of her knobby little shoulders to her stride. She measures about 18″.  She and I can wear the same stretch pants. (I just prefer mine a little larger around the ankles.)  I am 5’5″, and fairly short-waisted, (Though I got nothing on her!).

Her spine is collapsing in on itself at an alarming rate. And the really odd thing is that she has positively no tolerance for any kind of pain at all and she doesn’t seem to be feeling it. It seems to me like it would  be grossly uncomfortable. Aside from having more indigestion than ever before, she’s oblivious.

I remember asking the nurse ages ago when she was on hospice what would happen to her eventually when her spine kept disintegrating? What would happen to her insides if she didn’t die first? She said she would need to be fed through a tube.

Every time I get her dressed I look at her twisted up little body and wonder how much longer we have.

Oh, the hideous thing behind her is either the dog bed on the floor on the right or her rolling cart of tricks with all the grandkids and great-grandkids pictures all over the end of it, trash bag hanging off the side, Gerber sippy cup sans the lid with lotion she can’t live without, lamp, remote control, folded up dinner napkin in the back, aaaaall on the top.

Oh, and two flameless votive candles, one with Mary and one with Jesus on the sides. She “lights” these when she prays.

Anyway, I just thought you’d want to know she could implode any minute now.

I’ll keep you all posted.

Hello gang! I hope every little thing is coming up roses in your world today. Here? Well, it’s not exactly, but it’s not an entire bedpan of shit either. So let’s all take that collective sigh of relief I know we all need after opening this blog to see what kind of pee, poo and mayhem bathroom talk Krissa is going to subject us to today.

Henrietta has had her meds uped and, strangely, while making absolutely no difference in her associating my daughter’s boyfriend with Satan, (Yes. He still be the devil…), she is calmer while extolling his evilness. Less tears all around and frequent naps.

*Sigh*

There. Now that felt good, didn’t it?

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Yesterday I finally received my nook! Got all my crap transferred over just as it’s supposed to and so far so good! It is kept far away from all liquids and I am planning to have a pedestal built for it to sit it’s precious little self on when not in use. Do you think this will make it feel special enough to not nut up on me again?

We shall see.

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Keelan recently got a haircut and while it’s cute…

I wish so much she would let it be wavy and full of body like it wants to be, naturally. I would have KILLED for this hair when I was her age!

No.

She insists on straightening it.

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We were behind this vehicle the other day and I couldn’t help wondering… Drug dealer? Or, maybe just user? Could be just someone with a distinct laugh.

Free toes, everybody!

Well, Henrietta is sitting quietly in her wheelchair in her room. I say quietly because she isn’t crying or yelling for Gilbert to come in there or ringing the *=$#@&! bell for service.  I brought her in the dining room earlier and rolled the table to one side so I could roll her chair right up to the window and she could see the cardinals and blue jays and squirrels fighting for the food I put out on the feeder in front of the window. She greatly enjoyed this and I thought she might stay here for a while.

Nope.

She started rolling out of the room and down the hall in just a few minutes.  Oh well. It was a thought. It just seems to me the more she stays in there the worse her mind gets.

We may need an exorcism.

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I started to name this post, “Tragedy has struck” or something like that, but thought with John’s health problems of late that might not be best. Too easy to get the wrong idea before reading the post.

However, there has been a tragedy of another sort.

Remember Cecilia? Well, I was able to “fix” her. We won’t go into what I found out was the problem and how disgusting and embarrassing it was to admit. (NASTY BLACK…. GUNK. GROWING, reproducing… pooping, and doing all sorts of nasty things in the water reservoir.  I think I heard it laugh at me when I shined a light down in that black tank to see what it looked like. It had it’s own IQ, people.)

Well, I am just not down with that. The only place I am content to grow hairy things that are perfectly capable of turning into monsters that could overthrow the household is in the vegetable crisper. There’s plenty of light in the fridge and I am at lest aware of how bad it’s getting and can warn people not to even open that drawer.

Yes. That’s what I do…. Don’t you?

I think I am getting off track here. I was reminding you all of Cecilia so that you can appreciate how totally in mourning I am when I tell you that the EXPLETIVE HERE, dishwasher won’t wash. I mean, it will wash, but only with fairly cold water. Not nearly hot enough to say, remove grease. Or sanitize. And there is no heat to dry the dishes with either. It sounds to me like the heating element has gone out. Or maybe the thermostat in it is broken. Or, as some smart arse repair person pointed out to me on the phone, it’s an electronic gizmo in the computer brain of it.

I don’t know, but it is a Bosch and supposed to be a superior product dishwasher-wise. This means it costs a fortune to repair. So, until next month when we can afford it, I am washing dishes.

And drinking coffee with my best friend… Cecilia.

Or YOU if you want to come on over, I would love to have you! You don’t have to be scared of Henrietta! Well, not TOO much…

The Henrietta Enquirer

My friend, Red, over at In The Wheel, had a brilliant idea. I cannot take any credit for this idea except to say that my friends are terribly creative and brilliant. Why, yes! Yes, you are! And you too! Oh, and you, and you and you! ALL OF YOU ARE!

OK, enough kissing ass and on to the brilliant idea Red had.

In a comment on the last post she said, “… maybe Henrietta should start a newspaper – the Henrietta Inquirer.”

This is an obvious oversight on my part as we could be rich by now and in paper print if the Hollywood press had found out about her back at the beginning of her wild story telling.  Well, or any press at all. Particularly the raunchy kind.

Can you imagine the ruckus  in her little mind as we sat here Superbowl Sunday, watching the game, groaning and shrieking, yelling and high fiving? She sat alone in her room watching some crime drama that she just can’t get enough of. (Cause, I mean what else is a paranoid little old lady going to want to watch? Certainly not sitcoms or anything else reasonable.) I had invited her in to watch the game with us, but she was fast to point out that she wanted nothing to do with it.

Then. Somewhere around the third quarter, she is spotted rolling down the hall like stormtroopers. She, effectively, bursts into the living room and snaps her head around in all directions.  “Why is it dark in here?! Turn that light on!”

The overhead light was off and I switched on a lamp beside me.  “What?” I was clearly a bit pissed. She ignored me completely and looked at John.

“Is he here?”

John and I don’t even pretend we don’t know who she’s talking about anymore.  “Gilbert is outside, mother, he’s checking on the steaks.

Damn, we ate late…

She doesn’t understand what he’s said, just as she doesn’t understand most of what anyone says when she’s got her dander up.

“John, you better not be letting him put any drugs into you!”

And, really, I think this is the most amazing thing about the whole affair. John, her perfect child that could never do any wrong in her eyes, and has NEVER IN HIS LIFE, (OK, he’s admitted to smoking a little pot in high school), DONE ANY DRUGS.  Not to mention he is battling CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE!  She is convinced that he is getting illegal drugs from Gilbert who is clean as a whistle and has never been in any trouble like that in his life.

I can honestly say that we have stopped trying to talk her out of her misconceptions of Gilbert or anything that she comes up with that is crazy. She just gets kinda waved off. Heh. Which pisses HER off.

She was last seen, that night during the game, being quickly propelled down the hall to her room. With me doing the propelling.