Countdown to His Death - The Day

Today is October 19, 2015.  Louis Francis Martin died at Samaritan Hospital at 6:45 PM October 19, 1979.  I was not present.  My mother, brother and his wife, and my sister were by the side of the bed when Louis, the emaciated, toothless, babbling version, with his arms reaching out in the air above him, like he was trying to get the waitress's attention. Breathing slowed to a pace that allowed his soul to move. And then it did.

I was home, sitting in my room.  I had gone the day before, October 18 on a solo visit.  What I remember from that visit was taking one of Lou's cold hands in mine, and asked him if he knew me. He nodded. And then he said something I didn't get, and that was all.I kissed his forehead and walked out of the room.  The next time I saw him was in the casket at the funeral home.

But there were years in between to review.  Like 1977.  All I can remember about that year was that Jimmy Carter was inaugurated President and then the next day he began his downhill slide to doom, Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in a World Series game,and  my mother still worked in Latham.  I ended my junior year at Siena, and, after not going to Cape Cod ever again, began my senior year.  I had college friends by now and was able to go on dates and have fun, which had been rare.  Girls, okay just a few, thought I was funny and kinda cute.  This was a revelation.  But then I'd go home, and the situation would be the same.  We tiptoed around it, and except for the occasional blow up, all would be serene.  I'd play some baseball and hang out with a friend whose father was also ill. My friend and I agreed that we would inherit our father's diseases and still visit each other in our wheelchairs.  He's in his already.  Not my turn yet.

1978. The Red Sox lost to the Yankees in the playoff game at Fenway. I graduated from Siena and did not have a graduation party (maybe by my request, maybe).  I  have one picture of my parents standing in front of Siena Hall.  They are about three feet from each other and have all the emotion of the Royal Guardsman at Buckingham Palace.  I had a few pictures of me with friends, and went to dinner with a friend.  Lou stopped me on the way to meet my friend told me "I know we don't talk much, but I am proud of you." And I walked away, mumbling something about "too late now."

I was a 21 year old asshole.  And I would pay for that, as I should have.

From June 1978 until Lou was hospitalized for the last time, I was his full time caretaker.  Christmas 1978 brought a surprise snow storm and we were hitting the shovel and the snowblower for a while,  Lou was back in his element of supervising a crisis, but it did not stop me from slamming Lou with a fluff of snow.  Instead of a snowball returned toward me, I was given a look that would chilled my blood if I wasn't already freezing. We moved the snow away and went back in the warm house.  The idea was for us to go to my brother's home for Holiday dinner.  Lou by this time was no longer able to drive and that had been my duty to inform him of this. We got him into his car, passenger side, my mother in the back seat, yours truly driving (yes, I got my license) and we drove on to the snowy streets.  Until Lou opened the passenger door as the car was moving, and said "I 'm going to Barbara's (my sister's).  She's nice to me.

My mother lost it.  She screamed repeatedly "Get in this car! Get in this car!" Lou continued to shuffle along in the snow.  I pulled the car over, told my mother to stay in the car, and went after my father.  My mother joined me and we got him back in the car, with a promise that we would go to my sister's house right after visiting my brother's family.  Lou calmed down some once we got him back in the car and my locked the passenger door.  When we arrived at my brother's home family came out to help move Lou around and into the house.  There he saw familiar faces of grandchildren and friends long back.  We were able to have a decent day and even did get Lou to my sister's.  Home and we got my father into bed and then we collapsed.  1979 was going to be brutal.  My mother had that far away look in her eyes, she would start feeling depressed and begin the ranting again, this time I was the consumer, and would be for the next 22 years.

The year was brutal.  Lou would run away. We'd go find him usually talking to the bus mechanic about how the buses were running.  Time became distorted for him and he'd get up and want his breakfast at three in the morning, and if he didn't get his eggs and bacon, the dining room chairs would begin flying.  We could soothe him most times.  Most times.

Oh, yeah.  I can understand why some of you are asking where are the medical people?  Lou's doctor gave him some blood pills.  The Mental Health unit said they had no reason to think anything  difficult was going on, maybe a psychiatrist could provide some meds. For me, sure!  I'll take them as I wash Lou's crap off of his butt and clean him up in the shower.

Lou was finally hospitalized in August of 1979 and remained there until he died on October 19, 1979. So he has been gone for 36 years.  His death certificate says renal failure, arteriosclerosis, and pre-senile dementia. Lou was a smoker for many years, and working man meat and potatoes guy.  No big concern for us, that's all we knew.  But from his gut there must have resided many a bad news blood cell waiting for their chance.  But there was no heart attack, no stroke.  Just this fast decline.

Way earlier I said that my friend and I talked about how we might be when we hit 50.  As noted my friend is in a wheelchair and I'm not. Yet.

No, I do have what my father had, but it fits as Demylination Disorder, a sort of MS. My father would fall asleep at the kitchen, and then his muscles would jump. I do.  Constant brain fog. Yep.  Odd sleep habits. Gotcha.  Rawer emotions. True.  Pains and numbness of extremities.  Oh, yeah. And it showed up around age 55?  Like October 9 1975.  Lou Martin had just turned 55.

Lou Martin lived 21,561 days.  He went to war, came back and raised a family, liked a beer in the summer and his home grown tomatoes. I could have been a better son.  I am trying to be as good a person as he was.

As of this day I, Thomas Martin, have been on this planet for 21,560.  If dealing with my father's illness gave me any solace was that when my turn came, I'd pull more life out of days and be here. HERE.

I'll let you know Wednesday the 21st how it went.

Happy Birthday to Me for the 55th consecutive year!

Hi.  I'm sitting in the Saratoga Barnes and Noble treating myself to lunch and a mocha before heading down for water therapy.  The sandwhich is quite good.  Had a chance to walk around and check out some new releases (books, not sandwiches). I see J K Rowling's new novel is out.  What? No Harry? No Hermoine? No thanks.  Bill O'Reilly's Killing Kennedy is on the shelves, and I'll save you the money, it follows various possibilities for that tragedy in Dallas, but then defaults to the Warren Commission. I might recommend that we work toward the better world JFK envisioned than just rehash the tawdry events that lead up to Dealey Plaza.  The other books are by TV stars I do not know, monster book writers (books about monsters of all types, and monster sized books) and diet books that always end up selling in the dollar store bins

I walk among the printed words and knick knacks that B and N holds and wonder if the novels I'm working on will ever appear here. Probably not, but I don't care, I am really enjoying the creative process.  Like this. And thanks to a large amount of drugs in my system I can go on and on.  Lucky for you I know when to shut up.

Such is life at age 56.  I was born on October 9 1956 in Troy New York.  Here is the story of my birth.  For those of you not familiar with the Albany Troy Schenectady area, you may still find this interesting if  just for the sitcom value. 

First, the cast of characters:  Marge Martin (mom), Lou Martin (dad [and a tip of the cap to Lou on his 92nd birthday]), Teresa and Jimmy Norton (neighbors), a nurse, and a Freihofer's Bread Company delivery truck, like this one...

 

It may have been red in color, but the size and shape was like that.  Oh, one more person. Me.

 

It starts late on October eighth.  My sister and brother are in bed and my mother is resting with my father before he begins the morning shift at the Freihofer plant, getting his orders for bread, cookies, cakes and placing them on his truck and making deliveries to homes.  Yes, that actually did happen, Gen X and Millenials.  Lou goes to work, taking the only car in the house, leaving my mother and kids alone.  On the first floor rest the Norton's, friends of Marge and Lou, and we are grateful for that.

  

My mother wakes up around two o'clock in the morning.  My father is gone, and she knows the baby (me) is on its way.  Her mother (Grandma Frances) is working at Samaritan hospital back when nurses lived at the hospital. She's not available.  Marge gets out of bed, checks on my soon to be brother and sister, and then creeps downstairs to knock on the door of the Norton's.  The Nortons, alerted earlier they may be needed, are ready.  There's only one problem.  They don't have a car.

 

"But I do thave the truck!," Mr. Norton said as he grabbed his hat.  He indicated the vehicle to my  mother.  A Freihofer's truck (like the one in the picture).  It has one seat for the driver/delivery guy and places to stand and hold on as it hit bumps and swung the curves of old roads for anyone else who was riding.

 

Like my nine month pregnant Mom.  She looked at Mrs. Norton. 

 

"Margie, it'll be fine.  I'll go up with your kids.  Mine are snoring like logs."

 

Mrs. Norton scooted up the stairs, and my mother, for lack of options (no money for a cab), follows along and tries as delicately as possible to find to squeeze in the truck door and then find a spot to sit amongst the coffee cakes, cookies, breads and pies. 

 

"Make yourself ta home," said Mr. Norton as he got the truck started.  Marge chose a spot near the oatmeal raisin boxes and squatted there, holding on to a shelf for balance.  The truck, which never went much more than 30 mph, chugged along to Samaritan hospital up the hill (known to folks in my neck of the woods as Oil Mill Hill) and staggering along the road, a road my father now up in the boondocks for early deliveries, passed hours ago.  He would not know anything until he came home. No phones in vehicles then.

 

So Lou didn't know about the following conversation between my mother, Mr. Norton, and the night nurse as paperwork was completed at Samaritan.

 

 

Nurse: Name?

 

Mom: Marge Martin

 

Nurse: This is Mr. Martin?



 

Mom: No, we're not married.

 

Nurse:Really?

 

Mr. Norton: No, we're married but not to each other.

 

Nurse: I see.

 

Mom: Look, he's just a neighbor.

 

Nurse: So where is your husband?

 

Mom shrugged.  "I don't know.  Brusnwick maybe"

 

Mr. Norton: Yeah.  Brunswick is about right.

 

The nurse put her pen down.

 

Nurse: "Where is the father of the child?"

 

Mom and Mr. Norton: "Brunswick."

 

Fortunately, around this time my grandmother arrived to sort things out and get my mother ready to deliver.  I swear this where I picked up my comic timing.  And I also think the first smell I ever smelled was not the sterility of the delivery room, but oatmeal raisin cookies.

 

Years later, at my father in law's funeral at the veteran's cemetery in Saratoga, my mother was walking among the graves and noticed a familiar name.  She called me over, and pointed to Jimmy Norton's grave. 

 

"They lived downstairs from us." my mother said.  My mother in law came over and said "I know his wife."  It seemed that when our families moved from our original house, the Martin's stayed in Lansingburgh and the Norton's moved to Clifton Park where my wife grew up.  Mrs. Norton met my wife's mom and they became friends.  And so it was that some 45 years after the original event my mom and Mrs. Norton were reunited and relived that amazing day with lots of laughter.

 

I'm the only survivor of that day 56 years ago, so I get to tell the story.  They have been amazing years inbetween with highs and lows, and now the battles are raging within my body.  But I came in with a good story, and I hope I go out with a lot of better ones shared.

 

By the way, the sports fans in the readership may have seen that had I been born on 10/8/56, I would have been born on the day of Don Larsen's perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers.  But I held out for the ninth, the day the Dodgers won 13-0.  I've been a National League fan ever since. Imagine if I'd been in a rush? Born on a Yankee day? Wow, things might have been very different. But I know somewhere in a box in the garage is a Yankee cap.  Residual effect. That and oatmeal cookies.

 

More soon.  Thanks for reading.



Meet your mind! or mine, actually...

Hi, Before we start just a big thank you to the now over 1000 hits on the blog.  Glad you stop by.

Okay, now take a look at this:

This is my brain, or the back half anyway, courtesy of my most recent MRI at Samaritan Hospital in Troy, NY (props for the hometown!).  In the previous blog I wrote about using reiki to help some of my bipolar symptoms, and to dig around at the sadness tearing me apart.  I said that I'd stopped using reiki as a treatment once the MS made itself known, as the person helping me at that time touched the back of my head in a normal reiki matter, that generated nights of terror in my brain.  The reason I have got the picture here is to show you the physical reasons.  Look about one inch to the right of center of the picture.  See that little white dot?  That's an MS lesion.  Also looking down toward the right hand corner of the picture, you see a small .indentation in the outline of the head.  See that?  (You know I wish Blogger had more little tools to use, like a pointer, or an arrow.) That's where a reiki user places his or her fingers to send healing through that area.  Reiki + lesion = Bad thing.  At least for me.

My neuro as noted told me I had 50-100 lesions in my brain.  One of them just showed up right there in the picture (at the very tip of the occipital lobe), and perhaps there's another near where my eyes take in light and sight (also in the occipital lobe) and that ones playing around, too, whiuch may be why light is so bright and color so brilliant.

Here's a brain diagram so you can see the whole thing:

 

 

Brains are normally not this colorful. Ask any zombie, though that's hard as they don't say much except "naaaaaghhhhhhh", and if you're close enough to ask, you're close enough to be eaten. 

 

I'm not a doctor, I just got the disease(s), and I'm just trying to deal with them.  But it did get me thinking.  If a person is trying to help heal your body by laying her/his hands on you, using prayer or not, or just being open to the universe to bring that energy to you, and you think this will help you as you take that energy in, no matter what you think of it, doesn't get one to ponder that there is Something Else?

 

My body is breaking down.  My brain is full of lesions and chemical imbalances that only handfuls of pills can keep straight.  My mind, however, the real me, is having a great time taking this all in, watching this, writing it down and sharing it with you.  As long as the hands keep working, of course.

 

So there's me (Tom the guy), and there's Me.  Want to try it yourself? Think of a favorite movie, or TV show. Now close your eyes and watch it in your private movie theater.  Your order goes out to the hippocampus in the brain where "memories" are stored and the movie starts, and it seems like you can see it on the inside of the middle of your forehead.  That's where you go to see the film. Your private movie theater. Popcorn?

 

What we're dealing with is a three way battle. Your body, the brain, and You (what a Buddhist might call your mind, or others faiths call your soul).  The three of you have to get along for about 70-75 years or more if you're lucky.  Then the body dies, the brain stops functioning, and You, well, that's up to whatever belief system you may ascribe to.  But you are seperate from your brain and body. You can receive, from Some Source, healing. Perhaps you become that healing energy.  I don't know.

 

You would think that once the body is attacked by disease, that the three parts (body,brain and Me) would rally, and this happens sometimes.  There's a lady in my physical therapy class whose come back from stage 4 cancer...twice.  But with diseases like MS and bipolar disorder, the brain kind of flies off by itself and plots with the diseases against the body, and all You can do is remain vigilant as you watch yourself do dumb things, or do nothing at all.

 

It always will come down to the Me in You.  Pills help, therapy helps, support networks help. But it's still up to the Me in You.  That's who takes command. Stand up. Move. Therapy. Laugh. Hug. Live.

 

You can spread that energy (whatever you got left) from (whatever) Some Source to others.  You don't need reiki, a smile will do for a start.

 

More to come.  Thanks for reading.