When my son Paul died in 1999 at age twenty-seven, I took the advice of several people to see a therapist. The one I chose to see led a survivors of suicide support group sponsored by the Didi Hirsch Mental Health center. The group met once a week for six weeks and consisted of people who had lost friends, loved ones, and acquaintances to suicide. There was one other mother in the group who also lost a son – she found his body hanging from their second floor stair well. She hated the group as much as I did and was brave enough to quit after two or three sessions. I lasted the whole six weeks. But after I went to a private session with the leader – who finally admitted to me that she didn’t lose anyone one she loved to suicide, I quit her too. I made up my mind not to see anyone who had not experienced the kind of loss I was going through. That’s when I turned to writing. Four months after Paul died I began going to Jack Grapes’ writing class. I went every Wednesday morning and … [Read more...]
COVID even strikes without a positive diagnosis
The following is another piece I wrote in my Zoom writing group meeting. The prompt was: "Who did I meet this year who surprised or delighted us? I decided to change the "who" to a "what" and this is what I came up with. Needless to say the recent death of my husband after his long stay in hospital and rehab care was on my mind. COVID was the huge surprise this year. After a slow and quiet beginning it came upon us like gangbusters – so much so that we didn’t know how to behave in its presence. First we were told wearing masks didn’t help. Later on masks were mandated. And though staying six feet from others was recommended it wasn’t enforced very much. How does one stay six feet apart at the grocery store or even on the street. Another rule was to wash our hands for twenty seconds many times a day. But how does one monitor that. We washed using the honor system I did stay inside especially when the numbers of victims and deaths started to rise and the science doctors – and … [Read more...]
Sepsis, a potentially deadly disease
In late August I wrote what I thought was the final report on my husband's two bouts of sepsis (blood infection). He was doing great - walking without anymore difficulty, eating well again, and even getting to the point of driving his car and going places on his own. Unfortunately, he had a third recurrence of sepsis that started on September 26 and he's been in the hospital ever since. The good news this time is that the doctors found the bacteria and the source of the infection. The bad news is it will take my husband much longer to recover than it did the first two times. In week four of his hospitalization he still is not walking, he needs to be fed through a tube in his nose, and his mental ability is still not back to normal. Because the risk of sepsis is higher in seniors, I thought I'd provide all my senior friends who read this website with some information about this potentially life-threatening disease. I certainly knew nothing about it until if affected my husband. … [Read more...]
