104B off topic: NaNoWriMo

I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year. That's the craziness of writing a novel (50K) in 30 days. Join me. Link to my NaNo blog below and in the sidebar. Will include word counts, excerpts, etc.
Expect silence from me, unless something huge happens, during the first couple of weeks of November.

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My progress:

104 smoking pot HELPS memory and a little wine will do you fine

The propaganda says that smoking pot makes you stupid, slow, and forgetful. New research (actual science, not anti-drug campaigning based on fear and ignorance) shows that pot may actually HELP people with Alzheimer's retain their memories. Ironic, isn't it? Although pot still remains illegal everywhere, and who knows how one can obtain it in such a way to avoid prosecution.
The story says:
New research shows the active ingredient in marijuana may prevent the progression of the disease by preserving levels of an important neurotransmitter that allows the brain to function....(M)arijuana's active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, can prevent the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from breaking down more effectively than commercially marketed drugs. THC is also more effective at blocking clumps of protein that can inhibit memory and cognition in Alzheimer's patients.
And if THC had any other source, it would be aggressively pursued. I'm no dope fiend or anti-dope activist, but it's a shame that pot has such a bad rap. Alcohol is legal and just as destructive to mind and body IF ABUSED, and so is tobacco.
Speaking of alcohol, another study says red wine is also helpful to those with Alzheimers:
Red wine has...been shown to reduce levels of bad cholesterol and to protect against heart disease and some cancers....(Researchers) working with mice carrying a gene linked to Alzheimer's, fed them either red wine, water, or ethanol. They found that mice given red wine had significantly less memory loss.
I detest the dead-grapes taste of wine. My dad likes it but only drinks at holidays.

103 "it was like this" (illustration)

Photo source: scan of "Prince Valiant", October 1, 2006.

This is the picture I spoke about in my last entry--notice the bracers which my father interperts as the restraints put on him, and the screaming look on the man's face. This is how he felt. This is what it was like for him.
A picture really is worth a thousand words.

102 "You know her better than me"

My dad gives me the funnies every week. He has no problem remembering that. In fact, if he forgets to give them to me, he gets very upset. And if he gives them to me and I read and discard them in his presence, he becomes confused, fishing them out of the trash and giving them back to me. He can't understand that I just want to READ them, not OWN them.
This week, before he even gave me the funnies, he asked my mom to call me "because you know her better than I do" and ask me if he could have them back. My mom said he even knew my name on Sunday--and sure enough he did call me "Bert" when I was leaving my grandmother's.
When I found out WHY he wanted them back I was very sad.
In the October 1 Prince Valiant, there's a cell (is that what they are called?) of the comic which shows a man with a beard, wearing leather bracers (wrist armor) and yelling. It's part of a battle. But my dad isolated that cell (maybe they're called frames? neither seems right) and showed it to everyone. He pointed out the leather wristbands. "That's what it was like. See those?" He showed the bruises on his wrists. "That's what it was like." The cell/frame, out of context, could easily be a man in agony. As soon as I can get a copy, I will post that frame here. (I've got 2 copies promised to me--we'll see--my dad already cut his copy up before I could scan it and it's not online for another month.)
On Monday I had to take my female perfect lorikeet, whose name we don't know how to spell (rescue bird)--it's Aunnie or Onnie, like a combination of "aunt" (not "ant") and "annie"--to the vet for a check-up. Right before I lost my Zen she was diagnosed with fatty liver disease. I have been feeding her half-rations and pouring medicine into her 2x a day for 2 months now. She was up to almost 100 grams in weight, with a fatty bulge in her abdomen and another in her chest, and her blood was full of fat too. I brought her mate Hogan too. Onnie is the same age as Gwennie (they came from the same breeder in the same box) so she's around 13, which I think makes Hogan 15 or 16. Hogan has never been sick the whole time I had them (since 1995) and he's also the only bird I have with perfect feathers. This is the first time Onnie's been sick. I always try to bring my dad to the vet with me. It's helpful for someone to get the door for me and it's also to get him out of my mom's hair for a couple of hours.
He settled in my SUV with the box o' birds on his lap. "Where are we going?" "To the vet. You know, up in Berlin. You'll know when we get there." "Are we going to Hartford?" "No, we're going to Berlin." "Not Hartford?" The hospital was in Hartford. "I don't want to go there." "We're not going to Hartford. You'll see." He peers at the birds. "Which is the original one?" "I don't have him today. Lance is at home. This is Hogan and Onnie. Remember a long time ago we went to the airport to pick up some birds? Onnie was one of them." "No." But he does remember, because when we went to pick up my poor doomed sweet Prism in May, he remembered going there before to get birds "a long time ago" (12 years).
He's happy with birds in his lap. He holds up the box and talks to them. Tells them they are pretty and have nice green feathers. He worries about the state of Onnie's plucked head (Hogan pulls out her feathers) and tells Hogan "don't hurt him like that."
Onnie is down to 68 grams, more like what she should weigh. Her blood was like "cranberry juice" as the vet commented, not like cream of tomato soup like last time. We're waiting for the bloodtest to come back. Hogan is fine, he just needed a wing clipping and he likes car rides.
On the way home, a truck ran a red light on route 68 near Stop and Shop and almost "schmocked" us ("schmocked" is my father's new all-purpose word which he invented). My dad saw and alerted me so the accident was avoided. I thanked him. He waved his arm in my direction and said "They don't like it when I do that. They get mad." He means my mom, of course, who has forbidden him from saying anything about her driving. Which I can understand. He can be annoying. But in this case, he was right.

101 “It was awful”

My dad came through the angioplasty as well as can be expected. He had to have a stent put in because one artery was almost completely blocked. He's back home now.
So I’ll back up to Tuesday morning.
My parents picked me up at 5:45 a.m. which is about an hour earlier than I am usually awake, much less out the door. We found Hartford Hospital without much trouble; there wasn’t a lot of traffic yet. (My dad thought there was but I think it was just that everyone had their lights on, which for some reason makes it look like there are more vehicles.)
Going to the hospital is like going to the airport. Hurry up and wait.
They put him in a room on the 8th floor first. They told us the wrong room and then said they were doing the procedure there in the room in front of us. Eww. No way. But it was the wrong room, wrong procedure, so we got moved to another room. He had to put on the little gown and cool little blue sockies with tread on them (I wanted to keep the sockies; I don’t know what happened to them.) and get into bed. They hooked him up to all sorts of IVs and things. Then we had to sit around and wait.
Finally they came to get him and moved us to another floor and a waiting room. My mom and I just sat there. The TV was on really loud, annoying morning talk shows and then the same news stories over and over. A few other people were in there and we talked to them a little. I tried to read.
The doctor, Dr Farrell, came and explained they were going to have to put a stent in because of the blockage, a medicated one which meant he’d have to be on more medicine (why a medicated stent requires more drugs then an unmedicated one will remain one of life’s great mysteries). The doctor was concerned about dad's compliance with taking the pills. But my mom watches out for all that for my dad.
We got to watch a video of the procedure afterward, how the dye floods the arteries and outlines the heart, and where they seem to disappear or get smaller is where they are blocked. He has several others which are partially blocked but the doctor didn’t put stents in them. He understood what my mom wanted—keep him comfortable, nothing heroic or crazy. He was awake (slightly sedated) for the procedure and the doctor said he did really well.
Once my dad was all done they took my mom away to sit with him but wouldn’t let me come in because it was “too crowded” so I probably sat for another hour alone. By then the TV was off, thank god. Then they moved him to the 10th floor. That took a while because they wanted to put him next to the nurses’ station so they could keep a close eye on him due to the Alzheimer’s. He also had a private room. By then it was after 1:00 p.m. We got him situated and then my mom and I left to have lunch, let the dog out, and I had to go to school. Plus I was exhausted because I didn’t fall asleep until after 2 a.m. (I don’t sleep well anymore without my Zen-Zen kitty).
When my mom went back up at suppertime, there were a bunch of psychologists waiting with my father. They were trying to “evaluate” him, whatever the hell that means. They wanted my mom to stay overnight with him. She refused-she’s got the dog, the cat and the crazy grandma to deal with. She can’t sleep up in Hartford on a whim.
These people had no idea what to do with him. My mom got mad and said “Don’t you have any other Alzheimer’s patients here?” and they said “yes but not on this floor.” Well then GO to the other floor and say “WHAT DO WE DO WITH THIS GUY?” How hard is that?
So my mom told him she’d be back to pick him up around 9:00 a.m. and went home.
When she got there the next morning she found out that he had been agitated and kept trying to pull out his IV and catheter so they put him in restraints and sedated him. She was a little late getting there due to traffic and having to stop at a gas station, and he was totally upset, saying that they told him she was dead and she wasn’t coming for him.
The thought of my poor gentle daddy drugged in restraints is so upsetting to me I can’t even put it into words. Yes he can yell and get upset but he doesn’t DO anything.
I went to see him last night after work and asked him how he was. His succinct answer? “It was awful.”
My mom said she will NEVER ever put him through that again. He’s already fighting his diet changes, fighting taking more medicine (she started last Friday with all that). She says 1-2 years and he’ll have “the big one” and that will be it. She switched his salad dressing with low fat (put low fat in the other bottle) because we’ll never be able to get him to stop drinking it. She’s going to switch his cookies to low-fat too, but she said he reads the package so it will be my job to buy low-fat cookies and empty the package into the cookie jar. He refuses to eat the baked potato chips (she’s already tried) so it will be no potato chips for him.