jeannie's hands at work

Knitting, crocheting, other handwork, and personal.

Monday, August 21, 2006

August 20, 2006 GOD CALLED, MOM ANSWERED.

My mom died at 1:50 AM, August 20, 2006.
She had a couple of good days in ICU. She was in good spirits, her color was good, and her O2 level was up. She enjoyed our visits and was chatty and "all there."
Saturday she was moved from ICU back to the nursing home. It wasn't a long ride by ambulance, but still exhausting and a big change.
Martha, Joe and I along with Frances and Doris looked in on her a few times Saturday and she was sleeping. Sunday morning around 11:00 we visited and she was a little out of it but she knew who we were and she was talking and waitng for the Minnesota Twins game to come on tv.
The nurses said her oxygen level had dropped in the night to 30% and had risen again to 71%. They were trying to get her levels up more, but that didn't happen. The next two times we checked in on her she was sleeping and didn't awaken.
The night nurse said she didn't think Mom would be "coming back" from such low O2 levels and even if she did, there would be brain damage. We left about 11:00PM and came back to Doris's to sleep. I think we'd been asleep about an hour when the nursing home called to say Mom had crossed over about 1:50 AM.

I'm so grateful to her for my life and her sacrifices. I'm sorry I didn't know her better, but I'm learning more about her through my siblings. That's a great gift, and she gave us all that.
We love you, Mom.
Dance with the angels, Mama, you've earned your wings.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Hello! From Crookston, MN - Pictures!

Since my last post things happened pretty fast. My knitting friends and a co-worker rallied round and helped me get to Crookston to see my dangerously ill mother.
Between Tuesday morning and after work, I had tickets, cab fare, and an itinerary for flying to Minnesota.
I threw some clothes in a suitcase and filled the rest of the space with knitting. (It's all bout the knitting, you know.)


Here is Mom in her ICU room. Her color has gone from gray on Monday to almost normal by Wednesday evening.
One of the bigger concerns the doctor has is a resistant staph infection in Mom's lungs. There is no garuntee that this infection can be cleared up. However, there's an expectation of sending her back to the nursing home today. I'm not sure about that logic, but ...








These are pictures of my twin brother - his Stilt Band.......






















Two portraits.






Three of my sisters: top : Frances, Doris
bottom, L to R: Me and Martha
Taken at dusk on Doris's back deck.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

I couldn't swing it.


This is a picture of my grandparents with all the kids. My mother is standing in the back wearing a hat- her favorite accessory. This picture was taken around Mom's "high school" years.


I can't go to Minnesota. I couldn't raise the money to buy a ticket. I won't see Mom before she dies.
I'm just sad.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Update

I got word this Saturday that my mother had fallen and broken her leg in three places. My sister says no one at the nursing home knows quite how she did it. She tripped on her wheelchair or caught her foot somehow and went down.

She was bleeding a lot from the gash the bone made in one place when the aide found her.
The surgery went well Saturday and she was doing ok, considering her age and condition. She was in a lot of pain, but there isn't alot that can be done for that because of all the other medications she has to take.

Yesterday she started going downhill. She is pulling her oxygen off when she can and seems to be ready to give up.

The doctors want to have family meeting to withdraw the O2 and ler her go. If I can swing it, I'm going to be there tomorrow or Wednesday.

I'm sad for all the time I missed. All the potential and relationship not achievable. All my brothers and sisters and I will never know about her and she about us.

How can I miss someone I don't really know? How can I miss her already? How can I be so sad?

I'm so sad.

Friday, August 11, 2006

This one's for you, Barbara.


I caught Bear just before he jumped into your basket. He was smelling wonderful cheesy smells.:0)

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Busy, busy.

I've been busy for the last week & a half pulling wires under the floor at work. We have a suspended floor that's about 18 inches off the concrete. It's designed so that you can lever up a floor tile and step down into the space below.

For 30 years wires from the patch panels and time base correctors have run from there to ten VTR machines, the switcher, the studio cameras, the teleprompter, various scopes, audio, and "other stuff." There were at least six wires to each machine and so on. We've been able to patch any machine into any source and swap them around all the time.
Well, we've gone digital. We now are going to use hard drives to record studio video and fire-wire for feeding DVC video from location shoots into the editing Computers. It'll be 90+% non-linear editing and all digital and High Res.

So my job, Being the knitter and good at untangling things, is to crawl under the floor, UNTANGLE and pull the unplgged wires out.
The "boss" keeps saying "You're doing fine -it took 30 years to tangle those wires, I didn't expect them to be pulled in a few days." That's good.... I'm in shape for about 2 wires at a time and then I have to rest. I'm not used to having to stick my elbows up and out over my head, brace them on the floor tiles, and pull my body weight up using just my pectoral muscles. Every wire pulled requires half a dozen or more such movements and climbing up and down in to various holes tracing all the wires. By 2:oo in the afternoon I'm puffing and groaning like a buffalo stuck chest-deep in a mud hole. Both my knees are bruised and swollen from crawling on them under the tiles that are still in place, and my elbows and forearms are swollen from leaning on them trying not to lie down on all the wires under the floor.
It gets to the point where I just lie there and laugh when I get stuck. Sometimes I get wiggled around and can't move 'cause I'm backed up against a pipe and can't get my leg or foot around to get a different leverage point. It's SO FUNNY~~!!! I got in there, How come I can't get out?

The best news about this project? (Other then how nice the set-up will be at work when it's done.)The jeans I was going to give away -the ones I wrote "too tight" on the pocket linings? They FIT! They're even loose. All that ab work doubled over under the floor. Woo, Hoo!!!
That's all for today.