I WANT A TACO!

Howdy, everyone!
Like my dramatic title?  It is so very, very true.  I can just taste it now.  But I can't have it now.  It would more than likely get stuck in my "pouch" (the new name for my new stomach) and I'd have to go to the ER like an idiot and confess I had a taco and have it surgically removed!  Big sigh.  I don't know if I am glad I had this surgery or not.  Too late to go back, but I'm so tired of pureed food.  I feel like a baby!  My stomach won't even tolerate an egg, let alone the beloved taco!  I tried eggs twice and got a monster stomach ache.  I can have eggs, pureed, clear liquids and bariatric full liquids.  I've had so much protein I feel like Popeye!

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not complaining and am so glad I am losing weight.  It's just getting used to the new life style.  In one more week I can have soft food....like meat loaf, mashed potatoes, stuff like that.  It just seems it's been forever on this "diet"!!!!  And I still don't feel like myself before surgery.  I'm tired, cranky, sore, my arthritis and fibro is in flare which makes exercise impossible....and then I realize it hasn't even been a month since I had the surgery.  So I'll be patient and rely on God.  You think HE will give me a taco?  Ha!

Sorry to make this short.  My back and feet are killing me.  My neuropathy is acting up, too, and I mean BAD.  The neurontin I take tastes sooooo bad in applesauce (which is how I take ALL my pills is crunched in applesauce!), I make sure to have a "chaser" behind it like something good to drink or a popcicle.  I'm hooked on those!  I do things in stints.  Later on or tomorrow I'll check my email.  I can sit up for about 15 minutes and that is it.  Life just has to get better as I lose weight, doesn't it?  Pretty please?  Hope you all are well and I wish the love of God upon all of you.
Thank you for all the support.  Speaking of which...I'm going to a support group next week.  Maybe that will help, too, to bolster my spirits a bit.

Since everyone loves Jack, I'll post another pic of him:

Jackie with my husband.

        
Hugs,

PS...Hi, Gina and Dad!  Hope you are both doing well.  Love you!

Hello, Again!

Hi, My friends!

Let me start out by saying how sorry I am about not posting until now.  I have had such a rough time of it that I cannot even begin to know where to start.  My feet were burning so badly I could hardly sit for ten minutes and my back was the same way.  I took so much neurontin I felt like I was flying high.  That is so NOT good!  And it didn't even help the burning, I must say.  I will no longer do that.  I went outside for awhile and sat on what little grass we had here and that did help for awhile.  I soooo need a laptop!!  It would make my life so much easier!!  Unfortunately, laptops don't grow on trees.  Sigh!

I believe all this was brought on by stress from not knowing if I will have the bariatric surgery or not.  It is just positively crazy that I still haven't found out if I can have it yet or not.  I've went three times over to Gilbert,AZ and they still don't know.  The surgeon was out of town last week but he is back in town now.  I spoke with the nurse and she said she would present my case first.

Jacke is doing well, he is sprinting all over the house and getting into everything.  We have him on soft food and treats so he can get more moisture to prevent further infections.  That and I think he has some kind of sore jaw.  I saw him gnaw on some of his crunchies the other day and then he went a whole week where he ate nothing.  Not good!!  He loves the soft food and he gets a whole variety of food.  Almost like a variety for him.  I'll upload some pictures of him for you tomorrow.

Well, almost time for Frankie's doctor's appointment.  Thank you for praying me us, we greatly appreciate it.  We pray for you all, too.

Have a great day!!
God bless ya,

 

Rodeo Drive, Baby!

Howdy, folks!

I LOVE waking up and having it pour outside!  Maybe it will even wash the car for us, as the rain we had the other day was the typical AZ rain that just stirs the dust around on the car and makes it look worse than it did BEFORE the rain.  The only problem with rain is it brings humidity and that reeks havoc with my fibromyalgia.  When I took that first step out of bed this morning, I thought I was stepping on nails!  My whole right leg was killing me, starting with that "fiery" feeling in my foot all the up to my thigh.  That nerve involvement is getting worse in that leg, I can feel it everyday.  And no matter how many neurontin I take now, it doesn't really help.  I'm on the maxed out dose, I think.  I've never tried Lyrica, wonder if that would help?  If anyone of you has tried Lyrica, let me know what it does for you.  You see the ads on TV all the time how it helps, but those are just ads.  I need REAL advice!  :0)

OK...here's another episode of "Down Memory Lane."  I remember when my folks first came to AZ, they were really excited (as was I) to visit California. We went to San Diego first (which I already profiled in a past post) and then moved up the coast to Los Angeles.  My dad has a thing for cemeteries, so naturally, we had to stop at Forest Lawn, outside of Hollywood, I think it was.  Speaking of Hollywood, poor Mom was driving down the 101 at top speed to keep up with the other drivers and I kept getting blurred pictures of the Hollywood sign.  So she must have driven down that about 4 times and I never did get a picture of it!  How frustrating!  I did get lots of other good photos, though, I 'd like to share with you. 

Here we are, shooting into LA on two wheels, I think!  The traffic pretty much determines how fast you go...but yet, it's always the out of state tags that get the speeding ticket!! Not that we got a ticket, but I've seen it happen a lot of times, out-of-state cars pulled over to the side of the road. We rented a car for this trip, a beautiful blue Ford Taurus, as we still had the "Thurderbird" and we didn't want to deal with the oil leak and it had just completed an across the country adventure and we didn't want to push it!.  We went on this trip as a special 24th birthday gift for me.  I always have loved California and my parents really did chose a special gift for me!

 

 Here my parents are, all tanned and really to go on the LA adventure scene!  Side note: this motel was really hard to find, as all the ones we went to where renting rooms by the hour if you know what I mean!  But the room here was very nice and we rented it for the WHOLE night, which probably shocked the check in guy!  Second pic above is me and my dear Mom.  :0)

And what's Beverly Hills without Rodeo Drive?  My ma was so involved with looking at the street with all the little shops that she almost rammed into the "Beamer" in front of her!! I hope that taught her a lesson...don't look at the sides of the street while driving!  Focus straight ahead at your object and when he brakes, you brake!!  My mom wasn't real receptive to driving comments, but I threw my two cents in anyway!  After all, we were in a rented car and MY name was on the application!!

My dad has this thing about cemeteries.  He loves 'em!  He even has a "Find A Grave" coffee mug that he ordered off of one his favorite grave sites.  A lot of the cemeteries in his book are beautifully landscaped.  And Forest Lawn outside of LA is no exception!  Here is the fountain that greets visitors right at the front entrance.  There is a security stop point there and it's always manned by someone.  You can purchase cemetery maps there, but it doesn't show where the celebrity graves are.  The guy at the booth said that would cause havoc!  He did give us a clue to a general location where some of them were buried.  My dad was particularly interested in where Marilyn Monroe was.

Here my dad is, way down at the end of a plot divider, looking at all the graves. He was like a little boy in a candy store....all these graves, so little times!!  He was sooo excited, in fact, he left his glasses on to of one of the plots by mistake and forgot to take it with him.  We had to search and backtrack where he had been - like the whole cemetery! - to no avail. So we left the name and address they could send it to if they ever were found.  (To our surprise, about three weeks later, they WERE found and mailed to us.  Some person found it and turned them in! Yay!)

Here I am by the grave of Andy Gibbs, from "The Bee Gees."  Dad loved taking pictures of us by celebrity grave plots.  I wonder about him sometimes!!  :0)

Here dad is, posing by Bette Davis's plot.  He's too cute with how dramatic he can be.  He was in his wearing pants all year round stage because his legs weren't tan.  How could they get tan covered with jeans?  His logic was something else!  :0)

Dad just insisted I get a pose by Bette Davis's plot, too!  He's a silly little guy!!

Mom posing by Freddie Prinze's plot.  He was from "Chico and the Man" series.  Doesn't she look good?  And that's for being about 100 degrees out with the humidity about that high, too.

Here I am again, this time by Liberace's grave plot.  It was almost as decked up as he himself was in life!!

My mom walking down the cemetery sidewalk, looking at plots in the ground.  My dad was still in the celebrity section.  They were having a funeral on the other side of the celebrity section and my dad would yell out, "Mother, come here quick. I found a movie star!"  The people in the funeral would pause for a moment and look over at dad.  Mom told him to be quiet, they are having a funeral!

Somehow, Mom got Dad back into the car, even though we never did find Marilyn Monroe.  Dad was almost positive she was buried in Forest Lawn cemetery.  Oh, well.  We did find a lot of celebrities we didn't expect to find, so I think it was a fantastic trip.  Now we are in our air conditioned rental car, heading back to the motel.  Tomorrow we head back to Yuma.  Boy, was that a fun birthday!!  One I'll never forget, that's for sure.

                                                                                                                     
Thank you, Mom and Dad for an excellent 24th birthday party (June 24, 1994).  I love you both dearly!!

Thank YOU, folks, for coming along with down memory lane and my birthday bash "Dad style."  Which that always includes a cemetery or two!  We later found out that Marilyn wasn't even buried at that cemetery!  I forget where she actually is buried at, but it isn't Forest Lawn that we were at!!

Hope you all have a great Wednesday and be sure to go blog hoppin' with linky down below.  Just add your site, "follow" with Google Friends the 1st slot (which is the hostess) and then whichever site appeals to you.  It is so much fun, don't miss out on it!!  Every day I'll have a different linky that corresponds with the day of the week it is.

 

God bless you all,
Until next post,                                             

62c4d810-2ab6-4f75-b394-bfadfb2c3c7e

1.03.01

The Blog That Almost WASN'T

Greetings, friends!

Whew! I can finally wipe the sweat from my brow and breathe normally again.  My heart can start beating again.  Everything is OK in the world.....well, in my world right now.  LOL!  What happened, you ask?  I almost screwed up my blog!!  Not some little typo screw up, but a major I had two backgrounds that clashed, all my gadgets were a mess and the font type and size were horrible!!

I just was poking around the 'net, looking for cute blog backgrounds.  I don't know if you noticed, but I've been sporting the backgrounds for awhile now.  I had found this really cute Halloween one, but then I debated with myself if it was too early to use it.  I finally figured, nah, I'll use it. It's October.  So I applied the the background and head graphic and it looked great.  I should have stopped there....but no, I keep looking and picking at things until I have it in such a mess I need professional help to get out of it.
The background was a brilliant purple and had a ghost and trick-or-treaters on it.  Really cute!

Then, I found this other website that had the most ADORABLE scarecrow motif for fall.  It was something called a "template."  Well, I still am relatively new to blogging and I am NOT any kind of designer, so I didn't really know what a template was.  I thought it was the same as the background.  Well, come to find out, it's a whole kit and comes with a background and buttons and the header graphic.  I followed the instructions to a tee and I got a message that the template doesn't include -and it listed a whole bunch of HTML documents.  I pressed "keep gadgets" like I was supposed to.  Then, I pressed "preview" and what I saw next, I will never forget!!

Not only did the template apply itself, but the OLD background (the purple Halloween one I described above) stuck around too!  And right front and center of the screen!!  It clashed horribly with the scarecrow template.  Well, at this time, I'm considering my options: re-do the blog, get rid of the blog (which broke my heart!) or move to some foreign land that offered NO internet access so I wouldn't be able to see how horribly I'd screwed my blog up.  I was getting ready to pack when I just calmed myself down, took slow, deep breaths and kept telling myself, THINK.  You CAN fix this.  You know a lot about computers.  So, I went back to the blog, into the design section and into templates and started to re-arrange my stuff, I found the HTML box that held the old purple background and I deleted it-yay! I was down to ONE background, the really cute scarecrow one.  I re-adjusted the font size and type, got rid of the "linky" I told everyone about yesterday (I still had NOT one link from anyone, so I said goodbye to it!) and in the end, I have one really cute blog.  If I don't say so myself!!!  I certainly poured blood, sweat and tears into it, I tell ya!  So I'll do the Halloween one the week of Halloween because while the templates are cute, you have to readjust all your stuff because it gets out of place and it's a pain to re-do it.  So the scarecrow stays!!  I don't care if a really adorable, can't-live-without-it-template walks through the door and begs to be installed.  The scarecrow rules!!! (I think....LOL).

And here when I woke up this morning, I thought I'd have nothing to blog about!!  Silly me!!  I notice that my legs are losing ground every day. I can't WAIT to have my bariatric assessment on Thursday and get the show on the road.  I'm having problems with walking from the bedroom to the bathroom and it's a really short hallway.  I can't use my walker inside the house, it's too big, as the hallway is narrow to our room and the bathroom.  So I prop myself against the wall and get to the bathroom that way by holding on to both sides of the wall.  Every step I take is agonizing.  I'm on 200mg of Morphine and if I didn't have that, I think I'd have to be euthanized!  The pain would be to intense to live with.  And it's all in the right leg.  So I know that lumbar disk is pressing in even harder, because I have the "pins and needles" sensation nearly all the time now.  I hope the surgery and subsequent weight loss will take some or hopefully all of the pressure away.  I really don't want back surgery, so if this works, I will be one happy gal!! :0)

I'm still trying to get used to the extra neurontin. I think today I start taking it three times a day at 900mg at a time.  It feels good to have that fire feeling gone, but boy am I sleepy!  I think if I took a million naps a day, it wouldn't be enough!

Alrighty, I'm going to go and relax now by reading OTHER people's blogs.  I hope you all enjoy my new blog's look.  Please comment on it so I know if you like it or if you don't, tell me how to improve it.  I love any and all comments. 

Have a good Saturday, everyone!!!
God bless,
Until next post,
Missy

Fragile

Greetings, dear friends!

I don't know what is up with Blogger recently, but I'm having a problem with linking an image to a another blog.  I'm having to put the image on without the link, and add a hyperlink underneath my image!  I don't like it at all!!  And then, I wrote out some of the post for today and had to go to another site for the link and when I came back to my draft, it wasn't there and the copy and paste didn't work, either!  ARGH!!!!!! 

But, my problems are NOTHING compared to the story I'm about to share with you.  I was having breakfast while reading blogs, when I saw a button to "Pray for Leslie Joy Evans" on one of the blogs.  I clicked on it and it forever has changed my way of looking a things.  Life is so incredibly fragile, that it must be preserved and kept safe inside each one of us.  You never know, in a fleeting moment it can be lost forever.

Leslie Joy Evans was a beautiful woman, recently married to a man she utterly adored.  He had a previous wife who died of cancer 2 years ago, leaving him with three children.  Leslie loved those kids and wanted to feel the experience of pregnancy and raising a child of her own.  So she got pregnant and found out she was having twins.  Then, at 21 weeks into her pregnancy, her water broke.  She was rushed to the hospital and it was found to be a tear in baby A's amniotic fluid sac. The baby (a girl, I believe) was still born.  The other baby's lungs were too under-developed and died as well.  If THAT isn't enough, the mom (Leslie) had a heart attack!  They were able to revive her, but she was without oxygen for 17 minutes....way too long for the brain to not be damaged.  Leslie died on October 7th, 2010.  My heart just breaks for this young couple. So much to live for, over in a fleeting moment.  I know God has His reasons for ALL things and He doesn't give you more than you can bear, but sometimes He comes awfully close to that breaking point!  Her family has a blog about Leslie, click on my link: Leslie Joy Evans

ATTENTION TO MY FELLOW BLOGGERS:  PLEASE, please, please join me in the Blog Hop!  It's fun!  Down below, under the discussion labels and above "Patients Like Me" is the "linky" on which you enter your blog's URL.  Your traffic will DEFINITELY increase....mine has!  And you can look at some really cool blogs and meet new people.  It can be as time consuming as you want it to be.   I'm kind of embarrassed because the only link there is mine, to start it off.  So won't you help me with my Blog Hop??

Today is "Follow Friday"!  That means anyone over 40 are encouraged to visit other blogs and "follow" them and then they return the favor and "follow" you back.  Sound fun?  :0)  Click on this link to visit the blog that started this tradition: "Never Growing Old"   

OK, on to other things.  My neuropathy pain has much improved with the extra Neurontin, however, it makes me so darn drowsy!  My aunt took it for the same reasons - shooting pains from her back to her legs and it really zonked her out, she told me.  I'm going to continue it, though, because the benefit I get from it far outweighs the risks.  The "fire" feeling in my feet is basically gone.  I'll get a twinge here and there, but definitely much better.  I always have "pins and needles" sensations, those are no problem. I just can't stand it when my feet are on fire!!

Today my hubby and I are taking a practice-run out to the hospital in Gilbert where the bariatric surgeon is.  We thought it best to do this because we are always running late and then stress out about where to go.  But not this time.  We will be armed with the GPS and we can take our time getting there and back.

Nothing else is going on, thank Heavens!  We've had enough to last a life time!  I heard from my dad in Michigan today and he sounds like he is doing very well.  Met a very nice lady online (just like Frankie and I met!) and is planning a trip to Oklahoma to visit her.  He sounds really excited about it. I'm happy he's found someone to fill at least partially, the loneliness hole in his heart that mom left behind.  It is strange thinking of him with some one else besides my mom, but I'll get over that in time.  Mom would want him to be happy.

Alrighty, that is it from my corner of the blogosphere!  Hope I get some people to sign up their blog on my linky list...it's free! And fun!!  Although I'd have more fun if people would sign up....hint, hint! :0)

Have a blessed day!
Until next post,
Missy

My Very First Blog Award!

Howdy, folks!

Before I get on topic, I have just one thing to say at this moment:

 WHERE DO I SIGN UP FOR THIS GUY'S LIFE??????  Jack here doesn't have a care in the world...he just ate, had some water and is now working on his fifth nap of the day.  He doesn't distress over bills, money, illness or medications.  Well, medications, maybe, as I do give him an allergy pill almost every day because he gets all stuffed up and he has that teeny tiny little nose to breathe from.  He's so used to me shoving it down his throat that I don't think he even worries about that anymore!!   He's got "people" who do things for him, pet him and love him 24/7.  Oh, bliss....the hard knock life of a pappered beyond belief cat!!   I just couldn't resist taking this picture. :0)

OK....today I've just been moving in slow motion, it seems.  I'm so exhausted and I don't know how or why.  Everything is such a chore, that it's virtually impossible for me to do the chores.  My husband is FANTASTIC with me.  He truly understands what I'm going through and I feel the same way about him and we help each other out like the team we are meant to be.  When I'm not feeling too strong, he is. And vise versa.

My stupid feet are swollen beyond capacity.  I can't even bend them and I have the ever present leg pain.  The burning feeling on the top of my foot has resolved with the extra neurontin.  I'm taking 900mg/3 times a day.  Maybe that's why I'm so tired.  But I'll take tired over that burning pain any day!!!  So now I'm just waiting until Oct. 14th for the bariatric clinic appointment.  Unfortunately my insurance is being a pill and it's a 30 mile trip EACH way.  Out of this huge city, they choose a doctor who practices  in Gilbert, AZ!!!  Go figure.  I've been reading up on him, though. and he's chief of this program and has been in bariatric practice for 5 years.  The hospital I will be going to is the FIRST in the valley to use "robots" in surgery to assist the surgeons.  I learned that at the seminar. They had a news clip we watched while waiting for the seminar to start.  So I'll be in good hands.  I'm desperate enough to do even the gastric bypass.   I know I said I wouldn't, but I gotta do something, and if this surgeon thinks that's my best bet, then that's what I will do.  I don't want to die young, like my mom. I still have so much stuff to do to fulfill my life!!,

Did you see my pretty lil' blog award in the upper left sidebar?  I was so shocked and honored to have this award presented to me.  Thank you, Martha Ruth, for thinking my blog is worthy of this award.  Make sure to visit her AWESOME site.  It's so beautiful and the posts are very interesting.  Just click on the award or look in my blog roll down on the page for the URL for her blog.

In order to accept this beautiful award, I have to pass it on to 15 other bloggers that I have newly discovered.  I let them know I'm giving them a blog award and then they will do the same thing to pass it along. They will also need to say who gave them the award. I like the concept of that - it's like bonding us all into one big community of friends.  From what I can tell, there is no time frame to give out the award, so I'm going to think about it tonight and start tomorrow with dishing out the award to people whose blogs I really like and respect.  It sounds like fun!!!  So fellow bloggers, look out...you may be on my award trail!!!

Speaking of trail, I've joined a "BLOG HOP" that I'd love my fellow blog friends to follow along with me.  Down on the page, where my web and blog links are is where you enter the URL for your site.  The SAME list is on each participant's blog(s).  You can find out more by going to the Linky site who hosts this....their website link is there, too.  They can explain it far better than me!  I'll tell you, though, since I signed up about three hours ago, my blog traffic REALLY improved!  No joke!  So go ahead....enter your URL down below in the "Blog Hop."

Alrighty, I can't do anything more today.  I'm spent. I'm gonna go and get my "melon" feet up and probably take a nap.  I start out reading and then before you know it, 2 hours have gone past and I feel the book being gently lifted from my hand by my husband and he puts it on the bedside table.  It's a routine now we go through!!  I used to be such a quick reader. I could read a 300 page book in a day.  Now I'm lucky if I can squeak out a chapter a day.  I wonder if I have that narcolepsy?   Nah.....it's the fibro.  When is it never NOT the fibro?  That is the question.  If you have a good answer, I'd love to hear it!  :0)

Hope you all have a blessed day.
Until next post,
Missy

A Mind Lost

Howdy, everyone!

Boy, did we just have the mother lode of storms, so to speak! Rain, hail, thunder...it made me think I was in Michigan again!!  I loved it.  It went on for about 30 minutes and now it's down to a little sprinkle.  I'll bet the cacti in the desert are really sucking the water in!!!

I went to the doctor yesterday because my right foot is absolutely killing me with that "fire" sensation all the time.  I'm already on 800mg of Neurontin and now she has upped that to I still take the 800mg pill, but I add a 100mg pill with it three times a day.  I have to admit, I haven't had that "fire" sensation too much since the medication change!  Thank goodness!  I'm still falling, though. I did it again this morning. I was on the computer and must have fallen asleep and leaned too far back in the chair and I toppled backwards to the floor, chair and all.  I am so damn sore from all these little mishaps!  I wish they would stop!  I got rid of the fire feeling, but added thigh and leg pain because of the fall.  ARGH!

You may wonder why I titled this post "A Mind Lost."  Today I'm going to share with you my grandpa, who had Alzheimers and lost his battle to it (that and pneumonia) in July of 1993.  He was a wonderful, kind-hearted man who deserved a much better way to leave this Earth than how he did.  He went from doing complicated math problems to not being able to tie his shoes.  He gave my grandma a very hard time.  He would think she was a man (probably because of the short hair) and wouldn't let her sleep in the bed with him.  She spent many nights out on the couch. Sometimes he would even throw her out of the house, so she would go to the car. She had to cover up all the mirrors in the house because it would upset him to see his own vision. THAT wasn't him...he saw himself as how he was back in the war days. So he kept thinking that an old man was following him.  He'd forget that he already ate and would eat again. So many things happen with Alzheimer's and I hate it.  It makes you do things and say things that are mean and hurtful.  I remember when we were going back to Michigan with him to take him to a VA hospital, at the motel we had a second floor room with lots of mirrors, of course.  Motels love 'em!  He went into the room, saw the old man following him again, and out the door he went.  My mom went to stop him and he got up to her face and said, "If you don't move, I'll throw you right off this balcony."  My mom said, "I love you, Dad. We are staying here for the night.  It's OK."  And he said, "Well, I DON'T love YOU!" and pushed past her and went downstairs.  Grandma flew down the steps after him and somehow, Grandpa found this huge rock and he began chasing Grandma with it around the yard of the motel.  I was in such shock, I had no idea what to do.  Mom was in the bathroom, because when she gets stressed she always has to take a crap and she kept telling me, "call the police!"  Well, the police were already called by a church group who saw the whole show as they there raking leaves next door.

The cops were really nice and talked with us and with Grandpa.  He wouldn't go anywhere else with us and he definitely needed some sort of evaluation at the hospital.  So the cops took him and we followed behind.  At the hospital, he totally flipped out and was never the same again.  I think he had a stroke. He couldn't walk anymore, his speech was garbled and he refused to eat, so they placed a feeding tube until Grandma signed a paper stating not to restart his heart if it should stop. And to remove the tube feeding.  He wouldn't have wanted that.  They transferred him back to Yuma, where he died four days later of bad pneumonia.  We learned that according to the MRI he had at the VA in Phoenix, he only had a quarter left of his brain that still functioned.  The Alzheimer's ate up everything else.  It is a challenging disease, none I'd wish on anybody.  My grandma went through hell, but so did my grandpa.  I'll bet he was extremely scared not knowing who the people are around him.  Or not knowing where you are and how you got there.  We need a cure for this.  I'm happy, though, that medications are being released to help it.  It's too late for MY grandpa, but maybe not too late for someone else's grandpa or dad or mom or friend......

Here are some pictures I took of that very first time I set foot on AZ ground.  I took 7 rolls of film (give or take a few rolls!) and most of them were of desert, cacti and palm trees.  So bear with me....they are good pics, I promise!!

Isn't this an awesome, kick butt cactus garden?  My grandma's friends live here and take care of the garden.  I love it, but would hate to fall into it!!

This is my grandma, peeking out through the blooming cactus.  She hates having her picture taken and will go to all lengths to stop it!

Isn't she a fashion plate?  I don't know if you can see it or not, but my mom is wearing my grandpa's fuzzy blue slippers outdoors with her yellow shorts and black shirt.

Grandma, Grandpa and Mom taking what is left of our suitcase up to the trash.  I don't know what TWA did to it, but it was all dented and wouldn't close!  So we got another one while in Yuma.

Mom up in the Yuma Territorial Prison Historical Park Watchtower.  Little did I know that I'd be getting married there in three years!  Anyway, notice how mom is nice and centered in the camera?  Good. Because here is the picture she took of me.....

Isn't that a scream?  I have forever teased her about that and how off centered I am.  :0)

Here is the mystery of all time:  WHO is mom talking to?  I was behind her, taking the picture.  Grandma & Grandpa had to go back home real quick to shut the windows because it looked like a storm was coming in.  My mom and I have forever loved this picture because we just don't know what happened here!  :0)  Some things are never meant to be found out, I guess!!

As you can see, it does look like a storm is brewing.  Look at them dark clouds!  So rare for Yuma.  I think my mom and I fell in love with it the second we got off the plane in Phoenix and went to Yuma.

This picture was taken by me outside a Mexican restaurant we had lunch at.  Grandpa was a little agitated because all the windows there and he kept seeing his reflection and that "old man following him."

Here is a pic of my grandma telling my grandpa to hurry along and quit shuffling his feet.  You can tell by the look on his face he was getting pissed at her constantly griping at him.

Yay! We are almost on our home soil!!  Up ahead is border crossing and you go into a building and form two lines, usually, depending how busy they are. They ask you where you are from and check your license.  If everything pans out, you are free to go.  However, when your spouse has Alzheimers and he can't remember where he is from, that gets tricky so grandma always was on the ball and explained that he had memory problems and was from Yuma, Arizona.

This is the last picture I have of my grandpa.  This was taken the morning we were leaving for Michigan and we were trying to get ready.  I don't know where grandpa's glasses are, but we'll find them in some goofy place like the freezer or something!

We finally made it out of Yuma and got as far as Springerville, AZ which is approx. 14 miles from New Mexico.  Grandpa threw a giant fit in the ER in Springerville and they sedated him and transferred him to Phoenix.  He must have bitten a paramedic, because they asked permission from grandma if they could do an AIDS test on him.  They THEN transferred him to the VA in Tucson without even telling us. We found out from an employee in Phoenix that had worked the previous day and remembered they had transferred him.  When we called Tucson, he was there!
From there, they sent him BACK to Yuma to a nursing home and then he died.  That's the story of my grandpa.  When he was a young man, he was so many wonderful things: a son, a husband, a soldier, a father, a grand & great grand father.  Alzheimer's slowly takes who you were away and replaces it with a shell of the person that once was.  I really feel for everyone having to deal with this devastating disease.  So let's take a moment to think about how lucky we are to still have our mind.  We may not have much else, but we do have our mind!!  :0)

For more information on Alzheimer's Disease, please go to this very informative website. It also helps caregivers cope with the challenges Alzheimer's creates.  Here is the URL:  Alzheimer's Foundation of America.

I wish you all happy and well.
God bless!!
Until next post,
Missy

This post is lovingly dedicated to both my grandparents and to my good friend, Heather, who deals with the ugly reality of Alzheimer's everyday. Keep up the strength!!

PS-Heather's blog "Life and Fibromyalgia" is terrific. You can find the URL to it in my blog roll.  Give her a visit!!  :0)