{"id":598,"date":"2011-10-11T05:15:14","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T09:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/?p=598"},"modified":"2011-10-11T05:15:14","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T09:15:14","slug":"the-good-the-bad-and-the-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/?p=598","title":{"rendered":"THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE FUNNY"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have known people that have been told that they have cancer and their immediate reaction is that they have<\/em> to live because their children need them. \u00a0In all honesty the only reason that you have<\/em> to live is for yourself. \u00a0I would love to think that Lennie could keep his hope alive by getting well for me,<\/em> but the truth is that he can only get well for himself. \u00a0This is his battle and I am merely a bystander who is urging him along with a lot of well meaning nagging.<\/p>\n

I can recall when I was about 5 years old and I saw the B\/W version of Peter Pan with Mary Martin in that role. \u00a0Tinkerbell saves Peter Pan’s life by drinking the poison herself. \u00a0Watching Tinkerbell’s light grow dimmer and dimmer, Peter Pan pleads with the TV audience to ‘believe’. \u00a0“Say, ‘I believe’.”, he calls out to us, watching from home around our tiny TV set. \u00a0There I sat, shouting, “I believe!”. \u00a0And I really did believe. \u00a0At that moment I believed\u00a0that shouting out the words would save Tinkerbell’s life. \u00a0And I guess I still do. \u00a0But this time it is Lennie’s light that is starting to grow dim. \u00a0All the shouting in the world will not save him. \u00a0Only he can do that, and sadly, Lennie is losing his will to live.<\/p>\n

I guess that I saw it first months ago when his personality started to change. \u00a0His happy go lucky nature was turning into something dark as if his alter ego was starting to take over. \u00a0Over the months he has become very negative and short-tempered; especially with me. \u00a0The nurses of course got their share of abuse too, but he saved most of his anger for me. \u00a0It seems that it is always the people that care about us the most who put up with the brunt of this misdirected anger.<\/p>\n

We arrived home here in Hawai’i about eleven days ago. \u00a0Two days after our arrival Lennie got on the scale and was shocked to see the display reading 167 pounds. \u00a0He was scared and he was angry. \u00a0I tried to tell him that everyone loses weight after major surgery, but he wouldn’t listen. \u00a0He was convinced that he was dying. \u00a0He decided that he wanted the narcotic pain killers that the doctors in Mexico had weaned him off, so he got his handyman to drive him to a walk-in clinic, because I would not, where he was doled out his narcotics and prescription sleeping pills. \u00a0That night he decided that he would ignore the label and take 1 and another half a sleeping pill. \u00a0…..The sound of him yelling at 4 a.m. woke me. \u00a0He was lying on the floor in the bathroom after stumbling. \u00a0He had managed to pee everywhere except in the toilet. \u00a0I got him up and into bed and put some dry socks on him, then went in to clean up the bathroom. \u00a0Staggering back to bed I realized that I was now wide awake, yet exhausted. \u00a0In less than 3 hours he was waking me up and telling me to get up and get him some food.<\/p>\n

I have become even more creative in the kitchen where I try to get a lot of calories into a little bit of food. \u00a0The dishes that I feed him are the most nutritious ones that I can create, into which are added healthy fats and calorie rich items of proteins and balanced food groups. \u00a0Coconut cream and oil goes into every dish I can manage. \u00a0I literally spend hours in the kitchen every day and well into the evening, so you can imagine my fury when he ate some of our cleaning lady’s junk food cookies. \u00a0After 6 days of 5 small meals each and protein shakes in between, Lennie had put on 8 pounds. \u00a0He was 175 pounds. \u00a0I was ecstatic, but he was only mildly interested and\u00a0pessimistic\u00a0that he would only lose it in a couple more days. \u00a0So far he is staying at 175.<\/p>\n

We had to go to the bank a few days ago. \u00a0Some how Lennie’s credit card was compromised and we had to get it sorted out. \u00a0When we arrived at the bank, the woman that he was dealing with was on her lunch break in the back of the bank. \u00a0She said that she still had a half hour left, but would be out in 15 minutes. \u00a0Lennie said that he couldn’t wait that long because he felt too weak so he just laid down on the floor! \u00a0He went behind a partition where the filing cabinets were and one of the tellers came out and said that she was going to ask him to sit in the waiting area. \u00a0I just looked at her and said, “Nope, he’s not going to move. \u00a0Good luck trying.” \u00a0She knew that I was right and didn’t bother. \u00a0Instead she asked me to go back there and sit in a desk chair so that I could see him and they wouldn’t worry that he was going through the filing cabinets. \u00a0When the banking officer came out a few minutes later after cutting her lunch short, Lennie was sound asleep on the bank’s floor. \u00a0I would like to say that this was as funny as a sit-com, but at the time that it is happening it is anything but funny. \u00a0He pulled this same stunt at the swimsuit designer’s store where we are having made a pair of spandex swim trunks that have a higher, snug fitting waist with an interior pouch for his new colostomy bag so that once again he will be able to swim in the ocean.<\/p>\n

Our trials and tribulations continue…..<\/p>\n

Kathryn<\/em><\/p>\n

www.kathrynsmith.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have known people that have been told that they have cancer and their immediate reaction is that they have to live because their children need them. \u00a0In all honesty the only reason that you have to live is for yourself. \u00a0I would love to think that Lennie could keep his hope alive by getting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-lennie-and-kathryn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":606,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions\/606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}