{"id":612,"date":"2011-10-26T03:16:35","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T07:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/?p=612"},"modified":"2011-10-27T08:30:08","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T12:30:08","slug":"the-walker-and-lennies-mojo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/?p=612","title":{"rendered":"THE WALKER AND LENNIE’S MOJO"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s nighttime as I sit on the sofa in the living room watching Lennie sleep. \u00a0Outside the rain is pouring straight down; something that has\u00a0always amazed me here in Hawai’i.\u00a0 We are on the windward side of the island, so named because of the constant ocean breezes.\u00a0 It is\u00a0windy here, yet when it rains the rain comes straight down. \u00a0I\u00a0watch it cascading down the roof and flowing into the rain catcher at the back of the house. \u00a0All of the louvered windows are open and the only sound is the pouring rain.\u00a0 I am just sitting quietly in the dark after turning off the TV and the lights. \u00a0I knew Lennie wouldn’t get to see the whole movie; he can never stay awake long enough. \u00a0But I know that when he is asleep he is not in pain.<\/p>\n

We signed up today for Hospice in-home care. \u00a0This is a not-for-profit organization that we won’t have to pay for. \u00a0Lennie will get a nurse twice a week and an aid worker to help him shower and clean up, also twice a week. \u00a0There will be a manager that will look in on him and a social worker and he is on a list for a volunteer who will come over and visit him and read to him or just keep him company. \u00a0His pain medication will be provided. \u00a0This is a free service for people who are in an end-stage illness. \u00a0We signed up for it because it was free and I didn’t know what else to do while I am away from him. \u00a0How else would he even get someone to change his colostomy bag?<\/p>\n

Someone asked me a few months ago if I cry. \u00a0I told them that in the past year I have not cried at all because there would be plenty of time for crying if Lennie doesn’t make it. \u00a0I cry all the time now. \u00a0I cry for him; I cry for myself; I cry because we signed up for Hospice care, but most of all I cry for the loss of our hopes and dreams. \u00a0We had planned such a full, happy life together and now all I see is his will to live slipping away. \u00a0There are moments when I think that hope has been renewed in him, but they fade quickly as the pain overtakes him. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>On Saturday I bought him a present: \u00a0a walker that I got at a garage sale for two dollars. \u00a0Hawai’i has the best garage sales and how my heart ached for him to be with me the way we use to be. \u00a0It was one of our favorite things to do. \u00a0We would get up incredibly early on Saturday mornings so that we could be the early birds at the sales. \u00a0We have furnished our old Hawai’ian home with the treasures that we have bought off other people’s lawns. \u00a0The walker was my last purchase.<\/p>\n

When I showed him the walker it made him happy. \u00a0I told him that he could not use it in the house; this was to be his motivation for getting up and outside and walking. \u00a0He tested it out Sunday\u00a0morning as we walked down our long drive and across the street and back. \u00a0It tired him out because his hemoglobin has dropped again to 8.6, but I think that it also energized him a bit, because about half an hour later I saw him walking around the outside of the house, something that he hasn’t done since we arrived here 3 weeks ago. \u00a0We must be two of the palest people in Hawai’i as neither of us go outside to just enjoy the sun.\u00a0 I showed the walker to the nurse that came over and she thought that they could do one better and provide him with another walker that had a seat so that he could walk even farther and sit down to rest when he got tired.\u00a0 This also would be provided by Hospice Care free of charge.\u00a0 This is a welcome gift of help after spending what I have estimated in the past year to be approximately $130,000 on his treatments, surgery and all other items related to his cancer.\u00a0 We are not only watching his life teeter on the brink, but also our financial future.\u00a0 We now have to play catch-up as we started to use our mortgage money for treatments and fell behind on bills.\u00a0 This is the reality of getting an illness\u00a0if you are\u00a0a United States citizen without health insurance which comes at a very hefty monthly premium.<\/p>\n

So this walker, a symbol of a fragile and an aging body, seems to have\"\"<\/a> given Lennie hope once again.\u00a0 I told him this morning that I believe he is getting his mojo back.\u00a0 He asked me what I meant by his mojo.\u00a0 I told him that it meant finding your groove\u00a0and getting back your sense of purpose in life,\u00a0or coming back to life after being apathetic.\u00a0 It is that eternal spark of life that gives us the hope to go on when the odds are against us.\u00a0 Mojo is what made Steve Jobs live 8 years with pancreatic cancer when the ‘experts’ said he would only live 1 year.\u00a0\u00a0Lennie promised me as I started to get ready to go back to Canada without him, that he would try and walk every day.\u00a0 He would not only use his walker, but he would become a walker.\u00a0 This may have been the best two dollars that I have ever spent.<\/p>\n

Kathryn<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s nighttime as I sit on the sofa in the living room watching Lennie sleep. \u00a0Outside the rain is pouring straight down; something that has\u00a0always amazed me here in Hawai’i.\u00a0 We are on the windward side of the island, so named because of the constant ocean breezes.\u00a0 It is\u00a0windy here, yet when it rains the […]<\/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-612","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\/612","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=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":626,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonartist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}