Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

Supercolliding since 2003

So, yesterday, I left Christi in the East Bay and came down to Cupertino with our only automobile (did you know that “east bay” is pig-latin for beast?). Christi convinced Tiffany and Luoi that they wanted to drive doen to Lucy’s Tea House (La Teejo de Lusi) in Mountain View for dinner. So those three, Mitch, Vince, Tammy and I had tea and some food. I asked Mitch where I could buy candles in the area and he sent me to Albertsons on El Camino, in Sunnyvale, right next to highway 85 and that big empty mall that used to be an Emporium. They had hundreds of candles. We now have candles in reserve. We meant to buy one of each, but accidentally skipped a few. Even so, we ended up with twenty two candles. There were on sale for twenty percent off. I was extremely pleased. I was returning to the aisle with a grocery cart when a guy walked up and asked if we were buying one of each. I said heck yes, there’s a lot of them and they’re on sale to boot. He asked why we were getting them and I said my mom was sick.
“Lighting a candle isn’t going to help her. Getting on your knees and praying to Jesus will help her.” he said, but not immediately. He seemed harmless at first but quickly accelerated up to preaching us the word. He told us about how his daughters had the power to lay hands and heal. I said they were welcome to lay hands on my mom if they wanted and I was sure nobody would mind. We got lots of folks praying at her bedside. The more, the merrier. He decided it would better to pray right there in the grocery store. and he held christi and my hands and asked Jesus to bless us and my mom. It was the first time I’d ever prayed in the grocery store. The stock boy thought it was a bit odd. I think they guy was a bit embarassed at some point, cuz he got really quiet when folks started staring. I think that if you’re going to proclaim the word in a grocery store, you ought to be out, loud and proud (to co-opt a queer saying), but I guess Jesus doesn’t necessarily want people to stare at you if you’re going to get thrown out of the store. But he really did not want us buying the candles, so maybe it would have been worth it to him. He asked if I thought the candles would heal her, and I said no. He said, “that’s right, only jesus will heal her!” but why was I buying them anyway? “She’s scared of the dark now, and an electric light is too much light, so these are perfect.” He suggested a kerosene lamp. But there were none in the ethnic foods aisle.
He must have told us fifty stories of people being healed by prayer. Some guy died right there in a church pew at church and the congregation prayed for him and he walked out alive. I said, “oh, but we have a do not recessitate order for my mom.” and he had oodles of stories about people praying instead of calling ambulences and being healed. Are fundamentalists more likely to die of heart attacks because of delaying treatment? There’s a study and some graduate degrees waiting there.
Despite Jesus’ amazing power to heal, this guy’s cart was full of diet foods and he combed over his bald spot. He didn’t say anything about praying instead of going to the barber. If jesus can cure his daughter’s tumor, can’t He grow hair on the top of this guy’s head? What about the Jesus diet? Pray five times a day to cure obesity. One man, he said, had his asthma cured by prayer, but refused to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. “And do you know where he is now?” “burning in hell!” I said. Hallelujia! (apparently it was a rhetorical question.) Anyway, it was getting late, so I said goodbye to him. At first he just seemed very lonely, but then I realized I did a bad thing by encouraging him.
The checkout woman said, “did you get one of every candle?” Had almost the same conversation again, except she said, “I guess she needs a lot of praying.” and let it go. I don’t understand why millitant atheists vince and Tammy want to stay in the south bay. People are praying all over the place.
Anyway, Margie is off at Albertsons right now, because she’s very keen on candles and likes to buy them on sale. It seems she and her sister regularly burn twenty two of them in a week.
I came back to my parents house and refilled the distilled water on her oxygen generator and set my watch alarm to go off every two hours and tried to sleep. Mom’s breathing was very rough and uneven. Its the sort of thing that makes me think she won’t make it to morning, but she’s as strong as a horse, so I wasn’t sure. I turned up her oxygen, elevated her head, have her more morhpine, but none of these things helped. The hospice nurse arrived this morning while I was in the shower and discovered that I had cross-threaded the bubbler part when I refilled it with water, so my mom had gotten no oxygen during the night. Her breathing is fine now. Ooops. I feel bad about it. Mom is still going. Her kidneys are still going. She’s part camel.
I’m going to see the Saint Francis opera in San Francisco tonight, unless something dramatic happens. My dad is encouraging me to stay in Berkeley tonight. He sarted that encouragement after I threatened to slug him if he said anything more about Jimmy Carter.

Apparently, there was a misunderstanding and my Dad has not cut the amount of meds going to my mom. Or that’s what he says when I talked to him about it. And now there are six fewer candles burning than yesterday. I’m thinking mabe they should be replaced with scented candles. As dying people’s systems break down, they stop being able to deal with toxins in their bodies and start to smell kind of toxic. I’ve been picking a lot of roses, but Cathy, the weekend attendant is allergic to roses, so i’ll have to switch to something else by friday evening. anyway, if mom can’t see the flowers, at least maybe she can smell them. Her sense of taste came back some a while ago. She lost it during radiation, but Sarah K gave me a book on remedies for cancer symptoms and it said that radiation aimed at the head or neck can make taste buds quit working. The remedy for that is zinc. So I gave my mom zinc every day as long as she ate food and she seemed to be able to taste more and more. Who knows what’s going on with her now.

Last night, my dad came home with a pomegranite, so I ate a little bit of it. Then, I went to Esperanto class. Class got out early and then dinner was quicker than usual, so I was in bed early for a Tuesday night. The class was on the correlatives. I thought I knew all of them, but as I sat in class, I couldn’t think of a one, except for kio, which is easy. We had pizza afterwards at Pizaa My Heart. It wasn’t very good. Sarah D came to class, which I’m happy about. I kept telling her that it was a language for the proletariat. I think she’ll find it useful for international organizing.
At some point this morning, Christi realized that Tiffany was in our living room. she came up and said goodmorning, then disappeared again. She’s taking over cat-sitting duties. It was nice to see er, even if only for a few minutes. I slept till about noon and then spent an hour running around the house, recollecting things, like the toiletries bag which was returned to the bathroom and anyway, I’m prolly runnign slow. I feel much revived though.
And now I’m back here and my mom is still here, although five of her candles have burned out since yesterday. One of them is St. Martin of Tours, patron saint against leprosy. and the red spot on her back that went away has returned. Cooincidence?
Apparently my dad has been cutting back the amount of medication my mom has been receiving. He wants to only give her stuff every six hours instead of every four. And maybe she doesn’t need lorazepam, maybe we should try torepositin her instead, so she’s more comfortable. It’s this sort of thinking that leads to the return of red spots. And once again, by the time he realizes he was wrong, it will be too late for him.

Oh my lord, I am tired. I understand it’s pomegranite season. I would enjoy a pomegranite after an uninterrupted night’s sleep. woke up many times. Held my mom’s hand from 4:00 to 8:00 because she was scared. I worked out a way to prop up my arm and sleep at the same time to arrange this. I accidentally gave her some meds every 2 hours instead of every four, but it doesn’t matter, because the dosage was less than half of the maximum. Except this afternoon I inadvertantly went .3ml over the max, but not all at once. anyway, she still looks pained.
the hospice nurse came by today and doubled the amount of lorazepam I could give mom after I complained that the previous maximum dose was not stop her from shaking sometimes. So maybe this other medication actually has a higher maximum dose also. Anyway, the new max dose of lorazepam is still not enough to stop her from twitching. Margie says all dying people twitch and nothing you give them will stop it. I think she’s right on this.
Everyone comes over and marvels how tough my mom is. She’s one tough woman. things I didn’t know about my mom: hidden, inner toughness. I think I should have suspected. Don’t know her as well as I should.
I’m thinking about going to esperanto class, except i get angsty when i’m away for too long, cuz what if something hapened or something? Sheesh. I am foolish. The hospice nurse had to call my mom’s doctor to report that my mom has high blood pressure. Yeah, let’s start her on high blood pressure medication right wawy! Otherwise, she might have a stroke or something! anyway, the doctor made a note of it and told us not to do anything. My mom has always had high blood pressure, especially when she’s stressed. I imagine she must be stressed right now.
after more than a day of not reacting to anything, she nodded in responce to a couple of questions today. One of which had to do with drinking water. She’s in favor of it. She’s gotten so thirsty, she bites the glycerin sawbs we use on her mouth. So i gave her water and fruit juice 0.1 mililiter at a time. She hasn’t had very much. I’ve brewed some mint tea for next time. I think the fruit juice might be hard on her stomach, even though she only had 4 mililiters of it or so. anyway, she liked the juice. She squeezed brother robert’s hand when he said hello. she’s tough.
I’m not tough. Christi wants to sleep at home tonight. Me too. But who will spring to the rescue if mom starts wet respirating again? Prolly not me. I had to make christi wear my watch because the watch alarm no longer wakes me up. My dad wanted to give me a louder alarm clock. I said, “but I don’t want to wake up mom.” he said, ‘there’s not much danger of that.” but then she did wake up today a little bit, sort of, so you never know.
I talked to him about euthanasia. he says that because it might be a mistake one in a hundred times, it should never be done. I said, “do you think mom is going to wake up again?” no, this wouldn’t be one of those times that it would be a mistake. but if you’re going to have rules, you need to follow them all the time. I asked if this is like Socrates refusing to escape from prison, because it was important to always respect the law, even if it was wrong in this case. He says yes. My dad is definitely not a post-modernist. no situational ethics for him. The rules are rules and they’re right or they wouldn’t be rules. He votes libretarian, but he’s a republican at heart. He says that people say that we’re nicer to cats because we put them to sleep when they’re suffering and dying, but we can also sell cats for vivesection, so uh… I didn’t quite follow his logic. Some of the ways we treat pets differently than people are worse than how we treat people, so every way we treat cats differently than people must be worse? I don’t know. He ran out of the house to work before he could clarify himself. By the time he might suspect that he’s wrong, it will be too late… I’d respect his wishes anyway.

Mom tenatiously keeps hanging on. where was this fighting spirit earlier? when she first had brain surgery, she kept saying “I’m dying! I’m dying! It’s all over! Everything is ruined!” now she just keeps going like the energizer bunny. Why is she changing her mind at the last minute? Why couldn’t she have been determined earlier?
I got up every two hours last night to check on her. That went pretty well and it kept her pretty much out of pain. Except that I’m exhausted. Margie woke me up this morning and told me I’d better sit with my mom. She was breathing quickly and her pulse was racing, she was hot and sweaty. So I sat and held her hand for a while. My dad was leaving for work. He said, “call me if you think anything is about to happen.” I said, “uh, dad….” but he was already out the door. And after a while, we realized it wasn’t it and I went to take a shower. Vince and Tammy brought lunch, which was very nice. and then Christi decided maybe she had better head off to work too. I don’t know how she could have the energy with me waking her up every two hours and sometimes trying to ask her questions, “does mom look like she’s in pain?”
Mom hasn’t been reacting really at all tofay. Her eyes are mostly closed. When they open, they’re grayish and cloudy and don’t focus. Or just for a moment. She’ll hear my voice and look at me and almost focus and almst seem to recognize me. She’s up to .4 ml of morphine every four hours and I’m thinking of going up to .5, because the .4 isn’t enough a lot of the time. Her heart has been racing all day. Her temperature has been going up and down. she sweats off and on. It’s hard to tell because I put ointment on her dry skin yesturday, so a lot of her is shiny. She twitches in sort of convulsions. Marie says not to worry about it, that everybody dying does that and te lorazepam won’t stop it. I called hospice twice yesterday to ask questions. The first time was because I had given her all the lorazepam I could and she was still twitchy (“Give her some more.”) and because she had a lot of wet respiration and I thought her mouth was filling up with fluid. (“Do you have a dentist tool or something I can use to get the fluid out of her mouth?” “Use a dry washcloth and after you get everything out, give her three drops of atripine.”)
So right now she’s lying in bed, with her eyes open but unseeing, breathing noisily (5 – 6 seconds apart), swallowing occasionally and thoughtfully raising her eyebrows periodically. Her heart is still beating very fast and her head is warm and has turned a highly alarming shade of blue. Her eyes are sunken in. She looks like you’d expect a corpse to look, but she’s still hanging on. Almost nothing in her catheter bag today. Nobody even offered her water or anything. I doubt she’d take it and it would prolly just end up making her gugrle more while breathing. Oh she just looked highly paniced and clenched, so I’ve given her two more drops of lorazepam.
I went to get more oreos. you need munchies for your bedside vigils, especially as they head into their second week. Mom, you can’t always run around changing your mind at the last minute! Why are you doing this to yourself? You’re freaking us all out! I mean, we’ll miss you and stuff. . .
christi went to the candle shop below her office this evening. She works in the Mission District. the proprietor saw her coming and re-opened the shop and handed her two BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) candles and said, “you need these.” So now we have a whole bunch of candles. I got some essential oils to drop in them too. I was looking for ones to promote calm and peace and death. But all of them said they were for rejuvenation and exhiliration and energy and stuff like that. That’s definitely not what we’re looking for. So, I’ve been dropping in the candles drops of geranium (calm), rose (my mom loves roses), and vanilla (seems calming to me).
Mom’s fingernails are getting bluish, that’s suppossed to mean that the end is near. But her skin hasn’t “broken down” yet. something alarming sounding that I’m not asking what it means. I’m sure it will happen soon. I know impatience is the wrong reaction. I don’t like seeing her suffer. This can’t go on much longer, since she never even woke up today. and thirst will get her if nothing else does. I think she’s going to have to go through every possible bit of suffering before this is over. All the sufferings of Job will be hers. I woouldn’t amkea dog go through this. I’d take it to the vert and have it put to sleep. But my mother I have to sit and watch suffer things I wouldn’t make a cat endure. This is all fucked up. Listen up folks. If I’m unconscious on my deathbed, in pain with no chance of recovery, call up doctor Kevorkian. For real. Maybe I should call my mom’s doctor tomorrow. I wonder how my dad would react…. I don’t know if I want to have that coversation with him. He’s extra weird right now (I’m sure I am too) and we’re kind of avoiding each other. I wish the social worker would come talk to him about his feelings or something, cuz I don’t want to. Maybe I should call her. And I’m not sleeping.
My mom never wants me to leave when I come visit. As soon as it’s dark, she’d say, “you can’t go home this late, you’d better just stay over.” Well, now she’s got me here….

Candles

I keep asking for candles and they keep arriving (I’m still asking). this is what we have now:
burned out:
homemade St Timothy
St Jude
very low:
BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary)
St John the bapist (russian icon printed out and glued to candle)
low:
head shakra
halfway:
St Martin of Tours
The Sacred Heart of Mary
Holy Spirit, Gaurdian Angel;

pretty high:
St Alex
St Jude
The miraculous Virgin Mary
just lit:
Foreheard shakra
Neck shakra
Nice candle (coated by christi in rainbow rice paper) that unfortunately lacks a wick, which I’ve just stuck a long fireplace match into with the hope it would behave like a wick

Well, my mom was awake yesturday morning, but she was less active through the day. She never once removed the oxygen line from her nose. It’s got to still be itching her. Her breathing had been a little rough off and on. When I went to bed, I was listening for “wet respiration.” That’s when fluid gets in people’s throats and they rattle or gurgle. I thought I heard a hint of it, but nobody else did. At 3:00 AM, all of the sudden, she started making sounds like an espresso machine. Very loud, alarming gurgles. I know how to treat this, but I sent Christi off running for Cathy anyway. She says that usually people with wet respiration are sweaty and especially wet around the mouth. Anyway, we gave my mom a drop of the medicine for it and she quieted down. It was her first bit of it.
She’s been getting more of it since. None of the super-loud gurgling again, but gurgling anyway. The medicine is supossed to work immediately, but she just got a drop and is still gurgling away. Maybe she needs more, maybe we should wait a bit. This afternoon, she got the sweaty, wet mouth thing as described, but it doesn’t seem to be any sort of prerequisite. She’s also maxed out on morphine doses and went over sedative doses. She starts freaking out half an hour before she can get more morphine. Sarah K. says that some of that is withdrawl. Medical Marijuana is illegal under federal law because it has a side effect of euphoria. Morphine has all the euphoria and is addictive to boot, but it’s legal. Not that I want it to be made illegal. I just wish it didn’t give mom withdrawl, or lose it’s effectiveness so quickly. Some of it is my mom being in more pain. Some is that she just needs more to stay at the same level. She’s in an educational video on drugs or something. It does suck as much as they say. But she’s not walking the street yet or anything.
My dad has been telling everyone all week that my mom would live until tuesday. I’d been silently mocking it, but who knows, maybe she will, at least until 3:00 AM. We’d been wondering how my dad would escape to work on the weekend. Apparently, he’s been sitting in front of his computer, at the other end of the house, all day. Cathy feels bad for him.
I wish my mom would stop gurgling. Her friend says that since she got sick so fast and it was mostly a brain-disease, her internal organs are in better shape than most dying people and so she’s hanging on longer. I wish she’d hurry up and die. It sounds awful. If we were in Oregon, she wouldn’t have to keep suffering. But I can’t say definitely that she would have done the paperwork to allow her doctor the euthanize her. Catholics are pro-suffering, they don’t go for euthanasia. Mother Thersa apparently spoke in favor of the sufferings of the poor because more suffering makes the workd holier. It’s that whole pro-penance thing. Christi got a candle of Saint Alex, because it was a pink candle and he was wearing pink. turns out he’s the patron saint of warding off satan. He was born a rich guy in Roman times, but ran away on the night of his wedding to be a poor and holy beggar. He finally ended up living in his parents house off of the charity they routinely offered the poor. The servants abused him terribly and only on his death did anyone discover that he was really the son. Talk about ungrateful children. And what about his poor wife. Did they have anullments back then?

Needs

  • Candles: bring them (votive type in glass) or light them at home
  • Oreos

Thank you to providers of candles, comfort food, coffee, takers of phillip glass tickets and writers of email.

Mom is still alive and not kicking. We give her lorazapam whenever she starts kicking. We have her morphine every 4 hours last night and she slept much better. She woke up at five and started reaching again. She was exceptionally alert this morning and her eyes were bright. She told Christi, “I’ve got to go.” or “I’m going to go.” Christi said “where are you going?” Mom’s been saying the I’ve got to go thing for weeks, so it may not mean anything. I’m trying to feel encouraged. A nice nun came over to pray today. Christi called her after being annoyed with the hospice volunteer. No howling wolves were invoked. It was ok.
Mom’s been awake several times today. Her breathing isn’t so great, but no near-death alarms have gone off. I haven’t really been crying today. I looked up eco-caskets online. There’s a company that makes them. Jean send out email asking people where to buy them in the area. They might be in sebastapool. where is sebastapool?
Nobody came by today. That’s ok, but it would be nice if my uncle and brother would come.
Nothing new. I’m kind of tired.

Needs

  • Candles: bring them (the kind in tall glass thingees) or light them at home
  • We’re out of oreos and Mother’s frosted oatmeal cookies
  • Fair trade coffee. my dad’s coffee sucks
  • Fair trade chocolate
  • vegan comfort food
  • Please ask for the phillip glass tickets for sunday and monday

None of these needs are especially pressing. except for candles. light a candle.

A few hours ago, my mom started breathing roughly. I gave her some morphine to calm it down. That takes a half hour to work. But as her breathing was getting rougher and more irregular, her pulse was speeding up. She was warm and sweaty. We called Paul. Dad, Christi, Cathy and I stood around and stared at Mom. then her breathing calmed down and her pulse returned to normal. We called back Paul and told him to come to dinner. He’s got some alarming voice mail. I guess we should have waited a bit to call.
Mitch says, “wow she’s a real fighter.”
Mom’s pain seems to have subsided at least. She’s somewhat awake. She’s fighting. She’s fighting a losing battle. But she’ll make up her mind. My dad is convinced she’ll die on tuesday. Maybe she’s trying to hold out. He really wants her to hold out. so do my brother and uncle. Margie told her yesterday, “Baby, go home.” She’s getting mixed messages. I wish I’d made her some pot tinctures. She could take a few drops. It would make her feel better. Maybe give her courage. the nearest CBC is in hayward, I think. I can’t send anyone in my stead. It would also increase her heartrate, so maybe it’s not the thing for her now. It’s a moot point.
Christi and I went to wholefoods to buy dish soap. We got a head shakra candle. Perhaps it’s a bit late for it now. One of the checkers at the store is a Mills student. She was in German House with me. I made her cry. I scare the horses. I should not go out in public.
I wonder if there are eco caskets. I wonder how one would get one on short notice. I think most enviromentalists are creamated.