Hello world.  <tap tap >  Is this thing on?

It's been a hard year-plus.

 My mother is losing her mind and her health.  As is often the case, we didn't see it when it was starting.  We think she has a parkinsonian disease called PSP, which is like CJD except confined to the brainstem.  In the course of a few months last year she went from living independently, to assisted living, to a nursing home, to a house of her own but with 24 hour care.   The disease has nearly completely destroyed her ability to create new memories, and the longer she goes without that ability, the more she delves into her past memories, grafting them onto her momentary self-awareness, to make sense of her surroundings.  Every few minutes, the reset button is hit, and she starts over.  There's *just* enough short-term to long-term memory transfer happening to make it so she is now jumbling the past and the present into a crazy mix.  This is called dementia.  She also has no balance -- she can't walk, or even stand up, without assistance.  But of course she can't remember that, and insists she can.

 If she could write, or manipulate technology (a recorder, a computer), or if she trusted her caregivers to act as secretaries, she could perhaps externalize part of her thinking... but she can't do any of the above, and even if she could, I think needing to be reoriented to reality every five minutes would be incredibly disheartening, and a very difficult exercise in patience by the care-givers.

So, she lives a few blocks from me, I get to see her often, she still remembers who I am...   she thinks my younger sister is about 30 years younger than she is, she thinks she lives in Chicago, or Texas, or any number of other places she's lived or travelled, and she weaves input from movies, TV, radio, conversations, and her own dreams or daydreams into her reality, with incredible facility.   And I've made the transition from correcting her (much), telling her the truth, to just improvising and going with her flow.  Then, if she "wakes up" in the middle of a conversation and accurately remembers something of the present...  she thinks *I'm* the silly one, which is fine.  They call this "validation" care...  and it does seem to be more humane and less confusing and painful to her, though it's like being on a a stand-up improv show to do it. 

 Everything else is a bit topsy too.  My ex-partner and I get along as well as we can, I miss her, I think she misses me.  I like her new boyfriend, and I like being around them, but it doesn't happen much.  My new partner and her partner are preparing for a new phase of their lives, which may separate us.  My position has been absorbed into a much larger, less humane department, and I'm in a cube-hobby-farm (four people in one office).  I'm learning  alot, which is always good, but tiring. 

So, that's where I've been.

 I'm feeling old.

PS: cdent   andinpetto   both showed up at Soma last week, that was fun.  I like their lives.

• You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
  
• You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
  
• You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
  
• While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
  
• Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you.
  
• Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.
  
• At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
  
• You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
  
• You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.
  
• You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.
  
• At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.
  
• Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
  
• Security is one of your major goals in life.
  

1. preparing to leave for Australia


2. being in Australia


3. recovering from Australia

• determine the gender of their baby (they tend to choose females first, and after bearing a couple, then bring a male to term -- females stay with the mother longer and need more attention -- perhaps they have to take reproduction lessons!)


• decide whether to allow a fertilize egg to implant


• delay implantation of a viable fetus for up to three years


• abort a fetus


• significantly flex growth rate of joeys in the pouch (separately in the case of more than one), by altering the formula of milk delivered to each nipple


• choose to abandon a joey if threatened or if poor conditions persist for several years
  

• sanctity of life
  
• hope after devastating accidents
  
• hope for medical miracles
  
• state of scientific and medical knowledge
  
• science / faith / belief / logic
  
• fear of being killed while incapacitated
  
• right to die
  
• right to life
  
• definition of life
  
• right to control ones fate
  
• suicide, sin

  
  

• brain damage, humanity, life, emotion, expression, reaction, CT scans, diagnostics, similar cases, “miraculous recoveries”, god, heaven, death
  

  
  

• right to medical care, access to medical care
  
• money, medical costs
  
• medicaid, medicare, insurance
  
• best practice, malpractice, best care vs covering your ass
  
• living wills
  

  
  

• starvation - Terri's
  
• starvation - mine/yours
  
• starvation - anyone's
  

  
  

• poverty
  
• race
  
• special treatment
  

  
  

• long term/permanent disabilities, costs
  
• policies and belief systems about disabilities
  
• eugenics
  
• quality of life
  
• value of a life
  

  
  

• sanctity of marriage
  

  
  

• states rights, human rights, individual rights, greatest good
  
• courts, competence, jurisdiction
  
• constitution, lawmaking, politics
  
• constituencies, PR, access to media
  

  
  

• scope/vision – one American vs one Iraqi, one Afghani, one child, one adult, one fetus