Mama and My Birthday: Nothing is Ever Easy With Mama

It's 9:16 in the morning of my 51st birthday.  They've just taken her back for the first of several procedures.  We don't know exactly what procedures, only that they will or won't show her eligibility to have world-class cutting-edge-technology surgery at Ochsner's Heart and Vascular Institute, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Favorite Child paid for me and Mama to come over Monday evening and stay in Southern Suites Marriott.  There was a ground floor accessible room.

We took it.  Our delight in finding the queen bed squishy comfortable was only dimmed by the affable and warmly friendly staff and easy access back to Ochsner's.

 Easy, that is, once google maps was re-consulted to make sure where we were was where I thought we should be. Joy!  We were closer!  It's amazing what a change in directional course can do for navigation!

Mama didn't eat this morning, her gut instinct of standard-fasting-before-testing proven true.  They're doing an angiogram now, three and a half hours after our arrival here.  We left the hotel at 8:11, arriving here at 8:37, almost an hour before her check-in time.

 "Well, you can never tell about weather or traffic."  I know she wanted to add "or your driving,"  but didn't.  It's my birthday, you know.  Less passive-aggressiveness is her special gift to me today.

This is not an easy trip for her osteo-arthritic bones to make.  Riding jostles her last good nerve that's managed to remain healthy enough to be considered 'good' some fifty years now.  She'll be stiff and stove up for sure going home tomorrow or Thursday afternoon. I'm glad Joe is coming over and she's riding back with him. Favorite Child always has an analgesic effect on that nerve.

She's difficult to live with when she's scared.  She wants me as close as possible here today.  She's glad there's no hotel room tonight.  She told me, "I won't have to be scared with you in the room."

 Scared?  No way...  It's a hospital with real security officers with real guns.  She's scared she will hurt beyond the normal hurts?  No. She's scared she can't be strong without me.

I'd like her healthy enough to not use me as an excuse for any negative thing in her life.  I'd love for her to be healthy enough that I don't use her as an excuse to not excel.  Joseph Heller's Catch 22 is everpresent as I find the very situation that can make my situation better can only make it worse.

Brrrrrr.... At 2:35 I'm sitting in room 309 on the short stay cardiac wing - waiting for Mama!  Some cute creole wearing scrubs and a sweater fetched me from the brightly lit CathLab waiting area to this cave-ish sort of room of maximum efficiency and minimal space.

Reba's come over with specialty birthdaycupcakes

and gumbo!  I had a little of each cupcake (the pralines are my favorite, devil's food with peanut butter cream icing a close second).    The gumbo is pretty good, too,

but I've had better closer to home.

The thermostat was on 68 when I walked in.  It was promptly dialed up to 80.  Mama can't stand the cold.  She's already going to be ill as a hornet from hunger; a cold room would certainly finish off that last remaining nerve.

At 3:30 Dr. Ramee comes in, her blood pressure is dropping, he'd like to put a stent in the coronary artery that's blocked.  He believes it will help.

At 4:30 Dr. Ramee's physician's assistant, Kristen, fetches me and Reba from the room, bringing us around the way, past the darkening walls of floor-to-ceiling windows, to the waiting area of the cardiac care unit.  There was no time for the stent, epinephrine was begun when Dr. Raymee went back to her side at 3:30, her blood pressure continuing to drop to critical levels from an anaphylactic reaction to the contrast used for the angiogram.

It's my concern, my fear, that something will go horribly wrong.  Something will happen and not only will I be left without Mama, I'll be at the end of creative energy.  The last of good deep thoughts will have come and gone and nothing innovative is left.  I'll be one of Those People.  You know the ones.  You shake your head and you say "Poor Thing, what will she do now?"

She has to fit the parameters of the trial study;  has to have this almost non-invasive surgery to fix the aortic stenosis.  We have to live...

And here I am, at 10:28 in the evening of my birth day, thankful to be another year older, even more thankful my mother's at a world class hospital and her cardiologist literally writes the text book on high-risk cardiac care.

It's been something else but I wouldn't expect anything less.  After all, nothing is ever easy with Mama...

4 - 1 - 1: Seasoning Blend from a Blogger Friend (News of Mama, too)

Woot!  It's October already.  Is it just me or did this year only start ten months ago?  I like to get my reflection of the past year's activities started ahead of schedule so if I get a bit nostalgic, wistful, or dramatic in a hokey sort of way, please overlook the behavior.  Better yet, tell me to knock it off and get to work.  But first let me tell you about the last couple of weeks and September with Mama and why I've not been around a lot lately.

Y'all know Mama by now.  She's independent.  Strong-willed.  A do-er.  She works her garden (those were last year's tomatoes she grew), tends a hot house full of container plants, shoots hateful armadillos and opossums, loves to fish as long as it's not in a boat, cooks for her family, loves her family, and is faithful to an Almighty that loves the both of us, despite ourselves.  She's not my best friend but is this daughter's best sounding-board, never failing to call a bad idea out or applying a generous slathering of encouragement when needed.  She's a champion of children's education and continues to be an example for education, reading constantly to enlarge the database that occupies the space of her mind.

She was diagnosed last month with colon cancer.  It's kind of a long story (which I'm good at but not here).  To make it short, her rheumatologist didn't like something in her bloodwork;  pernicious anemia was found:  local gp sent her to gastroenterologist;  a half-dozen tests were done including biopsy of ulcer in the cecum which revealed a spot of cancer, larger than a nickel but smaller than a quarter.  Eighteen inches of colon was removed in a laparascopic colon resection BUT her heart rate began going up afterwards.  The doctors are going to argue with me (and have) but the more Mama hit the morphine button the more her heart rate went up.  That's alright though.  Mama's day nurse called in a staff internist who called in a cardiologist.  Mama's great grandson, John Thomas, sent along Luigi to keep her company in the hospital while the doctors were conferring and continuing more tests.

 The tests showed that Mama has aortic valve stenosis.  Or aortic stenosis, depending upon which web site you visit.  It can be corrected with surgery BUT since Mama has brittle bones (she had negative bone porosity for years and barely registers positive on the bone density scale) she'll have to have a less invasive surgery.  The whole family, plus cardiologist, is looking for a surgeon in the very local Deep South that can perform it.  I've been on the road a good bit.  And in and out of her house even more.  A brother and then a cousin came to stay with her but she's ready to stay by herself.  The heart condition is not imminently fatal.  She lives her faith;  it doesn't matter what the heart condition is she doesn't want anybody staying with her, messing up her routine.  She doesn't function at 100 % Perlena when her routine is messed up.  

I understand completely.  I'm all out of sorts when my routine is botched too.  So.  

I don't have to go tend the chickens for her or cut them greenery because every one is gone from Mama's house but her and she's more than capable of feeding her hennies, gathering eggs, and shutting the hen house door herself.

Which has left me to do my own thang today for the first time in weeks and weeks:  laundry, cleaning house, making cakes, and catching up on foodie friends' posts!  I don't know about y'all, but I tend to see what's happening in the South first and then branch out east and west and north.  This afternoon I only got as far as Florida and my friend, Jackie.  The link from her Facebook blog fan page to the Bloomingdale-Riverview Patch (http://bloomingdale.patch.com/articles/fixin-to-fix-the-fixins) had me smiling from the beginning.  And then I saw something I didn't recognize:  a number that I knew couldn't be telephone information in a food post:  4 - 1 - 1.  It was highlighted.  A link:  http://syrupandbiscuits.com/4-1-1-seasoning/ !!!  

Ohhhh deliciousness!  It's all of my favorites in just the right proportions.  I don't know why I didn't think of it but there it was, everything necessary for a quick shake of flavoring:  kosher salt, black pepper, and garlic powder.  The ratio of salt to the 'nother ingredients is 4 to 1.  That's four parts salt to one part pepper and one part garlic powder.  

I knew I had to make it.  Immediately.  While still putting cakes together.

I had almost all of the measuring cups out so it was no problem to pull out three more:

I dumped the cup of salt and the quarter cups of black pepper and garlic powder in the mason jar.

And shook it all up!  Tadadaaaaaa!!!!  It was just that easy.

I thought I had a bag of okra in the bottom of the refrigerator but it was bell peppers from the same cousin that sent along the pears a  couple of weeks ago.  I had wanted to make Jackie's roasted okra.  Not happening tonight.  The peppers were diced coarsely, along with a bit of sweet onion, drizzled with olive oil and given a good sprinkling of freshly made 4-1-1 seasoning.  I baked them along with the last cake (a VERY interesting combination of smells:  chocolate and bell pepper) and Beaudeux and I had them with left over chicken from the Pig.  

OOOoooooo... and you know what else?  That's Jackie's Sweet Tea Sangria, too!  

The ingredients to 4 - 1 - 1 seasoning are:

kosher salt

black pepper

garlic powder

I used one cup and one-fourth cup increments but make as much or as little as you'd like.

Y'all enjoy!

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And because I really am warped that way, here's a fun little pic entitled "Luigi's revenge."