Nightmare and the Detroit Connection, Tponetom
THE NIGHTMARE
October 1, 2006.
3:00 am
We were in bed, sound asleep. The day before had been nondescript. Nothing spectacular, nothing exerting. Just a pleasant day of experiencing the promise of cooling temperatures in the near future.
I sleep easily and well, but not for very long, at a time. I am a charter member of the BPH Club. I have, for over 20 years, conscientiously observed and complied with the demands of said Club.
All of you men know that BPH stands for, ‘Benign Prostate Hyperplasia,’ and you know what it is. 90 to 95 % of all men will join the Club sooner or later.
I will not go into detail. There are ladies present.
The NIGHTMARE is not a comedy. :[[
If Peggy, in her sleep, moves the wrong way, breathes the wrong way, makes any kind of untoward sound, I am awake and alert. I have nursed her through thirteen surgical recoveries. [[For some reason or other, she has bad dreams.)
O. K., that is a little bit of background.
On this particular night, she awakened in a frenzy of panic! Her entire body, including arms and legs, was covered with RED Striations. Streaks if you will. Every part of her was itching including the very top of her head and the soles of her feet.
My mind was blank for the first twenty minutes or so. Then I remembered something about a “corn starch bath” or an “oatmeal bath,” to relieve itching.
After getting her in the tub and scooping the water constantly over her body, it took an hour and a half for the itch to subside.
We got through the rest of the night. The next day there were two more sporadic episodes on her back and legs. I had two tubes of Cortizone [[outdated by two years) but it relived the itching within two or three minutes.
We got to our Doctor the next day. He said he just did not know what, why, when or how the itch developed. He referred us to an Allergist. The Allergist examined her and listened to us and then he said it was definitely NOT an allergy. He referred us to our Dermatologist. The Dermatologist was no more helpful either. He just said it was a “skin condition.” He prescribed Betamethazone, a Corticosteroid for itching,
The diagnoses/speculations of the three physicians were unanimous. “Yes, she has an itch. No, we do not know what is causing it. No, we do not know how to cure it.
Early on we discovered that Jergens Lotion was the treatment of choice. It took only 3 to 5 minutes to stop the itching. Keeping the skin ‘moist’ was the only preventive.
Fast forward to June 2007. For nine months we were ‘housebound.’ There was no place we could go without the fear of another episode. I spent most of my time on the computer, searching, searching and more searching for some new and effective information about curing an itch. Nothing, nada, zip.
A few years earlier, I had accessed The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit. I could immediately identify with most of those sad sites. But for whatever reason or not, I never paid any attention to the Detroit Forum link. I did not associate it with the living, breathing, self sustaining entity of communication, that it was and still is. So I began to read some of the posts. I smiled, I frowned, I laughed, I ignored, but mostly I was impressed with the dedication of most of the members.
I told Peggy about the Forum. She listened to me read some of the posts. We realized, immediately, that most of the members were of a younger generation. There was little or no mention of the Thirties, Forties or Fifties, and even little of the Sixties.
It was Peggy who said, “Well, why don’t you send in some of your stories about the old neighborhood?” I snickered my ‘good nature’ snicker.
I told her that I did not think my ‘stories’ about kids kneeling on both knees for hours at a time, shooting ‘agates’ [[marbles) in the dirt or about kids dragging a wagon through the alleys looking for the treasure that would manifest itself in the form of an empty pop bottle that could be redeemed for two cents at the corner grocery store, would not exactly thrill them. [[Finding that pop bottle would be like winning the “Lotto” today.)
Her enthusiasm always trumps my negativism, so I joined the Forum and posted some memories. The response was amazing! Peggy snickered her “I told you so” snicker.
That was only the beginning. Along with the omnipresent ‘itch’ she developed a lower back problem. It was deja vu all over again. Doctor, Chiropractor. X-rays, etc.
The itch and the back problems are kid stuff. Dementia is the sad, silent footstep, creeping behind us and eventually overtaking us and covering us with a cloud of obscurity.
I am sure that some of the older members of this Forum are beginning their apprenticeship in this insidious and irrepressible condition. [[Did you forget your car keys?)
O. K. Enough of the gloom and doom. Her condition still exists, BUT, the itch has abated since last December 1. The ‘back’ problem still keeps her in the house.
The bright spot of all this rhetoric is this.
Our one source of daily entertainment has been, for the past two years, this Forum.
Mostly, I read to her the stories I have posted and then the comments that they may have evoked. She has read everything I have written over the years but her memory has dimmed.
So, when I read to her, it usually triggers her memory and her face lights up when I read a favorable comment and it is such a treasure to see her smile.
A few mundane thoughts. It isn’t bad enough that I got the new Vista O. S, with the black keyboard with white numbers that keeps reflecting a ‘shine’ when I turn a light on, or the fact that after using a computer for 12 years or so, whenever I type the personal pronoun “I” i wind up with a lower case i instead of I, because the “shift” keys that used to be in the extreme lower corners of the keyboard are no longer there, no, that was not enough, i had to go out and buy a “CELL PHONE.”
In the immortal words of Butterfly McQueen, I paraphrase:
I DON’T KNOW NUTHIN’ ‘BOUT NO CELL PHONES, NO VISTA OR SHIFT KEY STUFF.
[[I am using a cuticle stick to punch the numbers on the keyboard.)
In conclusion, things are looking brighter. :)
By the way, What is a "tag?"
