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Diaryland
Grandma's Birthday 2005-02-22 @ 9:32 p.m.
I had a nice three-day weekend to enjoy thanks to GOOD presidents day (although to tell the truth, since I didn't live back then I can't say how good they really were, but I have feeling they were better than the current excuse). My dad's mother had her 80th birthday and we had a medium-sized extended family get together in celebration. Originally more people were going to come, but one bad thing happened after another to prevent people from showing up. My dad's flight got cancelled due to technical malfunctions (I'm not complaining about that one being cancelled), my great aunt's husband died, and many family members are either sick or preparing for the funeral. I was thinking there might be something in the stars that weekend.
I did get to see my dad's two brothers and their families (minus my cousin Andrea who is currently working on her master's degree at John Jay in New York), and also some of my dad's cousins and their families. I don't really know them that well but since I've moved down here I've been seeing them some more and for the most part I'm looking forward to getting to know them some more. My dad's cousin Valerie is a hoot - she's a super outspoken social worker and political activist who gets fired up over all kinds of liberal causes, even more so than me (which is serious). Her family lives in Marin county so I'm gonna see if I can visit sometime. Her sons seem really nice, although they looked a little embarassed that their mom was carrying on to the degree she was. Valerie can be a little too out there sometimes. The real funny thing is she ended up sitting next to grandma most of the time, loudly dominating the conversation, and grandma had this look on her face that made me wonder if at any moment, she was just going to lose it and start screaming, "SHUTUP WOMAN! FOR GOD'S SAKE, SHUTUP!" But thankfully, as I found out later, grandma was just getting exhausted from having to sit for so long.
I went and visited my grandmother by myself the next day since I didn't get much of a chance to talk with her at the party. She's not doing well, but I think she deserves more credit than my mom gives her for dealing with all of this and not giving up. Her Alzheimer's is bad enough that her memory goes in and out, but not too bad. She's aware of her memory problems and that makes it worse in many ways. She says she can't read much anymore because after a few pages she forgets what was going on. Also she has really bad tremors throughout her body. They make it very difficult to hold things and move around, and they also constantly tire her out by stimulating all her muscles involuntarily. I noticed she's got a bunch of diet root beer around the house, and I'm wary of that because I've heard a lot about the negative effects of aspertame. Also, I had read up that heavy metal toxicity had been linked with Alzheimer's, and according to many alternative healers, a lot of that leaks into people from dentist's filling that contain mercury (even though the dentists' swear and sue that they are safe). I asked grandma if she had any, and sure enough, she said she had a couple of them. I was talking to my parents about it, and they listened, but they are understandably skeptical. I need to find some real conclusive proof if I want to really get them to have things changed for her. The dental work would be an especial pain, my dad assured me. One more thing to gather data on from the net. In the meantime, all of you, please avoid aspertame like the plague. I could get sued for libel, but many independant people are finding it linked to a number of neurological problems.
"Details in the Fabric" - May 31, 2009
Not So Quick Questions - April 6, 2009
The Morning Stars - Lords of the 15 - April 9, 2009
Sincerity and Faith in Magic - April 10, 2009
Not So Quick Questions (2) - April 14, 2009
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