If you have read the blogs written over the summer of 2008, you know that I did not work much at my chosen career of massage.  Mostly, I took care of my daughter as she journeyed through cancer and beyond.  So now that she is gone, what now?

All I ever wanted to do was to be a Mom.   As a young girl, I wanted a large family of 4-6 children.   At the age of 21, I married a young man who was in the Army and we moved to Anchorage, Alaska.  That was fine with me because I wanted to travel and move away from family and discover what else was “out there”.  I was raised in a normally dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father and an enabling, martyred mother.  I was not in love with the man that I married, but rather felt like I could live with anyone.  You see, at that time I did not believe in love….not the “from across a crowded room” or “at first sight” kind of love.  (If you’ve known me for a while you’ll know that I experienced that kind of love in my 40’s and look forward to knowing it again!  My late partner, Bruce, is the love of the first half of my life. My life is not over, so why should love be?)   We stayed married for 20 years and divorced because I changed.  He was the same person that I had married 20 years before and had no desire to change one whit.  But I wanted to be a different person and I needed to change and grow.   I felt very suffocated by my life, the life that I thought I had always wanted.  The turning point for me was when my second child, my Manda, passed away.   She was 5 months old and one day during a nap, she simply left her body behind.   When it happened, I was at work (in the Army and in a deployment briefing for Desert Storm) and she was at the baby sitter’s home less than one block from our small local hospital.   It took me 14 years, but I came to know that she gave me a gift with her passing that she probably could never have given me with her life.  That gift is this:  Life is short and there simply is no time to be living out of alignment with my dreams.

At the age of 21, I had some dreams.  I was a registered nurse and I wanted to be a good one.  I do believe that I was/am.  I wanted to have children and be a mother.  Mostly, because I wanted to prove that I could do it better than my mother could/did.  And mostly believe that I have achieved that goal.    I wanted to live a healthy life and walk my talk.   And I was really interested in alternative health.  When I married, I wanted a man who was not an alcoholic and who would not beat me.  I got that.

As it turned out, I was not very fertile. So after almost 10 years of marriage, I joined the Army to be a career woman instead of a mother.   However, I never gave up hope and my sweet baby boy, Doug, was born a year after I joined the Army.   At 8 months gestation my doctor discovered that Doug had a severe birth defect.  His diaphragm had failed to close and his bowels had developed in his chest instead of his abdomen.  His bowels took up all of the room in his chest so that his lungs had no room to develop.  They (the doctors at two major medical centers) said it was the worst diaphragmatic hernia that they had ever seen and that he had “optimistically a 25% chance at survival”.  We beat those odds and he lived (without intervention…no surgery, no nothing except perhaps a miracle)  and has been a joy to me all of the almost 21 years of his life.

This is Doug.

Two years later, my first daughter, Amanda was born.  At 8 pounds, 12 ounces, this little momma could not push her out, so the doctor attempted to pull her out with forceps.  She had 2 black eyes for weeks.  Then at the age of 5 months, she went down for a nap and never woke up.   I was devastated.  I cried for almost a year non-stop.  And I mean non-stop.  I cried while driving to and from work.  I cried at work.  I cried while I cooked dinner.  I felt like that tears were not doing anything for me.  I did not feel like they were healing tears or cleansing tears.  They felt like they were never ending tears.  So, realizing that I needed help, I went to a psychiatrist and he offered me Prozac.  I declined saying that I didn’t feel like I had a Prozac deficiency, that I was grieving and not doing it very well and needed help.  He asked how my husband was doing and I told him that my husband was just fine.  No problems.  Business as usual.  (Many years later the husband told a marriage counselor that Mandy’s passing really wasn’t a factor for him because she was only 5 months old and he never really knew her!)  So this very conservative Mormon Army psychiatrist then me that I was crying my husband tears.  WHAT?!!!  I didn’t know that anyone could do that!  My response to the doctor was “F*** that!” and I marched right out of his office.  I never even told my skeptical, devil’s advocate husband what the doctor said, I just decided that he could jolly well take care of his own feelings from then on!

So now my second daughter, my baby girl has put down her body and passed on to whatever is beyond.  I don’t claim to know what happens after this life is over, but I do know in my gut that it’s not over just because we are finished with this body.  All I ever wanted to be was a mother first and foremost.  And now I’m left with an empty nest, living alone for the first time since I was 21 years old.  I have to say that I have not come to an understanding that she has passed.  I can’t wrap my brain around it.  It’s more like she’s gone to camp or something.  It would be too much for me to try to understand that she is gone for good.  My “circuits” would probably overload.  I have used a bit of chemical assistance to get through the days and nights, but have recently met with an herbalist so that I can use herbs instead of potentially addictive drugs.  The herbs are helping.  (No, I still don’t have either a drug or an herbal deficiency, but this time my grief is more than I can handle without assistance, so I am accepting it.  I still have to admit that I like my cocky response to the shrink about the Prozac deficiency, though!  A sense of humor sure helps.)  So I just go though my days the best I can, crying when I need to and trying to do it privately as much as possible.  I’ve always tried to make the best of things.   And I’ve made a lot of lemonade from the lemons of my life.  Ironically, Rinnie’s favorite drink was lemonade!  I drink it regularly to honor her.

To honor Rinnie is to go on.  To continue living my life, walking my talk, doing what I am here to do– what only Pam Hauser is here to do.  And that’s what I intend to do.  I am back at work at Phoenix Massage and I am blessed to have a private duty nursing job 1-2 days per week, where I have a wonderful patient to care for.  I count my blessings daily.  Most of all, I am grateful for my family, my community, my home and to be living in these beautiful mountains.  I’ll just keep breathing and putting one foot in front of the other and doing what there is to do in front of me and making the best of life.  Mountain Area Hospice offers a wonderful service to our community.  They offer one year of free counseling to anyone who has lost a loved one.  I used this service after Bruce passed away, and I am going back for help with Rinnie’s passing.  It is my belief that it takes a community, a mentor, counseling (or all three!) to live a rich and productive life.  If we were meant to be alone, we would each have our own planet.   I will do whatever it takes to return to thriving.  I am blessed to have a career that helps with that.  I often meditate while I work and that helps to keep me centered, grounded and clear.  Thank you, dear clients for your support and for allowing me to do what I came here to do.  I am well blessed.

Pam

My darling daughter, Rinnie, passed away last night, September 28th.  About 9:45pm she said “Momma, I can’t breathe” and she was gone.    Her friends, the Spectors, had come over Sunday afternoon and took us for a ride along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  She asked for Arby’s curly fries, and we stopped and got her some for the ride.  We were out about an hour.  When we got home, she sat up in her chair for most of the evening, visiting with guests.

Rinnie’s Memorial Celebration of Life will be at the Center for Creative Living on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 6pm.  You can call the Center at (828) 253-2325, or visit their website at www.cfcl.org for directions or information.  There will be a potluck dinner following.  Please bring something to share.  There will be a power point presentation during the celebration.  If you have pictures that you wish to share, you may send them to cfcl@charter.net.  Rinnie will be cremated and her ashes scattered by her family.  There will be no viewing at this service.

Please do not send flowers.  Please make a donation in Rinnie’s name to a charity involving one of her interests…an actor’s guild, an environmental agency or an animal shelter.

Pam

It was almost 2 weeks ago that Rinnie and I heard some noise in the wall between my bedroom and the main bathroom in our home.  We could hear scratching noises as well as something that sounded like a cross between a growl and a hiss.  Since we live in the country and have outside cats, I am familiar with that sound.  Many nights I have chased possums from my porch where they love to eat the cat food.  This is what I found when I opened the access panel in my bedroom to expose the plumbing to the bathtub in the bathroom next door:

My electrician friend, Joseph, came over to move the cable TV outlet to the other side of my bedroom so Rinnie could watch TV in my room (she has TV in HER room, but my bedroom is much closer to the bathroom and has the advantage of having ME there…) so he offered to fix it for her.  This is Joseph using his shop vac to clean out the nesting materials that the possums had taken into my walls…things like shredded newspaper, leaves, etc.

I discovered that one of the access doors to the crawl space was open.  I locked it shut.  I have one of those humane traps, so we set one in the crawl space with cat food as bait.  The next day we had a possum in it.  My son, Doug, took the cage and let the possum out in the woods along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  (I was going to kill it, but Joseph’s fiance didn’t want me to, so I let him go.)  I baited the trap again and when I checked it a couple of days later, there was a dead possum in it.  Last night I could faintly smell the lovely scent of “dead something” emanating from the bathroom.  This morning I could smell it in my bedroom.  So this afternoon, Doug went into the crawl space for me and found a very dead possum and removed it for me.  Hopefully now the dead smell will leave.  Yuck!

Now about Rinnie:

The last time I wrote, I said that Rinnie was getting a feeding tube placed.  We did get that done and she is gaining weight!  It’s a good thing.  I am giving her real food through the tube and then she is eating as well as she will.  Once the tube was down and she had gotten vegetable juice for 36 hours, she became very very hungry.  She started eating every thing that was not nailed down.  Unfortunately,  she will only eat bread and cheese, and she wound up having a hard time breathing as a result.  She is on oxygen now at a very low flow rate, just enough so that she doesn’t have to work so hard to breathe.  Although she is still eating, she is eating food that does not cause her difficulty breathing.  Tonight she wants salmon, so we’ll see how that goes.

The past 2 weeks have been very difficult ones for Rinnie.  She has been excessively weak and has spent those 2 weeks either in bed or on the futon in the living room.  I got her up in her chair a couple of times and made her go outside when the weather was beautiful…which is a lot these days!  On Sunday, she decided that she would sit up in her chair more.   (The chair that I refer to is the one that was made especially for her.  Go to the blog “Rinnie at school” to see her in it.)  Then on Monday, she decided to stay up most of the day.  She got in the chair 6 or 7 times, starting with 15 minutes.  Twice she stayed up for an hour and another time for 90 minutes!  Yea Rinnie!  Well, on Tuesday, she stayed in the bed most of day, just exhausted from her Monday.   Any one who knows Rinnie knows that she is a very persistent person.  Stubborn, really.  (Yes, I know.  Just like her mother!)   Despite warnings about pacing herself she stayed up until I finally put my foot down and made her go to bed.  Now, today, she has been up since 11am and has been in and out of the chair all day.    She did another first today.  She actually sat on the futon.  Theodore is located around her tail bone so she has not sat for many months.  What a joy to see her sitting again!

In the last post I asked for help with yard work.  This past weekend, several people showed up to help and someone else is scheduled to come later this week.  I would like to thank Amanda and Tim for coming from Athens and Clayton, respectively, to help on Saturday.  Amanda mowed and Tim weed wacked and then cleaned out my hen house!  Also Steve and Kathy Harrington came over and worked all morning on Saturday, pulling weeds and weed wacking.  Thank you so much.  I have done nothing all summer, so this one acre property was looking like nobody lived here!

Thank you all for your prayers, kind thoughts, groceries, and the beer runs!  My son does a lot of my errands, but won’t be 21 until February and I was missing beer.  I don’t drink much, when I want it when I want it.  Thank you Barbara Waterhouse for the tons of veggies that you brought over for me to juice for Rinnie!  Doug actually had to get my old refrigerator out of the storage shed so that I had room to keep everything!  We are so well blessed.

Feel free to go to www.rinnierocks.com for a slideshow of Rinnie pictures.

Pam

With the dry weather, our yard has not required much in the way of care.  We have weeds everywhere, but they did not flourish.  Now that we have had rain, the grass needs to be mowed and the weeds wacked.  My weed eater is broken, but I do have a mower.  Would anyone want to help with cleaning up my yard?  If so, please call.

Rinnie has had some increased  swelling in Theodore.   This happens when she goes into the healing phase with German New Medicine.  We have soem homeopathic drops to help with this and they are working.  This swelling is causing some numbness and pain in her legs.  We have a new doctor locally, and he is consulting with our doctor in Atlanta to see how best to help Rinnie.  One of the positive results of having this doctor is that Rinnie will get a feeding tube placed some time next week.   She still refuses to eat any fruits or vegetables, eating only bread and potatoes.     I have been giving her whatever she will eat in an effort to keep her weight up, but she simply will not eat more than a few bites of anything.  The bread makes Theodore burn and any soy products (cheese or milk) make her have more mucous so that she coughs and sometimes gags and throws up.  Not very productive.  So I’ll be able to give her the nutrition that she needs to feel better once the tube is in.  And her medicine and supplements can go in the tube so that she will be eating only what she wants and there will be no more efforts on my part to encourage her to drink fresh juices or eat a vegetable.  I’ll just juice everything and put it in the tube and all is well.

Please continue to hold us in your prayers.  You can go to her website to see a slideshow of pictures or to make a donation.

It’s been a while since I’ve done an update.  Rinnie has been sick with a cold and taking care of her is my priority.  She had a fever, cough and body aches.  After a trip to the doctor, she improved greatly.  Meanwhile, she has lost more weight.  <Sigh>  But she is once again eating well, so that will change soon.

Rinnie started on food based vitamins, minerals, fruits and veggies just before her cold.  She gained 2 pounds in 3 days on the stuff!  But, she did not eat so well due to the coughing and lost those precious 2 pounds.  She may have lost more than that, but she has not gotten on the scale for confirmation.   As she continues to take the supplements, we know that she can gain again.  I just put the powder in a smoothie, juice or soy milk for her and she drinks them down.  She doesn’t care for the taste, but so far is taking them.  There are a few capsules that taste really bad, so I leave them in the capsules for her to take.  She refuses to eat any fruits and vegetables,  and I believe it is vital to get good nutrition into her, so I am grateful for these supplements.

We were blessed this week to be able to see Jon Rousseau for a divination treatment.  He does an African healing modality and Rinnie was quite intrigued by it.  And very relaxed and peaceful afterward!  He offered this work to her for free, and called me today to offer me a treatment as well.   We are so blessed.    Rinnie hopes to be able to work with him more in the future, and he has graciously agreed to trade body work for his work.

We are so very grateful for our community who supports us in this adventure.  I was given Jon’s name by Monique (she is a checker at the food co-op) and she has been very active in helping us.  We are so grateful for Monique!  I have been a worker member of the co-op for 5 years or so and used to do chair massage for the employees.  There are other things we will do in the coming days to support Rinnie in her healing adventure.

Now, we are off to Atlanta for more treatments with Dr Turner.  Rinnie always looks forward to these visits.  She had a rough night last night and is less enthusiastic about the trip this time.  Her back was hurting.  She had 2 days in a row of being up and out more than usual, with me having her sit up in her chair to see how long she can stay upright.   (It’s a delicate balance that we have here…encouraging her to do as much as possible without tiring her out too much.)  Her back muscles are weak from spending so much time in bed, but now that we have the chair for her, I have been getting her up and out more to strengthen those muscles.  There is healing power in sitting on the deck in the sun on a beautiful day!  Anyway, she took an advil for her back discomfort, and did not have enough food on her stomach, which resulted in abdominal cramps all night long.   So my night was spent giving her small amounts of food and drink, holding her hand and giving her stronger medicine so she could rest.  She slept until about 1pm, which was very welcome!  All in all, she had been sleeping much better.  She had a couple of nights where she was awake during the night coughing with her cold, but was still able to sleep most of the night.  We’ve both been getting 8 hours of sleep or more each night.  YES!

An update about the referral to DSS for medical negligence:  The social worker came back out to our home this week and officially “closed the case”.  She acknowledged that I am taking care of Rinnie and seeking out appropriate medical care for her.  Duh!  Anyone who  knows us knows that I love my daughter and take the very best care of her that any mother can.  Yes, we are not doing standard chemo and radiation, but I am doing everything in my power to care for my daughter.  And she is the one making the choices about the treatment after receiving answers to all of her questions.  Her questions are many and insightful.  She is 13 years old, it’s her body and she can choose.  Although I know at least one person who thinks I should just tell her what to do, pump her full of chemo, zap her with radiation and give her a boat load of pain killers and other drugs, it is not her choice!  I honor her intelligence and know that she has innate wisdom.   She knows when she is in pain and makes the call about the solution! She has a wide variety of solutions available to her from meditation, to plain tylenol, to ice packs, to advil, to aleve, to tylenol with codeine, to morphine.  I would never let her be in pain.

Rinnie has chosen to do her schooling at home.  We have completed the paperwork so that she can be a “homebound student”.  What this means is that she remains a student at ArtSpace Charter School and will have a visit from a teacher each week to pick up her work and to bring her new assignments.  She has thus far been very diligent in completing her assignments.  We have found that she can do more work in 3 hours than she gets done in a full day at school.  It is working well for her.  As she wants to, she can go back to school.   I believe her decision is mostly based on being different from how she used to be.  It is hard on her to see her friends running around and not being able to participate.  All of her friends have been very supportive to her and we hope to have them over for a poker party soon!  (Hint:  If you play poker with Rinnie, don’t play with mone!  You wil lose it!) One of her friends (Logan) is a good cook, and has made her banana bread as well as blueberry muffins and Rinnie actually attacks the food when she brings it to her!  And the best part is that she cooks in a very healthy sugar free fashion, hiding vegies in her baked goods.

It is our wish that you would continue to hold us in your hearts and prayers.  We actually have an alarm set so that we pause and return the favor for all of those who pray for us.  As always, you can go to Rinnie’s website if you wish to make a donation for Rinnie’s care. With Rinnie at home, and sick this past week, I did not work much and bills still have to be paid.  And if you are a client, please call and schedule an appointment for when we return from Atlanta.  I bring Rinnie to the office and she does her school work or surfs the internet while I work.  I am so very blessed to have work that fills my soul with joy!  I sometimes think that I get more out of the massage than my clients do!

Pam