I’m ready to fly away from the damp foggy Pacific Northwest to return to the cold snowy upper Midwest. It’ll be good to get home, but at least I can say that I got to watch my mother get visibly stronger in the week I’ve been here. She is off the oxygen during the day, and is able to get up and walk to the kitchen to get a cup of tea all by herself. If she keeps up with her therapy, I expect her to be roller-skating and dancing and changing flat tires next time I’m back this way.
The only downside is that she’ll be complaining even more vigorously about her offspring taking her cigarettes away. It’s for her own good!
As a rule, I find “dry” cold more endurable than Britain-style damp misery.
If the air is dry you can ban the cold with appropriately thick clothing – this is how the sami endure living in Lapland.
Glad you had a nice visit and that your mom is on an upswing.
You are fortunate to still have a parent among the living.
-If nothing else works to kick the tobacco habit she might try vaping. It is not perfect but it is better than going back to smoking.
There are a myriad conditions that hit the elderly.
I hope someone will identify the anti-senescence genes the reptiles still retain and our ancestors lost, maybe finding pharmaceutical fixes
(evolutionary pressures among short-lived nocturnal mesozoic mammals were different than for us).
BTW PZ I know if I order you some reading through Amazon it will not arrive until the Xmas-New Year holidays are over, but maybe you can read it next summer as a belated celebration of your mom’s recovery.
Is William Gibson’s writing something you can digest?
I’m glad to hear your mother is better and you had a nice visit.
Hope you have a good trip, although from where I sit near San Francisco it looks like a wet trip all the way to Morris.
You can always share stories from other people who had a parent die from smoking–related diseases. Maybe that will settle her down about and appreciate what her children are doing. Like many others of the WW2 generation, my mother smoked for at least 35 years when I was growing up. She was able to finally quit in her 60’s but the damage had been done. She spent the last 10 years of her life on oxygen, suffering from emphysema which was a major contributing factor to her death. She was mostly healthy, otherwise, and might have lived another 5 or 10 years to enjoy her grand- and great grandchildren but she didn’t have the chance.
Thus the universe balances itself, when the children do unto their parents as their parents did to them.
Around 40 years ago, my mother came to visit me in Japan. We were staying at a hotel in Kyoto and smoking was allowed pretty much everywhere. I wouldn’t let her smoke in our room, however, so she went down the hall to smoke near the elevators. An American guy in a nice suit around my mom’s age got off the elevator and asked my mom what she was doing smoking there. Looking for sympathy, she complained that her son wouldn’t let her smoke in our room. I was walking down the hall to get some ice at the time so I heard the whole conversation, but neither of them had noticed me. The man smiled at my mom and said, “Good for him.”
Post-travel day, I suppose. Hope you are resting. Us old codgers need our rest.
I’m still en route! Multiple planes, now transferring to different shuttle vans to get to Alexandria, then Mary picks me up to carry me the last 50 miles. I’ll be home about 6.
Yes, I’m very very tired.
My ughs go out to you. Sounds like an ordeal.
But you get to return to the new Minnesota state flag!
I have major regret about not letting my husband smoke in his last months. He had so little time left and I couldn’t let him have that small comfort. The damage had already been done and a few more cigarettes, smoked or unsmoked, made no difference in the end. I deprived him of a pleasure for no effect whatsoever.