Notes From A Bear's Journey

     This idea of "order" began by my reading of an article on judicial law in the UK (from the London Review of Books ), a piece which spoke of the laws against assisted suicide: .. .the law continues to inhibit the entitlement of a sane individual to draw a line under a life that may well have been fulfilling and worthwhile but has now become unbearable, by threatening to prosecute and jail anyone who –regardless of motive– gives them the help they need to end it.   Not only this; if the helper –a spouse, say– would have inherited the deceased person’s estate, the law may step in to disinherit them.  Whether it actually does so depends on the applicability of forfeiture legislation, which itself defers to what it recognises as a principle of public policy –that is to say, a principle developed and applied by the courts– that denies a wrongdoer the fruits of his or her own crime ‘in certain circumstances’, as the statute reticently puts it.  What thes...

Becoming Baby     It's an old saying, especially for those of you dealing with an aging parent or relative.  The body slowly staggers a bit in walking, the bladder starts to lose a bit of control and diapers appear, and for the most part, learning again becomes difficult.  On the other side of the coin, new experiences are again fascinating, as are new friendships.  Money and possessions become of little concern, while warmth and food and being taken care now take center stage...we start to again enjoy being babied.     As my mother approaches her sixth week without rehab or seeing a primary doctor (my adventures of such were written earlier , for those of you new to these posts or just wanting to discover what might possibly await you when you move a parent across state lines), there are a few more things to pass on, a few more discoveries of what you may want to watch out for (and I'm sure there'll be more to come).  So let's start...

   The other day my mother had her hair done, her hairdresser telling me about different types of hair that Asians and Hispanics have, generally a coarser hair and hair that holds a softer curl longer (perm too soon --sooner than 4 months since the last one-- and you "over-process" the hair leaving it stringy and wiry, she said, the stuff a male rarely understands).  But more importantly she told me of people who talk to her about their parent or aunt or whomever who no longer needs to have their hair done, all mentioned to her as if that person didn't exist and being told that "she doesn't know the difference anyway" or "it doesn't matter to her."  All of this was usually done while that person being talked about was sitting there, she told me.  At first, I was shocked that someone would do that, until I began thinking about the facility where my mother was staying and the people she was staying with...people I found both engaging and interest...

    To those of you just beginning, this will be another post of moaning; okay, that might be a bit harsh but it's an extension of the trials and tribulations of moving a parent into an independent living facility, and likely will sound familiar to some and quite boring to others, as if this is yet another woe-is-me story ready to dot another make-your-life-better magazine.  If that is how you might be  looking at it, and there's absolutely no judgement here for when everything was going well and the years were sailing by without incident, reading another version of such a story was way down on my own radar list, this is your fair warning.  But surprisingly (perhaps coincidentally), I've found many more people coming out of the woodwork like ghosts in a foggy forest, as if spirits of happenings past.  As I relate my frustration at clearing up the insurance angle or the reluctance to move until it is too late, I hear small mumbles in the background, t...

     Talking nonsense can take on so many meanings, from "hearing" a person in shock ramble on, to listening to someone speaking a foreign language.  For some stroke victims, there can be a phase (temporary or permanent) called aphasia , one where your mind is clear but your speech is unintelligible to others (the other form is the opposite, where a person speaking to you sounds jumbled and cannot be understood).  I can vouch for the "shock" version from my teen years, emerging from the ocean after being caught in some rough water, riding back with my roommate some 30 minutes to our apartment and him turning to me to ask what had happened.  I just told you when I got out of the water, I said, as well as the whole drive home.  "You were talking gibberish," he told me.  And yet, to me it sounded normal, clear and organized.      When that happens, who knows what our brains prioritize, basically telling our bodies that it has more impo...

     In less than a week, we will board the plane and start our journey to Peru and Ecuador; and from what I've been reading, I must tell you that there is a lot we will miss, not only the people and pets who we'll leave back home, of course, but within the country of Peru itself.  For one thing, Peru is big, as in three times larger than all of California (whereas Ecuador is about the size of Colorado).  Needless to say, what we'll be seeing during our visit there will be only a glimpse of the country.  Let's face it, when you travel to a place that has canyons that are nearly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, and has the largest navigable lake in the world, there is a lot to see...but we'll miss those.  It was the same with South Africa and Alaska, two large countries of which we saw a lot in our opinion; but of course it was also just a small glimpse.  Think just of your block, your neighborhood, your city, your state.  How much overall h...

   Funny thing, our vision.  Remember reading about those cortical nerves and a third being dedicated just to our eyes?  Turns out that our brains devote a lot more space to our eyes as well, or maybe it's the other way around (estimates are that between 30-50% of our neocortex is devoted to our vision).  For one thing, our vision arrives upside down on our retinas, complete with a blind spot for each eye (an actual missing piece).  And the eye is constantly vibrating, anywhere from 120 to 200 times per second; and you might ask, just how do they know this?  When a drug is administered that stops this movement, the patient loses vision (which returns when the drug wears off and the eyes are allowed to resume their motion; in other words, without the vibrating we would not be able to see).  The brain is left to sort all of this out, from "filling in" the blind spot to making sense of the moving images (think Steadycam).  Sounds easy enough but...