Helping
Patti who is non-ambulatory and legally blind from Multiple Sclerosis is really
about decorating the tree oneself and trying to find ways to keep Patti
involved and engaged.
.jpg "\"Christmas at Penn State\" featuring Joe Paterno")
When
they got to Patti’s “Christmas at Penn State” ornament featurning Joe Paterno (Patti
is a Penn State alumni) …
- “Why do
we have an ornament of a pedophile?” from a ‘20 something’ with no Penn State
allegiance.
- “That’s
Joe Paterno he’s no pedophile he’s the Nittany Lions football coach” from Patti.
(Patti’s MS dementia symptoms prevent retention of any recent memory – for
example she does not even remember I have lung cancer)
My God,
I think to myself, I’m going to have to live forever just to explain the
ornaments. A year ago as I helped Patti by hanging this same damn ornament I
did not know a 8 mm spiculated nodule was living in my left upper lobe.
So I
weigh in to offer a new piece of family Christmas lore. “Speaking of Joe
Paterno …” believe it or not, he even played a role in my lung cancer
diagnosis.
Beginning
on Dec 23 last year not only was I keeping my scans and appointments secret but
my only question was “how long do I have to live?”
Looking
through my PET scan in January 2012 my then pulmonologist points out to me that
today lung cancer is treatable unlike the past.
Seeing
the suspicion in my eyes, he pulls Joe Paterno out of the news as an example of
an 85 yr old man under unimaginable stress while being successfully treated for
lung cancer.
Two days
later Joe Paterno died from lung cancer. You can imagine how encouraged I felt.
Later
that night watering the tree stand supervised by our cat an ornament fell from
the tree landing between Stardust and me. Yep, believe it or not, there laid JoePA as
Stardust looked at me with a telepathic “see I told you so, they fall from the
tree all by themselves.”
Patrick Leer
BLOGS:
Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/
My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/
health
lung cancer
harrisburg
pennsylvania
LOL; I'm thinking maybe you'll have to sort through the ornaments and remove the ones down the road that could potentially be interesting to explain :)
ReplyDeletebetty
Your dark humor cracks me up Patrick!
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