C Diff Awareness Month

November is C Diff Awareness Month. My mother died from advanced dementia brought on by repeated relapses of clostridium difficile (c. diff).  C. diff is an antibiotic-resistant gastrointestinal infection that kills more people than HIV, AID, and drunk driving combined, yet people are not very aware of the danger they and their loved ones are in. 

Deaths from c. diff aren't reported in the media  I have a feeling if they were, we would be shocked. C. diff infections and related deaths in nursing homes, where our most vulnerable relatives are, are not reported to New York State government. At least in Massachusetts where Mom died, her death had to be reported to the state government, but it was not publicized (until now). If we are to protect our relatives and stop c. diff deaths, this has to change. C. diff infections and deaths must be reported and published. We need to know how well facilities are or are not controlling and eliminating c. diff infections and where not to let relatives go.

I miss my mother every day.  Last fall she was in the hospital every full moon from August to October, twice with a septic episode, once with a fever.   I've been reliving it emotionally, since I had to be strong last year.  It's been hard, especially since at work I have to help medical offices request procedures that allude to what my mother had or experienced.  I keep feeling like I have to get into the car and drive somewhere to visit Mom, but I can't anymore.  

I've never really enjoyed the winter holiday season and I'm not looking forward to it at all this year.  For years, my maternal relatives only paid attention to Mom and me when it suited them, maybe once every few years combined.  We only celebrated the holidays together by ourselves.  Now there is no one else.  Even my cats aren't getting along very well right now.  

Use antibiotics only when you really have to. Be careful of where your family members go for medical treatment or hospitalization.  Make sure all surfaces are cleaned.  Clean them yourself if you want and do it repeatedly.  Research the facility where s/he is.  I think how well they take care of the patient is also reflective of how well the facility is taken care of.  We need figures on patient infections and deaths from c. diff to be released to see how safe our relatives will be.  I tried very hard to get Mom out of the awful place she was in, but it was already too late.    For more information please visit the Peggy Lillis Foundation.

Southern Adirondack Fiber Festival 2018

I made myself go to the Southern Adirondack Fiber Festival 2018.  After losing my mother this past April, I haven't felt like doing anything until this came up.  Once I got there, I found two friends were there, too, and I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon with them.

I really didn't want to spend much money, but I found this yarn:

This is cormo fiber from Battenkill Fiber in Washington County, New York.  This is the softest cormo I have ever felt.  I fell in love with the colors somehow.  There is delicate shading that you can't quite see in the photo.  I think I was looking for something different from my usual colors of purple and turquoise.

I am one of those people who fall in love with colors the way they look in the skein.  I don't always like the appearance when it's knitted up.  It's the case with this colorway because of the dramatic contrast between the plum and the other colors.  I think if I knit using two skeins I may come up with something I like.  I'm determined to like it because I wasn't happy about the amount of money I spent on four skeins.  

I believe I can knit the Flying Feathers cardigan out of the yarn. I hope the pattern will look all right.

Flying Feathers

Escaping to Ravelry

It ended up a stressful week and I find visiting Ravelry this morning a restful escape.

First came the stress of finding the last parts of my Halloween outfit after working over-time Monday evening.  Finding my black skirt was the worst.  I did Tuesday morning, though, and cleaned it up Tuesday evening.  Many people dressed up for Halloween and it was great fun.  I think we all needed a chance to play and have some fun.  However, I was very tired the next day.  I worked more over-time.  At the end of the week with activities winding down, I started to miss my mother more.  Saturday I messed up a volunteer activity for work and injured my pride.  Then a gullible cousin with contrary political opinions to me began to argue with me after falling prey to fake news.  All that led to an emotional crash for a while.  I woke up with a migraine.

Ravelry is good for many things. Through messages I can catch up with friends.  I can find out about various knitting topics.  I can look up yarn products and shop for yarn and patterns.  I can learn about various non-knitting topics and get help that way.  Because of lack of time and energy to travel I enjoy finding patterns on Ravelry.

On the whole, after developing an allergy to artificial fragrance I don't do much shopping in stores anymore. I try to at least narrow down my choices on-line and then go to the store.  I found yarn and bead stores disturbed my allergies the least.  Unfortunately due to the economy we are losing both in my area.

A few of the projects I found today:

Flowers in the Rain Shawl

I love these next patterns.  I don't know if I'll ever get to knit them.

This is where genealogy and knitting meet up.  I have Scottish ancestry from both sides of the family, with fairly notable ancestors.  I've always been drawn to Scottish things, and so has my mother.  It turns out many images and designs that we liked were Scottish in origin.  Mom was lucky enough to visit Scotland.  I can barely afford to leave my state right now.

I find I'm looking at patterns now with my ancestry in mind.  Finding Scottish and Irish patterns is fairly easy.  I'm not sure if I can attempt the intricate Scandinavian patterns I've found.  I did find a couple, though:

Leafing Cowl / Løvspretthals

Løvsprettlue

The designer is Norwegian.  On a local radio station they started a silly discussion about nose warmers. I thought the idea of a nose warmer was pretty silly anyway since cowls would work better and look much less silly.  Then I remembered I wanted to knit one for the same reason myself.  When I was looking for yarn to knit a gift, I found myself looking for yarn for this.  I'm trying not to spend money needlessly.  It didn't take much pondering of my stash to realize I had a yarn to try, Plymouth Baby Alpaca Brush Paint.  The gauge worked up perfectly and the alpaca should be warmer than wool and help negate any wind.  I'm hoping to obtain the worsted bulky yarn in the same colorway to knit matching leg warmers and mitts.

Loss of A Lovely Woman

Juanita M. Winchell, 85, lost her long battle against the antibiotic-resistant gastrointestinal bacteria clostridium difficile on 4 April 2018. at Timberlyn East Nursing Home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Juanita was a long-time resident of Columbia County, residing in Philmont and Hudson, N.Y. She most recently resided at Bethany Village in West Coxsackie, NY. She worked in several sewing mills in Columbia County. She retired from Sunoco Crellin Plastics in Chatham, N.Y. where she was a press attendant, head trainer, and member of the initial McDonald's product team, receiving an award at corporate headquarters for process improvement in 1998. She was a Girl Scout troop leader and participated in bowling teams in Hudson and in the Columbia Memorial Hospital Auxiliary. Juanita also obtained training in reflexology, Reiki and furniture refurnishing. Decades ahead of business trends, Juanita attempted to establish a business sewing and selling reusable fabric shopping bags. After retirement, she earned her real estate license and worked for Barns and Farms Realty in its Germantown and Hudson offices. She adopted several cats from the Columbia-Greene Humane Society. She greatly appreciated her British Isles, colonial Dutch, and Native American ancestry. 

Juanita was born in Torrington, Conn., the daughter of Frederick E. Wilson and Mary M. Vandivier. She is predeceased by her parents; brothers Harvey, Sidney, Richard, Everett, Donald, Raymond Wilson; sisters Mildred Alstrup, Florence Davis, Dorothy Baccei, Nina Joyce Carrozzo; and her former husband Avery Winchell. Survivors include daughter Debra, sister Edna Westmoreland and many nieces and nephews. 

There will be a private funeral service at Gleeson-Ryan Funeral Home in Torrington, Conn. Internment will be in Hillside Cemetery, Torrington, Conn. next to family members. Memorial services in West Coxsackie and Torrington will be held later this year. Contributions in Juanita's memory to the Peggy Lillis Foundation, 266 12^th Street #6, Brooklyn, NY 11215 would be appreciated to help prevent further clostridium difficile deaths.

Knitting and Crying

Just over a month ago I lost my mother.  It seems like all I want to do now is knit.  I think it's the only time that I feel better.  The day after the funeral, I went to a local yarn shop and bought some yarn in greens and blues that made me feel better.  I've been knitting a heavy shawl with it to wear over jackets on chilly mornings.  When I stop knitting, I start thinking about my mother and start crying.  She was my only close family. It's hard to sleep at night.

GERD A Symptom

As a sufferer of GERD (gastrointestinal reflux disease), I've never seen the disease written about accurately.  To begin with, much of the time GERD is a symptom, not a disease.  It's a sign that other things are out of whack with your body and you need to fix them.

There are a lot of people who don't realize they have allergies.  If they do, they don't bother treating them.  What makes you sneezy, sniffly and drippy is histamine.  Histamine produces more acid in your stomach.  The more acid in your stomach, the more likely you're to have heartburn and GERD. That's what led me to start taking the over-the-counter heartburn medications.  One after the other, they all stopped working.  That certainly made me miserable, not wanting to move so that the acid wouldn't slosh into my windpipe.

I discovered that all the medicines I was taking to counter the acid in my stomach were acids such as Ranitidine hydrochloride (Zantac) and omeprazole hydrochloride (Prilosec). Prevacid is in the same pharmacological class as omeprazole, so it might be an acid too.  I think after a while adding more acid to the acid in my stomach was counter-productive.

This situation led me back to my allergies.  When my test results said I was allergic to yeast, I thought it meant candida, or the kind that grew on your body.  No, it was the yeast used in food.  I immediately dropped a lot of food from my diet:  the frozen dinners I was eating because of kitchen problems, bread, English muffins, bagels, doughnuts, and pastry. I discovered a lot of companies sneak yeast into processed food, so the list of those I can eat has shrunk quite a lot.  In addition, yeast is used or created in other foods like alcohol, barley malt, cider, and soy-based Asian flavorings.  I'm also allergic to maple trees, so I can't eat foods sweetened with maple syrup either.  I stopped eating these foods and very quickly started feeling much better.

The situation wasn't resolved completely, though.  Sugar is an acid.  That's why you're supposed to be brushing and flossing your teeth.  I had to cut out sugary foods.  This actually hasn't been very difficult.  I never ate a lot of candy, lost my desire for most cake, didn't have a strong sweet tooth, and tried not to spend money on sweets.  I've had to give up my favorite chocolate-filled chocolate sandwich cookies, though.  Dark chocolate is better for me as straight chocolate than as an embellishment, but I prefer it that way.

The change in diet has helped a great deal.  My heartburn hasn't completely gone away, but I haven't taken anti-acid pills in well over a year.  I have been using Gaviscom tablets but I don't like it because it has aluminum in it.  The nurses have given Mom baking soda in ice cream because her stomach is acidic.  I've been using that in sugar-free smoothies twice or so a week and find that very helpful.  Until I came down with the flu and then a cold, I wasn't using Gaviscom very often, either.  That is a big change.  I have also lost enough weight to got from wearing size 14 jeans to wearing size 12, and even my new jeans aren't as tight as they were when I bought them.

Here is what to think about if you have GERD:

1. Find out if you have any allergies.  If you have allergies, treat them to prevent histamine build-up in your body.  
2. If you have any food allergies , stop eating those foods. The allergic reaction and histamine they produce will produce more acid in your stomach.
3. Stop eating sugary foods because they are acidic and add more acid to your stomach. Bread and bagels aren't necessarily bad for you and you might not have to give them if you don't have my weird allergy.
4. I have trouble with fried foods, so try avoiding them as well.
5. You'll have to eat fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains instead, which is much healthier for you.  Many of the flavors you've been consuming do exist in the real world. 
6. If you buy your food from a local food co-op or farmer's market, it will be better for the local economy as well.
7. This should enable you to stop taking Zantac, Prilosec or Prevacid.
8. Chances are you should lose weight without a lot of effort. 
9. Your teeth will be better and need less care.

Colorful cardigans

I have been thinking about knitting lately.  I have so many other things I need to do first, it's all I can do.  I recently found some nice yarn in nice colors, so I was daydreaming.  Here are some colorful cardigans (in no particular order) I found on Ravelry that would be fun to plan and knit.

38-7 Jacket by Drops Design (dk weight)

Log Cabin Cardigan by Lynn Garrett (worsted weight)

My Comfort Jacket by Kennita Tully

Stash Stripes by Judith Shangold

Color Play Jacket by Fran Jepperson (Aran)

San Francisco Cardigan by The Blue Moose (Aran weight)

Sausalito by Susannah Lewis-O'Dea (worsted weight)

Colorfall Cardigan by Kirsten Hipsky (worsted weight)

An Epic Battle in My Home County

When I decided to celebrate my raise at work, I bought the 5-movie package of Ice Age animation movies and also the movie Epic made by the same studio.  It came out while I was unemployed and I didn't have money to go see it.

A little way into the movie I was amazed to see these scenes come up:

In the county where I grew up, Columbia County in New York State, there is an ornate mansion named Olana built by the painter Frederick Church in the late nineteenth century.  It's a state park and very popular.

If it was ever mentioned in local media that the mansion was being used in a feature cartoon film, I completely missed it.  I enjoyed the movie very much and I think it's kind of cool it takes place in Columbia County, New York. I was hoping to play the movie for my mother.  She would have enjoyed it once.  Now she has advanced dementia and can't handle violent episodes in movies.  

I thought the way the woods folk were represented was very cool.  I don't know why the clothing wasn't adapted for Halloween costumes.  They may be labor intensive.  I'm afraid my short, stout figure doesn't lend itself to the loveliest flowers.

Lessons Being Learned

Just short of a year ago my elderly mother broke her lower leg in two places and our lives haven't been the same since.  She's been through the wringer and I've been right behind her.  I'm her only child and the only family member who wants to take on the responsibility of seeing Mom is taken care of properly.

Lessons learned the hard way:

1. If you don't trust your parent's doctor, see if there's a way you can intervene.
2. Don't automatically trust the rehabilitation center or nursing home to do what's right.  You have to visit and make sure they're taking care of your family member correctly.  His or her life could be at stake, as my mother's was.
3. Don't let the social worker bully you or shut you out. You are supposed to have periodic meetings with the social worker and you can ask them to accommodate you. If s/he gives you difficulty, speak to his/her superior.
4. If your family member has to apply for Medicaid and is accepted, make sure you make someone tell you what is expected of your family member or you.  In three different facilities (two rehabilitation centers/nursing homes and one hospital), not one person told me the information I needed or gave me advice in any way. One other organization gave me very wrong information. Not getting the correct information can make life very difficult and make decision making and finances even worse.  Now I'm a stressed-out mess.
5. You have the right to complain to the state (New York in my case) about a nursing home using the Nursing Home Complaint Form.  I made multiple complaints which were investigated and found to be true. I don't know what happened in the facility after that.  The nursing staff sent my mother to the emergency room because she was in shock and I refused to send her back there.

Now I've received a phone call that Mom isn't well.  I was trying to put off a visit due to lack of money, but I think I better go.

Update:

Mom had a slight cold.  She was feeling better by the time I left four hours later.