Cold Wind

December 14, 2005

The night before last brought a dusting of snow to the foothills, and some more to the tops of the mountains.

As usual for Albuquerque, the was, for the most part, gone from any surface that sees the sun by early afternoon.

What is not gone however, is the wind and the colder temperatures.

For the last week or so, I had thought that today would be my "review day" on the trail to the summit. I've got one last exam on Friday and I figured that I could listen to the review cd's on the way up the mountain.

It might have still worked yesterday, because the afternoon temperature hit the low fifties. But yesterday we had an afternoon review on campus. And now today, drop another ten degrees from yesterday's high, then drop another 20 in the hike up to the summit, and you get a really chilly walk.

I decided to stay home. Besides, I put up some lights last night and got a little carried away. Who knows where the time goes when you've got lots of lights to string.

Meanwhile Mrs. is back in Michigan, where it's really cold and wet and snowy (and where that picture was taken back in July). After fighting with doctors and such about the treatment for her mother's dementia, what she said would happen has, they basically have killed her.

One of the side effects of the drugs, especially when given to dementia patients is death.

She insisted that they not give it to her mother.

They did.

Another side effect of another is that it screws up the body's ability to deal with sugar. Why they gave it to a diabetic is beyond me.

But they did.

When my wife listened to her mother's breathing she diagnosed the onset of a diabetic coma from 1,600 miles away and had her sister call the Dr. immediately. When they got her to the hospital an hour later her blood sugar was 856 (for those of you who don't know, my wife said she had never seen such a high number).

She boarded the first available flight out on Monday and has been sleeping in her mother's room at the hospital. She says it will be over in hours, but her mother lingers.

Curiously we had just talked on Friday about how frail her mother was and how she could die at any time, either from kidney failure a heart attack or stroke.

I guess we didn't count on bad medicine and incompetent medical staff.

Thanks nursing home.

Merry fvvking christmas.

Meanwhile, I've got one more exam to finish.

Edit:

3:58 - eastern time - She died.