tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67642245752435202952024-02-19T02:24:02.098-05:00Bright NepentheMarziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.comBlogger617125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-51206389605265995232016-12-04T14:48:00.000-05:002016-12-04T14:52:11.776-05:00Bifurcation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Nepenthe by Loui Jover</i></div>
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In recent years, I lost my love affair with blogging. I came back to this space occasionally, for moments of needed catharsis, often feeling that writing about my cares made me forget my cares. (<i>Nepenthe</i>, get it?) But with the current political climate making me once again feel that it is something like civic duty to speak out about science, facts, the state of country and its impact on our world, I feel as if Bright Nepenthe has become too personal a space to address issues of relevance in the the post-truth world. Truth and Facts and Science have become such controversial things. And so, I have started a new blog, <a href="https://adcaperescientiam.blogspot.com/" style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">ad capere scientiam</a><b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>in order to blog factually about important things like global warming, climate change, the environment, vaccines, race, gender, orientation and why gay conversion is the stupidest idea ever. <b><i>Bright Nepenthe</i></b> isn't going away. It's still a place where I will write from time to time about feeling and being. But I hope that you will join the discussion at the new blog, since it's a critical time in our country and in the world.</div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2016</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-48191466731989513082016-12-01T16:55:00.000-05:002016-12-02T00:56:54.258-05:00Wreckage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Azalea, Rhododendron subsessile, Luzon, Philippines</i></div>
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It's been six weeks since my mother died. In that time I have dealt with enough BS, enough detritus from the termite-ridden hoarder house, enough estate financial mess, enough unresponsiveness from CPAs, argued enough with hospice people that they already took their equipment. I have had friends and loved ones tell me how they are going to help me instead of asking how they could help me, until I said "Enough already, how about you listen." I have listened patiently until I can bear no more as people helpfully tell me that I should think of how happy she would have been that Trump won and that evil Hillary lost and that it's a shame she didn't live long enough (in agonizing pain) to have seen it and then quietly said, "Enough already." I have caught ten of her cats, put one to sleep, found a home for three, and worried about whether I'll have to euthanize the other six, a mother cat and five kittens, because no one seems to want them. (Everyone coos and says how sweet they are. Possible home for the mother cat, against all odds. No takers for the kittens, though.) On the heels of finding homes for two and euthanizing one of my friend's cats back in the spring, I can definitely say that my sentiment in looking for homes for ten cats is, "<i>Enough Already."</i></div>
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All of these things have been rough, but somehow I anticipated them because my mother never dealt with any of these things. Because she was ever fearful of everything but everything that could take her out of her bubble, the bubble where even catching a female cat that kept having kittens and getting her spayed was too much of a risk because "then the cat won't trust me anymore or let me pet her so what's the point." (Point would be my not having to bottle feed four abandoned kittens in one litter and find homes for five of them in another litter.) Yes, it's been good times. I laugh darkly when people ask me if I'm grieving and bite my tongue to keep from saying "I'm <i>too effing busy</i> to grieve."</div>
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I guess, if you read this blog, you know I also anticipated the loss of my mom's huge, sprawling, beautiful but overgrown garden, which was more like a forest by the time she died because she had been unable to work in it for more than two months by that point. But I had plans, and had asked her friend and fellow gardener to help me remove some of my mother's precious plants to use them in her own garden. I was assured repeatedly that everything was set with the friend. I had also arranged for my mom's yard guy, post removal of the special plants, to severely trim back things from the walls of the house, which will be tented for termites on December 5, and in general to make things more navigable. I blithely went away, sure it was all taken care of. The friend's gardener was going to dig things up. The friend's gardner knew what he was doing. In spite of the English/Mandarin language barrier, and the Mandarin/Spanish barrier. The friend. The gardner. My mother's yard guy was going just going to trim things back. This was all going to work out okay. All the irises, all the special ground orchids, but especially the rare plants, would be taken care of.</div>
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Boy, was I naive. </div>
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So when I showed up on a Monday morning, one month after my mom died, and saw the rare and difficult to cultivate, endangered azalea from Luzon razed to the ground, I cried. The special Chinese imperial jasmine that was hard to cultivate, was in similar circumstances. They were supposed to have been dug up and carried safely away to their garden haven. Where I expected big holes in the ground, instead I found corpses of my mother's beloved plants. The fragrant, heritage gardenia, grown from a cutting of my grandmother's favorite gardenia? (You know about me and my Irish grandmother, right? You go check out modern gardenias with your nose. Like modern roses, they often have hardly any scent. This was from a plant that was growing in my grandparents yard sixty years ago. And growing gardenias from cuttings isn't easy...) The gardenia was broken off at ground level and uprooted, instead of being pruned back. I was really just too stunned for words. I'd already been dealing with a house in which every time I turn around I find some fractured (literally) relic of my childhood, whether a little marble bust of a child reading a book, or a genuine wedgwood vase or the large mineral specimens from my collection that my mom snagged from my room while I was in graduate school and placed precariously in her garden and then allowed to get broken. I'd already seen so much memory from childhood broken. But this just took my breath away. My friend Maria was one of the only people that got it. She stood looking at the tatters of the garden and cried with me. </div>
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<i>Mammaw's Gardenia</i></div>
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I guess the wreckage of the garden is final proof that Mom is really gone. With all her quirks, her bubble, her Fox News love affair and her infuriating ability to deny reality and be passive-aggressive with me all while asking for my help... It still felt like a vise had gripped my heart. As much as I resented her, I still loved my mother. And that garden was the most important thing in her life. Immediately, my husband and a bunch of other people told me 1) I tried <i>so </i>hard, 2) the cats were more important, or 3) my personal favorite, it was just a bunch of plants. </div>
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Maria was spot on, in her hazy English: <i>It is too awful. It feels like she died all over again.</i></div>
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<i>Azalea, Rhododendron subsessile, Coral Gables, Florida</i></div>
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<bottom>Yesterday I was in a store and I saw a packet of Cherry Rose Nasturtiums. They were my mother's favorite color for these annuals. It's a variety that is usually hard to grow. She used to pierce each seed with a hot needle to fracture the shell a bit, to make it easier to start the seeds. She'd always grow a few extra to give to me when I lived in my former house, which had better gardening space. I looked at that packet and just started crying. A store clerk asked me if I was okay and I said "not so much." </bottom></div>
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<bottom>Grief is the oddest thing. In the midst of feeling overwhelmed and resentful and exhausted, it still finds something to steal from you when you feel there is simply no room for anything else. It can still take your breath away.</bottom></div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2016</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-40038256560890789152016-04-24T19:02:00.000-04:002016-04-24T19:35:23.082-04:00Grief, or The Triumph of Nature over Nurture<br />
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<bottom>I'm still trying to parse it. The grief over more than a decade long labor of love, hard work and very literal sacrifice. The risks that were taken, marital and emotional. The huge emotional investment. The financial investment, which, to be frank, consumed no small amount of a personal trust fund. I still wake in the middle of the night and think, no, no, it's a dream: Your adopted child isn't a drug addict who is so far gone that he is selling his personal possessions to fuel his habit, and that of his friend whose bong he broke. He didn't just tell you on FaceTime that he feels wonderful and stress free and that this is the best he's ever felt. And he didn't liquidate most of his checking account's available balance on the 1st of April by the <i>2nd </i>of April on drug paraphernalia and drugs. He didn't text me on Friday with the facile request for a cash deposit bail out I wouldn't give him, after successive and rapid overdrafts on his checking account, thinking somehow that I hadn't noticed the $385 drug paraphernalia purchase, the cash withdrawals and deposits of cash from that TV or bike he mentioned he was going to sell. He didn't stop going to class, stop eating gluten-free in spite of the celiac disease, start gaining 70 lbs, stop cutting his hair for three months, stop shaving his beard off for two months or stop living in his dorm room that we paid for, with his friends who were not drugging, in order to go live in the apartment of his friend whose parents evidently haven't noticed they are supporting more than just college for their son.</bottom></div>
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<bottom>But he did.</bottom></div>
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<bottom>Twelve years of knowing a child you realize that you no longer know. That you kicked out of the house in late December 2015 for his explosive and seemingly irrational anger and demands for money that raised that visceral red flag that you didn't quite understand on a cerebral level at the time but that you felt with every fiber of your being was a sign something was very, very wrong. All of which you now see, thanks to the paradigm of years and years in the child welfare system dealing with substance abuse cases, through the filter of <i>substance abuse behavior</i>. The paraphernalia charge on his bankcard and stark admission of enjoyment of his drugging, bailed-out-of-life life, both by FaceTime and SnapChat, only confirm the very saddest of realities.</bottom></div>
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<bottom>So much loss. So much grief. Really, there are no words to define it.</bottom></div>
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<bottom>The genes... They won. They won<i><b> big</b></i>. They crushed the nurturers. They crushed their very souls.</bottom></div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2016</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-50193289241448553662016-03-11T14:01:00.000-05:002016-03-12T08:26:49.127-05:00The Hurting Redux, or Mental Illness Stole Another One of My Friends<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>From The Bumper Book, illustrated by Eulali</i></div>
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Though nothing can bring back the hour<br />
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;<br />
We will grieve not, rather find<br />
Strength in what remains behind;<br />
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Thanks to the human heart by which we live,<br />
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,<br />
To me the meanest flower that blows can give<br />
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.<br />
~ William Wordsworth, </div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">from Ode on Intimations of Immortality... (Tintern Abbey)</span></i></div>
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Last month, a friend of 28 years committed suicide. She had been plagued with depression most of her life and had a pretty good Cluster B personality disorder set. She was also beautiful, smart, funny, and poignant. She loved cats and Shakespeare and flowers and pink and lace. She loved fairy tales, poetry, classical music, and art. There was her love of The Twilight Zone and the conflicted opinion about the merits of Nathaniel Hawthorne and why Hemingway was horrible but wonderful. She was a great supporter of civil rights and liberalism. We loved so many of the same things. We met in 1988 and would fall out of touch sometimes, but always fell right back in sync when we were in the same geographic place again. I knew she was mentally ill, but I loved her in spite of it. She knew that I knew. Eventually, she told me much about her history and how it all started. Ironically, her history was so much like that of <a href="http://brightnepenthe.blogspot.com/2012/01/hurting.html" target="_blank">my other friend</a>, the one that committed suicide in 1997, who left me in charge of finding homes for all her pets. Back in 2012, I saw the writing on the wall about how this whole thing was going. It finally went there. Frankly, the circumstances are so freakily similar to those that took my friend, who I called "Cindy" in my post in 2012, that I just can't even.</div>
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My friend had a kind and gentle heart and, in her own way, raged against the dying of the light even as she tried to take apart the lamp. I feel, quite unreasonably, as though a world that would let a person like my friend wither in her mental illness until there was nothing left is just a messed up place. But I guess we already know it's messed up, especially for the mentally ill.</div>
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My friend trusted me with what was most important to her- her kitties. I found what seems like it will be a wonderful home for two of her cats (together) but had to make the excruciating decision to put the third one to sleep because he was very ill with FIV. He was a sweet kitty, the sibling of the two girlcats and of a lucky one-eyed boycat that I placed with my BFF Gloria, almost five years ago. I'm still wracked with, not exactly guilt, but heartache, over the decision to put Hamlet to sleep. I consulted with a lot of people about the decision, and the only potential shelters I'd found to provide sanctuary would have kept him in a cage. I couldn't be sure if they would really attend to his painful stomatitis. Everyone assured me it was a valid, or even a good or right choice.</div>
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On Sunday, I received a box, full of my own books that I had loaned my friend over the years, with what appear to be some of her final messages, scrawled all over on the outside of the box. I say final because that last "please," at the end of the "forgive me- please take care of my cats" just trails off. First and foremost, on the top of the box was her message about Hamlet having FIV. I keep looking at that box, wondering if fulfilling 66% of her wishes was good enough. I'm trying hard not to beat myself up over it. But it's really hard. Preventing suffering seems like the best choice, though. I wish I could have done more. For her, too. She was in so much pain.</div>
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So I watch her fish (I also inherited them), and listen to my Blanchard wind chimes. History does repeat itself. </div>
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It feels no better the second time around.</div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2016</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-51373163502710704072016-02-27T21:46:00.003-05:002016-02-27T23:25:23.574-05:00Cancer Care in Miami<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Feeling like Shattered Glass from <a href="http://www.weirdtwist.com/2013/01/statues-from-crushed-glass.html" target="_blank">David Arsham</a> </span></i></div>
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>So, here's the thing. You're 77, you have cancer and you have Medicare. So what does the wonderful American Healthcare system offer you?</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>Early 2010</b> </bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>Your daughter announces her alarm that you have lost 22 lbs.</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>October 2010 </b></bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>You get a chest x-ray to have surgery that you end up not having on your hand, and the x-ray suggests problems in your right lung, hey, maybe emphysema or COPD. Because of course, emphysema is unilateral, as is COPD.</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>December 2011</b> </bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>You take too much thyroid hormone by mistake and while in the ER, just for the sake of billing, your attending physician orders an x-ray that shows NODULES in your right long. Oooooh, bad. Your geriatrician could not possibly care less. Like really, weight loss, stuff in your lungs, who cares?!</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>February 2012 </b></bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>You start with a brand new geriatrician in ta new system of care (UM), Dr. Roos, but oops, he's going to retire and btw, he thinks you should get out more and poo-poohs the difficulties of social interaction with celiac disease that requires a strict Gluten Free diet, and oh, by the way, so many social gatherings revolve around food and contamination is this whole big issue if you have celiac disease.</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <b>November 2012</b><br />
<br />
Dr. Roos retires and Dr. Xxxxxx takes over. He's not worried about those nodules because<i> who knows what they are</i>?!<br />
<br />
<b>Interim period of total exhaustion, more weight loss.</b><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>April 2015</b> </bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>You have a big GI bleed not once but twice after not following your hematologist's advice and taking salicylates, in the form of Pepto Bismol, Bismuth Salicylate. Your hematocrit falls below 30. </bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>May 2015</b> </bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>You see a GI doc who orders a CT virtual colonoscopy, but hey, you don't really complete the instructions and you have too much stool in the colon to get a clear picture. But, whoops, <i>what the hell are those nodules in your lungs</i>?</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>July 30 2015</b></bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>After prodding the geriatrician, Dr. Xxxxxx, you get a PET scan which shows WOW do you have uptake in your lungs and colon. Only look at that, now you have uptake in both lungs and gee, what the hell is that primary in your colon. Oh, by the way, what's that sitting on top of your kidney and adrenal gland. Hmmm.</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>August 2015</b> </bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>You elect no treatment, just state you want pain management.</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>October 2015 </b></bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>Recheck, hey everything is PEACHY KEEN. You so healthy!</bottom><br />
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<bottom>_______________________________________________</bottom></div>
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>First Week of December 2015 </b></bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom><bottom>You: "Oh MY GOD, the pain in my chest is driving me insane. I am so scared this is cancer pain, the one thing I was afraid of," </bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>Geriatrician Xxxxxx: "Why would you think you have CANCER?" </bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>Me: "<i>Because of the fucking PET scan that showed she had metastatic cancer?!"</i> Nice version: "Remember the PET scan that showed she probably had colon cancer with mets in her lungs? Remember <i>that one?</i>"</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>Geriatrician Xxxxxx: "What PET scan? Oh, <i>that</i> PET scan. Hmmmm. What's your dose of Tylenol?</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>Second Week of December </b></bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>Consultation with the Concierge Geriatrician. We sign on. It's only $6000/year. Referral to high-powered Oncologist!!!</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><b>Third Week of December </b></bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>Referral to the utterly wonderful oncologist. </bottom>Fill out boat-load of online medical history and medication issues that is promptly ignored later.<br />
<br />
<bottom>Dr. Xxxxxxx at The Miami Cancer Institute! Motto: Fight, fight, fight! Bill, bill, bill! "We need to figure out if this is even cancer! You look healthy to me! What do you mean fatigue and loss of 20% body weight? So healthy!</bottom><br />
<br />
<b>December 27 2015 </b><br />
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MRI shows apple core lesion in the sigmoid colon and "suggests"* primary colon cancer with perinodal involvement. Just an FYI, that's a constriction of the colon that looks like this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPgP6w3BSOJ-8teU5zbnfPFhmsKO8nlzHFnuSLHfQZAoxMX9p9mM3w665kwiHs_XkF7wbeRW1u9Bf7ghhGxeon8A7UiDlXW-CYvdBsDk42EdNudXQdI0OC1aoVN2Mbq120LfFpGxzDofp0/s1600/0f40c2dfb7af6fc6f99611e3048a97.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPgP6w3BSOJ-8teU5zbnfPFhmsKO8nlzHFnuSLHfQZAoxMX9p9mM3w665kwiHs_XkF7wbeRW1u9Bf7ghhGxeon8A7UiDlXW-CYvdBsDk42EdNudXQdI0OC1aoVN2Mbq120LfFpGxzDofp0/s320/0f40c2dfb7af6fc6f99611e3048a97.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>Kind of distinctive, no? Like, not too easy to fit things through there.</bottom><br />
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<bottom><b>January 4 2016 </b></bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>PET scan shows nothing in the colon but WHOA those lungs, OMG the thing growing into the pleura and all that hot fluid, ouchy, ouchy!</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <b>January 14, 2016</b><br />
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Fill out boat-load of online medical history and medication issues that is promptly ignored later.<br />
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Super Wonderful Oncologist Dr. Xxxxx wants to talk to you about your PRIMARY LUNG CANCER.<br />
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Me: "Um, I'm sorry but what about that MRI that showed the Colon Cancer primary and perinodal involvement?"<br />
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SWO Dr.: "Whaaaa? I didn't see that? Was that from UM?"<br />
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Me: "No, that was the one you ordered that was done on December 27th?"<br />
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SWO Dr.: "WTF? (paraphrase)"<br />
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Decides to get two biopsies, lung and colon, and oh, btw, hypochondriac mama says she has clotting problems, so Dr. Wonderful Oncologist says she has to get platelet studies before biopsies.<br />
<br />
Wait. Wait. Wait. Call. Wait. Told Off By Scheduler.<br />
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<b>Beginning of Third Week of January </b><br />
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"All you need to do is go to Outpatient Registration. No appointment is necessary."<br />
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<b>January 28, 2016</b><br />
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Me: Drag very fragile Mom (You) to Outpatient Registration at South Miami Hospital. They recognize she is so week they tell her to remain seated and bring all documents to her.<br />
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Transportation to Lab.<br />
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Wait. Wait. Wait. Apologetic Phlebotomist appears to ask who scheduled this appointment and then tells you that the blood for these tests can only, ONLY be drawn between 7 am and 11 am M-F.<br />
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Everyone apologizes profusely, OMG how did this happen, poor, poor sick Mom.<br />
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<b>January 29. 2016</b><br />
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Return following morning at 9 am. Pre-registered due to staff's incredible sympathy for how awful patient looked day before. Sits at main desk to sign, wheeled to lab.<br />
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Phlebotomist takes you right away. Sits you in draw seat. Turns to co-worker:<br />
<br />
"Before I stick this lovely lady, I just want to be sure about the procedure to send all those platelet studies to UM."<br />
<br />
"I don't know. Let's call Xxxxx, our Supervisoer, who is on lunch break at 9:20 am.<br />
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Speaker Phone: "Oh, you have to schedule those in advance with University of Miami Hematology, to make sure there is someone there to receive the specimens and do the testing right away.'<br />
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Off Speaker Phone: "FUCK ME WE CANNOT ASK THIS POOR LADY TO COME BACK A THIRD TIME!"<br />
<br />
Me.: Like <i>REALLY.</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <i>You: groan and slump further in chair, in utter exhaustion.</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <i>"</i>We are going to work this out. Could you sit right here with your Mom?"<br />
<br />
Me: Looks at watch that says 9:45 am.<br />
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Door closes. FRENZY behind closed door.<br />
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10:05 AM: "Our supervisor got UM to agree to take the sample if it's there by Noon."<br />
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<b>Interlude</b><br />
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Complaint to sister of friend who just happens to be VP of Miami Cancer Institute. Cue many phone calls, apologies, "Oh, things like this should never happen and will never happen again!"<br />
<br />
Blood drawn, and you know after all this saga and all the complaining done about various parties that the tests are totally NORMAL.<br />
<br />
<b>Last Week of January:</b><br />
<br />
GI Specialist says at pre-op appointment he will have to do sigmoidoscopy to get biopsy because lesion described by MRI is too tight for a colonoscope. Wheee! Easier prep!<br />
<br />
<b>February 4 2016</b><br />
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Sigmoidoscopy. Wait. Wait. Wait.<br />
<br />
We Interrupt this procedure for announcement that friend of 28 years has committed suicide and left you in charge of finding home for her three cats and btw, she also had fish, which are now also yours.<br />
<br />
Wait. Wait. Start to freak out.<br />
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GI Doc comes out to tell you that he was up and down that sigmoid colon and found no apple core lesion, no lesion period and not even bleeding or polyps and has the 97 photographs to prove it. Went all the way to the splenic juncture but NOTHING.<br />
<br />
<bottom>"That lesion? It isn't there. I couldn't find it. If she has mets, it isn't from her sigmoid colon!"</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>Once again, it's not like you'd miss this because hello, hard to get past it without noticing:</bottom><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKDx5_3CjCrIohvwCQxu_eJziqN7LYVhdieHW4U_bhZrmJY88k-jCdXtAkau5iAnNx1X91ThtlS0qOYw30YXsMuHipvoIn6An33ELADtIV28lQlT7na9AorworH4Fo0Hm3r3hsyME8o3ti/s1600/0f40c2dfb7af6fc6f99611e3048a97.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKDx5_3CjCrIohvwCQxu_eJziqN7LYVhdieHW4U_bhZrmJY88k-jCdXtAkau5iAnNx1X91ThtlS0qOYw30YXsMuHipvoIn6An33ELADtIV28lQlT7na9AorworH4Fo0Hm3r3hsyME8o3ti/s320/0f40c2dfb7af6fc6f99611e3048a97.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Aside: My. Friend. Committed. Suicide. Second friend who was in Menninger Clinic in Topeka as a teen in the 1970's who has committed suicide.<br />
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<b>February 11 2016 </b><br />
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Fill out boat-load of online medical history and medication issues that is promptly ignored later. Appointment with Dr. Xxxxxx, the Miracle Oncologist. "Dr. Xxxxxxxxxxx is great. He will stick needles in your chest!!!! We will figure this out!!!<br />
<br />
Dad and Stepmom visit, Dad goes to talk to Mom. "It's a bird! It's a plane! It must be lymphoma! Most common cancer in Celiac Patients!!!! Let's tell her, because that's so awesome easy to treat!"<br />
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<b>February 18 2016</b><br />
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Thoracentesis. "Ooops, didn't we tell you about all the fluid in your thoracic cavity?" Only 700 mL. No biggie." CT-guided lung biopsy.<br />
<br />
Dr. Xxxxxxxxxx says "I really can't say it's lymphoma. We need cytology and pathology. She's probably going to need to be drained again. BTW, about that pneumothorax, she might need to be admitted overnight until it resolves.<br />
<br />
Gluten free meal delivered for patient who hasn't eaten in 16 hours. Oopsie WHAT IS ALL THIS GLUTEN?<br />
<br />
"What gluten?"<br />
<br />
"The whole wheat roll and mashed potatoes with gravy?"<br />
<br />
"OOPSIE. You meant gluten free without gluten?"<br />
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Dr. Xxxxxxxxxx: "Okay, she can go home if she goes home with you and you keep an eye on her, even if she's asleep, to make sure she doesn't have her lung totally collapse."<br />
<br />
Me to You: YOU ARE STAYING IN MY HOUSE. I CANNOT STAY IN THE 80+ F HOARDER HOUSE WITH FLEAS OVERNIGHT WITH YOU.<br />
<br />
You: Ugh! I can't stay in the hospital overnight, so okay.<br />
<br />
<b>February 22 2016</b><br />
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Dr. Xxxxxx, Miracle Oncologist: "It's a bird, it's a plane! It's metastatic cancer in your lungs and it probably comes from your colon! (Runaway, runaway!) We need to do exploratory endoscopy to proceed! We will call you!"<br />
<b><br /></b> <b>February 26 2016</b><br />
<br />
Fill out boat-load of online medical history and medication issues that is promptly ignored later.<br />
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Dr. Xxxxxx: "Did they call you? We were wrong! We don't know what is! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's probably just lung cancer, unless it's not and then I don't know!"<br />
<br />
Me: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN?"<br />
<br />
Dr. Xxxxxx: "Well, immunohistologenetics shows that they don't know FUCK about this cancer! (accurate paraphrase) So here's my plan: 1) Chemo and radiation, except you said you don't want that; 2) Radiation, except you don't want that and we don't know where the fuck to put it! (another accurate paraphrase); 3) do nothing and just have pain management.<br />
<br />
You: "I might want to start some pain management. This really hurts!!!! Tylenol doesn't cut it!"<br />
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Dr. Xxxxxxxx: "Here, try this pain Rx for a patch that has this opioid. BTW, we could do this blood test to see if your EGFRs are susceptible to treatment with this specific drug that might work for your cancer if what I think you have is what you have except I don't know what you have but maybe you have this rare thing because you look WONDERFULLY HEALTHY. Maybe I should have thought of this earlier."<br />
<br />
Wait 45 minutes for blood stick and Rx script.<br />
<br />
Take Rx script to Marco Drugs with badass clinical pharmacists who pay attention and have software that actually works.<br />
<br />
"We cannot fill this! She's allergic to another opiate in this exact same drug class! It could make her have anaphylaxis! You need to call her doc back ASAP! It says RIGHT ON THIS PRESCRIPTION that she is allergic to Demerol! WTF! (paraphrase)"<br />
<br />
Consult by text message and phone call with Clinical Pharmacist Daughter Who Graduated from Second Best Pharmacy Program in USA, and who is currently in Residency for Critical Care:<br />
<br />
C: "I wouldn't give it to her. WTF is wrong with their software that it even let them generate that script!?!?!?!" Seriously? It really says she's allergic to Demerol <i>right on the script</i>? Like, I can't believe that. REALLY? OMG!!! WTF!!!!!!??????" (Paraphrase, but literally)<br />
<br />
PA from Dr. Wonderful Oncologist's Office: "So since she can't take the Fentanyl patch and doesn't like oral pain meds, we thought Naproxen Sodium was a great plan."<br />
<br />
Me: "<b><i>Aleve?</i></b> Really?"<br />
<br />
PA: "Well, no, we want her taking the 250 mg pill instead of the 220 mg pill! Her insurance might cover it!"<br />
<br />
Me: "So you want her taking an anti-inflammatory for her cancer pain?"<br />
<br />
PA: "Yes! It should work if she takes it every 12 hours and doesn't care about her stomach, small intestine or kidneys anymore!!!! (paraphrase)"<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Saturday, February 27 2016 </b><br />
<br />
You: "I don't know what kind of cancer I have and whether I should try to treat it or if it's a waste of time and effort and feeling sick versus feeling totally horrible from treatment. By the way, this Aleve+ they prescribed isn't working. I don't know what to do anymore. Every week they tell me something different- colon cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer..."<br />
<br />
Me: "I have nothing. <i>LIKE, NOTHING AT ALL. </i>I don't know what to tell you, Mom. I support whatever you want to do, because the only thing I can say is that it expresses cytokeratin 7 and isn't Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma."<br />
<br />
You: "And this is what happens when you can pay for healthcare?"<br />
<br />
Me: "Yep. Best healthcare in the world, Mom!"<br />
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<bottom>* "Suggests" is a great way to avoid legal liability for being wrong or being right but about the wrong place or the wrong presentation or whatever the f*** is not right there.</bottom><br />
<bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom><br /></bottom> <bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2016</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-64478134895121560782015-10-27T11:10:00.000-04:002015-10-27T16:47:31.463-04:00Your 2nd Amendment Rights and My 9th Amendment Right Not to Get Shot Because of Your Idiocy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." </b>- Second Amendment of the US Constitution, 1791</div>
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<bottom>As any of my international readers will have noted, we kind of have a gun debate going on here in the USA. By "kind of" I mean that a lot of people, including children people, are getting shot here on a daily basis and some whiny people think it's a problem. By a lot of people getting shot, I mean that this is the 300th day of the year and according to <a href="http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/" target="_blank">Gun Violence Archive</a> there have been 280 mass shootings in the 300 days of 2015, and as of this morning, 10,834 deaths, and 22,025 injuries. </bottom></div>
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<bottom>That little anti-Republican conspiracy magazine known as <i><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/" target="_blank">Mother Jones</a></i> keeps having incredibly subversive articles on the subject. Like the one that pointed out more <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/09/gun-violence-deaths-exceed-military-fatalities-us-wars" target="_blank">Americans have died in the past 25 years</a> than have died in all wars (combined) that the US has fought in since 1776. Then there's that liberal-fomenting bastion, Harvard, which keeps providing them with their extremely biased images like this one:</bottom></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQsWw9WTIAEb1Z19vYx0eiSsFEmGypUgBkTyztN756v4cgQ5WnorKlN_MHw2gOgTdwHqjnKc6SwkpJvpW_lqXSjd5VXScRjSl8HSpOP1PcK-7mlvNweDItoMALWHwO1KYTafn1Ywd9VG0h/s1600/harvard_timeline_1260.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQsWw9WTIAEb1Z19vYx0eiSsFEmGypUgBkTyztN756v4cgQ5WnorKlN_MHw2gOgTdwHqjnKc6SwkpJvpW_lqXSjd5VXScRjSl8HSpOP1PcK-7mlvNweDItoMALWHwO1KYTafn1Ywd9VG0h/s640/harvard_timeline_1260.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<bottom>We even have unhelpful articles like Christopher Ingraham's recent <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/14/people-are-getting-shot-by-toddlers-on-a-weekly-basis-this-year/" target="_blank">Wonkblog post </a>on WashPo, about toddlers getting a hold of their parents' or grandparents' guns and shooting themselves or their people, like that's a problem and not just natural selection. All this talk about gun locks and smart guns and proper storage and too many carry permits makes my head ache. I mean, look a the stuff Wonkblog is making us look at:</bottom></div>
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<bottom>Anyway, as a lot of you know, I've got health issues. I've spent no small amount of time in doctor's offices what with my, and my mom's, health. Maybe that's why <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/23/1437874/-Texas-woman-with-a-concealed-gun-accidentally-shoots-a-patient-in-her-doctor-s-office" target="_blank">this little gem</a> caught my eye yesterday. From the <a href="http://www.kcentv.com/story/30298765/gun-falls-out-of-purse-results-in-accidental-shooting-in-beaumont" target="_blank">Beaumont NBC affiliate</a>:</bottom><br />
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<bottom>"A witness told KCEN's sister station 12News that a woman was in the waiting room of a medical office. When she reached into her purse to pull out some paperwork, a gun fell out of her purse causing it to discharge. The round went through a wall and hit another patient in the hip."</bottom></blockquote>
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<bottom>Well, it turns out that it was all fine and hunky-dory and that the other patient was only shot <i>a bit</i> and could be discharged right away after treatment at a local hospital. I would have to be just plain dumb to be unsettled at the idea of people getting shot accidentally in a doctor's office or outpatient clinic. Admittedly, I always thought my doctor's office would be a safe place to have to sit and hang out, waiting endlessly to be seen. I mean, way safer than a movie theater or a university or a Wal-Mart or a post office or a fast food restaurant. Because, you know, doctors heal and all. But it turns out that going to the doctor isn't just potentially dangerous to your wallet, at least in Texas. It can be dangerous to your person. Because some idiot got a concealed weapon permit from a place that evidently forgot to test whether the person knew how to put the safety on their fecking gun.</bottom></div>
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<bottom>I keep looking at that second amendment and wondering what is "<i>well regulated"</i> about militias (which we don't really have) and guns in the USA? Is one amendment more important than another? Because, personally, I would like to invoke my unenumerated Ninth Amendment <i>right not to be shot</i> because of someone exercising their purported Second Amendment right to bear their stupid firearm they don't know how to use safely. I think the Ninth Amendment means they can't take away my right not to be shot by idiots, doesn't it? I mean, the founders didn't spell it out, but they clearly foresaw the need that there might be some rights that shouldn't be infringed on, that weren't enumerated. I'm calling this one my unenumerated right not to be shot. (Yes, I know Scalia et al will say this is a complete misinterpretation of what the Ninth is about, by the way.) Speaking of my right not to be shot, that cute little thing called the Declaration of Independence,* which was drafted back in 1776, has some examples of unalienable rights that speak to me. Life (definitely not shot), liberty (freedom from being shot) and the pursuit of happiness (so much easier to be happy when you're not worried about being shot) were envisioned by our founders. What the hell happened?</bottom></div>
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<bottom>*Incidental irony- Independence from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom" target="_blank">one of the countries with the lowest rate of gun homicide</a> in the world, and one with a complete ban of handguns, etc. If you want to get really jazzed about firearm related deaths in the US, take a gander at <a href="http://www.humanosphere.org/science/2015/10/visualizing-gun-deaths-comparing-u-s-rest-world/" target="_blank">Humanosphere's</a> take, which is sooo 2013. Here's a closing shot of nice and shiny "facts have a liberal bias" graphic:</bottom></div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2015</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-38571021327006005172015-09-29T17:49:00.002-04:002015-09-30T00:04:39.490-04:00The Things That Keep Me Up At Night...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYnU1kgVfxUeaD51UIAEB28apl7BHZBwnyhoicmeaYhrOw-qeoJsCFDMk95Gm4Cep66ywyCIPJqbtLkeVbIwub0_MmAofLJyv9emlYQhpWJO2gebbit59lN9TPZYiaL2z9VWBsKAleFr2v/s1600/Museo_del_Prado_-_Goya_-_Caprichos_-_No._43_-_El_suen%25CC%2583o_de_la_razon_produce_monstruos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYnU1kgVfxUeaD51UIAEB28apl7BHZBwnyhoicmeaYhrOw-qeoJsCFDMk95Gm4Cep66ywyCIPJqbtLkeVbIwub0_MmAofLJyv9emlYQhpWJO2gebbit59lN9TPZYiaL2z9VWBsKAleFr2v/s640/Museo_del_Prado_-_Goya_-_Caprichos_-_No._43_-_El_suen%25CC%2583o_de_la_razon_produce_monstruos.jpg" width="432" /></a></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters</i></span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Los Caprichos, No. 43</i></span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Francisco Goya</i></span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I come from a family of people who struggle with sleep. One of my cousins once had a period of time where he slept only about an hour a day. I neither fall asleep easily, nor do I stay asleep easily. But sometimes I think it's more to do with some generalized anxiety thing than just some neurological weirdness. I've ardently resisted having a sleep study done, since the idea of falling asleep with electrodes all over my head and body, in a bed not my own, is just unpalatable, not least because of my back and neck problems. </span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The stuff that keeps me up at night, these days, feels almost like I'm suffocating. There is of course, the biggest issue of all, that of my Mom, worrying about her, as I see her growing ever frailer by the week. She gets annoyed if I hover (defined as too many welfare checks and not enough appreciation for Fox News and the GOP) and annoyed/sad/lonely if I don't hover. I worry about her being in pain and not trusting that I'll keep her at home with nursing services if she tells me. I worry she is having more GI bleeding than she's willing to admit to, since she looks so pale. I worry she still insists on driving to her daily acupuncture appointment, though I've suggested getting her a driver. Today, we had a huge fight about her wanting to give a potted ground orchid to her beloved acupuncturist. That would be the same acupuncturist that told me she mustn't lift anything heavy because of the risk of hemorrhaging. And you know, I'm thinking fifty pounds of heavy Chinese-style glazed pot and rain-wet potting soil was probably the kind of thing her acupuncturist was thinking was heavy for a 5' 1" tall, 118 lb woman who's had a number of GI bleeds in recent months. After a bitter discussion in which she tried every diversion tactic and misdirection ("Do I hear that you don't like my getting my primary treatment from an acupuncturist?" "No, Mom, you hear that I don't like it that you're ignoring her very sensible and clearly stated to you advice!" "I'm not lifting it. I'm going to roll it to the car and push it up an 8 foot long ramp to get it in the back of the car!" "All of which still uses ab muscles, last I heard. How about my husband I lift it together and carry it a good 15 feet to a car parked outside that gate and then take it to her house so she doesn't have to lift it either?" "Why do you have to try to micromanage me?!" Because I'm following your Chinese doctor's advice you wanted me to follow, remember?") we agreed that tomorrow she would ask her acupuncturist <i>when </i>she could bring it to her for her birthday. Of course, I went behind her back and talked to the acupuncturist in person, in her office, about my husband and I bringing the plant to her. I am sure now, after it's gotten thoroughly soaked in the rain, that she'll try to roll it to her car and take it tomorrow morning, because... that's just how oppositional she is. Let's hope she doesn't get any bleeds. My mom... Oy. She's the kind of person who worries that when she dies that someone will take the decades old appliances out of the house when she's gone, in spite of my pointing out anyone buying the house will likely gut it in order to make all those new-fangled updates people like in houses these days and that it might be more salient to think about who will take her kitties. Things I worry about are the placement for her three shy indoor cats, and her two outdoor kitties. (I already have 7 cats and her cats cannot join us. I already have one refugee from her household.) These are all reasonable things to worry about. Aren't they?</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But... there's more. Of course, there's more.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My husband and I are headed toward retirement. We want to leave Florida, and there is another worry. Having become a professional guardian, I wonder what will happen to my wards when they transition to successor guardianship. And I struggle with what to do about one of my GAL kids, who plainly <i>needs</i> a guardianship, in about 15 months time. She is an incredibly behaviorally disturbed, low cognitive functioning youth who has almost been trafficked and who is prone to aggressive outbursts. Like, I'm sure if she does what she does now, at 18, I'll be explaining to a Criminal Court judge that she is incapacitated and doesn't bear responsibility for assaulting her school teachers and showing the judge my letters of guardianship. If my husband retires in 5 years, that will mean a scant 3-4 years of guardianship to get her circumstances in order well enough, and to find a successor guardian or guardian entity. And therein lies yet another problem. Our public guardian provider does not take these cases anymore. Who will take care of these still young, lifelong, low functioning, high needs wards? These disabled adult children, as the Social Security Administration calls them. </span></bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have known this soon to be 17 year old child since 2008. How can I turn my back on her, given her history? Do I give it a good 3-4 years and then hope I can find a new and caring professional guardian for her, as well?</span></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">These are the things that keep me up at night. Trying to sleep shouldn't breed monsters.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2015</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-89090266712057163372015-09-29T13:53:00.001-04:002015-09-29T13:53:13.402-04:00Women Vote GOP. Yes, We Do. #IStandWithPP<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-60607155753272152662015-09-24T22:23:00.001-04:002015-09-24T22:23:28.429-04:00Boundaries and Balance<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpcZ-FW1c043JFmDD36sR7_7w06LlLV9bD275YsJZZDy2Gfg5tkiT1pafmc-sUWgtsV4JCWwmP26tTJurB8v9Up6QrQRLqepuLzDgfb_BT3JDR8tz5Ys_NGEh9_ccyBgQe4ugp-PmGrfx2/s1600/balance-heart+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpcZ-FW1c043JFmDD36sR7_7w06LlLV9bD275YsJZZDy2Gfg5tkiT1pafmc-sUWgtsV4JCWwmP26tTJurB8v9Up6QrQRLqepuLzDgfb_BT3JDR8tz5Ys_NGEh9_ccyBgQe4ugp-PmGrfx2/s400/balance-heart+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artist Unknown but boy does it capture the feeling of a balanced heart...</td></tr>
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So you know, in the last few months, I have had all kinds of challenge to my intention to do good and stay sane and unfatigued, compassion-wise.<br />
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There was the foster parent who told me that she was <i>disappointed </i>that I didn't get the foster youth placed with her and didn't try hard enough, when the youth and her placement agency wanted to place her elsewhere, and oh, by the way, I was trying to stay in touch while my terminally ill mother was getting her PET scan only she didn't because she didn't adhere to the instructions and I was trying to reschedule it. My bad for not picking up the phone. Yeah, that one really sticks in my craw. Personality disordered much?<br />
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There are the group or EFC (Extended Foster Care) home providers who seem to think I am a taxi service and that I'm failing in my transportation duties. (Let's just forget all commitments to other youth and to my own family, because, hey, let's just.)<br />
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There's the group home provider that won't even give you the courtesy of a hello or eye contact, because your GAL youth is a difficult youth. Hey, you're right. It's all my fault. I just love it when you won't reply to a text message or only call me to rant.<br />
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There is the judiciary, kind of forgetting they're talking in front of a person's 12, 15 and 16 year olds about how terrible their parent (who still has custody for 2 of 3) is and how long their criminal history (back before 1990) is. Kids just love to hear their parents called bad apples. Love. It.<br />
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There are all the bashing emails. The ones where you reply trying to point out all the good things the case manager did. The ones where the one thing that went wrong today is all everyone's fault, evidently. <i><b>Every.</b></i> One's.<br />
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There are the aged out teenage kids, who sometimes resemble leeches until you realize that you are the only one that picks up the phone call. That helps them move from one placement to another. The only one that will give them the money for the spontaneous GED test or the daycare they need for their child if they have any hope of getting that GED. And maybe they aren't leeches as much as desperate, because for sure they are not getting that from anyone else in the system.<br />
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There's the fact that I haven't had time to see my mom this week. Not since Sunday. Wow is that messed up.<br />
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How do we maintain the boundaries that keep people from draining us dry, and still have heart enough to truly care?<br />
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A tough one, this question.<br />
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© Bright Nepenthe, 2015Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-51411060414527011712015-08-30T18:46:00.000-04:002015-08-30T18:46:24.745-04:00Palate Cleanser La Petite Comtesse Version<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Un cadeau de La Petite Comtesse, la Fée Fuchsia, m'a envoyé hier. Qu'est-ce que une fille douce, non?</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ-7U0n5cfeuK08nsusqKpnLFbYpci4tOqkAP3vlom2EF7ettObb6MR7k7sY-IZ4mz_TAC0ENNr5X8wp0JaU6g7HuOkf8Rfba6WbCxJ5togiyp9a4XFGpqBj-uNP_EzgHuQLpiHDxgfn6k/s1600/IMG_0630.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ-7U0n5cfeuK08nsusqKpnLFbYpci4tOqkAP3vlom2EF7ettObb6MR7k7sY-IZ4mz_TAC0ENNr5X8wp0JaU6g7HuOkf8Rfba6WbCxJ5togiyp9a4XFGpqBj-uNP_EzgHuQLpiHDxgfn6k/s1600/IMG_0630.JPG" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Source Unknown, but looks a lot like the Apple Dahlia. </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I'm really hoping that this next week is an improvement over the past week, which we just won't review, for the sake of sanity. Pretty flowers are a fine start. As was the 10 hour night's sleep.</span></span><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2015</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-26168925426835953162015-08-29T10:04:00.000-04:002015-08-29T10:05:26.459-04:00Between a Rock and a Hard Place<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsoTJK7NS7pLu1glQhhtog0mlxH34pxrdvyPLu1RA7Yu6BFTTUt2G8WLUPuMe5Ia78kVa4ULA-O1zAST20s7JR9DID-gHwJwZSMn2R6k2iLnSDGVP4_3ifxcRWKDyT_IoEk7qphwm_e1I_/s1600/between%252Ba%252Brock%252Band%252Ba%252Bhard%252Bplace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsoTJK7NS7pLu1glQhhtog0mlxH34pxrdvyPLu1RA7Yu6BFTTUt2G8WLUPuMe5Ia78kVa4ULA-O1zAST20s7JR9DID-gHwJwZSMn2R6k2iLnSDGVP4_3ifxcRWKDyT_IoEk7qphwm_e1I_/s1600/between%252Ba%252Brock%252Band%252Ba%252Bhard%252Bplace.jpg" /></a></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>A Rock and a Hard Place, attribution unknown</i></span></bottom></div>
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<i>This brief post is about what it's like to be a case manager. It is a pastiche of actual comments from some of the truly wonderful case managers I've known. And I've known more good ones than bad ones.</i><br />
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"I feel horrible. I'm taking care of everybody else's neglected children and feel like I'm neglecting my own children."<br />
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"One day I came home from work, like usual, after 8 pm, and my daughter asked me why she never saw me anymore, why I never went to any of her extracurriculars. I had to quit doing case management. I couldn't bear it."<br />
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"So I do all this work, get a master's degree, hardly sleep, really care about each and every child in my case load, spend my own money buying them things my agency won't, and then this judge, who thinks that parents can do no wrong and practically own those kids, sends them home to get beaten with a belt? I have to get out of here. Maybe I can go into medical social work or something. I just can't stand this anymore."<br />
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"I missed his first words, his first steps, his first morning at pre-K. I can't miss any more."<br />
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"You're on your own out there. Your supervisor won't raise a finger to help and will only tell you what you did wrong. Your administrator's door is always closed. I'm up there facing a judge and there's nobody that has my back."<br />
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"At my agency they have all these layers. I'm supposed to have someone else do all the referrals for me. But if they don't get made or services don't get started, it's my fault, and you can bet I'm going to get blamed for it. But, if I do them myself, then I'm accused of not following their structure, and of being inefficient with my time. I just can't win."<br />
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"Overwhelmed? I was overwhelmed last year. This year, I'm almost drowned. I don't know where I can go. This is the third agency I tried. This system is broken, and while I want to try to keep these kids safe, no one's really helping me do it. Some judges give them right back and others don't want to even give their parents a chance. Staffing after staffing of what I'm supposed to be doing that I haven't done yet for this case or that. No money to do it with, all these insurance snags or limitations, no way to do anything nice for these kids, foster parents that you don't like, and program managers talking about money, money, money. I don't want to quit caring about these kids, but I have to get out of here, or I will. I am almost too tired to care about myself."<br />
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"I feel so terrible about leaving her case, because she has such abandonment issues. But my whole unit was reassigned. I just don't know why they do this. I'm so sorry. If I give you my personal cell number, you could call me with her, when you visit. I don't want her to feel like I just disappeared and forgot about her, like her family did."<br />
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2015</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-19254342354357733782015-08-21T20:47:00.000-04:002015-09-29T17:50:44.774-04:00A Little Shop of Horrors<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-NykU7lSf4xAGVp0oZAqDJLHoJyMe9AKvQ8HTL1v8orlFaTm7UvKknhLzOU8EdJSic3BU8uI_NFgv5GgwgtYC6aoAuvBlcrkVDoIfZ8CzB6WWRfVFfnYNlrLtybfpgD_GGmYDSHnOlrMY/s1600/450px-Delphinium_elatum_hybride_001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-NykU7lSf4xAGVp0oZAqDJLHoJyMe9AKvQ8HTL1v8orlFaTm7UvKknhLzOU8EdJSic3BU8uI_NFgv5GgwgtYC6aoAuvBlcrkVDoIfZ8CzB6WWRfVFfnYNlrLtybfpgD_GGmYDSHnOlrMY/s320/450px-Delphinium_elatum_hybride_001.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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from <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Delphinium_elatum_hybride_001.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I title this post "A Little Shop of Horrors" in honor of a PET scan. Actually, a PET scan is a thing of surprising beauty, from a scientific and visual standpoint. It's only when it belongs to someone you know, care about or love, that you have a problem. But more on that later.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So here I am, writing again. It's like I drank some real Nepenthe and forgot this blog, right? Only not so much. It's partly that I had nothing positive to say, about the world, about child welfare, about so many things, that I thought, hey, fallow is good, fallow is fine. So now, by virtue of not posting for two years, it's like my own private diary, right?</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You'll notice the delphinium flowers above. (Don't you have problems with delphinum/delphinia?) They're to honor my Mom, the lady that can grow <a href="http://www.plantdelights.com/Delphinium-exaltatum-for-sale/Buy-Tall-Larkspur/" target="_blank">officially Zone 8a</a> plants in Zone 10b. That's my Mom. Growing things. Hey, she even grew me, though, for a while there, she sure didn't water me much. That long stretch between 13 and 24? Yeah, that was no man's land. </span></bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">DNRs were signed,</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> g</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">randparents died, muggings, breakups, rape, yeah, there was bad shit during that time. But in the end she showed up. She's been around on quarter time or so, since. But the early years, in between trying to commit suicide when I was 3 and when I was 13, those are the golden years. The books! The music! The theater! Oh, the enrichment of those years! They were the truly formative ones for me. So much of who I am, especially intellectually, owes to those years, in spite of the fact that pretty much everyone says I am my father's child, rather than hers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So on Monday, I'm going to be 54, and the following Tuesday, Mom will be a frail 77. I have contemplated our age difference a lot recently, thinking about how unformed I was at 23, how wounded at 24, and then reflecting on how my Mom had me, at barely 23. I was, to say the least, a challenging child. I can't imagine. Especially, I can't imagine my Mom and my Dad and how they ever managed the quantum entanglement that resulted in a hurtful marriage and <i>me</i>. I can kind of understand, knowing both of them, what led my mom afoul when I was 3 (hey, long before post-partum depression was understood, and regular depression is still such a taboo... A failure of will, what a lack of discipline, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just get on with it, no matter how many times you get knocked down!) and how my parents circled one another like a they were like bowling balls, or twin stars, on a gravitational track into a black hole. Swish, swish as they swirl around each other, both to be extinguished, crushed and then, the quanta exit to form new worlds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Wow, that got side-tracked... So anyway, after years of diffident and sometimes hostile-avoidant interaction, here I am worried about my Mom. The same Mom I overtly blamed, in a sadly seen by her diary, at age 16, for the ruination of my "family" (not that it had been all that awesome, mind you) by her refusal to try anti-depressants, and for her lack of "participation" in my life. (Yeah, that thing about not showing up at all for anything in school still burns. Award ceremonies (senior year got 5, but friend's parents were the one's clapping for me). Parent Night (I was a guide, showing everyone's parents around but mine), College graduation (all she cared about was that Phi Beta Kappa pin but she didn't go to the ceremony, even for that...), So yeah, she watches Fox News now (incessantly and thinks Bill O'Reilly is awesome and that Bobby Jindal is soooo smart) and I watch BBC and Al Jazeera. Oil and water, my mom and me, the mostly my father's active, go-getter child, on a social justice crusade because, hey, ya gotta do more than fill your time gardening. (Oops, I do garden, come to think of it...) And yet, she influenced who I am, my intellectual curiosity, my interest in music, art, literature, more than my Dad ever did. My dad was never around much and then he left. Such common wounds, these. Yet bridged, or bandaged, by urgency, by foreseeing a future with so little time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">About 5 years ago, my mom lost 30 pounds. It seemed gradual, but one day, as leaving after a visit, I hugged her and I realized that there was just too little of her to be <i>right</i>. Enter the aggressive pursuit of fixing my Mom. After a 1.5 hour wait and total indifference from her then GP, I ditched him on her behalf and after asking the Provost of UM (connections, man!) for a recommendation, got to an autoimmunologist (old school) and a really good geriatrician. Aggressive pursuit of reasons for weight loss and a slew of other things (platelet aggregation disorder? Hematologist! Refractory celiac? Diverticulosis? diverticulitis? GI! Nodules in the lungs? Pulmonologist!) led eventually, five years later, to <i>now</i>. Ah. Let me talk about now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the last geriatrician appointment, my frail mom, who used to be 5' 4.5" was measured as barely 5' 1" ("Stand up straight, dear!" said the kind nurse with the Caribbean accent) and 119 lbs, up from 118 lbs (and way up from 107 lbs!), but I know it's only because she didn't take her sweater off. This was the appointment where we found out that the cancer in her lungs maybe probably came from elsewhere only we spoke in code because the language my mom speaks is "Don't touch me, I'm tired and I am tired especially of all this." Later, I read the PET scan report and found out that what we had been told was primary lung cancer and early stage 4 was actually primary colon cancer and waaaay stage 4. Like lungs, adrenal glands and colon. Oh, my! Three colonoscopies over the past <strike>three</strike> fifteen years, capped by a virtual colonoscopy in May of this year, and none of them showed... the clearly visible on PET scan massive lesion with more than half the maximum uptake of the radionuclide-tagged glucose (8.1 on a maximum scale of 15)!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Today, I saw the actual scan, with a good friend of my mom's who is her acupuncturist and a modest practitioner of Chinese Medicine. My mom, who naively but firmly stated to me that her friend had both seen the scan and understood how to read it, doesn't know that her friend Mary and I sat down and I basically interpreted a little shop of horrors for her. About the best I can say is that it hasn't made it to her brain. The lesion in her colon is so large that in comparison to her frail frame and narrow hips, it took my breath away. A lesion missed by so many exams, a lesion that will consume her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In recent weeks we have made end of life preparations- Advanced Directives, Living Will, Designation of Healthcare Surrogate, Trusts. so much planning. Yet all I can remember of this, right now, is a narrow pelvis and a colon cancer the size of Texas, in my mind. I've had other friends who have battled cancer- some lost, many won, with all the modern techniques and treatments. But this is somehow different. Both the painfully accurate five years long conviction that s<i>omething is really wrong with her</i>, and heartrending reality that it's too late to do anything now that we finally, <i>finally</i> figured out what was wrong. And the unrelenting reality that she is being eaten alive from the inside out and there is nothing I can do, or anyone can do, now, to fix it. Did I mention how strained my Mom and I have been? Or that I would do anything to "fix" her? To buy her more time? To buy her no pain?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When we were working on the trust, the deed for her house will be tied to her trust, of course. I was so absorbed thinking of what will become not of the house, but of her garden, her life's work and the <i>one</i> thing that makes her happy. An ecosystem for cats, for birds, for squirrels, opossums, raccoons and at one time some sort of exotic fowl that I still can't confidently identify (cruelly killed by some predator, crushing my mom). No one will be able to maintain that garden, and as my husband says, with maybe too much gusto, no one is going to <i>want </i>that garden... Something inside me just quails at this. It was the one thing, in 54 years on this earth, that I knew made her happy. She, the one who grew camelias in Miami, delphinia, and so many other northern plants I love, the creator of magic, reader of stories with voices, the offerer of wonderful books, art, music, is dying. Somewhere, the intersection between PET scans and gardens spells disaster. I can drop a Google Maps pin and show you where. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is this garden. It's a slice of magic. And it's gonna die. Just like her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It hurts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It hurts so bad.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Garden as a metaphor for a person? Hey, why not.</span></div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2015</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-59756513773677842912013-07-08T20:51:00.001-04:002013-07-08T20:51:27.340-04:00Simple Mistakes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm-jdB_Ef5aDRgnTTPB9aKkneRPM7XIYPJfNM_xy0elR2v1JltMLSCdksadR0CBViolvkyd1QzBEGDnzzXcdn8j6sPBHlsicXewY4WfXy3o_I7gMpXI2svsltA7dzl0QFLdzHPljudGhxC/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-07-08+at+7.35.52+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm-jdB_Ef5aDRgnTTPB9aKkneRPM7XIYPJfNM_xy0elR2v1JltMLSCdksadR0CBViolvkyd1QzBEGDnzzXcdn8j6sPBHlsicXewY4WfXy3o_I7gMpXI2svsltA7dzl0QFLdzHPljudGhxC/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-07-08+at+7.35.52+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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I am still tasting bitter disgust from an <a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-child-removal-spike-20130703,0,6171909.story?page=1" target="_blank">article</a> I read over the weekend. It was written by Mike Clary, a reporter I both respect, and whom, coincidentally, I used to live next to in Coral Gables. His article ran in the Sun-Sentinel and the Miami Herald over the weekend. Let me cut to the chase for you. I'm sure you'll see precisely where my problems began and where they are fixated still.</div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"</span></bottom>Three months before the remains were found, DCF had received a report
that Dontrell Melvin (see below) had long been missing. But no one at the time —
not his parents, not police and not DCF — went looking for the infant,
who disappeared when he was about 5 months old.</div>
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Sierra and Melvin have been jailed, charged with felony child
neglect. Though Dontrell's death was ruled a killing, no
homicide-related charges have been filed in the case.</div>
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Both Miles (Dennis Miles, DCF's southeast regional managing director) and Benitez (Emilio Benitez, CEO of ChildNet, the private agency contracted by the
state's Department of Children and Families to oversee foster care in
Broward and Palm Beach counties) said a high-profile case, such as Dontrell's, may influence investigators' decisions on removals.</div>
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<b>'They see that from a <i>simple mistake</i> they may get prosecuted," Benitez
said. "That sends a chill down your spine. It sends a chill across the
whole system."</b></div>
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<a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh%3Dv8/3e19/3/0/%2a/q%3B273024199%3B0-0%3B0%3B12928629%3B4-234/60%3B54622253/54507234/1%3Bu%3Dptype%7Cs%21pos%7C2%21sz%7C234x60%21asl%7CB0%21z%7C33143%3B~okv%3D%3Brs%3DB0%3B%3Bptype%3Ds%3Bslug%3Dfl-child-removal-spike-20130703%3Brg%3Dr%3Bzc%3D33143%3Bic%3D%3Bby%3D%3Bgr%3D%3Bpos%3D2%3Bsz%3D234x60%3Btile%3D2%3Bat%3DAbusiveBehavior%3Bat%3DCrimeLawandJustice%3Bat%3DChildAbuse%3Bat%3DPalmBeachCounty%3Bat%3DHallandaleBeach%3Biab%3Dsoc%3Biab%3Dlaw%3Bu%3Dptype%7Cs%21pos%7C2%21sz%7C234x60%21asl%7CB0%21z%7C33143%3B~aopt%3D2/0/9306/0%3B~sscs%3D%3fhttp://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="60" src="http://s0.2mdn.net/dot.gif" width="234" /></a>"They see that from a simple
mistake they may get prosecuted," Benitez said. "That sends a chill down
your spine. It sends a chill across the whole system."</div>
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Child-abuse investigators are required to remove a child from a home
when the child is in imminent danger. The case is then to go before a
dependency court judge for a shelter hearing within 24 hours."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuxym1B5vZTLU73LtEUAhQJIf_CFbu1g1wkh5F54WDREtdQzPFt4wUzkDetHXAnOKN8X6HpOff4Ix0Rk7fG-4CUolsxOxI4FxoexOujBtd16JveTP6uucwkUoB2YQmcM3IvBep6ZiaJ16w/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-07-08+at+7.59.03+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuxym1B5vZTLU73LtEUAhQJIf_CFbu1g1wkh5F54WDREtdQzPFt4wUzkDetHXAnOKN8X6HpOff4Ix0Rk7fG-4CUolsxOxI4FxoexOujBtd16JveTP6uucwkUoB2YQmcM3IvBep6ZiaJ16w/s320/Screen+Shot+2013-07-08+at+7.59.03+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Death-of-Toddler-Dontrell-Melvin-Ruled--a-Homicide-By-Medical-Examiner-200591831.html" target="_blank">Dontrell Melvin</a></div>
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This is Dontrell Melvin. I don't know about you, but to me <i>he doesn't look like the victim of a simple mistake</i>. </div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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<b>He looks like a CHILD. </b>One who is now forever gone from this earth.</div>
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This child was murdered by his parents, who were supposedly investigated by the Department of Children and Families. He is one of six children <i>I </i>know of who have suffered the same fate in my state <i>thus far this year</i>. You can read about them, in brief, in various Florida news outlets: Ezra Raphael, Antwan Hope, Fernando Barahona, Bryan Osceola, Dontrell Melvin and Emma Morrison. A few days before Mike's article ran, the Miami Herald ran an OpEd aptly titled "<a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/01/3480306_dcf-fails-vulnerable-children.html%20%20Read%20more%20here:%20http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/01/3480306_dcf-fails-vulnerable-children.html#storylink=cpy" target="_blank">DCF Fails Vulnerable Children</a>." </div>
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You can see how "affecting" to some child welfare sector management the public outcry has been when you hear tone-deaf responses like that of Mr. Benitez, CEO of ChildNet, an organization managing child welfare case management services in not one but two counties. Failure to remove this child was "<i>a simple mistake,</i>" and that, oh, boohoo, child protective investigators have been "chilled" by the fact that they'll get at a minimum a lot of notoriety, and a at a maximum, charged if the children they investigate are further harmed and/or killed.</div>
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I'll tell you what's chilling and it has <i>nothing</i> to do to with whether PIs are removing more children because they're afraid if they don't that they'll be.... oooooooh! cue the Twilight Zone theme.... in the public eye.</div>
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I've said it before and I won't quit saying it:</div>
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<b>Where is the WELFARE in my state?</b></div>
<br />
We need an army of Mike Clarys and Carol Marbin Millers in my state and we need to give them megaphones and a large bandwidth to make the stories of these children heard and most of all, to <i>prevent similar stories</i>. We need a rising tide of outrage to crest in change. It should be chilling that any child is unsafe when under the watchful eye of the Department of Children and Families!<br />
<br />
From Rilya Wilson to Nubia Barahona to Dontrell Melvin and onwards, we have too many dead children, too many excuses, too much handwringing. We have no real change in my state.<br />
<br />
It's a cruel irony that children's protective services doesn't even come into play until after a child has suffered harm. But to allow that harm to accrue? To ignore it? To turn a blind eye and then cry crocodile tears when that child dies? To call these compounded failures "simple mistakes?"<br />
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These are not "simple mistakes."<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom><br />
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No mistake that involves the death of a child ever will be.<br />
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These are shameful failures. They represent the utter failure of the system of care. They represent no meaningful caring at all.<br />
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<b>The bottom line is that, in my state, saving money is more important than saving children's lives. </b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqX1_PZTFzKQFlQ_VxDWWTNyZ8ha7h_tOH_2WmshH54DZo6Nx_v44p589b-DJhNthfZgPC4gDG-zeMSi5BMDSi7y1L9h1lkUjhyMxdCVkHYaSAJIRCFKMmm7Mt5KVHCaHw9KOX_NJKhXoc/s1600/IMG_4308.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqX1_PZTFzKQFlQ_VxDWWTNyZ8ha7h_tOH_2WmshH54DZo6Nx_v44p589b-DJhNthfZgPC4gDG-zeMSi5BMDSi7y1L9h1lkUjhyMxdCVkHYaSAJIRCFKMmm7Mt5KVHCaHw9KOX_NJKhXoc/s1600/IMG_4308.JPG" /></a></div>
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Sounds of the Sea by Karl Gussow</div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been listening to you people.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, I have been turning over the idea of continuing to blog. I quit, in part, because I felt there was nothing positive to say. (At least based on what was going on around me...) I was weary of the negativity. But lately, I've started wondering again whether talking about what is messed up isn't actually a positive. After all, so many people ignore what's messed up, for various reasons. I guess I wanted to try to find a positive spin on negative things. I'm not sure I'm there yet. But maybe I can get there iteratively. We'll see.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Skål, à bientôt, and bis später.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2013</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-73998183805228985482012-10-10T12:39:00.001-04:002012-10-10T12:39:29.199-04:00Uppity Woman (Child) #21: A Profile in Courage<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijnK_FkOctgeySWUL9uaL_2xaLQ9IQlNXjbZhnW6LnIeJQSDIQNimZnX7kv-MoPfz0MECKda9OIyolGJid56uY_Bw8a-MLcog2tJf9xc-WKeKAtGAHimygkCVGC8QR0uemPL_s0D3Mf06w/s1600/121009-malala-pakistan-130a.photoblog600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="582" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijnK_FkOctgeySWUL9uaL_2xaLQ9IQlNXjbZhnW6LnIeJQSDIQNimZnX7kv-MoPfz0MECKda9OIyolGJid56uY_Bw8a-MLcog2tJf9xc-WKeKAtGAHimygkCVGC8QR0uemPL_s0D3Mf06w/s640/121009-malala-pakistan-130a.photoblog600.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">From the <a href="http://www.themuslimtimes.org/2012/10/countries/pakistan/peace-prize-winner-pakistani-girl-shot">Muslim Times</a>, Veronique De Viguerie / Getty Images, file</span></i></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom>
<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From dictionary.com- </span></bottom><br />
<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><bottom>Uppity: </bottom>rebelliously self-assertive; not inclined to be tractable or deferential.</i></span><br />
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I know of no person who better embodies the spirit of the amazing women on my list of "<a href="http://brightnepenthe.blogspot.com/search/label/Uppity%20Women">Uppity Women</a>" than Malala Yousafzai. Yet Malala is a child of only 14. She is "uppity" because she dared to blog, under a pseudonym, about the atrocities committed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Swat Valley for the BBC, that bastion of apostasy, in 2009, at the amazing age of 11. Her blog espoused both her desire and firm belief in her right to an education, and her outrage at the destruction of schools and the violence visited on peaceful Pakistanis who wanted their daughters to be educated or those who wanted to educate <i>all </i>children. The Taliban in the Swat Valley are clearly very threatened by the idea of educated females, and by Malala in particular, because yesterday two of their thugs proudly got on her school bus in Mingora, Swat and after asking which girl was Malala, shot her in the head and neck, then shot two other education righteous-thinking girls for good measure. Malala has survived the shooting, although just barely. Reports still insist the bullet did not penetrate her brain.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Malala, who was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize in 2011, won the Pakistani National Peace Prize in December, 2011. The Government School for Girls was renamed the Malala Yousafzai School earlier this year. Her attempted assassination, for certainly she was a well-known and charismatic figure, has brought immense sorrow, anger and embarrassment in various circles in Pakistan. But among the Tehrik-i-Taliban there is only the consternation that she is the girl who lived, albeit precariously so at this point. Their leader, Ihsanullah Ihsan has said tersely, "Let this be a lesson," and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/taliban-says-it-shot-infidel-pakistani-teen-for-advocating-girls-rights/2012/10/09/29715632-1214-11e2-9a39-1f5a7f6fe945_story.html">promised they will try to kill her again</a> for the obscenity of her desire for her rights and Western-tainted values. </span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Pakistani National Airline has said they are ready to fly her to any facility in the world for further medical care but she is evidently not stable enough to be moved. Meanwhile, demonstrators flooded the streets, as evidenced by the many photos on Al Jazeera and other Islamic news outlets. This morning the government of Pakistan offered a <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/10/2012101014927180385.html">10 Million Rupee bounty</a> for the men that shot Malala and her friends, an extraordinary sum. Roads are barricaded, streets bear signs decrying the shooting and Pakistani PM Pervez Ashraf said of the attack, "She is our daughter." Journalist Nadeem F. Paracha said in a positively brutal tweet on Twitter, "Come on brothers, be REAL MEN. Kill a schoolgirl." Yet, the Karachi-based Paracha's column in <a href="http://dawn.com/2012/10/10/rage-running-out/">today's Dawn</a> lays the blame for Malala's suffering not just on the Taliban but on Pakistanis themselves, who he paints in stark contrast, due to their apathy, to brave souls like Malala.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A friend asked me this morning about whether Malala couldn't get asylum in the West. I guess the US or the UK would be able to grant her asylum. Surely there is ample cause. But imagine uprooting your entire family and struggling to rebuild their lives so far from home. Why should she, or they, <i>have</i> to seek asylum, is my thought. Why can't a 14 year old girl be safe on a school bus or in her government school? Why should she or her friends live in fear? Why should any of the lessons she's learning have to do with grown men shooting children? Why can't she study as long as she wants to, and whatever she wishes to? </span></bottom></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Malala, who was <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/322054/bacha-khans-philosophy-of-non-violence-and-benazir-bhuttos-charisma-inspires-malala/">named</a> after a Pashtun poet and warrior woman, clearly saw the risks of opposing the Taliban, based on her direct experience and as detailed in her blogging. And yet, she was a child and children never internalize risks as adults do. Perhaps her courage will galvanize her elder compatriots and make them see, yet again, that the very future of their country is being brutalized and terrorized. Demonstrators in Benghazi, Libya took matters into their own hands, striking against, and routing, the Ansar-al-Sharia who killed Ambassador Chris Stevens. Maybe the people of Swat Valley need to make their voices, and their will, clearer to the Tehrik-i-Taliban? </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maybe the bravery of "their daughter" will be the catalyst for the change that Malala believes in</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The world, excepting a pack of barbarians, wishes this child a full recovery.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJwQ47zcTEUm3EhNBJbjB6USD7k8OU6RdAR41Z9CjhlXAVT4ebpDNk-KJ2C1VCSYk56ap3TgiujFTlr9nBjgykLxcJ-R2jgDzO9Nnv6JQ8j9KXEuaYzJNNyNPoduybx_QTbOMF6Ar07-1e/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-10-10+at+11.45.41+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJwQ47zcTEUm3EhNBJbjB6USD7k8OU6RdAR41Z9CjhlXAVT4ebpDNk-KJ2C1VCSYk56ap3TgiujFTlr9nBjgykLxcJ-R2jgDzO9Nnv6JQ8j9KXEuaYzJNNyNPoduybx_QTbOMF6Ar07-1e/s400/Screen+Shot+2012-10-10+at+11.45.41+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Demonstrators protesting Malala's shooting in Peshawar.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I guess I must just be on a tear with Pakistani treatment of women and children. Lest we think the Taliban is the only problem facing Pakistani women, or the sole factor in the mindset that women are mere chattel, we need only consider the case of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shafilea_Ahmed">Shafilea Ahmed</a>. This honor killing, which occurred in 2003 and is finally facing justice, took place in England. About a week ago, her parents were finally convicted of Shafilea's grisly murder, on the basis of her <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2184750/Shafilea-Ahmeds-father-briefcase-gold-bars-flee-justice-moment.html">younger sister's testimony</a> against her parents. Her parents had been living in the UK for more than a decade by the time they killed their 17 year old daughter for being too Westernized.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Shafilea Ahmed's teachers deserve kudos for trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to help this child. Just like recent killings in Canada however, the child welfare system seems to find it difficult to safeguard young women in these difficult situations. You can watch the CNN video report on the welfare failure here:</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And meanwhile, I encourage anyone who wants to spend a bit more of their time *headdesk*-ing to check out the comments on the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/etribune/posts/338207166270390">Pakistan Express Tribune's Facebook</a> posting of their article on Rifta Masih, the poor 11 year old Down's syndrome child who is charged with blasphemy (punishable by death) for burning pages of the Koran. As it turns out, her mother was with her when she was jailed. But of course, the rest of the family had run off and abandoned the mother who stood by her child. The police <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/424084/11-year-old-mentally-challenged-christian-girl-jailed-for-blasphemy/">now deny</a> the mother and child were "tortured." Since a later Pakistan Express Tribune <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/424084/11-year-old-mentally-challenged-christian-girl-jailed-for-blasphemy/">article</a> opens with the statement that the child was severely beaten, I'm wondering exactly what the police mean by "not tortured." A <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/424573/blasphemy-or-rights-abuse-president-directs-interior-ministry-to-submit-detailed-report/">later article still</a> says that Islamabad police have registered a case against the Muslim cleric in Rifta's village for <i>encouraging a village mob to set the child on fire</i>. Reportedly, the police intervened before that could occur.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2012</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-15013344448000342742012-08-19T19:39:00.002-04:002012-08-19T19:50:17.852-04:00The Blasphemy of the Disabled<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh41zJjfA_VAOGJhm7-m21tdZCc1UQho-47SnLLpmDMxx0dguIcRsz5GQLkefGl0hYJhP6VL2IPS-bLXjYQHoAUjZ9vcWDJApGoraOu0GayNG5m-WdV86GIYyf2o09yvOlyUxvbFDjhrdrD/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-08-19+at+7.47.24+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh41zJjfA_VAOGJhm7-m21tdZCc1UQho-47SnLLpmDMxx0dguIcRsz5GQLkefGl0hYJhP6VL2IPS-bLXjYQHoAUjZ9vcWDJApGoraOu0GayNG5m-WdV86GIYyf2o09yvOlyUxvbFDjhrdrD/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-08-19+at+7.47.24+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">An 11 year old Christian girl, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/19/pakistan-christian-tensions-quran-burning-allegations?newsfeed=true">Rifta Masih</a>, has been arrested in </span></bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mehrabadi, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Pakistan for blasphemy. The child blasphemer, who </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">has Down's Syndrome</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, was </span><a href="http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/2012/08/19/76-Police-arrests-11-year-old-mentally-challenged-Christian-girl-for-blasphemy-in-Pak.html" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">reportedly severely beaten</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> by a crowd of people, and may face the death penalty for burning pages of the Koran along with the fact that other pages she carried with her were housed in a bag of waste, which she was trying to put into a waste bin. She should, in spite of her disability, evidently known better. Or </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">her</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> God should have kept her safer or perhaps have given her better judgment or something. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yes, t</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">his is what passes for blasphemy in Pakistan, a place in which reasonable people, like </span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2011/01/110105_taseer_wt_sl.shtml" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Salman Taseer</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/02/pakistan-minister-shot-dead-islamabad" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Shabaz Bhatti</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, gave their lives trying to drum sense into the public's mind. So a disabled child may die, because with her lack of intellectual capacity and understanding, she insulted the holy book of Islam. </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is justice?</i></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I had planned to make some snarky remarks about a$$holes like <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/19/missouri-republican-claims-legitimate-rape-rarely-results-in-pregnancy/?hpt=hp_t1">Todd Akin</a> and their form of profanity against reason, but frankly, I'm really just too absorbed in thinking of what will happen to this poor 11 year old child, who probably just wants her mother, and who will be subject to who knows what horrors. Did she even get medical care after being beaten? It's too horrifying to contemplate. As the BBC's <a href="http://beta.bbc.co.uk/worldservice">World Service</a> says, few people at this point, after the deaths of Taseer and Bhatti, will stand up to the extremist mob, even if it means a child must die for doing something when she didn't have cognizance of giving offense. </span></bottom><br />
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another Bhatti, Dr. <a href="http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/2012/08/19/76-Police-arrests-11-year-old-mentally-challenged-Christian-girl-for-blasphemy-in-Pak.html">Paul Bhatti</a>, Minister of Harmony *cough* (no idea if he's a brave relation to assassinated Minority Minister Shahbaz Bhatti) is evidently trying to get her an attorney.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some days, I just lose all hope for reason in this world. </span></bottom></div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2012</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-70584748196409105542012-08-15T18:41:00.001-04:002012-08-15T18:42:25.780-04:00Simply Exquisite<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSJH65_fNaYrsX0wCgUMaGauVLiULGLkBznjfgAPmhZH0SU6TyQfFpCsS44Jp__iMqT6Dsg-2jCHzrMmtsM3M77XQrly1zkIg_Z6lKgzcXigj-2KooxFDBchDl6yflBUHBhbSczas97FV1/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-08-15+at+6.24.27+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSJH65_fNaYrsX0wCgUMaGauVLiULGLkBznjfgAPmhZH0SU6TyQfFpCsS44Jp__iMqT6Dsg-2jCHzrMmtsM3M77XQrly1zkIg_Z6lKgzcXigj-2KooxFDBchDl6yflBUHBhbSczas97FV1/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-08-15+at+6.24.27+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've come out of estivation. Amazing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Many of my friends know that I'm a die-hard architecture fan. (No, really. Consider the fact that I've dragged my husband to Bear Run, PA in late winter, driving through a hailstorm no less, just to see <i><a href="http://www.fallingwater.org/">Fallingwater</a> </i>on a private tour, people. Then there's the trekking all over California for <a href="http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Lloyd_Wright.html">Wright</a> and <a href="http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Greene_and_Greene.html">Greene & Greene</a> houses or buildings... Or how about the architecture tour of NYC, of my own making from the AIA guidebook, the Marzie walks your feet off tour? When I say I like architecture, <i>I ain't kidding</i>. Trip to Barcelona? Forget seeing Barça play. Give me some Gaudí. World Cup in Brazil in 2014? A chance to see Oscar Niemeyer's work live.) Anyway, as a fan of architecture, I've been fascinated by the work of Maya Lin for decades, ever since she won the Vietnam Veterans Memorial competition while still an architecture student at Yale. I was utterly fascinated by her. Both because of how well she forged ahead, in spite of all the controversy, and because she was so close in age to me and I couldn't fathom how someone my age could be so poised on a national and international platform. And, of course, I thought her designs were so impressive, so well thought out, so thought<i>ful</i> of what they were to represent. From the simplicity of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjhOvutbXwk">Vietnam Veterans Memorial </a>in Washington DC to the elegant concept of The Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery to the impressive African Art Museum (I love African art, too, btw) in New York, I've followed her work with great enthusiasm. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At present, Maya Lin is working on what she calls her <i>last</i> memorial. It is the ultimate conceptual art project. It is a memorial to planet Earth. I cannot say enough about it, or thank the <a href="http://www.birds.cornell.edu/Page.aspx?pid=1478" target="_blank">Cornell Ornithology Lab</a> enough for alerting me to its very existence. I could spend hours on this website. In fact, I have. (Ironically, the very first dot I clicked on was <i>Giant River</i> <i>Otters</i>...)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The installation of <i>What Is Missing</i> is touring in its ever diminishing world. While not everyone will get to see it in person, you can participate on the web at <i><a href="http://whatismissing.net/">WhatisMissing.net.</a> </i>What do you miss in the natural world in the last thirty years? Frogs croaking at night? Fireflies that look like stars come to earth in the summertime? Bachelor's Buttons in your garden? Naturally ripe and flavorful tomatoes? Rivers frozen in winter? Meadowlarks, Buntings or Robins making it as far south as you are? <i><a href="http://whatismissing.net/questionnaire/new">Tell Maya Lin your story</a>.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And those of you who say, oh, it will be <i>so</i> depressing, please, by all mean, go to <a href="http://whatismissing.net/#/home/what-you-can-do/what-we-eat">What You Can Do</a>. </span></div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2012</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-77789557855456124792012-07-13T20:51:00.000-04:002012-07-13T20:57:05.654-04:00In the Mire & Remembrance<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJQ8PmIOKJ4badSer8C-FGol0wWPrdVPpksTKFXfy1KYJUMWtl_24nApEogSMgXSKaewCIdBG748kHPNj_y9I1MM3z5eCPyXPJmtdC0OWONdAijSLtfH5lIc_vcUXsTjxB9w6LnPvV_FYm/s1600/IMG_3387.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJQ8PmIOKJ4badSer8C-FGol0wWPrdVPpksTKFXfy1KYJUMWtl_24nApEogSMgXSKaewCIdBG748kHPNj_y9I1MM3z5eCPyXPJmtdC0OWONdAijSLtfH5lIc_vcUXsTjxB9w6LnPvV_FYm/s640/IMG_3387.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>Baby Tern on a barrier island in Barataria Bay, one of the areas hit hardest with BP oil on 2010. This chick and most of the others were swept away with high waters from Debbie.</i></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>(Image credit: <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/the-long-shadow-of-the-bp-oil-spill-keeps-killing-baby-birds/259705/#slide8">Julie Dermansky</a>, used with permission)</i></span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's been a while, hasn't it? Things are better and appalling and not forgotten. Yesterday, I actually thought of that baby tern as a metaphor. Today, I'm in a better and clearer frame of mind. </span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Since my last post, I've filed a shelter petition for the young woman I call Lillie (don't even get me started on the legal end of this and what I have to say about child <i>welfare</i>.) I've seen the young man I was worried about land pretty much on his feet, and inch ever closer to aging out. I've seen Keyoncé disappear yet again, into the murky world in which he fails to thrive but doesn't struggle enough in to leave or to die in. Snow White is going to use my car for her operator's driver's license exam and we can have positive conversations again. Marina and Serena are fine in their group homes and in fact, they appear to be thriving. My other two GAL youth, Tammy and Shammy, are doing okay. My "not really my case officially" GAL youth is doing better, though I'm still worried about her living circumstance. Overall the trend is up. But, then again, less than a week ago, I've seen things like this (below) coming back into the home of my brand shiny new GAL youth, whose case I just got on because <i>she is diabetic</i> and this is what her <i>prospective adopter</i> is sending her home with (late for her medication, no less) from visits: </span></bottom></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiedoTPbXQ_lCrRAsDiryqBxCGNkuRfVjzDslTOQa2naSqWS65g1ZH9Az7fx-cFFTwumEYaWC1OEwLC4hTEdcCGmcU1Ln3rNYwicgm_GoB9eXw3gtrZAFcrZF4pXT5u4ccCvZ3sJPUY6ZBj/s1600/2012-07-08+11.53.16+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiedoTPbXQ_lCrRAsDiryqBxCGNkuRfVjzDslTOQa2naSqWS65g1ZH9Az7fx-cFFTwumEYaWC1OEwLC4hTEdcCGmcU1Ln3rNYwicgm_GoB9eXw3gtrZAFcrZF4pXT5u4ccCvZ3sJPUY6ZBj/s640/2012-07-08+11.53.16+2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(That yellow bag? Cheetos-type fries, mostly gone. The cup? Milkshake. The 24 oz. soda? A FRAKKING 24 ounce soda. The doughnut, the sugary <i>Bubblicious</i> gum, the buttered popcorn. Quantum field help me, what is she eating all afternoon, if </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">this</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> is what worked its way home?)</span></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And yet, in spite of all these many things, what motivated me to write a post is Julie's ongoing, powerful series on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf. Julie is my kind of person. I think I must operate on the same frequency. <u>She isn't letting it go.</u> She won't let us forget. Why? <i><b>We shouldn't forget.</b></i> The animals, the people, the<i> everything</i> about what BP did there with the Deepwater Horizon. Everyone and everything along the affected Gulf Coast will be seeing the effects for decades. We must not forget their struggle. </span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/the-long-shadow-of-the-bp-oil-spill-keeps-killing-baby-birds/259705/#slide8">Please join me in commending Julie's work at the Atlantic.</a> Like it, share it (yes, it's hard to <i>like</i>, but it's important to do so for social media connections and you help her get the recognition to keep on taking these pictures). Spread the word. Stick it to BP. Show them, and the entire industry, that the American attention span isn't quite as short as they hoped...</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We will not forget Barataria Bay, its birds, its marine life. Or <i>any place, </i>affected by the DH spill.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Julie- <b>Thank you.</b></span></bottom></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">© Bright Nepenthe, 2012</span></form>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-49847310334644167292012-06-11T13:32:00.000-04:002012-06-11T16:47:25.687-04:00Picking Up the Pieces<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom><br />
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Since the beginning of the year, I've been having a hard time with the idea of blogging. I kept posting about other things I care about, doing a delicate dance around things and people near and dear to my heart. But things kept piling up, and up, and up. Finally, I just quit, because really, I didn't know what to say, or how to say it, or whether I could even legally say it. This morning, I just don't give a damn.</span></bottom><br />
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What have I been doing for the last decade or so? What was I thinking? Sure I had that idea that I could make things better for one child, one youth, at a time. Yeah, right. Instead, I'll just be there holding their hand while the train derails. Or maybe sometimes I was one of the engineers?</span></bottom><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Since this post is a nice, big cathartic feast after a five week famine, I really suggest you turn back. Here, have an <a href="http://dailyotter.org/">otter</a>, or <a href="http://www.zooborns.com/">baby zoo animals</a>. You'll walk away happy.</span><br />
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The child welfare system is, as anybody who reads this blog, who has worked in it, lived in it, aged out of it, so very, very broken. And it is self-perpetuating. Abuse begets abuse, neglect begets neglect, loss begets still more loss. I'm really at a point where I wonder, wearily, if it is even possible to fix the system, to stop the cycle, and whether anything I do makes any difference to anyone, including the kids I serve. I am skeptical, if not downright cynical, about whether a lot of people working from within the system are more interested in just having their job than they are in what their job was supposed to be doing. Or whether they even care that they are part of the problem and whether they ever wonder if they cause more problems, more damage. Because I sure do.</span></bottom><br />
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And then, there are the kids themselves... The ones who bear the weight of all the mistakes, the inability of the child welfare system to forge a positive change in their lives. Where to begin?</span></bottom><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The day before Valentine's Day, I got a call from Snow White, who long time readers of the blog know is something of a success story. A young mother, Snow White won, against astounding odds, an RTI reinstatement case before the Third District Court of Appeals. She was and is, on the face of it, a good mother who chose caring for her daughter, even though it derailed her schooling and almost cost her her Road to Independence funding, the program that helps aged out foster youth when they turn 18. She has now graduated with her high school degree, has a beautician's license, and is ready to start work and college and <i>life</i>. Which is why it almost killed me to have to report her family for child abuse because her significant other battered her, stole from her, used substance, all in front of their child. While trying to limn that fine line between someone being a bad father while genuinely loving their child, being a bad partner while evidently loving you, Snow White lived and lives in the desperate world of many a former foster youth: the <i>I Want A Family</i> world, in which broken family is better than no family, and in which one can only hope that the system would agree with her and try to fix the broken parts. (It doesn't really, by the way. The system decides some things, and some people, are too broken to merit treatment.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To say that the rabbit hole that Snow White and I fell into on February 13 was a long and winding and unbearable fall (for the both of us) would be an understatement. She is now 21 and we have known each other for seven years. I was the constant in her life she could count on. I was also the one who almost cost her her daughter. But I did my duty and, in doing so, lanced the festering wound in her family and hoped the system would treat them, heal them. <span style="color: #3d85c6;">Good thing I am not holding my breath.</span> We have since reached a sort of truce. She now sadly knows she can't tell me anything <i>really</i> bad because I'm a mandated reporter, a point that was never crystallized in her mind before. (So much comfort there, for the both of us...) but she knows that if she has a problem that does involve the need for help, for connections within the system, that I'm there for her. I am just hoping that the system, which isn't really great at breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect, will somehow vanquish some of the problems facing her and her daughter. But the means of dealing with domestic violence (DV) in this county and in this state are egregiously outdated. (Maybe that's everywhere, though.) Even just domestic violence, treated wrongly as a concept isolated from substance abuse and rooted in gender, is outdated, when you look at decade old work by <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/t1156462704731g4/">Corvo</a> and <a href="http://lab.drdondutton.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Dutton-D.G.-Corvo-K.-2006-Transforming-a-flawed-policy.pdf">Dutton</a>, and others. DV is often not rehabilitated in terms of the success of programs- they <i>aren't</i> successful, by and large. The links between family violence, intimate partner violence, substance abuse and psychosocial dynamics are not often successfully addressed in our little corner of the world. Holistic isn't the first word that comes to mind when I think of dependency. (Nor are the terms 'evidence-based' and 'happy outcomes!'.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anyway, after the searing February, there was March.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In March, I found out via Facebook that the maternal grandmother of the talented young man who is now my oldest GAL case (first hugged him in January 2005) was terminally ill. He posted a status comment about it, in typical fashion, minimizing it. I was aghast to hear him say it was "no biggie", as was his adult sister, who came down to see Grandma and him. When his mom was on the streets, his grandmother loved and cared for him. His mother died of HIV in 2008. His father was deported to Suriname in 2004. His sister, also my GAL youth, ran away from Miami, in 2007. And this entire school year he was getting terrible grades and living in a dreamworld in which, when he turns 18 in September, he runs away to LA, with no contacts, no portfolio, no high school degree, and not even a contact email account that bears his proper name, and is discovered, becoming a famous actor and director. Talking with him in recent times, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">without crushing him, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">both because he is very bright, and because he is so adept at ignoring whatever is too painful to deal with straight on, has been probably the toughest run of my GAL 'career'. He is amazingly articulate and insightful, quick to call some of those who have worked on his case in court, 'condescending' among other things. To say this kid has lived with loss and has fought hard to bury everything painful he has endured would be the understatement of the century. And, after the continual revolving door of case managers (I count at least ten over the past 7 years and he told me a few weeks ago that "they change my case manager more frequently than I change my underwear...") he no longer really talked to his then case manager. I called her and told her what was going on about Grandma and that he'd even been to her house (a very bad scene according to the sister) and seen her. The case manager failed to document my concerns. (Including concerns about the 8% this kid had back then in Geometry, which, by the way, is rather </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">surprising</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> for a kid who was in the gifted program in math, from 3rd through 8th grade, before he got to his swanky and elite performing arts school and can you say </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">CRY FOR HELP</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> any louder, no you can't.) But she was in the weeds, evidently. Didn't document any of it. Didn't try to talk to him. Left the agency. The whole thing took a turn for the worse when his placement of 5 years began to disrupt. (A scenario described to Comtesse [redacted] as 'watching the slow motion derailment of a train'.) And then our wonderful child welfare system became all about covering asses and blame-shifting. To the point that after a discreet trip to the bathroom with a jurist, the agency 'had done so very much' to save that placement but they 'just couldn't save it'. And yeah, the youth, who has struggled mightily to express his feelings, in spite of being incredibly articulate and well-spoken for so many other things, was firmly stifled from the bench. So now he's in a good interim home and we get to look for where he can live on $892 a month, if he stays in school. (Age 18 and in the 11th grade, what a picnic it will be!) Since his school doesn't offer the school lunch program, I'm now going to be picking up 100% of the cost of lunch to try to eliminate that reason for dropping out because frankly, I do not see how he can manage otherwise. (For the past two years I was doing 50%, with the other 50% provided by the case management agency for their little star who should shut up and be quiet.) But hey, the happy story here is that the case management agency is good! And in another three months, they won't have to think about any of this anymore! Another successful outcome!!!! </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The world is filled with puppies!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So up to this point, I was still feeling okay about things. I mean, not happy, but as if there was still a purpose in being involved in the child welfare world. Then I got this FB message from a longtime friend and former GAL, who had been the beloved foster parent of the children in what is my second oldest case as a GAL. And therein, of course, lies still more sorrow. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'll just call her Lillie. She and her brother were placed for adoption in 2008. I had been their GAL since January of 2004. An unusual case, one that makes you really believe in Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. (And I've had two such cases, what are the odds?) A hard case to work, with demands for knowledge of IDEA, Section 504, and disability educational expertise like none I have ever had. Lillie and her brother both suffered from severe auditory processing disorders and what appeared to be dyslexia. I struggled finding them proper evaluations and services, and got them into a superlative private remediative school, The Cushman School, on full scholarships, to rehabilitate their reading and math struggles. They were doing so well by 2007. They were, for the most part, happy kids, although Lillie has always had a tendency to feel somewhat sad and lonely. In 2008 they were adopted by a seemingly successful couple who had overcome, or so it seemed, their own learning problems. They had moved from Michigan to Florida and wanted a child desperately. They wanted a boy but were willing to take a sibling set. Voilà! A disaster is borne! And <i>one I helped make</i>, that <i>I </i>signed off on as their GAL. Long ago Lillie had promised her mother that she would take care of her little brother. So she agreed to the adoption, even though she didn't feel entirely comfortable with this family, well, specifically with the adoptive mother. The father appeared to be nice enough and that was enough for her. The parents didn't seem ideal from the standpoint of really learning about their prospective off-springs' specific deficits and needs. But they did get those evaluations entered into the school systems that they moved to successively. Good thing, because after that adoption was final, they moved, and moved, and moved. Because they kept losing their jobs and being evicted. Because they drank and were verbally abusive and angry people who got fired a lot. Because even though they passed a Children's Home Society homestudy, which cleared their background <i>in the state of Florida</i>, I later paid for a <i> full </i>background check (too late, a mistake I will never, ever make again) myself and found out that they had a string of foreclosures and civil financial problems back home in Michigan. And I have to say that the idea of taking two instead of one when you're getting paid to take them makes great sense when you can't hold a job, right? Of course, right!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Lillie was miserable. Lillie tried to run away. Lillie reported abuse to me, which I reported to the state and which the state couldn't prove and didn't really look into all that much because it's just not the kinda thing they're into nowadays. Hey, no big bruises or marks, how bad can it be? I last saw her in early January, when she told me that she was just hoping she could stick it out until she turned 18, how miserable she was, how hard it has been. Lillie would come back to Miami and stay with her former foster mother every chance she got. In fact, Lillie is there now, in what is about to be, hopefully, her real 'forever home', except there are all these little details that are nagging at me. A forever home? Wasn't that the one you're adopted into? <b>They kicked her out. </b>She turns 18 in January. She will never get RTI now because she was adopted. She will get the free Florida Bright Futures Scholarship, if they deign to give her the documentation showing she's entitled to it. Speaking of which... There is no documentation so far as I know that make the arrangement legal and viable for the next 6 months. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have no idea if she has Medicaid, should she get sick or injured and with no documentation, the former foster mother cannot obtain Medicaid for her.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm also not clear on whether they are giving the $500+ stipend the state pays them for Lillie to the </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I cannot tell you how incredible</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> foster mother that has loved and nurtured her and made her a part of her family for all these years and is now taking her in for good. Guess why Lillie wasn't adopted into her foster mother's family? Her foster mother was too old to qualify. Guess what Lillie has endured? Psychological and physical abuse, separation from her mentally ill mother, now from her brother, and complete destruction of her childhood and adolescence. Yes indeedy, <wipes hands=""> job done! I'm feeling like one helpful person these days. And part of a very helpful system.</wipes></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yes, yes, I have had cases that ended in successful adoption, including my first case, where the child ended up with her young aunt, about whom I can say only wonderful things. Or the multivisceral organ transplant toddler, adopted by the nurse with her private nursing company, who had lost a daughter to the same condition but found room in her heart for more love, more loss. Or the young man with the severe skeletal defects, adopted by a longtime friend, after her supporting him through grueling back surgery for terrible scoliosis and kyphosis and helping him deal with his other skeletal defects and his social isolation. None of <i>those </i>people kicked the children out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But yeah, lately, everywhere I look, I see broken children, broken youths, broken system. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The word discouraged is wholly inadequate.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And not to be mean or dismissive, but y'all can just skip the usual palliative, oh "poor Marzie was good" comments. That is so totally missing the point here. Feel angry at the system and sorry for these kids and what they endure in the child welfare demi-monde, not me. I live in a nice house, with my nice family and my lovely pets and my beautiful garden and the worst I have to deal with is waking up at night worrying about these youths, where they are, where they're headed and wonder about how it is that I can know three people for seven or eight years and have done so little to have helped them. That's the right question to be asking, to my mind. They are just three children, of the many cases, out there. And if this is how it goes, when a person is really trying to be in their corner, I don't want to imagine the rest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Edited to add in the late afternoon:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When it rains, it pours. Keyoncé, 22 years old in late August, last mentioned on this blog because of his plight of being intellectually disabled, bipolar and working the oldest profession in the world under some very sketchy conditions on Biscayne Blvd., just called me. His APD is a mess and he needs an apartment because his electricity is off where he is right now. "I need you in my life, Marzie. I need you back as my GAL. I ain't got nobody, no family. Who's gonna help me? I can't live on $606 of SSI Disability. What am I gonna do? I'm <i>tired</i>. I want a Section VIII apartment but they don't take my application. Well, I don't know how to apply. You know I got problems reading."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Meeting: Wednesday, 11:30 am.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How do I tell him that I think Section VIII applications are closed but even if they weren't, he's not a woman with children? How do I tell him I don't know what to believe and not believe? How do I tell him that he needs to tell those fine folks at Our Kids and APD that yes, he really does turn tricks for added money?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sigh. Camillus House, here we come.</span><br />
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2012</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-42863527304468007162012-05-01T18:08:00.000-04:002012-05-01T18:08:36.511-04:00Otterly Adorable<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4NQL2O8XDUZ9-X0f9Yb8TBMmpVUFI-sxyCoyGz8kscMXfQ4PLFvXn3FLD_qon3b9dHxAmZGRFrvHs1Ya6AGDtPfsd0WvLBrbwLXnHBQm2iJYS-Vt6bmRZapaWOCDq5Bv7yf-eRx4j3vrW/s1600/otters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="504" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4NQL2O8XDUZ9-X0f9Yb8TBMmpVUFI-sxyCoyGz8kscMXfQ4PLFvXn3FLD_qon3b9dHxAmZGRFrvHs1Ya6AGDtPfsd0WvLBrbwLXnHBQm2iJYS-Vt6bmRZapaWOCDq5Bv7yf-eRx4j3vrW/s640/otters.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So since everything seems to be conspiring against my having any viable time to write anything about anything I want to write about thus far this week (other than sticking it to the <i>Men</i> in the Republican Party who support oppression of women as the way to restore their puny self-esteem) I'm offering up this baby otter video (below). Because in a world with clematis, the only thing as good as gorgeous plants and beautiful cats and dogs is otters.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And now you know why I want to move to Pittsburgh.</span></bottom></div>
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2012</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-71096325130198188222012-04-30T18:15:00.000-04:002012-04-30T18:17:24.526-04:00This Slut Votes<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom><br />
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<a href="http://www.thisslutvotes.com/i/TheFinalSlutsLogo_1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="http://www.thisslutvotes.com/i/TheFinalSlutsLogo_1.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><a href="http://www.thisslutvotes.com/index.html">This Slut Votes</a></i></span></bottom></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Since so much of the furor has died down, I just wanted to say that I ordered my bumper sticker and my t-shirt, and hey, "Republican Party Males Who Want to Roll Back Time to the 1900's, I Mean 1950's," <i>I remember <u>all</u> that <a href="http://www.thisslutvotes.com/antiwomen_legislation.html">legislation</a> you proposed, passed and have tabled until you think no one is watching anymore.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When it comes to the rights for my daughter and quasi-daughter-in-law, I think you'll find that my attention span is <i>fecking infinite</i>.</span><br />
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2012</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-60303719998688110882012-04-29T18:15:00.004-04:002012-04-30T18:17:59.573-04:00Palate Cleanser #179: Clematis Envy, Part 98<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></bottom><br />
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, to enrich my weekend (which it did), Cynical Nymph sent me these. I mean, I mean... NYC, you inspire envy in soooooo many ways. But, after a week of giving myself blisters planting, planting, planting <i>tropicals</i> that I wish were temperates, this, <i>this</i>, makes my heart sing. I've got plenty of green grass people, but I don't have these...</span></bottom></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv2zGWH26j_tctknTDBkwY4R7m90kN1ErhF52J0_HgKDS4KuaDrIc2xr-HKF8FYs0eVzSY5Q8yahzbcQybUaMeq5OfmeJlQyn8s7gJI7OQqG_Lm_C0ZGZvrv9aBF-UPZBjR6L3e_ijDDKz/s1600/photo+1+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv2zGWH26j_tctknTDBkwY4R7m90kN1ErhF52J0_HgKDS4KuaDrIc2xr-HKF8FYs0eVzSY5Q8yahzbcQybUaMeq5OfmeJlQyn8s7gJI7OQqG_Lm_C0ZGZvrv9aBF-UPZBjR6L3e_ijDDKz/s640/photo+1+2.JPG" width="478" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Clematis on the Upper Eastside © <a href="http://cynicalnymph.blogspot.com/">Cynical Nymph</a></i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVALxcbhLaDVVKyOZnaFKl1KPXX3S11uizQGJqoO2-0GTlHb9EUIbRTje8Aa7_qqTKHH9HPaWURjK_Il0FriBarhZTscgbH56KBRjeZYdMRsRw8GaLF6C4MTHRTOjHhPMkJmQlIxc7PiO-/s1600/photo+2+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVALxcbhLaDVVKyOZnaFKl1KPXX3S11uizQGJqoO2-0GTlHb9EUIbRTje8Aa7_qqTKHH9HPaWURjK_Il0FriBarhZTscgbH56KBRjeZYdMRsRw8GaLF6C4MTHRTOjHhPMkJmQlIxc7PiO-/s640/photo+2+2.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Still More Clematis on the Upper Eastside </i><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">© <a href="http://cynicalnymph.blogspot.com/">Cynical Nymph</a></i></div>
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No, really people, this is growing on a fence near where she lives, on the streets of NYC. Sigh.</div>
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BTW- Personally, I'm thinking the Nymph isn't as cynical as she says she is, since she goes around photographing flowers and all. </div>
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<bottom>Visual palate cleanser concept © Bright Nepenthe, 2012</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6764224575243520295.post-78853444253938008152012-04-24T13:45:00.003-04:002012-04-24T13:45:51.976-04:00Palate Cleanser #178<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://static2.pixdaus.com/files/items/pics/9/75/508975_b9863d7746fd9a28c0fad731d3800a90_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://static2.pixdaus.com/files/items/pics/9/75/508975_b9863d7746fd9a28c0fad731d3800a90_large.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Image credit: <a href="http://pixdaus.com/african-honey-bee-santa-barbara-california/items/view/508975/">Danis51</a></i></span></div>
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<bottom><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I mean, how could I be expected to pass this one up? It came in my Pixdaus Newsletter email.</span></bottom><br />
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<bottom>© Bright Nepenthe, 2012</bottom>Marziehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095675159000283648noreply@blogger.com0