We went to visit Joseph over the weekend. I had not seen him since May 4, 2012.

It’s been a long time since I posted here I guess I’ve been more on Facebook dealing with little things other than trying to cope with realities of my current life.over the last few weeks I’ve had to recognize that I’m not 20 anymore that’s my body doesn’t rebound slowly but it also doesn’t rebound as fast as I’d prefer. after destroying my wrist on January 11th I have not been back to work. I miss it and I don’t.I’ve been spending most of my time alone at home with the cats and dog while John continues to work and James continues to do his own thing and Joseph remains in treatment in Utah. John made the choice to go to Utah to visit Joseph because he worked hard in the program for us to be able to come and see him. I got to stay home and have surgery. I told John he should go see Joseph and that he should tell him how much I really wanted to go because of my arm I was not able to. It was really discouraging because we haven’t seen him since last May. 

After getting cancer, I thought I had dealt with facing my mortality.  But this bad break of my arm really threw me. I started feeling old and feeble. This is not a helpful feeling for me to have. As a result I started to go into depression and feeling defeated. (maybe that should be disarmed.)  If I keep going down that path it’s a really bad place.

I talked to a wonderful Christian sister who advised me to get back into the Bible reading it everyday listening to it on disc or on my mp3. She knew what she was talking about.  Once I started to hear the Word of God and really drink it in, I realized that when I am weak, God is strong. She reminded me of a lot of promises in the Bible including Romans 8:28, Jeremiah 29:11 and 12, Psalm 139. Nothing happens without a reason I know that we live in a fallen world, and God can take anything and use it for His purposes. I remember hearing my dad sing a song after mom died. Farther along we’ll know all about it, farther along we’ll understand why. cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine we’ll understand it all by and by.  

After my last post, it’s probably not a big surprise to anyone that Joseph is being placed out of our home.    Last Saturday night, he refused to accept John’s word that he needed space from Joseph.  After John locked him out of his office, Joseph went into the kitchen and got a butter knife.  He used it to break in despite my warning not to, James telling him not to, and John telling him not to do it.  He opened the door, smirked at John and said “You can’t lock me out of anywhere in this house.”  Then he shut the door and stood there.  

John reacted with a white-hot rage I have never seen before — in almost 26 years of marriage, he’s never been that enraged.  He came out of the room, saying, “I’m going to kill him.”  He tackled Joseph to the floor and got him into the bathroom.   I was screaming for John to stop and trying to pull him off Joseph, without success, and James came running, and was able to get John away.  I got in between the two and Joseph got up and backed into the shower.  John was still trying to reach him, and James pulled him to the doorway of the bathroom.  It was not our family’s finest moment. 

I tried to get John to leave the area so he could calm down.  I put my hands on his face, stared him in the eyes, and a stranger was looking back at me.  I couldn’t find my husband in him.  I walked away from the group — James standing in the bathroom between his dad and brother, trying to calm everyone down.  Joseph was standing in the shower, mouthing off to John.  I tried to get John to come over to me, and he said in a deadly calm voice.  “Call the police.”  He refused to leave the doorway. 

Eventually the police arrived, and Joseph got admitted to a psychiatric hospital I used to work at in the area.  He treated it like it was an inconvenience to his schedule.  He told me that I needed to stop letting emotion get in the way of business with him.  If we would just let him get whatever he wanted without getting emotional about it, things would be fine.  He said that several times.  When I pointed out that we are a family, not a business, he responded that he has no emotional attachment to our family, and frankly would prefer that we not have one to him.  He threatened to charge John with assault, and said that he could probably get money if he did. 

We’ve been praying and asking for prayer for a placement for Joseph and the funding for it.  I called a woman who is an attachment foster parent for the county.  I haven’t been in touch with her for about 10 years.  She gave me advice and told me who to contact at San Diego County Adoptions.  She told me about a program out of state that specializes in dealing with attachment disorder and oppositional defiant disorder.  I called Monday, and the adoptions assistance worker listened to my situation, and implied that I should have called sooner.  She told me about the same place that the previous woman had mentioned, and said that the program will be funded by adoptions assistance for as long as Joseph needs it.  I called the admissions person at the facility.  We talked about Joseph, his behavior, attitudes and so on.  He asked questions, and said that the program would accept him.  We told Joseph Tuesday at a family session that he is going to be placed.  He was shocked.  He ended up walking out of the session.  Later that night, during his visiting hour, he told me he’d like to smash my head in with a chair.  I thanked him for his restraint and he walked away while flipping me off.  He was angry because he spent the entire hour trying to talk me out of placing him.  I asked him what would be different if he came home — his response was that after he paid us back for locking him up in the hospital (  ) he would carry on as usual. 

I’m so sad, my heart is broken.  Yesterday, he let John hug and kiss him, his friend, Jared, kissed him goodbye, Jared’s mom, Nina, kissed him, and when I tried to kiss him, he shoved me away, and ran down the hall saying, “Don’t touch me.”  I’ve been the target of his rage for so long now, but this got to me in a way I can’t articulate.  I love Joseph so much, and it hurts so much to have him reject me, telling me he hates me, that he’d like to kill me, wishes I was dead, and that he’s never liked or loved me.  I know this is his hurt and anger speaking, and some day he won’t feel this way, but he does now, when he’s leaving for up to 18 months.  I need to see some slight shred of the boy I know is inside this hateful teen, but I haven’t.  He leaves tomorrow morning for another state.  We won’t be able to communicate with him for 3 weeks.  Then he gets 10 minutes per week on the phone with us.  He won’t have access to a cell phone or the internet at all.  It’s 40 miles from the nearest town.  We can’t visit until 3 months after he’s there.  Then we only get to see him on the ranch.  At least while he’s in the hospital, I get to spend an hour a day there.  They’re picking him up at 6 am tomorrow.  I’m sending one of his quilts that Grandma Myrt made, and his skateboard with him. 

I couldn’t go to work Tuesday and I’m not there today, because I can’t focus on anything, I keep crying, and it feels like the death of our family.  I believe this is God’s plan but, oh how it hurts. 

My sweet little girl, Adora, got sick and we had to put her to sleep.    It was so hard, because she was such a young kitty.  John adopted a kitten in March, shortly after returning from the funeral of his brother-in-law, Dan.  He named the kitten, Nickles because he gives high fives.  He chose the spelling because of the book we read James when he was little called The Fire Cat.  The cat in the book was named Pickles, and he had big paws because he had big things to do.  Nickles has big paws too, and he’s grown into them.  A friend came over this weekend who hadn’t been here for a bit, and was shocked because of how big he’s grown. 

Snow, the bichon frise, seems to think that kittens are toys.  He jumps at them to play, and they respond with fear or flashing claws.  If they run, he chases, and chases.  Mishka, who has been ours for 8 days now, is a very frightened kitty.  She’s a medium haired tuxedo kitty.  She’s only about a year old, and was taken as a kitten from a hoarding situation.  She went to the county animal shelter, where she was rescued by a group called Friends of County Animal Shelters (FOCUS).  They put her in a foster home, and I adopted her from a PetSmart store.  She was there for 6 months until last Sunday afternoon.  She has a cloudy spot on one of her eyes, and her back legs are misaligned.  I think the volunteers there thought she would never be picked.  She spent the first two days at home under our bed, and in the far back corner of it, totally out of reach.   Then I remembered Feliway Cat Calm and went to PetCo and bought it.  I sprayed it in the room, and lo and behold, out she came from the bed.  Snow still scares her, and she retreats under the bed for a while of safety.  I’m not sure what kind of kitty she’ll be yet.  She’s been rubbing every surface she encounters, and it is cute to watch.  She is very deliberate about rubbing each side of the stair rail, going in a circle around them.  My hope for her legs is that they will adjust since she has a big house to run around in now, not just a little cage and a small room.  She’s jumping up to surfaces more easily.  John doesn’t think she likes her name, but she hasn’t given me any other ideas for names yet.  And a coworker who came from Moscow said Mishka means Little Bear in Russian.  I like that.

I don’t know the answer to that question.  My precious Camille left us and the next thing we knew, Jon Claude started to ail.  He’d been having trouble walking and was limping for quite a while.  But, he talked to us, purred, and spent time with John, his favorite person of all.  Last July, John took him to the vet and we learned he had a kidney problem.  Since he was such a sweetie, he let John give him pills and ate the powdered medicine he mixed into his wet food.  He was also placed on Science Diet k/d.  But, he really didn’t like it.  He wanted the dog food or the other kitties’ wet food.  When we went to the desert the first weekend in November, our friend commented that he wasn’t eating much or drinking much and seemed to be having mouth pain.  John took him to the vet again and learned he had an abcessed tooth or a mouth ulcer.    So, more medicine and more tlc for our boy.  He was dehydrated, and the bloodwork showed kidney failure.  He was sent home with an IV bag for subcutaneous fluid injections.  We started to feed him baby food with the medicine syringe (no needle) and would squirt it into his mouth to avoid the pain.  For a while, that seemed to help.  He became a total lap cat to me and John.  He had never really been my lap cat until last summer.  He was always John’s buddy.  He would sit beside me on the arm of the chair.  He and John had such a special relationship.  He never lashed out at John. 

19 years ago, John was on a basketball team with a coworker.  He would come home and tell me about the kitten his friend had gotten.  His friend called it Dog, just because.  This kitten was fiesty and a ball of fluff.  Orange and white, with big paws, and a white diamond shape on his back, he was a purebred Maine Coon.  When Mike learned he was male, he just gave him to John.  I think that was one of the best gifts John ever got.  Neither of us liked the name Dog — and we tossed around various names.  John wanted to name him Clawed, I wanted to call him Fiesty.  We compromised on Jon Claude Kitty — after Jean Claude Killy the skier. 

Jon Claude had such a great purrsonality.  He bribed our dog, Grace, with kitty kibble that he would carry in his mouth for her to eat.  She would let him eat out of her dish as payment.  He loved baby formula, and when I babysat, we had to keep our eyes open, because he would grab the bottles and drink as much of it as he could before we caught him.  We had to replace several nipples because he chewed a bigger hole in them to drink the formula faster.  When our friends Mary and Rita stayed at the house to watch our babies for a road trip John and I took, Jon Claude learned to sharpen his claws on Rita’s wheelchair wheels.  She would get jostled around, even with her brakes on, because he was a big cat.  She would tell him, “Jon Claude, stop that!”  And we would all laugh. 

He always knew what colors complimented his handsomeness.  He would lie on brown blankets, or black furniture and show off his coloring.  He slept deeply for a cat, and would wake up with his fur all ruffled up — who knew a cat could get bed head fur?  I could type for hours telling you about his unique qualities.

This is so hard, having to let go of such dearly loved friends and companions.  We got used to having older, settled cats in the house.  Adora is young and energetic.  She doesn’t want to sit on my lap for long.  She sleeps in bed with us, but unlike Camille and Jon Claude, she’s more of everybody’s kitty than just mine or John’s.  I miss that special bond we shared — Camille with me, Jon Claude with John.  I’m sure it will develop more, and I already love Adora, but she’s not Camille.  But, I don’t really want her to be.  I want her to be herself.  We just have to spend time and learn who that is.

What a time we’ve had lately.  My precious kitty, Camille got ill.  She was peeing everywhere — including in our bed when we were in it!  Eeewww.  So, we got her checked out at the vet, and learned she had advanced kidney disease.  It was incurable and there were only comfort measures we could give her.  We held on to her, probably longer than we should have.  So, why wait?  Well,  we shared 19 years of our lives together. 

When she was a kitten, my former roommate brought her out from Oklahoma.  She became my kitty on January 1, 1992 after our other cat was killed the night before.  Camille was named after my roommate — Kammy.  We had adopted Jon-Claude about a week before from one of John’s former co-workers who didn’t want a tom because he didn’t believe in neutering.  When he learned that Jon-Claude was male, he was going to take him to a shelter, so we took him.  John loved Jon-Claude as a kitten because of how feisty he was.  Camille and Jon-Claude became friends right away.  Jon-Claude and Grace (the dog we had then) were true buddies.  Camille didn’t like Grace and would stand up on her hind legs and bat at her like a bear.  Grace would get tired of it after a while and put her paw in the middle of Camille’s back and hold her down.  We would laugh and laugh at the antics of our furry kids.  Camille was my baby.  She was not a people kitty, and when strangers came to the house she would disappear.  Eventually, she would stay on my lap and not run away when people came over. 

Camille snuggled me through miscarriages, infertility treatment, and 2 ectopic surgeries.  She had a compassionate heart and more love than her little body could hold.  She slept with us, and would purr me to sleep if I couldn’t fall asleep on my own.  She and John had a “love-bite” relationship.  He would pet her, she’d be purring up a storm and then she’d chomp him without warning.  It used to infuriate him.  But he would also swat her bottom and she would lay on her side, and pull herself around in circles and meow.  When he stopped, she would meow up at him, like she was saying why’d you quit? 

She also went through our 2 adoptions, and other life traumas, including snuggling me through lymphoma.  She took such good care of me.  So, at the end, we had a hard time saying goodbye. 

We felt some shaking this morning.  It was shorter than the one on Easter Sunday.  Nothing fell off the walls, but the lamp shade swayed slightly.  James got up and asked if there was an earthquake — an hour later!    We have a friend visiting us today from our church.  His grandma has metastatic cancer and the chemo she was taking stopped working.  She is raising him because his mother, her daughter, isn’t able to do it.  We don’t know details.  Please pray for his “mom” (grandma) to be healed!

It’s been quite a long time since I blogged here.  Ian and Alissa have come and gone — seemed like in a flash.  The visit with them was great and I wish they’d gotten stationed at Camp Pendleton.  Ah well, we have a good excuse to head to Hawaii for a vacation soon.  Just before they arrived, Joseph broke his right arm.  Getting him not to mess up the cast is an impossible task.  He has removed the section of the cast that goes between his thumb and fingers because it was “bugging me Mom”.  He said it hurt.  Maybe so, but if he ends up needing surgery it’s going to hurt a whole lot worse. 

When he came home, he said he’d fallen on it and he and his friends described the incident.  They were using old lumber at the baseball field as a teeter totter — or a catapault.   Joseph launched his friend Oliver who landed on his feet.  Then they decided that it wasn’t high enough and they increased the height of the boards to about 2 1/2 feet.  Then Joseph stood while his buddy Jared jumped onto the other end.  Except, the board slipped sideways as it launched Joseph.  Jared fell onto his knee and scraped it.  Joseph went flying and landed on his arm first, then his other hand and knees.  He has the copy of his xray in a frame hanging on the wall in his bedroom.  Must be a boy thing!  His dad got him the frame so he could hang it up.  John was convinced it was just a sprain and told him to put ice on it.  I knew it was more than a sprain, but I thought he’d broken his wrist not his arm.  So I took him to Urgent Care and sure enough — the radius had a compression fracture that caused the sides of the bone to bulge out.  The doctor said if it had slipped out of place, he would have had to have surgery.  I’m just hoping he hasn’t done anything in the past 2 weeks to cause it to slip.  He’s still jumping on the trampoline, riding his scooter and doing bunny hops off curbs. 

What’s a mom to do?  Stock up on bandaids and ace wraps! 

I’t's been a while, and I’ve gotten another clean bill of health from my oncologist.  I remain thankful for answered prayers.  Another answered prayer regards a friend from my former workplace who just got hired at Camp Pendleton.  I’m so glad to have her working at the same place with me again.

December, 2009

This year has been challenging for our family.  Nancy was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in March and went through chemotherapy.  We are happy to report that she is in remission now.   John was the rock the family relied on.  He continued to work full time, and managed the household.   We were blessed to have Sally, Nancy’s sister visit for two weeks.  She arrived from the airport, rolled up her sleeves and didn’t stop until we took her back to the airport! 

James is in 10^th grade, attending a day treatment program.  Joseph is in 7^th grade.  Both boys struggled to cope with their mom’s illness.  James has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and we had to hospitalize him in the summer.  His doctor was able to find the right medicine for him, and he’s doing very well now.  Joseph has had his own challenges.  He struggled with school, and chose to get low grades.  We’re still working with the school to try to find ways to motivate him, and turn it around.

We took a celebratory vacation in the end of July, after Nancy’s last chemo treatment.  We spent a week on a houseboat on Lake Shasta.  John’s sister, Cindy, and her husband, Bob, came and spent the first part of the week with us.  It was so wonderful to be with them.   At the end of the week, Nancy’s cousin Mike and his wife, Anna, and children, Phillip and Christina came for a day.  We all had a blast playing in the water and catching up. 

Nancy missed five months of work, but was able to return, and was just hired as a permanent government worker at Camp Pendleton, working with active duty service members doing therapy.  The commute is long, but worth it.  She has reconnected with many friends via Facebook.  John has a wonderful group of friends he plays cards with almost every week.  James and Joseph have learned how to play it as well and are sometimes allowed to stay up late on school nights to participate. 

We’re ending the year with a trip to visit family in several states.  We pray that the upcoming year will be blessed and healthy for all.  May God’s love and protection be with you now and always.

                                                Love, John, Nancy, James and Joseph

To update, James is still at his day treatment program.  Joseph just started a new school program on Tuesday.  So far, so good.  He’s enjoying the attention he gets, and his mood has been much more positive at home.  He’s still disobedient, but he’s nicer about it.   The hope is that his structure at school will carry over to home. 

Joe had yarn with him yesterday, and a crochet hook.  John said when he got home he said, “now that I know how, I just want to stay home, watch TV and crochet.”  Not what you expect to hear from a 12 year old boy!  That lasted until he learned that John had plans to go out to dinner and to see Avatar.  He did bring the yarn and crochet hook with him though! 

James went on his first date last Saturday, it went well, but doesn’t seem to be too intense of a relationship at this point.  He participated in a “lock-in” at church last night with the youth group, and said it was a lot of fun.