Me and Mine 2002 - A Year of Change I was teaching full time, having had a class of Further Maths in year 12, 10 Maths, 9 Maths and 8 Maths and Year 7 Support
Mum died at the end of January. This was, in the end, a blessing, as she was not well and did not know us for the last 12 months. She could not talk and had all the usual problems associated with old age and dementia. We had a memorial service for her‚as she did not want a funeral‚ and scattered her ashes off the rocks under the lighthouse at Point Lonsdale, as she wished, early one beautiful Saturday morning at low tide.
I completed a series of Maths homework books (for years 7, 8 9 and 10) that were published by Oxford University Press, finishing them, with difficulty (and a number of other problems) on time at the end of September. They have been printed and are ready for use in 2004. I have no idea how they will go. The publisher is keen to sell them in NSW also as they are not syllabus dependent, but deal rather with the problems commonly encountered at each year level. Prior to that I had, along with 2 other teachers, written 4 Maths textbooks (for 7, 8, 9 and 10) so my brain can't be too bad!!
My husband has a form of rapid dementia called Diffuse Lewy Body Disorder which has symptoms that look like Parkinson's Disease, but with rapid onset dementia. He has been in a Nursing Home for 3 years now and is slowly getting worse. Prior to that I was his carer. He is very thin and bent over, looks about 30+ years older then he is. I try to take someone with me when I go to see him, as he likes listening to the conversation going on around him. A small group of people still visit him, (it is hard to visit someone like that, and many of our friends find it too stressful or sad to visit him. I can understand that). The rapid path downhill has meant that he is now bedridden, and cannot talk, walk or feed himself etc, and last week was the first time he did not even know me.
I have had Parkinson's Disease for about 7 - 8 years now. All the symptoms are more or less controlled by drugs....so far. The principal at school has been at me to resign on the grounds of ill health for several years, since a few days after I told her that I had Parkinsons 4 years ago. (I did not tell her straight away and the whole world knew long before she did). 2002 was a horrible "running battle" where I was told I did not teach effectively, and eventually ended up with classes being monitored to see how I was going. The problems about my teaching changed with every skirmish and the length of time that it has been going on. I pointed out excellent to good year 12 (final year before University) results to repudiate the claims. "Many‚" "most" and "almost all" of the students supposedly wanted to leave my class in year 10; yet there were only 14 in the class and one came into the class (wanted me as her teacher that did not count) and I knew at least 5 were OK with me. The students who complained (the principal could not remember how many or who) were four who had not done the preparatory work in year 9 (and were not known for their study habits). The problems were eventually nailed down to this year only (2001 as year 12 results were very good), and a teacher was hired to "help" me and "lift the level of mathematics in the school." He was a nice young, just married, guy but he could not do all the mathematics involved, marked work wrong that was right, could not do text examples, nor old exam questions, write tests or exams; in short, I helped him!!
Put this altogether with my classes being either observed or with a "helper" and every afternoon off on sick leave to visit the hyperbaric chamber for ulcer treatment. Class finished for lunch at 1.25pm‚ I picked up something (usually a pink iced doughnut) for lunch from the canteen and drove across the city to the hospital, eating as I went, changed into hospital cotton wear and went into the chamber at 2.00pm (in a very short space of time I ran around like a headless chook). It was supposed to be every weekday for 8 weeks. I asked if the observation could be put off until I had completed my sick leave but was told that I could be observed at any time and it should make no difference to my teaching. After 4 weeks of"headless chook-ing, the doctor in charge read me the riot act and gave me 3 weeks off on sick leave so that I could rest as much as possible with the leg up. Something had to give. I did. I wasn't half stressed!! One day later, I had a heart attack. I just felt "odd" (no pain at all) and rang my brother (a doctor) at midnight. He came and promptly rang a MICA, so I ended up with my son, my brother, five gorgeous ambulance officers, my brother's medical bag, two ECG machines and cat in my small bedroom, with Charlie (the dog) circling the bed at 110 kph barking enthusiastically!! I ended up in hospital (Cardiac Unit) at 3.00am. The next night the nurses woke me at 2.30am to tell me my heart had stopped‚ twice! This was the point at which I decided to retire from school. Apparently the heart attack had resulted in damage to the electrical circuits in the heart and the heart was occasionally forgetting to beat. So I ended up with a pacemaker. Nine weeks later I ended up back at the hospital (to admire the view from the other end of the cardiac unit's floor) when the artery that had been (90- 95)% blocked became completely blocked!! This time no "heart attack" causing damage, just a huge bout of angina...with after-shocks. The tissue around the area had developed ways of getting blood from other arteries while the problem artery was slowly becoming blocked and in looking at this and trying to drill out the blockage the surgeons damaged the main artery and put in a stent (miniature Titanium chicken wire tube) to keep the artery from collapsing. I also had virtually no thyroid function (taking thyroxine to fix that) and a bad back, caused by muscular imbalance between the 2 sides (caused by Parkinsons) I also developed (somewhere along the line) lymphodema in and varicous ulcers on my lower legs/ankles. The net result of all this (amongst other things) was that I applied to be superannuated out of Teaching on the grounds of ill health, and this was granted in November.
So now I am retired. I am not sure of how I will survive on my pension, but I know that I will be OK. I have taken up painting again (and love it) after almost 40 years and have discovered acrylics, instead of oils. I will also do some tutoring and some work showing people how to get the best out of their computers at home.
As you can see, 2002 was not a "vintage" year for me, but I discovered that I had lots of true friends, and for that I am very grateful.
So we move on..... 2003 - A Year of further Change Just when I thought things could not get any worse. . .they did. After three and a half years in a Nursing Home, my husband, John, died in late October. He had not known me for a few months and he had not known other people for over a year..... except for the family, my brother Alasdair and his wife Robyn and his best friend Barry and his wife Noelene. These four people were my "saving grace" and kept me going, along with my kids, when things got rough. They had been with me from the start and I am so grateful to them. My husband had a form of rapid dementia, called Diffuse Lewy Body Disorder, which has symptoms that look like Parkinson's Disease, but with rapid onset dementia. When he died, he was very thin and bent over, and looked about 30+ years older then he was. I tried to take someone with me when I went to see him, as he liked listening to the conversation going on around him. As time went on, fewer and fewer people visited him (It is hard to visit someone like that, and many of our friends found it too stressful or sad to visit him. I can understand that). I appreciated those friends who could manage to visit him. My Parkinson's Disease is more or less controlled by drugs....so far... "my" Parkinson's Disease?.. as if I WANTED it! So now I am retired and I know I will survive on my pension. I know that I will be OK. I have taken up painting again (and love it) after almost 40 years and have discovered acrylics, instead of oils. I have been going to watercolour classes for a year and I really love painting in that medium too. I have done some tutoring and some work showing people how to get the best out of their computers at home, taught one woman to use EXCEL and have made a lot of new friends. The house looks like a gallery full of awful paintings...they are stacked everywhere,.. the only consolation is that I am improving. As you can see, although 2002 was not a "vintage" year for me, things are getting better. 2004 - Life goes on My daughter (28) and her husband (a pastry chef who specialises in French cakes) live on the other side of Melbourne (about 45 minutes by car) and they have recently become the parents of a beautiful 9 lb 6 oz baby girl, Caitlin Clare, and I am not half biased!!! The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. My son-in-law also breeds budgerigars for fun. My son (30) has virtually abandoned his Ph.D and is working as a research assistant at Melbourne University; he may finish the Ph.D one day, as his girlfriend is doing her Ph.D at the moment. The trend these days in Australia is for our kids to live at home (and my son is no exception) but I am hopeful that he might get married to his girlfriend and move out next year, well I can hope anyway. We are experiencing a very dry period here (drought conditions) at the moment and the garden is suffering. I am not going to do any major work in it until the Autumn, but will spend the Summer planning a course of gardening action. | Although I gave up painting 40 years ago to work as a systems analyst and then a senior mathematics teacher, I am getting great joy out of painting now, having sent some of my paintings to the UK and the USA. I have spent this year painting, gardening and trying to get a PD message board and chat room for Oz. The "official" PD organisations were not interested, the Victorian one being positively Victorian where computers were concerned. I have been tilting at windmills.... give me a windmill, and like Don Quixote, I will tilt at it. I am, as you have probably figured out by now, a do-er, a fighter..... and PD is not going to stop me....I have a mantra "Don't let the bastard win" and I leave you with the following, which I am sure you know. The Serenity Prayer
Give me the serenity to accept what I cannot change,
the courage to change what I can
and the wisdom to recognize the difference
14th century (used in AA) Quote
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau
|  Woven Spectrum (the idea came from a rug I saw on a black polished floor)
Acrylic on canvas | Finally,
PD has made me stand up and be counted. It has also, however, found me a lot of friends from near and far, around the world. Some I have met, and others I have "talked to", but all of whom have enabled me to grow as a person.
Life ain't all that bad.
|
