Day 360

Somehow Day 362 and 361 merged. I think I ended up writing this blog late at night. Today is day 360 for sure. I am frequently up late and night when my days sort of blend together. I'd like to tell you that the reason I am awake is because I am researching the latest and greatest on aging science but the truth is much more mundane. I have two beautiful daughters. My oldest will turn 23 next month and my youngest just turned 18. Both have active social lives and are out and about late at night. That means I am up waiting to hear from them wherever they go. Last night I stayed up until 2:00 AM until my youngest daughter reached her final destination... a cast party for a play she had just been in at the Los Angeles Theatre Company. She is a relatively new driver and I make her check in with me from each point of departure to each point of arrival. I have a very good sense of how long it should take to get from one point in Los Angeles to another. Whenever she takes a little longer than I think it should I start to melt down, thinking of all of the things that could possibly have happened and why I did not prevent it. If you are one of those individuals that think I worry too much and should take life as it comes...you are delusional. I have been described (or really accused) of being too controlling. Let me assure you, I only try and control what I care about. The rest of the world can conduct itself in whatever manner it may to whatever results it may. When it comes to those that I love, I will try to exert whatever control I can over what ever circumstance I can to ensure an optimal outcome.. That's just how it is.

My Mom was 42 years old when I was born. By the time I was a teenager she was a single mom who was the only source of support for me and my brother. After working all day and taking care of us she was usually asleep by 9:00 pm. I think I knew that if I stayed out too late she would wake up and start worrying about me but I always tried to avoid that happening. We didn't have cell phones or email in those days so it was up to me to check in with her. Let's just say I was trained to check in and be home when I said I would be.

My Mom was a wonderful person. As far as I was concerned she had a tragic life. She was born into a family of Italian immigrants from Sicily. She was the third child in a family of five. My grandparents immigrated to Beaumont, Texas from Palermo, Italy. Not exactly the stereotypical Italian immigrant story portrayed in so many movies. My family tried quickly to assimilate and within a generation the language was lost and cowboy culture was adopted. Whatever this strange cultural mix produced in her, she had the audacity to endure some of the worst curve balls life had to throw at her. She was four foot, eleven inches tall and the biggest person I have ever known.

When she was ten years old she was involved in a terrible car accident. It was 1929 and her family had moved from Texas to California seeking a better life during the Great Depression. On a family outing to the beach, the car she was travelling in collided with one of the "red cars," the now defunct rail system of the greater Los Angeles area started by Henry Huntington. She was in the back seat and the car door opened and her arm was drug along the street. She was taken to the hospital and her arm was sewn back up with gravel inside. This resulted in gas gangrene. Although I can not authenticate this, she told me she was the first person to ever be spared the loss of a limb with gas gangrene due to the efforts of a Dr. Love. I tried to google this doctor to no avail. I do remember hearing his obit on the radio in approximately in 1988. For reasons that are somewhat foggy to me, my Mom's 14 year old sister was asked to sign a document consenting to the amputation of my mother's arm after gas gangrene developed. She refused and a young doctor asked if he could then try an experiment. He tried skin grafting from healthy parts of her body on to her arm. He was successful. Although her arm was badly scarred as was her abdomen (where the successful skin graft occurred) she lived. She had stayed in the Los Angeles Children's Hospital for 9 months before she was released.

By the time she was sixteen years old she had met and married my father. She had six children with him including my only sister who died when she was two years old. My sister's name was Shirley Anne. From what my mother tells me, Shirley was an "RH" baby. Her doctors told her that it was amazing that she lived until she was two years old. You can find out more about the "RH Factor" at www.mayclinic.com/health/rh-factor/AN00566.

I was an RH baby too but by the time I was born in 1961 the medical community figured out a way to deal with it. I hate to write down what I have been told because I can not vouch for how accurate it is. My understanding is that I was kept in Children's Hospital for two weeks after I was born and under went a blood transfusion. Today I understand babies with RH Factor are treated in vitro.

Intentionally or not, I have been raised to believe that my mother and I were both spared untimely deaths through scientific intervention. My Mom lived until she was 69 years old. By today's standards she died fairly young. When I think about her life though, I think it was long and drawn out. First dealing with the death of a child when she was a teen ager herself. Her oldest child was a schizophrenic. My father was a adulterer who eventually left her with nothing but her youngest two children to raise by herself when she was 50. I was eight years old and my brother was 12. Granted the extra years you are given through science are something to be gratful for, but how those years are experienced rely on many variables including life style choices and an each individual's response to what life throws at them.