VACATION UPDATE

Not sure how much time I have, but I wanted to do a bit of a vacation update. We are still in Orlando at my timeshare (aka the financial noose around my neck). However, for these couple of weeks it has been pleasant instead of painful. My mom and I drove down and were here for a few days on our lonesome last week, which was nice. We got to relax, buy groceries, and more or less gear up for the arrival of everybody else.

My dad, brother, and sister-in-law flew in from Ohio on Thursday of last week. My mom and dad were married 22 years and have been divorced 22 years. This was a strange anniversary, of sorts, for them. I don't like to think about those numbers too long, because then it starts going places I really don't want to go. I really shouldn't have brought that up... Anyway, they get along really well now.

I hadn't seen my dad in a while, and really talked to him at length in a much longer time than that. He's lost chunks of his memory. It's not like with Alzheimer's when you forget what you ate this morning, but can remember 30 years ago with clarity. He remembers what he ate for breakfast just fine. The first inkling we had was when he got it wrong about his job history from 1960-1966, and where he was living at those times. My mom knew him then. He also completely forgot a roommate he had at that time. That person is just wiped from his memory ~ gone. She finally got him straight on his resume. But he could be just as mixed up about it a week from now. Those memories aren't sticking.

Later we were talking about this pretty traumatic experience when my brother broke his leg when he was a toddler. It ended up being traumatic for my dad because it happened while he was at work. He came home to find blood in the driveway, with a blood trail through the garage, and into the kitchen, and no one home. That is enough to scare anyone. What happened was that my little brother was napping, and woke up just in time when it was time to get me at the bus stop. Long story short: Mom put him on the back of the bike and told him to stick his feet out. He didn't. She felt terribly guilty, I walked home from the stop by myself, and Tim broke his leg. Anyway, dad not only doesn't remember that... he doesn't remember Tim's broken leg at all. Nothing about it. It has also been wiped.

The more we talk, the more things we find that are wiped from my dad's memory. Significant stuff has just been erased. My dad thinks it is because of his severe adrenal problems back in 1978. Of course, he wasn't the only one. It was sort of like watching a bizarro episode of The Four Stooges. One person would say, "Do you remember when thus and such happened?" And pretty much every time we could never get a concensus on it. In other words, it was really tough to find even one event that all of us remembered happening the same way. Or, in some cases, at all. The only thing that everyone nodded and agreed on was my brother's ongoing determination that one day he would fly. He had the red Superman cape from Halloween, and my mother relegated a coffee table to the back porch. My brother decided that was his ramp. I don't know how many times he got on that coffee table, ran down it with his arms held out in front of him like he was going to take off Superman style, and then landed with a thud and an expression on his face that was somewhere between dazed and confused. He did reveal to us that he had a dream that he could fly, which was why he was so persistent about the whole thing. My parents looked at each other and gave thanks that he never thought to climb to the roof of the house!

I am fairly certain that most of my problems stem from my severe adrenal problems. My adrenals pretty well crashed back in 2003. I still haven't bounced. My dad found a way to bounce back much faster with his because he didn't have migraines. When your adrenals go down, they can hit you "bad" in specific areas. His was his blood sugar. There was a time that he thought that the low blood sugar was going to kill him. It hit me in the hormones. It just keeps moving mine around and manipulating them so that my levels are always off and inducing a constant migraine. However, I am already getting a taste of the memory loss. That started back in 2005 and comes calling like an unwanted guest whenever it is inconvenient. If I am in the middle of a migraine, my speech is often impaired. I think it is because my ability to grasp and hold onto a thought or word is difficult. I suppose that gift is located somewhere close to where memories are stored, and something happens that causes the circuits to simply short out.

So, we discussed a vitamin protocol that he would have taken back then had he been the wiser. When I get home, I am going to try it. If I could pick and choose the people and events that I could wipe, well, then it might be worth it. But, I know it doesn't work like that... so I am going with the revised vitamin protocol.

So, this vacation has been full of some revelation for me. However, we also spent some time at The Hard Rock Casino in Tampa. Luck was not a lady. She was mean and nasty and took our money without even saying, "Thank You." Those machines were as tight as I've ever experienced them! We had several rousing games of Uno Attack. If you haven't played it and you like games, it really is fun. We laughed a lot! I also played shuffleboard for the first time. Friday and Saturday were long days and full of stuff. That is why Saturday night I got this HUGE migraine that carried over into Sunday. And the days since have been getting back to my regularly scheduled migraine.

Now, it is just Mom, Steve (my step-dad), and me. Things will be a lot more settled, since I live with them all of the time anyway. Everyone feels pretty free to go and do as they want. In other words, I don't feel pressured to knock myself out, even if I don't feel good, because I only have limited time with these people, and I probably won't see them again for a year.

And here you thought this was going to be a concise post. I would have made this shorter, but I didn't have the time! Oh, and I am thinking about doing something really weird for HERE'S TO YOU THURSDAY. So brace yourselves.