pyewacketsworld

In my last post I started mentioning  my disdain about the medical profession and how I got that attitude from my great-grandmother.  I was listening to an episode of Oprah Winfrey the other day and all the blunders that do happen in the medical profession and if my great-grandmother had been alive and heard the show, she no doubt would be rolling her eyes in disbelief on what goes on.  For instance, one woman was supposedly diagnosed with breast cancer…she got mammograms, MRI, biopsies and NONE showed cancer, yet via her specimen slide it showed cancer and she had a mastectomy.  It later was discovered and  turned out the specimen slide was for the wrong person…it wasn’t her specimen but another woman, who unfortunately was no doubt being told she didn’t have cancer, when in fact she did.

 As I see it, all along we take the medical profession’s word, we trust doctors and trust that their evaluation of our medical problems are absolute gospel truth…we DON’T question their opinions and judgments, but it’s literally our lives at stake here and often we’re playing Russian roulette. Heck, I can even cite two incidences in my own life where the medical profession no doubt bungled and it had to do with both my grandmother and mother.

My grandmother was diagnosed with asthma relatively late in life, perhaps not having symptoms until her early 60s, naturally she was bombarded with a lot of medications, from those inhalers, to pills, usually Theophylline but other asthma medications as well.  Now those medications can do a real number on the heart, making it palpitate, especially Theophylline.  At some point, her doctor even gave her nitroglycerin since she seemingly had a heart condition…that goodness she never took it though, since if one doesn’t have a heart condition can actually trigger one.

Years passed by, and my grandmother’s asthma  was getting so out of control, she often had to go to the ER.  One day, back in October of 1986, she had a real dousy of an attack and we called the paramedics–they took her to the ER and she was pumped up with higher ranged doses of asthma medications, including of course Theophylline.  Hours later, feeling better she was discharged and came home.  She wasn’t home more than twenty minutes when yet again she got a bad asthma attack.  We called the paramedics again and she goes back to the ER where the same higher super doses of medications were given to her—AND–by the same team of doctors.   She died October 8, 1986 at the hospital…NOT from asthma, but from cardiac arrest.  The culprit?  Theophylline which can only be prescribed generically and under certain supervised conditions as it was later found out, years after my grandmother’s death, that Theophylline can trigger, yes, as you can guess,  cardiac arrest.  Back then, neither my mother or myself made the connection nor question the “wisdom” of the doctors in how they went about treating my grandmother…we trusted them.

 I myself did take Theophylline very briefly whenever I would get bronchitis.  In fact, the very first time I had a real severe case of it, and went to my doctor he gave me the injected version of it which is stronger than the pill form.  I asked my doctor what side effects I could expect and he said maybe a little dizziness.  So trusted him and allowed him to give me the shot.  Well, let me tell you, I experienced MORE than just a little dizziness, my heart palpitated like crazy and I swear I wanted to punch my doctor right there and then, but yes at least it did clear my lungs and I could breathe better.  After that episode, my doctor recommended I take regular doses of 400mg of Theophylline daily…well, yes I would take it, but not the whole pill, only a quarter of the pill which I’d cut up…and it still would make my heart palpitate.  Then whenever I went back to the doctor, all of a sudden it seemed my usually normal blood pressure was now reaching the high zone…Long story short…I later dispensed using the medication all together, and guess what?  My blood pressure was normal again and no longer had heart palpitations.

I shall continue more about my viewpoints of the medical profession in Part 3 and discuss about my mother’s death which I also blame on the medical profession as well.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

As I hinted in my last blog entry, my great-grandmother is responsible for my general attitude about the medical profession. My great-grandmother was a nurse, and to be frank thought doctors were a bunch of idiots (not the word I want to use). All her life she relied on natural and herbal remedies, never took anything stronger than aspirin oh, and some shots of whiskey, and lived to be 98 years old. She died on August 31, 1970 and I was fifteen years old at the time, so I still remember her quite well. She was a feisty woman, who told it like it was and didn’t mince words, or language for that fact. My grandmother and mother always said my personality reminded them of her, so that will give you an idea of “where I’m at”.

Now I’m not saying I don’t have health problems, I do, the most defeating at times is my arthritic type joint pain in general, and now of course, as I mentioned previously, my carpal tunnel and wrist injury…and like my great-grandmother I refuse to take anything stronger than aspirin (I skip shots of whiskey as I just plain don’t care for it). I rarely go to the doctor, save for when I have a bout of bronchitis, and will agree to take antibiotics for it, but nothing else, and I’m even picky about them. Once, my doctor prescribed an antibiotic, one I never had before and not a penicillin type either which doesn’t effect me too badly with side effects. Well, I did get the prescription filled but before I took it, I read up on it via the myriad of prescription drug websites. It was Cipro (ciprofloxacin hydrochloride) and clearly stated right off the bat was a severe warning…DO NOT TAKE if one has joint pain and there was an increased risk of tendinitis and tendon rupture. I further read that a lot of class action suits were against this medication as many people who took it, became virtual wheelchair bound people. Lovely. Did I want to take it? No way! I managed to get the prescription changed to Augmentin, an antibiotic I’ve had before.

Then there was the time my doctor recommended Celebrex….another winner in my eyes, since once again, a severe warning was listed as it could trigger blood clots, strokes and heart attacks. Did I take it? Again, no way. In my opinion if one were to read the general possible side effects of most medications, people would never take anything. The worse was an incident years and years ago, with another doctor, one I actually liked a lot. I was having one of my bouts of bronchitis and he prescribed not only an antibiotic, but an asthma type medication…both were medications I had used before but separately never combined. Well this was long before I had a computer, so couldn’t look them up to see about interactions. So I took the prescriptions to my pharmacist, handed them over and he nearly fainted. He said if I had taken that combo, well lets put it this way, I wouldn’t be writing this…yes, it was a lethal combo of medications. Thank God, my pharmacist caught it though!

The question I often think to myself about medications in general is this. Why don’t the doctors look up medications and ALL their effects? If I were a doctor, each and every time I would prescribe something, I’d take a look on the computer for side effects, drug interactions, food interactions and so forth–I would want my patient to understand all the risks involved in taking anything, not to scare the person, but just to be informed. But alas, doctors don’t do this, do they? Nope.

There’s one story my mother and grandmother often told me about my great-grandmother. This was before I was even “around”, so before I was born. Say my great-grandmother was recommended to be hospitalized for some condition. The nurse would come into the room to give her medications, watch as she take the pills, drink water and “swallow” the pills. Not five seconds would pass after the nurse left that my great-grandmother would take the pills out of her mouth and throw them on the floor and under the bed–in other words, she never took any. Oh, and I know that trick myself…how one can make it look like they are taking pills, drink water and seemingly swallow the pills, but of course, with the trick, one isn’t actually swallowing them…Guess I DO think a lot like my great-grandmother!

It’s a shame though while my great-grandmother was alive, that neither my grandmother, mother, or even I paid much attention to her natural and herbal remedies and what she used for a variety of ailments and wrote them down. The only one I remember is that famous mustard plaster one that can be used to break up congestion in the chest when having a cold or flu, or to use as a natural heat rub. I’ve come up with a few of my own remedies for things using herbs. For instance, years ago, I was plagued with regular bouts of gastritis that made me feel as if I had every football, soccer and basketball team pounding through my gastrointestinal system. NOTHING worked. Not Gas-X, not Maalox, nothing. Then, since I do have a very good herb book which lists every herb and their medicinal uses, I read up on fennel seed, yes fennel seed which tastes like licorice. I would boil up some water, place a teaball filled with the fennel seeds let it brew and drink it and would even eat some of the seeds themselves, and yikes did it ever work! Talk about breaking wind like a machine gun! Thankfully I haven’t had gastritis in decades now, perhaps also due to I’m eating better and not eating many fatty, fried foods.

Well I’ll end it here for now and plan to write more about my attitudes about the medical profession and my great-grandmother in my next entry.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 16:

As I mentioned in Part 15 of this series, I kind of had “fun” writing out cover letters, and including a copy of my mother’s death certificate to all the places my mother owed money to. At the time of her death, she was in debt for something like over $25,000.00. As I also explained, that unless the recently deceased had a joint account with another family member (in this case would have been me if there was a joint account) one doesn’t owe a penny to any company, not even credit cards. If a company harasses someone for payment it’s actually against the law and is clearly stated so in the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, but of course, some places, fed on people’s fears that they do owe debts of a deceased member, and also, many of these debt collector’s are under the impression that the deceased person left an enormous “estate”. Right, sure. My mother had no savings or checking accounts and she certainly didn’t have any life insurance.

Thankfully my cover letter and copy of my mother’s death certificate seemed to satisfy most people, but then I had one nuisance company harass me over and over again…and believe it or not, it was of all things the billing office of the hospital my mother died in. Like, duh? How stupid. Didn’t the people look up my mother’s name on the computer and see that “Oh, she’s deceased.” Apparently not. Even though it was frustrating it was also actually funny, for you see, when I’d got letters from the billing office it was always in my mother’s name…or I’d get phone calls, and asking for my mother. Like duh again? I would talk to the person on the phone, explaining my mother was deceased, and I had sent a copy of my mother’s death certificate. Seemed they never got it. So sent another one to them, and why I had to do this in the first place is beyond me, when all they had to do was look up my mother’s name on their computers to verify she was dead.

About a month passes. I get another phone call from the billing office, and I recognized the voice and she asked for my mother…again. It was the very same woman I had talked to previously. I explained the whole thing all over again, that I had already sent now two copies of my mother’s death certificate…are these people dense or something? So, yes, believe it or not, sent yet another copy of my mother’s death certificate. More time passes, that is a few months and it’s now around February of 2007, and I get another call, but instead of the billing office, it was now a lawyer representing them and yes, the lawyer asked for my mother. Honestly, I should have tape recorded a message so I wouldn’t have to explain the whole thing over again. Yup, you got it…I sent yet another copy of my mother’s death certificate. Well, luckily that seemed to end that episode and haven’t been bothered by these jerks.

Now, back to the court case. I didn’t go to the August 31st court date, heck I had a good excuse as my mother had just died on August 27th, but now I was up a creek without paddle. Why? The law firm that had been helping my mother and myself was JASA-Legal Services for the Elderly…so technically speaking I was no longer legally represented, thankfully though, they were able to arrange a variety of services for me. I still had my Adult Protective Service person representing me, and I was given a “Guardian Ad Litem”, so not an actual lawyer but still could represent my interests in the court case. There were no court appearance dates for the month of September, yet I was to have two final ones, one on October 5th and the other October 19th and I didn’t have to appear at either of them, instead my Adult Protective Service person and Guardian Ad Litem represented me.

Well, for all those reading this blog so far, and wondering what the court case outcome was…I won! The final decision was made on that last court date of October 16, 2006. I wasn’t evicted and could stay in my apartment…yahooooooo! Ironically, never once did I believe that the case would go against me. Maybe the cock-eyed optimist in me, but also, technically speaking the landlord no longer had an issue to persue. The cat population problem had been resolved, and I was down to only two cats, so the landlord had nothing against me now. And yes, it really was great how things fell in place for me.

I’ll be on and off continuing how things fell in place for me even beyond this “epic” saga in my life.

©Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 15:

Well as previously mentioned in my last entry, on Wednesday, August 30th I was to go to my nearest Social Security office and my Adult Protective Service person was going with me. He had scheduled an appointment for me during the first week my mother was hospitalized, and initially, it was more the idea of just asking questions if my SSI would be raised should my mother pull through her illness, but had to be sent to a rehab/nursing home type place, as I would now be considered living alone then. Well, of course that changed when my mother actually passed away on August 27th….now I HAD to have to have my benefits raised as there was no way I could ever survive on the benefit amount I was getting.

It was actually brilliant that my APS person did make the appointment for me, for if he hadn’t I would have been sitting there for god knows how long taking a number and waiting my turn. Yes, I still had a wait but not all that long. After about only an hour’s wait, I was called in, and Mark, my APS person came in with me to the offices and was assigned a caseworker. And yes, she examined everything I had…I brought tons of paperwork, evidence of bills paid, rent, so forth, enough “evidence” that would have made a lawyer a happy camper. However, I was in for a shock. My benefits were to be raised to $690.00 a month…I nearly feel off my chair…like that wasn’t enough for me to live on! My rent was $529.00…still dirt cheap but the only reason it was so low was due to the fact that I had lived there since 1961. Minus the rent from that amount of $690.00 didn’t exactly leave that much leftover…I had the utilities to pay off…including one rather over-due phone bill of about $100.00, the gas, the electric (which then was level-payments of $78.00). Thankfully the caseworker said I was eligible for food stamps, but I still just didnt’ have enough to pay off all those bills. Anyway, the caseworker said my new benefits would be available to me that coming September 1st as my benefits increase would be established right away. But you can still imagine how I was fretting over being able to pay all my bills. At the time, I figured, okay, I can put off perhaps paying off my phone bill one more time as my reckoning it was more important to pay my rent on time. Things were to turn out though.

The next day, August 31st, was to be another court appearance, but for the first time, I didn’t attend. I had in a way a good excuse as my mother had just passed away. It was at that court date however, that the next step was to assign me a guardian ad litum…not quite a lawyer, but could still legally represent me. You see, the one big hiccup with my mother passing was that I was technically speaking no longer legally represented, only my mother had been via JASA-Leagal Services of The Elderly. So great, huh? I was now without a lawyer, but JASA managed to arrange everything and my APS person, Mark was also still representing me. That court date, believe it or not, STILL was not to be the last one. Geez, they sure were dragging things out weren’t they? The next court date was to be in October. In the meantime, I had a lot of hustling to do to see if there was any funds available to me via the places my mother had previously worked at. Within a week’s time of having called the one place (Duestche Bank), I was sent all the necessary forms to fill out to start the process of turning the money over to me. The form indicated that there was at least $5,000.00 in the account that I could claim–that more than settled the problem of paying for my mother’s cremation but it still would take awhile before I would actually get the money. I still had my worries though about paying off all my bills, but thankfully a dear friend of mine “helped” me out and told me the money she gave me I didn’t have to pay back….thank goodness!

It was Saturday, September 9th that I “picked” up my mother’s cremated ashes, and had yet more forms now to fill out as I indicated to the funeral director that there would be funds available to pay off the costs. He said that the Deustche Bank Total Now account would have the money automatically deducted to cover the funeral costs. One great load off my mind! It wouldn’t be until the beginning of October that I would receive that money and it seemed forever waiting for it. One thing I did sort of have “fun” with however. My mother’s old debts. When she died, she was way over $25,000 total debt due to credit cards, loans and other bills. What did I do? I wrote cover letters to all concerned, slipped in a copy of my mother’s death certificate, and explained to each company she owed money to, that with her death negated any responsibility in the debt being paid off…THIS IS LEGAL by the way. Unless, the debt is a joint account, the surviving members of the deceased are NOT obligated to pay off debts, including credit cards or loans. It’s also mentioned in the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act how this is true, so meaning, a surviving member of the deceased cannot, repeat, cannot be harassed by any debt collector. There actually a few “funny” moments in connection with this though, which I’ll talk about next time and of course, some of my other aggravations.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 14:

In my previous entry I related how my mother had died on Sunday, August 27, 2006, while we had been involved with a eviction court case battle. I had actually been present when my mother died, and when I came home I was tired and weary, but my next emotion was anger. Like how dare my mother die while in the middle of all this mess, a mess she had created and the reason why we had been threatened with eviction in the first place.

The whole following week was an event in itself. Since my mother didn’t have a savings or checking account and no life insurance, now came the question of how to get some kind of decent funeral arrangement for her without any money involved since there was none. Prior to my mother dying, I had asked, out of curiosity, if the hospital had any procedure about funeral arrangements if there weren’t any funds available, as my mother certainly didn’t have an “estate”. It just so happened that the hospital provided free funeral services, that is, at least a burial and via the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The next day after she died, I went back to the hospital to talk with the social worker on the floor my mother had been on. It took quite awhile to get all the necessary paperwork, plus me having to go to the first floor to the place to find the head priest who had to sign the forms, then back up again to the fourth floor of the hospital. The social worker then faxed all the info over to the head office of the Society.

It was rather amusing, or at least I thought so, since when I came back home, a message was on my answering machine. It was from the Society. I thought, gee, they sure do work fast. So, I called back and talked for a long time about the procedures of how things were done. Everything was going rather smoothly until the woman asked me, how much monthly income was coming in from my mother. I told her the amount of my mother’s Social Security retirement benefits and her pension. The woman said, “Oh, that’s too much, we only provide free burials for monthly incomes of less than $938.00.” My mother’s monthly income combined was $1,340.00. Now I know it wasn’t the woman’s fault and she was just going by the book of rules, but here I was literally screaming into the phone, “What am I supposed to do with my mother?” The phone conversation ended…she didn’t even give me any suggestions of just what I could do. I also, had to find something and quick as the rule was that the hospital only keep the bodies of the deceased for three days, after that they automatically went to some city owned cemetery, similar to a Potter’s Field.

Then I began making phone calls to the different places my mother had worked for. She had worked at a bank for nearly twenty years, and then much later at a major department store. The idea was to ask them, if there had been any funds available. I didn’t have much success finding anything out that day, as all I succeeded in doing was leaving messages and crossed my fingers that they would call me back with some kind of good news.

I started calling up my friends to tell them of this “wonderful” new development. Then, one of my friends, Barbara, who had very close ties with the local funeral home told me she would call them up in my behalf and tell them the situation that maybe somehow special arrangements could be made in my behalf. Much later, I actually got a call from one of the directors of the funeral home, and I too, explained the situation, especially the fact of no “estate” being available to handle any funeral costs, and of my being a recipient of SSI benefits. He told me to stop by the funeral home the next day and some kind of arrangements could be made.

Early the next day, Tuesday, August 29th, just a little before I was to go to the funeral home, I got a call from the main benefits office from the place of employment when my mother worked for the bank. There indeed were funds and I was the beneficiary and they would be sending me forms to fill out. I wasn’t told how much the funds were, but at least when I went to the funeral home I would be able to tell them that there was going to be some kind of money available to hopefully pay for the funeral costs.

I remember it being a bleak, overcast and rainy day, the day I went to the funeral home…somehow fitting I thought. The funeral home had been in business since God knows when, a family run business going way back and now two brothers ran it. I didn’t get to meet with the brother I had talked to the night before but the other brother. It took quite awhile to do all the paperwork, filling this form and that form and what was to be arranged was a direct cremation, no wake, no real burial, but a cremation as let’s face it, it was the less expensive way to go. Even a one-day wake would have cost something like $6,000 as opposed to the direct cremation which would only cost $2,000.00. And oh, how embarrassing it was though as the only “extra” money I had to leave as a down payment was a mere $25.00, but at least the funeral director didn’t laugh in my face with my meager payment.

The next day was to be a busy one for me as well, in fact, that whole week was a whirlwind of busyness. On Wednesday, August 30th I was to go with my Adult Protective Service person to the closet Social Security office to see about arranging a raise in my SSI benefits. Also, other arrangements had to be made in my behalf, for you see, with my mother’s death, technically speaking I was no longer legally represented for my court case. The lawyer we had, had was via JASA-Legal Services for the Elderly and one could only benefit by it if one was at least 60 years old. So…wonderful! I had THIS on my mind too, but as you’ll see, things worked out.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 13:

Before I relate what eventually happened to my mother when she went to the hospital on August 11, 2006, I just have to back-track a bit to give you an idea of the real seriousness of our court case situation.

This eviction issue with our landlord was actually the second one in relation to the cat situation my mother had created, as we had our first court case back in 2001. And as I’ve indicated, we had a heck of a lot more cats then, but managed to adopt out a lot of them, but not all, and certainly not down to the mere two that was in the stipulation agreement my mother signed June 11, 2001. So since this was the second time we were involved with another eviction issue the landlord and his lawyer in a sense were out for blood and really wanted to get us out no matter what. You kind of know the situation is serious, since quite often our lawyer came to our apartment to discuss things with us, and her attitude was that the whole thing was pretty dicey…in other words, it didn’t look good for us as technically speaking by having had more than the two cats we had breached the former stipulation agreement. So, bottom line, it was that serious, that dire and there was a real good chance we would lose the case and the landlord would win. So I had all this in back of my mind, when my mother was admitted to the hospital on August 11th of 2006.

As I indicated in my Part 12 of this series, I didn’t expect what I walked into, when I entered my mother’s hospital room on the next day, Saturday, August 12th. I certainly didn’t expect her to be attached to life support and respiratory machines. Like what happened to her? Just the day before, when I went with her to the ER she was conscious and talking. Now she was in a medicated-induced coma with all those life support hookups. And you know her condition was bad, as almost right off the bat, I was being asked, if the plug should be pulled, like gee, I really wanted to make that decision. Not! I don’t think anyone wants to make such a decision unless absolutely necessary, and on the days to follow it seemed a few times that she just might make it. In other words, I didn’t want to jump the gun if there was even the slightest chance she would pull through.

I had other things lurking on my mind all this time. The social worker on the hospital floor said if there was a slim chance she pulled through, she most definitely would have to go to some kind of rehab/nursing type environment, as it would have been impossible for me to take care of her adequately. So now my concern, was money. I was receiving a very small monthly SSI benefits due to my disability, but in no way was it adequate enough to live on. My Adult Protective Service person, Mark, who had been assigned to me for the court case, made an appointment for me for the nearest Social Security Administration office so I could discuss the possibility of getting a livable and workable increase in my benefits, since if my mother did pull through and sent to a rehab, I most definitely needed more money to live on. The scheduled date of the appointment was Wednesday, August 30th with the very next day, the 30st being another court date appearance, of course that court date was made before my mother’s hospitalization. So my Adult Protective Service person also suggested to me, to secure a note from the doctor explaining the circumstance, that my mother was in the hospital, and thus a viable excuse as to why she couldn’t appear.

Now before I go on, I have to add something that was, well a little strange, and some might call it a paranormal type experience and it had to do with one of my cats, Pyewacket. Prior to my mother going to the hospital about two weeks before, Pyewacket had a habit of jumping up on the sofa to keep my mother company. Then all of a sudden he stopped…wouldn’t go near her. Late Saturday night, on August 26th, I was talking on the phone to one of the pet rescuers who had taken five of our cats. All of a sudden, while talking to her, I noticed Pyewacket jumping on the sofa. I even mentioned this oddity to the rescuer, and even she thought maybe it meant something.

Now it’s Sunday, August 27, 2006. I went over to the hospital mainly to get that note from a doctor. I had awhile to wait for her to come. I was beginning to realize that there really was little chance my mother was going to pull through, so I said over and over again to her, in her coma-like state, “Do you want to go? Do you want to go?” They say that even in a coma, a person can hear. So then the doctor finally comes in and I explain how I needed a note explaining how and why my mother couldn’t go to the next court case date on August 31st. All of a sudden I notice the vital signs of my mother plunging down rapidly and alarms going off..she was crashing. The crash team came within minutes and I was kicked out of the room while they tried to resuscitate her. Believe it or not, I was annoyed at that. I wanted to stay. I’m not a bit squeamish and in no way would I have freaked out, but like I said they kicked me out and I had to wait in the hallway. About fifteen minutes the doctors, nurses, and crash team came out of the room. My mother had died.

They all surrounded me consoling me and telling me how sorry they were and I guess they were expecting me to fall apart with hysterics and cry or something, but I didn’t. Not to sound unfeeling, but to be honest it was a relief in more ways than I can ever tell you. To this day I haven’t shed a tear of my mother’s passing since she had put me through a lot of pain while alive.  But I do still have to wonder about that incident with my cat Pyewacket.  Did he somehow sense my mother was to die the next day and that’s why he jumped up on the sofa that night?  Also, who knows?  When I asked my mother, “Do you want to go?”,  did she indeed hear me?  Was she waiting for me to let her go?  Do you mean to tell me she finally listened to something I had to say?  It  was a first then.

Now, if you want to hear something rather funny. After I came home from the hospital, drained and just plain tired, you’ll laugh at my next emotion I felt. Anger. Yes, anger. I was thinking, “Gee, so typical of you mom, you go ahead and die on me, while I’m still left with all this crap to deal with, especially the eviction court case issue. Gee thanks mom!”

In my next entry, I’ll relate the “loveliness” I had to endure, not only concerning the court case, but handling my mother’s “affairs” as she had NO savings, NO checking account and certainly NO life insurance. The “fun” was about to begin.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 12:

Why the court case against my mother and I didn’t end sooner I have no idea, since technically speaking the issue that had created the eviction threat against us had been resolved Friday, May 19th of 2006, and when the representative inspectors came from the landlord on May 31st they clearly could see, they just plain didn’t have a case against us. My theory of course, was that the landlord’s lawyer wanted to drag it out as long as possible to get more money out of the case. In fact, in my mind the case should have been dismissed with the next court appearance on June 25th, but it wasn’t. It was to continue until October 19th.

I was by no means idle for the remainder of this time…I kept up my daily cleaning routine to make sure the apartment was odor free, getting rid of things. The best was when on a hot, very steamy, humid August 1st I was able to get rid of the old bureau and dressers drawer furniture. A tenant who had recently moved out had left a lot of furniture behind and it was like a free for all for whomever wanted to grab some of the furniture. I opted for a deep mahogany wooden tall dresser drawer which very conveniently was roomy enough to place the contents in from the bureau and dresser I wanted to get rid of, plus the fact, that I just plain got rid of a lot of stuff from both pieces of furniture I no longer needed.

The next court date was held Thursday, August 10th. By this time my mother’s health, both mental and physical was rapidly deteriorating, and I suspected she had a bout of pneumonia, but since she hadn’t gotten a note from a doctor to excuse her presence from court, she had to go, it was either that, or by default the landlord would have automatically won the case. The next day though, I had made up my mind that I was going to get my mother to a hospital. I went out to do some errands, but when I came back I did a 911 call for an ambulence. My mother wasn’t thrilled with this and was resisting the idea of going and even said she would walk to the ER room of the hospital. I looked at her as though she were nuts, as she could barely walk period, being so weakened. When the paramedics came and examined her I did mention that I suspected my mother had pneumonia, and the one paramedic said he could hear “crackling” in her lungs. So off we went to the ER and began the long wait to get my mother the medical attention she needed.

Since I had been through this so many times, that is my mother having been in and out of the hospital since June of 2005, I knew the wait for my mother to be officially admitted would take hours and hours, perhaps not until the wee small hours of the morning. Realizing this, I opted to go home, and told my mother I’d be visiting her the next day. Like I said, my mother’s trips to the hospital became such routine I just thought things would be no different from the many times before that my mother had been admitted to the hospital. I was wrong.

Whenever my mother had been previously hospitalized it was always a room on the sixth floor, which was for the most part, sort of the geriatric ward, that is most patients were older people. After I had my breakfast and got dressed I called the hospital to get my mother’s room number and was told A-4-1, meaning the fourth floor. Already this didn’t sound right and I sure wasn’t prepared for what I walked into went I went into that room. Quite literally the first words to spring out from me were “What the hell happened?” Just the day before, and all through the time I was with my mother in the ER she had been conscious and talking. Now here she was in a medicated type coma hooked up to respirators and other life-support machines. Like I said, what the hell happened? Her pneumonia hadn’t been that bad and I just can’t help thinking that while she was in the ER just the day and night before, that they must have given her a combo of medications that triggered everything off and made her health spiral down worse than before.

I’ll continue with this story tomorrow to relate what happened next.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 11:

Okay now to continue with my epic saga.

As I previously mentioned, on Tuesday May 9, 2006, my mother and I were visited by the woman who would be our lawyer and representing us. May 8th, had been our first court appearance, it was by no means the last. Another one had been scheduled for May 25th, June 28th, nothing occurred in July, but then in August there were two dates of court appearances, on August 11 and the 31, then two in October, the last being October 19th. I had temporarily stopped having Animal Care & Control come to pick up anymore cats due to what had happened to Porthos (one can read up about what happened to him in Part 8 of this series). The lawyer wasn’t a happy camper about my canceling out on AC&C coming to pick the remainder of the cats especially since on the May 25th court appearance we signed an agreement that an inspection by representatives of the landlord’s office were to come by on May 31st to see if we only had two cats.

Luckily, I had something else up my sleeve. By around this time, we had a total of ten cats, two of which we could keep according to the prior stipulation agreement my mother had signed on June 11, 2001. One of the pet rescuers from up-state NY who had already taken in five of the cats agreed to take the remaining eight, but there was a glitch. She wouldn’t be able to come down to pick them up until June, and when I told the lawyer this she kind of freaked out….she desperately wanted us down to only two by the time that inspection was to held. Now while my mother had known how to drive, she never got a car…weird no? Way back when, when my grandmother, mother and I went on vacations, she would rent a car. So never had our own car, and I never learned to drive. So the dilemma was how to get the cats up to the rescuer.

Thankfully, out of the blue a friend of our out in the Long Island, NY area and who had adopted two of our cats back in 2001 (Bibbity and Fidget) then also adopted Sherkhan, Bobbity, Footie, Whizzer and Shadow earlier in 2006, said she was more than willing to drive to our apartment, pick up the cats, and drive to the pet rescuers…see? See how things were falling into place here? It was just the principle of the thing…I just DID NOT want anymore cats going to AC&C.

So it was all arranged, that on Friday, May 19, 2006, Lisa came over real early in the morning. Prior to her coming, I placed a very unhappy Pyewacket into a traveling case. Why? I didn’t want to risk the chance I’d goof up and grab the wrong black cat, as I did have another black cat named Smudge. As for Kissy, she hid under my bed and by the “expression” on her face was easier to differentiate from the other tiger-striped cats. As soon as the cats were on their way, I called the lawyer to tell her the deed was done, and now we were officially down to only two cats: Pyewacket and Kissy…I think I can safely say, that she breathed a sigh of relief.

On May 31st, when the representative inspectors came to our apartment, our lawyer came a few hours earlier to give us “instructions” on how to conduct ourselves…in other words, not to “volunteer” any information unnecessarily that could be used against us. Also, one saving grace was that our lawyer had made arrangements for a old sofa of hers to be delivered to us just the night before the inspection, enabling us to get rid of the cruddy old one. She was in the middle of a move, and wanted to get new furniture, and the sofa that she gave us, a sofa-bed mind you, didn’t really look that old, heck it was sure better than the crap-heap of a sofa we did have, that had a lot of pet odor to it, since the cats often accidently peed on it, even though we had a plastic type cover on it. Anyway, when she came over the day of the inspection, she was concerned since according to her though, the apartment still had a slight “cat oder” smell to it, despite all my cleaning. Well, like what was I supposed to do? I had knocked myself out giving a good cleaning the night before, and then another touch up job prior to her coming over.

Well, the two inspectors did come over and checked every nook and cranny, even opening up closets and looking under my bed to make sure no cats were being hidden. Despite everything, I thought, and even our lawyer thought the inspection went well. The main issue that had been resolved: we were indeed down to only two cats.

In my next installment I’ll write about what happened in the middle of our court case. As if I hadn’t enough on my mind at the time.

©2009~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 10:

In my last entry, I mentioned how on May 8, 2006, was the very first court case appearance my mother and I had to attend to. That was by no means the last….we were to have several more, one on May 25, June 27, August 10, August 31, October 8 with the last one being October 19th. The last ones I didn’t attend with good reason, but I’ll get into that another time. It sound silly but I had a “method” for preparing me at each court appearance, and it may sound daft, but I think when anyone is going through a rough time, one clings to “something” to get them through…it may be a song, a movie, an inspirational book, whatever. I know one person who had gone through a rough time, and she used the first three Star Wars movie (actually the last three but the ones filmed first in the late 1970s and early 1980s)…she said the whole concept of the “force” gave her encouragement.

Well, with me, it was a movie, Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe that pulled me through. Haven’t a clue why it worked for me, but it did. The day before a court appearance, I would watch the entire movie, then just before bedtime I would re-watch the battle scene…well when you think of it, my mother were in a “battle”—a battle to keep from being evicted.

On May 9, 2006, the next day after our first court appearance, my mother and I were visited by the woman who would be our lawyer. What a wonderful person, and she had her hand full in dealing with our case, since technically speaking we had breached the stipulation agreement my mother had signed during the first court eviction case against us in 2001, in which she had signed on June 11, 2001. In other words, the landlord and his lawyer were out for our blood in a way. Also, no wonder as I understand since that first case had to be re-opened and from what I’ve heard a lawyer will charge his client $10,000.00 to re-open the case, not of course that he couldn’t afford it but no doubt NOT a happy camper about the expenses and fees.

Along with our lawyer, I was assigned an Adult Protective Service representative, since technically speaking I wasn’t really legally represented. Since the legal firm was JASA-Legal Services of The Elderly, it represented people 62 or older, so I didn’t qualify, yet I wasn’t as you can guess totally ignored as I was like the package “deal”. Also, I was the one, the lawyer usually dealt with, as my mother’s frame of mind just wasn’t up to dealing with anything at that point.

Well more about my “epic” tomorrow. I rather do shorter entries than longer for easier reading from you folks. Lets face it, some people are turned off by really long readings on a webpage. I tend to be like that myself as I’m not a good computer reader and I think that due to years and years of being a book reader rather than reading off a computer. Also, I confess to being very under the weather lately and have for awhile now.

©~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket

Part 9:

Okay I guess it’s time to further tell about all the happenings of my “winner” year in 2006. I had stopped allowing Animal Care & Control come to take anymore cats since I was so dismayed about what happened to one cat, Porthos, and also, I had other things to think about and that was the court appearance that was looming up on Monday, May 8th, 2006—only the Friday before, the director of JASA-Legal Services For The Elderly had sent my mother and myself via DSL a letter of postponement to hand to the judge, so put off any further court proceedings until a lawyer was officially assigned to us.

Now one doesn’t have to have panic disorder to have major anxiety about any court appearance as it’s anxiety producing to begin with, and don’t forget, I had agoraphobia as well to boot, even though I was no longer housebound, still the distance to the court from our home was fairly far away. Thankfully, since we were being legally represented by JASA and they dealt with “elderly” people all the time, one of the services they provided was car service. What a blessing that was! I didn’t have to worry about trying to travel by subway, which I hadn’t done in about fifteen years, and also there was no cost to us. The total cab fare had we paid out of our own pocket would have been about $40.00 total.

On the night before going to court, I made sure I went to bed earlier than I normally did (being the night owl that I was and still am). Our appointment wasn’t until around 2:00 p.m. but I wanted to get up as early as possible to allow myself ample time for the two of us, that is my mother and myself to get ready. The car service came on time thank goodness, and off my mother and I were to go to court. Now most people when they are nervous, anxious, stressed out might begin talking a living blue streak, I guess to get that nervousness out of them. Me” I’m the opposite, I clam up. Well obviously my mother was the talker type, and honest to God wouldn’t shut up the cab ride over and all I wanted was quiet! At one point, I said directly to her to shut up as I wanted quiet….boy what a nasty look she gave me. I just wanted quiet as I was psyching myself up for the court appearance and I just didn’t want anything to possibly trigger off an anxiety attack, including talking.

Well when we got there at court, we did have a wait outside the particular court room, but finally when our names were called I handed the clerk the postponement letter, she took it, and was going to go back inside the court room to give the judge the letter, so more waiting. Sometime passed, and finally the clerk came back out to us and gave us a new court date of when to appear: Thursday, May 25, 2006—at 9:30 a.m. Yikes! That early?? It seems the court rule is one HAS to be there at that time, no matter when your case is actually called. By default one can get there no later than 10:30 a.m. but ONE HAS TO BE THERE, NO MATTER WHAT, otherwise by default, the opposing side would automatically win. Uh, no thanks, don’t think we wanted that, after all we were talking about an eviction issue and no way did I want the landlord to win. I was proud of myself though, that I managed to “handle” going to court and didn’t feel the least bit panicky. Little did I know however, the court case would drag on until October, and in the meantime a lot of things were to happened during that time, of which I’ll continue this “adventure” in my next entry.

©~Melanie Neer aka pyewacket