Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Tag: Prescription Drugs

December 9, 2021

tear-splashed windows

sunbeams stream
through tear-splashed windows
the old woman blinks

~~~

This is not the turn I thought life would take
when I reached my late seventies.

Yesterday’s newborn chicks have finally come home to roost
not in my back yard but in my body.

Today I bear marks of what being female, white and alive cost
from the day I was born until now.

So far in my life, I’ve been able to function without getting entangled in multiple prescription drugs.

For the last several weeks, however, I’ve been looking at three prescription drugs (each from a different doctor), wondering which options would be relatively safe. Especially given my kidney disease. Some prescriptions drugs can’t be discontinued precipitously, which means no trial period.

I‘m also forced to consider my determination not to be caught up in staying “alive” at all costs. When do I cross the point of no return and stop attempts to fix what is unfixable?

I’ve never missed posting so much as I’m missing it now. I’m grateful for your visits and pray each of us will find a way through troubling times that sometimes overshadow the true gift of Christmas.

Thank you for stopping by today.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 9 December 2021
Photo found at maxpixel.net

15 Comments
July 12, 2021

On My Mother’s Table | Memories

Photo taken in 1948, before Mother came down with polio in 1949
Ruth, Elouise, Dad, Mother, and Grandpa Gury

I’m reposting this in honor of my mother, Eileen Gury Renich, born 12 July 1921.
I often wonder what she would have been like without polio or the pain of her childhood.
It colored everything that happened in my life.

A graceful old table
With fold-down wings
On each side and
Beautiful scrolling
Along the edges
Sits there in the kitchen
Small and old with just enough
Room to turn around

A small pantry hides beneath
stairs to the second floor
A window looks out
Above the small porcelain sink
With ridged sideboard

A small walk-through kitchen
With four doors
Impossible to miss stands
Ready and quick to reach

There on the table they sit
In their permanent space
Neatly arranged on a medium-size
Round tray never messy always tidy
Kept just next to the short wall
Out of the way not in your face
Part of the scenery
Normal things needed daily in
My Mother’s kitchen

Salt and pepper
A sugar bowl and bottle of creamer
Instant coffee and paper napkins
Or were they paper towels
I’m not quite sure
Vitamins and minerals
Aspirin and toothpicks
Small round Rx bottles neatly arranged
At least a dozen sometimes more
Coming and going as needed
New and old as prescribed
One on top of the other
For the latest pain or muscle discomfort
Carefully labeled and marked with her name
Mother’s name only not anyone else’s
Her cafeteria of pain-killers and relaxants
Old friends from polio days plus
New friends added to her
Growing collection of pills or
Were they drugs from
Multiple doctors with multiple solutions

A potent mix of ingredients
For multiple ailments in multiple periods
Of her pain-ridden sleep-deprived life
Sit neatly on the table
Ready at a moment’s notice
Would you please bring me
My phenobarbital and a cup of coffee?
Caffeine and barby doll her friends for life
But at what cost?
Drugs free from a friend’s prescription shop
But at what cost?

* * *

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 21 July 2015, edited and reposted 12 July 2021,
the anniversary of my Mother’s birth (12 July 1921 – 17 Feb. 1999)

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 12 July 2021
Tourist photo taken in 1948

9 Comments
April 20, 2016

I stepped from Plank to Plank

Night Sky and Pacific

For several weeks I’ve wondered about this poem by Emily Dickinson. What’s it all about? Do I get it yet? I’m not sure. I do, however, think it gets me right now.

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch –
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

c. 1864

Emily Dickinson Poems, Edited by Brenda Hillman
Shambhala Pocket Classics, Shambhala 1995

As usual, there’s precious little Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments
July 21, 2015

On My Mother’s Table | Memories

A graceful old table
With fold-down flaps
On each side
Beautiful scrolling
Along the edges
Sitting there in the kitchen Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments
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