gsteinb

my job is to make sure the kindergarten kids don't fight over the toys. someone else keeps the furnace running.

rkwaki

Do you have to keep the kids from fighting much? Haven't seen much animosity in a while.

gsteinb

There a banned users thread. I'm not at liberty to discuss moderation beyond that.

rbart4506

Well I bit the bullet and decided it's time to put the bike away for a bit...

Sciatica just isn't improving and it's bothering me on the bike as well...I've become a bit of a miserable sod, and I'm basically driving my wife nuts!

I came to the conclusion that the only way to get happy is to rid myself of this pain and deal with the underlying issues at hand...Which I gather is the loss of my parents. I never in my life thought that it would affect me like this. I had assumed that since they both were suffering from dementia and had been taken from me years beforehand that the loss would just be the next stage and I would get on with life...

Well that isn't happening as smoothly as I had hoped...

Went for my first ever acupuncture treatment. It was with an older Korean doctor of Chinese medicine. I guess he's pretty renown around here. It was an interesting experience and definitely open the tap on the emotions which is good thing...

It's going to be a long spring I do believe...

rkwaki

No that's cool.

BTW is there an issue with the database?






Bwahahahahaha

rkwaki

Good for you. A great post.
As I had posted, removed, re-posted, removed my story just writing the words can often help.

Over the past year I have opened up a lot and helped me identify things better myself.

Keep it up and remember your Canuckistani friend if you need to share some thoughts.

Fat Boy

My SIL lives in England and visits every summer. I lend her my small truck to drive. Damned if I don't always give it to her full and she leaves me with it on fumes. What's up with that?

rbart4506

It's weird...I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, but this I keep inside and have trouble opening up about...

Here's an example...My mom's birthday is coming up on the 21st. When she was alive it was never a big thing in my books, I'd get her a card and a small gift. If I could make it out to see her I would if not, I'd go the weekend after or something...Now I want to make sure I can visit the grave on the day with flowers, making the effort...Even to the point that we'll divert our drive up to the race we are going to...

I shake my head at how I kind of didn't think twice while they were alive, but now I realize what I missed...Damn! They were right! I hate when my parent's are right

rkwaki

I hear ya - it reminds me to make a better effort with my parents (especially when you consider the stuff I put them through) and I as well wear my emotions on my sleeve - not always a good thing though as I used to be very quick to anger but have now got that under better management.

Smallguy

rbart my wife lost her mom in February.. it was sudden but had been coming for 20+ years

she still has good and bad days.... her moms b-day was rough and she still ha sleepless nights

I can only imagine what she is going through since they didn't have the best relationship at times

loving and loosing is probably the toughest thing to deal with and moving on isn't as simple as opening a new door

wanders

It's FoxPro.

jwible

rbart, I went through that a few years ago with my father. You never get over it, but it gets better. Talking about it is a good thing.

carpediemracing 

I lost my mom in 2003. I was fortunate because I was there for virtually the whole time, from driving her to all her tests (in 2000), having her live at my house until early 2003, then being with her daily for the last couple months (in the house where we all grew up). I posted about her here in BF in one of my favorite threads (where BF really helped me pull through a long long day/night at the airport):

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...=1#post6162192

Being involved, talking, etc, was the best thing. I feel bad for my sister who lived in California and only saw my mom every few months.

roadiejorge 

I lost my dad in 95 as the result of an accident on the GWB (George Washington Bridge), I'll never forget the sequence of events that day. I remember the intense crying at the hospital and the wave of emotions I felt for the few hours after seeing him unconscious on a hospital bed. What was interesting was that the next day I woke up with this sense of reassurance that everything was going to be ok, and that it was best to remember all of the things I learned from him and the times we shared together as a family. It's a good thing I made my peace with it the way I did because I was able to be a shoulder for my mother and sister. Now as a father I see all the ways he influenced me and am thankful for it. I cross the GWB every day on my bike commute to work and always look to the spot where the accident occurred and think of him.

/ramble

waterrockets 

I had my CT scan today. No abscesses. My surgeon says that I'm 9 weeks out from surgery now, and that it's just healing pain. He reminded me again of how much of a mess I was in the OR. In 20 years, he's only sent two patients back for a scan after an appendectomy (including me), and sometimes he has five of them in a day.

Well, I'm just going to take it easy on the bad days, and get some pedaling pain on the other days.

gsteinb

even the Dr. agrees

htfu

mollusk

I have better stories than that.

I won't share the best ones just in case my wife monitors BF, but she would appreciate the story about her father "fixing" the shifting on our VW Jetta when he borrowed it. He said that there was a problem shifting into reverse (manual transmission), but he fixed it for us. He managed to snap off the piece keeping you from inadvertently shifting into reverse in the shifter box without first depressing the shifter. Favors like this I don't need, but I keep getting them over and over and over again ...

Flatballer

Holy internal cable routing batman. My Noah is here, but I'll be damned if I can actually build it. Hit up my favorite LBS earlier to get my seat height close, and have them cut the mast.

You'd think for a $3800 (non-sale) frameset, you'd get some instructions or something. But no, nothing like that. I read online at one place that you need to put at least one 3mm spacer under the saddle or you void your warranty and might break the mast. Gee, isn't that the kind of thing you should probably include in instructions with the frame?

I've also spent the last many hours trying to route my shifter cables through the frame. I didn't know you could cross them inside the frame, so I cut my housings thinking I couldn't (I prefer my housings going across the headtube, instead of on the same side). I've got my RD threaded (uncrossed), but can't get the FD threaded at all. It's ridiculous. I'm losing my mind.

Racer Ex 

Not that hard IF you've built a few internal cable bikes. Built several Noahs. I've never had a frame set that came with build directions BTW. Seat mast/spacer thing is an urban myth. There's a few tricks to routing...biggest one is rough the cables THEN install the BB. Badda bing badda boom.

PM me if you run into more stuff. I ran EDR through the drill.

Racer Ex 

Bobbie Flay visited tonight. I made some suggestions.

caloso

Went to the Giants home opener with my mom. Matt Cain threw a one-hitter. It was a good day.

DocM

I'm heading up to Battenkill in about 20 minutes. Tell me again why I do this.

rbart4506

Sorry, this is a long one.......

I think part of it is that when I lost my mom I still had my dad and had to be strong and focused for him...Even though he didn't really know who I was...Now that he's gone I think the body is just revolting from all the years of stress dealing with both of them. Their quality of life the last 4-5 years was terrible. Dad showed signs of dementia early, about 10 years ago and I knew it was going to get worse. The day he crashed the car into the house was the turning point. That was the day I made the decision something needed to be done. I was the one that took him to the hospital, knowing full well, the doctor would have no choice to pull his license.

Pulling that license was everyone else's saviour, but his killer...That started him on a downhill path. I know it was the right thing to do, but still...He got angry, confused and depressed. Add in his worsening dementia and things around the house were not good. This is where my mom really started to suffer. She had her own problems and had to deal with him day in and day out. I knew it was only a matter of time before we had to get him out of the house to save her. The issue was she was stubborn and so were my brothers. We basically waited until he was on death's door before everyone agreed with me that it was time. At this point he basically. bed ridden and not eating. He was not the man I remembered.

The day he went to the home was awful. My oldest brother and I took him and the bugger still had fight. He did not want to go. He came up with every excuse to stay in bed. Finally we got him up and changed, but he had to pee. We got in the washroom and he did want to leave. We had to carry him out and he was grabbing at anything to stop us from doing it. It was such a bad day.

Once he got into the home and settled, things began improving. They got his nourishment in line and he slowly gained weight and started to look healthy again. Everyone agrees that if he didn't go in the home he might have had another month or so. Putting into the home was good, but it brought to light his ultimate killer....cancer...He had prostate cancer when he was in his mid-60's and survived. The surgery at that time changed him, but he was alive. As part of his entrance to the home they had to do a full workup and discover some spots on his chest x-ray. After some further examination that found cancer in his spine and lung. We knew it was only a matter of time now. The decision was made not to treat it since his dementia was pretty advanced and treating him would just complicate things. So they went about at making him comfortable.

While this was going along mom was at home...Alone....And falling into a depression...She did not know what to do with herself. He had spent her life looking after her kids and then her husband...Now what...She began screwing up her meds, forgetting things, not cooking, locking herself out of the house (even though the front door was wide open). Her antics were also creating tension between my brother's and I since they took everything she did at face value. I knew there were underlying problems. Things that needed to taken care of, but know would listen to me.

Within 6 months she was in the home as well. It was the only choice. She could not look after herself and none of us lived close enough to keep an eye on her daily. The first little while in the home for her was good. She met people and looked happy...Then something happened...Were not sure what, but she changed. My wife and I headed to down to Georgia for training camp and during that time the home got hit with a flu epidemic so it was quarantined. We saw her before training camp and everything was relatively good, a month later and she was a different women...She was slowly going insane...To the point one of the doctors wanted to institutionalize her. It was bad. Some of the stuff that she did and said was scary, but when you think back...pretty damn funny! Like the time she wanted me to go by the house to check on the cousins that were staying there and make sure the horses were ok...Of course she was thinking back to when she was a young girl.

Over the next 6 months or so she went downhill fast. I think she lost the will to live and had given up. I guess she must have felt her job was done and death was only way to end her misery. The night she passed we all got a chance to be with her. The home did a very good job of keeping us posted on her condition and making sure we had ample time to get there to say our goodbyes. She was surrounded by her kids and grand-kids (minus my one son who lives out of province with my ex-wife). I had hoped he might make it there in time since he was making the trip out for Christmas, but alas that didn't happen.

Now it was time to once again deal with dad and figure out how not explain the death of mom to him. There was no point in telling him since 5 minutes later he forget. He would suffer for no reason at all. When he was asked he was told that mom was sleeping. He never questioned it, never argued or demanded to see her. I'm sure deep down he knew that was not the truth. By this point he never called me by my name or revered to me as his son. He knew me, but didn't know how he knew me. You could still chat with him and get reactions.

As spring and summer passed this went away though, his cancer was getting worse and the meds were taking him away from us faster. He was slowly shutting down. First it was mentally. He was no longer conversing. He was just in his chair, or in bed staring blankly. Then he was only sleeping. My brother use to bring home made pudding with him to get him to open his eyes and eat. At the end this didn't even work.

As December rolled around we again knew it was close, but hoped he would make it past Christmas. We did not want to deal with another funeral at Christmas and wanted to mourn my mom's passing. He had others ideas I guess and wanted to join her ASAP...So two days prior, to the year, he slipped away...

Again the home made sure we could all be there (Again minus my one son)...

Now I am alone...

All the holidays, where there was always a place to go a reason to visit are gone...It's a weird feeling...My oldest brother said it best, we are now orphans

18hockey

It's my birthday, my wife slept in, I have been unemployed for a year and a half (besides some low paying contract work that barely keeps us living) and I am sure I will not hear from any of my friends or family...as usual. I'm going for a long ride.

carpediemracing 

^ I think that's longer than my posts.

It sounds terrible, what everyone went through. In a sense though your mom and dad are at peace now, no more suffering. You can take that away, if nothing else. And they left some good kids behind as legacy to their lives.

My dad is in a similar situation after losing my mom 8+ years ago. My brother, who is closest to my dad (like I was to my mom) said that our dad is just waiting for "the book to close". He's accomplished what he wanted to accomplish, he is surrounded by good kids, and he lost his long time wife a while ago. He made it through WW2 intact (his dad, for example, didn't, and the only thing I know about him is one picture where he's in a military outfit - my dad never talked about him or his death).

He adopted the US as his country, spending much of his adult life trying to move back to Japan, and once he did, coming home after one day and telling my mom that as soon as his three year contract is up they're moving back to the US.

Right now he's unable to talk, almost unable to write. We siblings (four of us) have power of attorney 100% (medical, financial - someone who knows about such things was surprised at the broadness of the "power"), my brother writes all the checks (he and his wife and three kids live in my dad's house, which is the house where we siblings grew up), he no longer drives (wrecked his car, in a one car accident, and told/wrote to my brother that he didn't want to drive anymore).

Luckily I get to see him frequently. I wasn't sure if he understood that the Missus was having a baby, but it was clear from his expressions when he saw our son that he had understood. I'm glad he got to see this grandson (the first son of his first son, so it's significant to him, esp since my two brothers and sister have a total of 7 kids in their three families already).

This week I'll see my dad three times, tonight/tomorrow, Tuesday, Wednesday.

My dad's greatest fear is to burden us unnecessarily, it's what he kept saying for the last whatever years. But the reality is that it is what it is, and it's good to see him, even if he only grins at us.