Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully by Julie McFadden

Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully by Julie McFadden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

4.5 rounded to 5 stars - This was a Nana's book club selection and it took several weeks to get it off reserve, but it was a quick read once I did. It is one of eight books on the End of Life GR bookshelf that I have read, and the only thing you should read into that is that I find the subject of our humanity interesting. When I was much younger, midwives and birthing were the topics, and now death and dying hold a little more interest.
Our society has stigmatized the topic of death. We don't routinely care for our dying ourselves, often sticking them in a hospital to die, too many times, by themselves. But those are not good deaths. The author spent many years as an ICU nurse and watched families agree to procedures and extraordinary measures that, while prolonging the outcome, did not change the fact that their loved one was dying. In the ICU, the rule was life at any cost, and often families didn't realize the futility and pain involved.
She had a life changing moment when she suggested a family conference for one patient, and when the family fully understood the situation, their choices changed. Shortly after, she left the ICU to become a hospice nurse.
The fact is, we all die. We can't change that. But to some extent, we can choose how we die. Hospice facilitates those choices. Will we die at home, or in a hospice center, surrounded by loved ones, having said the things we need to say, shared memories and made plans, and kept comfortable? Or will we die in a hospital, pumped full with liquids our bodies can no longer process, and medications that are really doing anything for our quality of life?
The book is gentle, and while the language may seem too simplistic - sometimes the advice is repeated several places, it is written in a way that allows people to process it, even people who are overwhelmed or grieving. She tells patients and loved ones - this is your end of life journey, what do you want it to look like.
Some of the topics covered in the book include: what does death entail - there is a process our body will go through, sometimes starting weeks or months before we die; what interventions help (pain medication, etc.), and which do not (forcing food and water); what are the most important things a caregiver needs to do for their loved one (keep them clean, safe and comfortable); how to let things go; how to ask for and get help; what hospice can do to help - and what it can't do; and advice for the dying and their caregivers.
This is a book that should live in every home. Read it now, before the time is upon you, read it when you are in the process, and read it again, for the advice on grieving.

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The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann

The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading by James Patterson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 rounded to 4 stars. This was a little all over the place (rating-wise) for me. It started out strong, a 5, floundered a bit in the middle, and came back in the end. What worked for me: the diversity of stories, public libraries, academic, small independent bookshops, many Books-A-Million stories, but they all had the love of reading and books and talking to people about books, in common. Each story was just a few pages, and told of communities and how libraries and bookshops affected the lives of the people in them. It talked of creating readers by introducing them to books and characters they loved, or in some cases, saving a reader's life by helping them find the book that convinced them they weren't alone in this world. But it's a symbiotic relationship, as communities came together to fight censorship by schoolboards, help bookshops survive the pandemic, or start over after a natural disaster. What didn't work as well was when the book seemed to be repetitive in the middle.
I loved some of the anecdotes, one that sticks out is a man asking a bookseller to find several puzzles, ring them up, remove them from their boxes, and wrap them for him. He explains that he doesn't like to see the picture in advance, it keeps his mind sharp to put them together that way. Another story I enjoyed was by Judy Blume, where she talks about deciding, at the age of 78, that she no longer wanted to spend the rest of her life writing, she'd rather interact with readers more. To that end, she and her husband, George Cooper, moved to Key West and bought a small, independent bookstore called Books & Books @ The Studios of Key West, and how different that side of the business was. The flip side of this, is that I was very disappointed that there wasn't a story from Ann Patchett, who owns Parnassus Books, in Nashville. Finally, there were two stories about librarians who provide services to incarcerated people. Diego Sandoval Hernandez works at the Brooklyn Public Library and is in charge of Jail and Prison Services, including those for the inmates at Rikers. They do some wonderful things, including helping incarcerated parents connect with their children by reading and recording stories for them. This reminded me of the fiction book, How to Read a Book that I recently enjoyed reading.

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The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts

The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.0/5.0 - My first thought about this book is that I wish my father-in-law was still alive because I think he (and my dad) would both have enjoyed this very much. I wish I could ask them whether they remember hearing about the journey that Annie Wilkins took across America, from Maine to California, in the mid-1950s. They both grew up around horses, and were young men at the time. I think they would have been fascinated by this, as many of the people of America were, at the time.
Annie is 63, when she is given just a few years to live, after being hospitalized for what might have been thought to be TB. She remembers a dream of her mother's, to see the Pacific Ocean, and decides that she has nothing to lose (she knows she can no longer hold on to the farm in Maine, by herself), and manages to save enough money to buy a horse and sets out in November, 1954 to ride across the country with her dog, trusting that strangers will let her sleep in their barns, etc. along the way.
A newspaper gets word of the story and she becomes something of a celebrity, people in the towns she travels through often put her up for a night, or longer, and her horse(s) are always given a place in a stable. The police act as escorts through towns and offer her a place to sleep in the jail, when needed. Overall, people are very kind to her and her animals. In Tennessee, a town gives her a second horse, a Tennessee Walker, to help her along the way.
This was an interesting book, in a simpler time, and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys animals, travel or history.

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The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a wonderful book. Covering a little over 5 years (from Sept. 2017 - Dec. 2022), author Amy Tan shares a selection from nine natural journals with sketches, reminiscences and observations gathered during hundreds of hours studying the birds in her backyard. In the beginning, she could only identify three birds, but over time and through keen observation, she eventually identified over sixty-three species.
From the beautiful pencil sketches to full color drawings, each offering is a gift and a labor of love. She wrote of the effects of various wildfires on the local ecosystem, birds that normally wouldn't appear in her area were driven south by the smoke, as well as of the comfort of watching the birds go about their normal lives during COVID, when the world seemed turned upside down for many humans.
I highly recommend this book!

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Chocolat by Joanne Harris

Chocolat by Joanne Harris
3.5 stars - I read this book as a pick from the list - Books that are better than the movie and then watched the movie, itself. The book, written in 1999, takes place in a small French village in the early 1960s. Vianne and her daughter, Anouk, arrive on a north wind at the very beginning of Lent and open a chocolatier, or chocolate shop. This immediately causes friction with the church, for whom Lent is a season of denial. But Vianne is a generous, giving, intuitive woman, who befriends all, and even treats her would-be enemies with kindness and compassion.
I enjoyed reading the book, but it clearly was written as the beginning of a series. It hints at back stories, creates more questions than it answers. The movie, on the other hand, keeps the same characters and setting, but tells the story in a different way, giving the viewers a neat ending. I appreciated that about the movie, and enjoyed it for both the acting (Dame Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, and Juliette Binoche) and the ending.
I feel I would be remiss if I didn't mention the parallels between this book and Lessons in Chemistry, which I recently finished. The time period in both is mid-twentieth century, and the protagonists are very similar. Each woman is a single mother to a precocious young daughter, who are running from their pasts, while trying to create a loving home for their child. While they may love a man, they are not dependent upon them. Vianne creates her living changing people's lives through chocolat, Elizabeth has a television show called "Supper at Six," that touches and changes lives in much the same way. They are both compassionate, funny, and smart. The books make good companion reads.

2023 Holiday letter

Happy holiday, friends!
2023 was a wonderful year at our house. We joined the East Tennesee Gleaners Co-op where we taught a few classes, took a few more and enjoyed the company of like-minded people. Of course we planted a garden, focusing on tomatoes, peppers, okra, and garlic, as well as some squash and gourds, with great results. This was the first year we were able to break even on the garlic, selling about 10 pounds for seed. We also planted (with the help of a few grandsons!) 50 or so lavender for the bees.
We hosted family and friends a bunch, including friends from Texas, and most of the children and grandchildren, as well as my sister and brother-in-law. In addition to that, we did a bunch of traveling, Texas in January; Charleston in March; a quick trip to NY in April; Missouri in May, where we got to visit Alden, see where my grandmother was born and some ancestral graves, and start our Route 66 journey; Arizona in September, where I met my cousin Carl and his wife Patty for the first time, saw the Grand Canyon, and enjoyed more of Route 66!; and finally a trip to Colorado last week to see Cirque du Soleil in Denver. This was the reason I retired!
Now we are home, enjoying our Christmas decorations and the quiet until we sojourn to Hawai'i next February to see our new granddaughter, November, and her older sister, August, as well as Matt and Niah.
I'll close this letter with a few photos, and wishes for all the blessings of this holiday season for you and your loved ones.

Health, part I

The thing about this blog is that it's safe. No one reads it. So all the fears, anger and other emotions that I don't know what to do with, I can put here. The last six weeks... It started in early August when I felt something weird happening on my back. I asked John to look at it, he told me it looked like a mole and we should get it looked at. We took a photo, and I called the dermatologist.

By the time I got into see him, a week later, it looked like this:

I was floored when the dermatologist said - "oh, that's a tick" and then removed it. Because of the irritation around it, he prescribed Doxycycline, a powerful antibiotic that I took twice a day for two weeks. Two weeks of throwing up, staying out of the sun, and halfway through the treatment, getting thrush. He also did a complete body scan, to look at any moles or skin conditions that might be a problem in the future. I specifically asked about something that had recently - I think sometime in the spring, shown up on my breast. It was skin colored with a hard brown core. He told me it was a cyst, and I shouldn't worry about it. So, about a week after finishing the tick treatment, around Labor Day, I noticed what looked like a pimple there. It quickly turned into an abscess. So I called the dermatologist office to try to get seen, but it was going to be two weeks. I made the appointment, and started putting drawing salve on it, and a lot of pus came out. I was able to get into see my PCP, on 9/11, a few days later. She was on maternity leave, and the elderly doctor (started practicing in 1971) said he thought it might have been a bug bite that got infected.He prescribed Bactrim, a sulfa-based antibiotic, and Nystatin to have on hand, should my thrush return.

So here I am 5 days later, trying to figure out what to do about the upcoming trip to Arizona and the Grand Canyon.