Only read this if you want a good laugh.

Grandpa: “My stomach hurts.”

Jill: “Take your Omeprazole. We’ve been out of it for a couple of days and that’s why your stomach hurts.”

My husband Robert takes a pill out of the new box and hands it to Grandpa, laying the box across the table from him.

Grandpa starts swinging his pill container to catch the edge of the box so he can get it near enough to him to grab.

Robert notices what he’s up to. “What do you want Grandpa?” he says in a loud voice (so Grandpa could hear him).

“What are you you yelling at me for?” Grandpa says, getting angry.

“Cause you can’t hear me.” Robert replies.

“Do you want him to read that insert?” Robert asks me.

“I don’t care,” I say. Big mistake.

Grandpa starts reading the drug insert.

After a few minutes he says, “I don’t have chronic heartburn.”

“Yes you do, Grandpa,” I said. “You’ve been on that drug for a long time.  Your blood pressure medicine causes acid reflux and you were without Omeprazole for two days, so now you have heartburn again.”

Mr. Hypochondriac is self-diagnosing himself again. “I don’t have chronic heartburn,” he says.

He sits at the table for a half hour stewing over the fact that he is positive he doesn’t have chronic acid problems. I’m ignoring the fact that he is moping…

“Do you read directions?” he asked.

“Why are you asking me that?” I replied

“I just want to know.”

“Does this have to do with your medicine?” I ask, knowing full well it does.

“Well, the directions say you shouldn’t use that product if you don’t have chronic heart burn.”

“You have chronic heartburn, Grandpa. You’re always eating Tums. You just told me that you take a Tums every night. That means you have chronic heart burn!”

I explain to him that his other medicine causes heart burn and that’s why he needs to take Omeprozol which he’s been on the whole time we’ve been taking care of him (three years). Every time we run out, he only lasts a couple of days and then he starts complaining of acid reflux – because he has “chronic heart burn.”

I give up, I say to myself.  “Time to brush your teeth, Grandpa, and go to bed.”

One half hour later, as Robert is getting Grandpa ready for bed, the crazy argument continues.

“If I was Jill I would go to the doctor with the instructions and tell him he is wrong,” Grandpa says, trying to get one last lick in before bedtime…

“If you were Jill, you could wear a dress,” Robert replied.

My stomach hurts now. Oddly enough after a little health episode of my own in January, I was prescribed Omeprazole. I don’t take it however. I don’t have chronic heart burn. But I’m sure burning tonight!

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The Approved Plan

by jillnovak on March 20, 2012

It isn’t often that we get a chance to repay our parents for all that they’ve done for us.

Sometimes Grandpa get’s on a kick that real Christianity is caring for orphans and widows and he wants to start a non-profit to minister to them (James 1:27), until I remind him that he’s a widower and I already have my hands full.

When I was changing him before lunch, he said to me, “Who thought when I was changing your diaper that you would someday be changing mine?”

“That’s a God’s approved plan,” he continued. “That’s real Christianity.”

That’s life full circle, Pops.  It’s payback time, I thought to myself.

Somehow I don’t think my diaper changes were as  profound.

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Running in Circles with Grandpa…

January 9, 2012

I haven’t written for a long time, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a lot to say, it only means that life got in the way of the written page, but some days just have to be recorded, not for posterity’s sake but for sanity’s sake. Today is one of those days, and I’m [...]

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Clearing the Fog in Nursing Homes? Things Grow Curiouser and Curiouser.

June 14, 2011

After almost two years of caring for my 90-year-old father with Parkinson’s, I’m starting to wonder what drug he was given that caused him to totally zone out and land him in the hospital, dehydrated and so drugged up that the hospital doctor thought he wouldn’t come out of it for ten days.  It didn’t [...]

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Staring into the Fog

June 14, 2011

I am supposed to be working today, but I can’t. My mind is in a “PCF” better known as a “Parkinson’s Caregiver’s Fog.” The last 24-hours have been a roller coaster of emotion as I try to wade through the quagmire (difficult situation: an awkward, complicated, or dangerous situation from which it is difficult to [...]

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Personal Training with The Muffin Man

June 5, 2011

The human spirit coupled with The Holy Spirit – the will to face your limitations courageously and find creative solutions – that’s   what I’ve seen in Grandpa. It’s taken a lot of courage and creativity for him to do as much as he can by himself, and humbly rely on family to do the rest. [...]

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Hidden Treasure

March 25, 2011

The first flower to emerge out of last year’s curled and decayed leaves was a snowdrop. A single bud blossomed on the first day of spring and lingered for a couple of weeks like a miniature ambassador heralding the long-awaited season of rebirth and growth. As winter storms subsided and the sun began to warm [...]

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Open the Floodgates

March 18, 2011

By mid-February, the warm breath of God melts the remains of a 100-year blizzard. Within hours, the huge snowdrifts, sculpted by an invisible finger of icy wind dissolve – leaving behind pools of nourishing moisture to replenish the earth. As the temperature fluctuates, the snow quickly recedes and the ground becomes saturated. The cycle repeats: [...]

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Be Still My Soul

February 27, 2011

Beneath the snow, my garden lies waiting for the rebirth of spring. For months, there have been no visible signs of growth – no change, no movement, no life. Frigid and cold, the world outside my window appears locked in a state of suspended animation. The sunflowers stoop low under heavy caps of crystallized snow. [...]

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Don’t Bite the Hand that Feeds You!

January 16, 2011

We live on a farm and keep an odd assortment of chickens and waterfowl. The chickens, for the most part, are a congenial lot, whereas, the waterfowl have an “ATTITUDE”   every day. You have to be really careful around a certain gander, named after a character we heard about on a children’s record from the [...]

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