Just a few more things to pack into the car, and I’ll be ready for the final leg of my trip back home to Kansas. My mom is already there, having taken a flight out of Albuquerque yesterday morning. This weekend, I’ll post the whole story of how we managed to get waylaid here for two weeks. Till then, wish me luck. 
My mom and I left Tucson last Friday, hoping to make the trip back to Kansas in time for me to attend the office Halloween party Saturday night (I’d assembled a hasty pirate costume). Suffice it to say that things didn’t work out as planned.
I’m too wrung out to go into details at this point, but I’ll tell the whole tale in a future post. This is just a quick update to let friends know that I’m still alive, and that we’re working on getting out of here as fast as we can. The limiting factor is my mother’s health. The first leg of the road trip was much harder on her than we’d expected. Please keep her in your thoughts.
To distract myself from my problems, I will now post a flurry of tech-geek nonsense. Enjoy.
I’m back in Tucson, and have been since the seventeenth. It turns out that my mother, Angela, will get to come home sooner than expected.
Phone consultations with my mom’s Wichita-based allergist, and with the interior environment specialist who examined our house, revealed some stark disagreements with “Dr. Erickson’s” assertion that the house would never be habitable for her again. According to the allergist, Erickson’s is an extremist viewpoint that leaves her with virtually no options; according to the environment specialist, all that remained to be done was replacement of the carpet in the formerly-leaky loft.
When I returned to Kansas in late September, Angela was healthier than I’d seen her in years. Over the three and a half weeks that she was on her own, however, the burden of doing all her own shopping and errands — along with searching for an apartment1, buying a car to save money over renting one2, and getting exposed to pesticide when the bushes outside the hospitality house were sprayed — had caused her to deteriorate almost to her previous level of ill health.
Shortly after I came back, she started taking oil of oregano and olive leaf extract. Both were recommended by a Tucsonite she’d befriended who knows a great deal about natural medicine. She started to cough up a lot of the remaining crap in her lungs, which turned out to be a mixed blessing. This was apparently one of those “it gets worse before it gets better” things, and there were a couple of very scary episodes. Now, however, she’s breathing much better. I’m hopeful that this will continue to be the case.
The current plan is to take the new car (a 5-door Chevy Aveo) back to Kansas on Thursday. We’ll be heading north to Flagstaff, then taking I-40 east through Albuquerque and Arlington to Oklahoma City. At Oklahoma City, we take I-35 north back to Kansas. It’s a two-day trip; we’re currently looking for hotels in Albuquerque with Evergreen rooms, where my mom can stay the night without setting off her allergies. (more…)
Though I was supposed to return to Kansas last Friday, I’m still in Tucson. I’m long overdue for an update on the whole reason we came here — my mother’s health — so let me start from the top. If you’re just now joining this saga-in-progress, you can read this post first for all the back-story.
A few days after we arrived, Angela had her first doctor’s appointment. The doctor is a toxicologist specializing in patients who’ve had toxic mold exposures. Since repeating one of the things he said might get him in trouble with another physician at the University Medical Center, I’ll call him “Dr. Erickson.” He was sympathetic and very knowledgeable, but he couldn’t do much for her directly. He told us what kinds of specialists she should be seeing. He also gave us three bits of information that, while crucial, have forced a massive re-organization and re-assessment of this trip. (more…)
Just a quick update before I hit the sack: new photos from my trip to Tucson have been posted in the photoblog. Look under the “Tucson Trip 2005” category.
I keep meaning to post more extensively, but haven’t found the time. Will try to do better over the next couple of weeks.
