I'm posting twice today since I missed yesterday. Here is a baby picture of pearl playing under a rug. She noticed that David had had a stroke first and ran to the bathroom making a noise rather like a siren. I have never heard such a sound come out of a cat in all my years of being a cat owner. She met me at the door each night that I was able to come home and sat with me until I fell asleep.

In late May of last year, our lives changed forever. While showering after a normal day at work, my very healthy husband suffered a massive stroke. He had no history of high blood pressure or other illness. He did, however, have occasional allergy related migraines with auras. We learned that people who have auras with migraines are at a higher risk for stroke.

I heard a loud thump form the bathroom and jumped up because I feared my husband had slipped in the shower. The cats—still kittens really--behaved very oddly meowing and running toward the bathroom. I broke into a run. When I reached the door, I found that I could not open it because my husband had fallen against it. I could hear him calling for me in a weak hoarse voice so unlike his own voice. I wondered what could totally change a person’s voice like that and began to be terribly afraid.

After a few minutes of a panicked attempt to push the door open, I forced my self to admit we needed help right now and called 911. The EMS people pried the door off and rushed my husband to the nearest hospital. There I was told that he was suffering a hemorrhagic stroke to the right side of the brain. The hospital called for a helicopter to forward him to a hospital in a larger city where he could be seen by a neurologist. The helicopter was already out for a car wreck. I could see by the doctor’s face that he felt this was a death sentence. They told me to tell my husband goodbye and loaded him in a ambulance bound for a city an hour away. I did not say goodbye as I feared he would give up. I said with all the conviction I could muster, “we are going to a better doctor. Hang on, Honey. We will be there soon.”

The ambulance driver drove 85 to 90 miles per hour except for the times she had to turn. We arrived at the hospital in a remarkably short time considering the distance. I had begun to shiver uncontrollably on the way with shock and was wearing only lightweight warm weather clothing. My husband was taken for another CAT scan at the city hospital. In comparison to the one taken earlier, it showed he had continued to bleed into his brain.

I met briefly with the surgeon. He recommended immediate brain surgery to remove the blood pressing on my husband’s brain. I was again told to tell my husband goodbye. I kissed him and told him in a calm assured voice that they were going to put him to sleep and operate on his head and he would feel better when he woke up.

I was grateful that his two bosses came and staid with me awhile. They left and I waited in the surgery waiting room alone for some time. Then the surgeon and several other people came in. I could not read either success or failure in their postures and the number of people unsettled me. Then they told me that he was alive, but they didn’t know if the bleeding would begin again. It was wait and see if he made it through the night, and then the next 3 days would be the most critical time. The anesthesiologist asked my husband’s age, which I told him is 55. He had come to tell me that they seldom saw a man of 40 in such good health.

My husband showed some responsiveness a couple hours later by squeezing my hand as I sat by his bed in the ICU. I staid up the next three days, sitting by his bed and holding his hand constantly. The nurses and doctors complemented me on my calmness. Little did they know that my jaws hurt from keeping them clamped tightly shut so I wouldn’t scream. A week later when he was more alert, the nurses got my husband up for the first time while his sheets were changed. I was in front of him and he leaned forward. At first the people helping him were afraid he had lost his balance, then one said, “Oh, he wants to kiss her. The nurse and three CNAs held him as he hugged me with his right arm and kissed me. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

The thing that interests me the most about research is that everything around us has a history.  The origins of the flowers in a garden and the story of how they each came to be available to us would give a pretty complete history lesson. Did you know that the seeds of the humble hollyhock traveled to England from the Holy Land in the saddlebags of returning Crusaders? Or that the tulip industry originated from the theft of bulbs given to a Dutch university that were gifts presented by a Turkish diplomat. Tulips soon became a source of speculation, after people learned to give them a virus that damaged the color gene sometimes resulting in spectacular varieties like red and yellow striped tulips. Roses imported from China were considered so important that they were actually given safe passage through Napoleonic Naval blockades. Those Valentine’s Day roses are pretty expensive, but they were once a gift fit for an empress. Josephine first brought them to Europe for her garden at Malmaison.

    It is the New Year, and I am feeling a bit of nostalgia, so I decided to post pictures of my cats from when they were kittens just over a year ago.

Pearl is a Siamese mix with short dense grey fur with white feet and nose and underbelly. She prances along like a dancer and loves to run and jump. We often say Pearl is to Cat as Greyhound is to Dog.

Cameo, a white cat with black markings, is a longhaired Persian mix. She is ever curious and always in a scrape. Despite her stocky build, she is the most airborne of the two cats and loves to leap into the air to catch balls or rubber bands. All four of her paws have black toes, which looks amazing against the white fur on her paws. 

Baby Pearl Jumping

Baby Cameo with some of her black toes showing

Rosacea was first described by Chaucer in his work The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s in his description of

THE SUMMONER
A summoner was with us in that place,
Who had a fiery-red, cherubic face,
For eczema he had; his eyes were narrow
As hot he was, and lecherous, as a sparrow;
With black and scabby brows and scanty beard;
He had a face that little children feared.
There was no mercury, sulphur, or litharge,
No borax, ceruse, tartar, could discharge,
Nor ointment that could cleanse enough, or bite,
To free him of his boils and pimples white,
Nor of the bosses resting on his cheeks.
Well loved he garlic, onions, aye and leeks,
And drinking of strong wine as red as blood.

whose alcohol trigger is noted. Being of Northern European descent, I unfortunately inherited Rosacea. My triggers include the red pepper family. I have often heard it said that those with Rosacea should not eat mustard, but I find that, for me, it is not the mustard but the paprika in most prepared mustards that is the problem. You too might be able to enjoy mustard again. I mix powdered mustard with rice flour in a 1 part mustard to 12 parts rice flour proportion and moisten the mixture with a little water, some vinegar (between 1 teaspoon  and a tablespoon--depending on how sour you like your mustard), and a tablespoon or two of honey or corn syrup.