Family Ties

[Guest guest]

My MIL, who is elderly, has shortened bowel syndrome. Turns out she

had an undiagnosed heart thing, an embolism formed, broke off, lodged

in her intestine and stopped blood flow basically causing part of her

bowel to be nonfunctional and required surgery. The shortened bowel

thing is not so rare but how it occurred is extremely rare, and

fortunate as typically an uncaught embolism spells real horror.

Anyway, malabsorption and bowel stuff is not so foreign to us and her

story and mine was part of my realization that swift action was

needed, my children's bodies were too much like their ailing 80 year

old grandma.

I digress. My MIL is from Slovakia. She is old school and grew up on

a dairy farm and was likely a DAN before such a name existed. One of

the many things she has done is work as a nurses aide. She had a

brain cancer client once. She made the woman nettle tea and poured

over texts and tried to help the lady. Swedish bitters compress on

the head, garlic meals, the whole 9 yards. Hubby, when he had to come

clean about the changes over at our house, explained what I was doing

by comparing it to that. That client was seen by a doctor a year

after MIL started caring for her. The oncologist asked if she was

seeing another dr. because she was doing so well and he anticipated

she'd have died by now. If memory serves me the lady lived 8 more

years. I asked MIL recently about swedish bitters (merely curious,

not planning on getting them) and she looked at me and lied "

Horrible stuff, tey hurt that lady, don't use them on my grandbabies. "

I loved it. So true. I get that she does not trust me in this. I

don't either. Just try what works and keep on moving.