My plate as they say too much is full.

One of my favorite people--Wanda, with her daughter Joelle. Wanda grew up in Puerto Rico too poor to have soda or go to movies. She does very well now. You are  really, really cool Wanda! This happy lady has 4 sons, also. To Marina, Joelle leads the life of a princess. She's the best-loved Mom of moms!

Courtney, Joelle, and Marina: Marina's best friends.

Marina and I with two of my favorite friends, Bob, left, and Jim West

Jim in front of the old stained glass studio. Jim plays guitar for Weird Al. They are making a CD now (March 2002). He also does the music for a new cartoon called the Book of Spells. He did the Moulin Rouge spoof on the Teen Choice Awards.

I alone have Siamese cockroaches.

Dots and Jade. Jade stayed in the house 7 months, then got out again and the same morning, he was  hit by a car -March 1, 2002 -and we found him  seemingly paralysed beside a  beautiful big dead black and white tom . .

He's the luckier one--just a seperated pelvic bone.He's a very cool cat--a playful adult who's  never                  sprayed or        wanted                out.

.Anytime I get up a second,   Jade sprawls wherever I was. He never misses a      chance, even now.

Tuala

Me at my computer in March. What can I say--I have no control over my face.

Marina introduced me to the coolest show. We missed the first 5 seasons but we'll catch up with the reruns--we're hooked! 7th Heaven has excellent writing, a perfect cast,and great timing--the youth of my daughters coincide with it. primo values: in one episode, the dad finds out a friend of the 20-year-old daughter's doesn't vote . As the guy hears a disturbing story about someone dying while waiting for their HMO to approve necessary surgury,  Reverend Camden says to him,"Health care is a political issue these days--another reason to vote." Very good.  .

My heart is getting bigger. I am retaining more fluids (is why my face is putty).What a wonderful time for my trusted cardiologist to go senile. Dr. Cintron used to see me every 3 months. The last time he saw me, he told them to book me in 6 months. I was uncomfortable with that, since I was on interferon which is dangerous to heart failure patients. Five months later my primary care physician told me to stop taking all my heart meds immediately and wrote me a referral to a cardiologist. I called Cintron's office and they called back and said he said to come in in 5 weeks. I said I have an appointment in 4 weeks and they said oh! Then just come in then , then! This is knowing I'd suffered a mysterious paralysed hand for 2 weeks and my blood pressure was so commonly at 80/39  I was told to stop all 4 heart pills I've been on for 5 years, including 2 you can't stop suddenly. I was in the E.R. the moment of my appointment, when it finally rolled around, with a bp of 145/80...I'd been urinating every 4 minutes for 2 weeks even off the lasix I'd been on for 5 years--and didn't know if I should be on the lasix or what to do, but a pain in my spleen area was too intense to go to the cardiologist's office with. E.R. doctors found a high white blood cell count and low platelets and put me on Cipro, the anthrax-buster.(I bet they do that to all the girls). I'm not so far off--a docotr on Medscape confesses that ER docs tend to guess bladder-urinary tract infection if the patient with abdominal pain is female, over 25 and not pregnant. (Under 25, they suspect STDs first).he said Bactrim works in one day for most women but some have new germs 2 weeks later and those treated with bactrim for 3 days don't ever have the recurrence so they give Bactrim to all women for 7 days. He said antibiotics are prescribed for 7 or 10 days not because it has been proven to work better in 7 than 5 or 8, but because we have 7 days in a week and 10 fingers.

The JGLB   Doll

My uncle Jack Young passed away of congestive heart failure recently. This is his backyard on Lake Michigan. He lived in Traverse City, Michigan.

I can pick  from quality doctors and avail myself of the latest technologies and concentrate on my health issues  and not the electric being cut off and repairs going undone on the house and my kids not being able to go outside because someone's smoking crack in our driveway. The girls and I are moving to a nicer place! And we are going to have a life three times nicer than you get on Social Security. It is an unbelievable generosity of spirit. I hardly dare get up off my knees and look about me. No one could have ever guessed my story could end so well.  Monica Lewinsky gets on her knees, and I like my own....

It's hard to take people up on offers to help. Wanda said to me, anything I can do to help, let me know, I want to help. She knew I had moved to Tampa-she caught me in the Land O' Lakes post office handing in a change of address order. I told her. She still wanted to be there for me. But realistically, how do I call her, 45 minutes away, and whine that my electric's been cut off, when we don't even have a  financial knowledge of each other.So it was just the nice way she offered, that I would have from her. But then Jade (see middle of this page ) got out when the maid did laundry, and confronted a neighbor's tom in the yard,which commenced to growling, so I grabbed jade up, and he bit me, which caused my arm to swell doube its size within hours. I spent 8 days in the hospital, including 9/11, on drip antibiotics while they tried to identify the invader , a pasturelli common to cats but which science knows little about how to handle in humans ; and then they cut off my tendonsheaths, which were necrotized.        Wanda kept Marina for me during some of that period.                                                           Which means, everything worked out great, except I still                                               had trouble making utility bills .

The kids and I were living off $9500 a year. Their child support was $181 a month each. Our electric bills were $200 a month.Siding the house, which was tarpaper, would cut the bill in half, but we couldn't save up for siding because the bills took all our money..

ER then referred me to my primary who again referred me to a cardiologist. Mine's office  said he could see me in 5 months. Could this be because I'm on Medicaid?

They both spent their elementary school years on the same street--she in a big house at the top, he in a little house at the bottom of the hill. At age 13 she moved away, and so did he. She attended a school on a ski lake adjacent to her home on a ski lake and boated all summer with all of her friends. He moved to a little town in the upper peninsula of Michigan and went to school with 20 kids in his graduating class. She held a series of dead-end jobs; he joined the service and worked overseas. Her parents were proud and told none of the wealthy relatives how their relative struggled; and the wealthy relatives died leaving their fortunes to charities because no family members needed it. His parents were poor and he founded a company and offered health insurance to all family members. He founded six more companies and went on to become very wealthy. She had two children and then became terminally ill. Her life was awful on Government Disability and Medicaid, which only the worst doctors accepted. They reunited at Classmates dot comma. Upon hearing of her struggle, he offered to give her a better life. He and his wife and daughter would provide all her and the children's medical through his goldplated insurance plan, move her to a better house, and give her $30,000 a year for the rest of her life. It presented no hardship to them to do this. And it would provide his old childhood chum access to  the newest medical procedures and best doctors, and best chance of being here longer for her children. It would also enable the family to tackle the killer diseases Mom had to fight with all their energies rather than also fighting for electricity or phone service to be restored, food to be on the table, etc. And thus ends the story of everyone wondering whatever happened to Deanne. I haven't picked where I want to move yet, I can live anywhere! One consideration is that my daughter Mary just got accepted (200 selected from 900 applications) for the only fine arts magnet high school in the area. She has to live in this county to attend. But after that we could move to any city, any state, any island. Not to mention that now I can get my computer fixed so watch out, people, here come my books! So, there are fairy tale endings! Loving every second, wish you the same happiness Deanne

This page is called Canticle because it is the canticle of the Change. We and our descendants will probably never think of it as  change but as destiny..this month, March 2002, our lives, mine, Marina's, and Mary's, change like Wanda's once did.Keep reading!

Here's my old pal, Ira--incredible real-world angel! I fooled around with him in Gifworks a little; it was his fifth grade class photo. I clicked on "line art". He really doesn't want me telling about him, so I'm not going into his last name. I was actually speechless when he presented his offer. Finally I said, "umhm"...