I am at Eviljob, taking a break. I'll get off later tonight and have pizza with Meg, then I have to make her think it's her idea to go out somewhere nice tomorrow, just the two of us. I am broke, and she's not much better off (financially, 2010 has kicked our collective asses), but I *want* to go do something, damn it.
Gah....more later.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Friday, December 31, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
So they say it's Christmas time.
My personal favourite part of Christmas so far is the zombie apocalypse nightmares where Mom, Meg, my brother and I are in someone's house in another city and the power is still on, then Meg and Brat leave to get food and leave me with Mom, and as I woke up this morning, I was shopping with Mummers in another city where the outbreak hadn't hit yet and Meg and Brat still hadn't shown back up.
For some reason, this dream has really upset me. And I don't know where anyone else was. Pfft. Like, merry Christmas.
I am getting really heavily depressed over Mom's death and my brother's deployment.
I suck at keeping in contact with anyone anymore. It isn't just you, blog. My plan is simply to have a good day today and tomorrow. And to feed the cats at Eviljob. They haven't been liking the weather, but they are okay.
I wrote something last night at work, then forgot to post it 'cos This Guy cannot seem to understand that I want to be left alone. so what I wrote is below:
At the moment, which is eight-ish p.m., I am at work. This is unfair for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that I just yesterday finished a conference proposal that appears to be a watershed in my career (as if anyone but myself gave a damn). This is the first of many which will not be undersigned by She Who Hath No Name, and I am not overly upset by this. I guess that makes me a free agent, if not yet an actual professional.
I have excelled for years at being an actual unprofessional, however.
Lawd, I am funny. It’s why you love me.
Butsoanyway.
So I (we, but I am not discussing this part at this time) got it in, and so that’s good. This morning, I had what I hope is my last physician’s appointment of 2010, only to find that I have a UTI that I cannot seem to shake. So after two rounds of Bactrim, I am on Cipro. Sigh.
And there is someone here who has their radio on xmas carols just loud enough for me to hear only certain parts of each song; one of the songs being played frequently – from this distance – has this theremin-like, repetitive whistling sound…sort of like xmas carols for aliens, or something. It’s kind of cool. I was, in fact, just sitting here thinking about how cool it would be in a dystopian-type way, and was halfway thinking about writing a story about it when I remembered that I haven’t any free time these days. Bleurgh.
Oh, and before anyone decides to get offended at ‘xmas’, please, please, please go look at Paul Brians’ errors page. Thank you.
Butsoanyway.
So I am all crampy and crappy, and will have to go in a bit, but in the meantime…
Ummm…in the meantime, I’m here. Brill.
I am still not finished with holiday shopping, but I really don’t give a damn; I am so depressed still that I cannot see straight. I am forcing Meg to go with me tomorrow and Saturday so I won’t be alone, but it will not be the same without Mummers. And I do not feel like being with my father. I will admit this here, and nowhere else. I know he is, as we all are, not long for this world, and my stepmother was diagnosed with MS this year also (I may have failed to mention that here – she went blind in one eye, and was diagnosed. Apparently she has had previous episodes and not noticed, from what her doctor said. Now the good news of this is that, because of her age, it is highly likely that she will be largely asymptomatic for the remainder of her life now that she is taking appropriate medication. The bad news is that, well, she has MS.), but…I just do not feel like it, especially if he is going to go off on a tirade about how terrible Mummers is, which is what he did the time before the last time that I visited him. So I am a crappy daughter. Meh.
----------------
I just don't feel like finishing. Here's hoping we all have a good couple of days.
For some reason, this dream has really upset me. And I don't know where anyone else was. Pfft. Like, merry Christmas.
I am getting really heavily depressed over Mom's death and my brother's deployment.
I suck at keeping in contact with anyone anymore. It isn't just you, blog. My plan is simply to have a good day today and tomorrow. And to feed the cats at Eviljob. They haven't been liking the weather, but they are okay.
I wrote something last night at work, then forgot to post it 'cos This Guy cannot seem to understand that I want to be left alone. so what I wrote is below:
At the moment, which is eight-ish p.m., I am at work. This is unfair for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that I just yesterday finished a conference proposal that appears to be a watershed in my career (as if anyone but myself gave a damn). This is the first of many which will not be undersigned by She Who Hath No Name, and I am not overly upset by this. I guess that makes me a free agent, if not yet an actual professional.
I have excelled for years at being an actual unprofessional, however.
Lawd, I am funny. It’s why you love me.
Butsoanyway.
So I (we, but I am not discussing this part at this time) got it in, and so that’s good. This morning, I had what I hope is my last physician’s appointment of 2010, only to find that I have a UTI that I cannot seem to shake. So after two rounds of Bactrim, I am on Cipro. Sigh.
And there is someone here who has their radio on xmas carols just loud enough for me to hear only certain parts of each song; one of the songs being played frequently – from this distance – has this theremin-like, repetitive whistling sound…sort of like xmas carols for aliens, or something. It’s kind of cool. I was, in fact, just sitting here thinking about how cool it would be in a dystopian-type way, and was halfway thinking about writing a story about it when I remembered that I haven’t any free time these days. Bleurgh.
Oh, and before anyone decides to get offended at ‘xmas’, please, please, please go look at Paul Brians’ errors page. Thank you.
Butsoanyway.
So I am all crampy and crappy, and will have to go in a bit, but in the meantime…
Ummm…in the meantime, I’m here. Brill.
I am still not finished with holiday shopping, but I really don’t give a damn; I am so depressed still that I cannot see straight. I am forcing Meg to go with me tomorrow and Saturday so I won’t be alone, but it will not be the same without Mummers. And I do not feel like being with my father. I will admit this here, and nowhere else. I know he is, as we all are, not long for this world, and my stepmother was diagnosed with MS this year also (I may have failed to mention that here – she went blind in one eye, and was diagnosed. Apparently she has had previous episodes and not noticed, from what her doctor said. Now the good news of this is that, because of her age, it is highly likely that she will be largely asymptomatic for the remainder of her life now that she is taking appropriate medication. The bad news is that, well, she has MS.), but…I just do not feel like it, especially if he is going to go off on a tirade about how terrible Mummers is, which is what he did the time before the last time that I visited him. So I am a crappy daughter. Meh.
----------------
I just don't feel like finishing. Here's hoping we all have a good couple of days.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Some things are better
Well, i asked to be repayed and i'm told that i will be. Tomorrow. We shall see.
In Other News, Sabra is batshit still. She posted some crap in (bad) Russian...she is losing her crackers.
Of all the things i have applied for, is it wrong for me to have been reflecting today that teaching in UT wouldn't be so bad?
Sigh. Time for sleep. I have been put on a low dose of Ativan and start a new blood pressure pill in the morning, even though my diastolic was in the low 90's. Doc says that even if that's stress (and i believe it is), it's too high. So i was moved to Metoprolol, and I cried. Mummers took Metoprolol. That's when Doc wrote the prescription for Ativan at night. So i cried more...Mom took Ativan in hospital and was allergic to it (seniors and children tend to exhibit paradoxical reactions to some drugs -- instead of calming them, it agitates them, or instead of wiring them up, it calms them down), though I didn't know Mom was allergic to it (okay, exhibiting a paradoxical reaction; 'allergic' is easier) when they were giving it to her at first. We didn't know until one Bright Cookie MICU nurse thought that 2mg Ativan was too much for Mom and gave her 0.05mg -- Mom was up all night, upset. The 2mg was agitating her as well, but it was also knocking her mostly out. On the nurse's recommendation, we requested it be pulled and listed as an allergy.
In case you ever need to know, a good go-to for seniors (or anyone exhibiting a paradoxical reaction) is Haldol. I guess I don't need this information any more.
Doc says at this rate, i'm not getting off the blood pressure meds any time soon.
Flustrated!
Yes, that's right; I am appropriating the non-word 'flustrated' to describe the feeling one has when a grammar nazi (or nazis) cannot get past the your/you're or they're/their kind of mistakes under any circumstances.
I mean, do you honestly mean to tell me that if your little child hand-wrote a card for you which said 'YOUR THE BEST MOM (or Dad)', that you would sit the kid down and talk to them about their grammar? What if it were a Special Ed kid? What if it were just some random app-writing fucknut on Facebook?
One of my really dear friends sent a hug to me on Facebook that contained a your/you're swap. It's not been two hours, and already I have two comments (one of them is a cousin ::hangs head::) trying to show off how 'smart' they are by pointing out the error.
How. Fucking. Rude.
I hate pedants. I make fun of mistakes, but I don't have the urge to invariably piss on *everyone's* parade just to show how so-called intelligent I am. Especially right now -- with both of them fully aware my life is Hell -- when I actually *am* grateful that ANYONE would take two minutes to do something nice for me...it just makes me rage.
It makes me FLUSTRATED. So there. Nyah. I have just proclaimed 'flustrated' to be a real word.
I would have gone off on them on my wall, but I have, like, dignity.
Butsoanyway.
I had an SRP this morning, and I am *still* in pain. I have a ton to write, and am dreading my brother leaving.
Yes, that's right: I'm still scared.
If I didn't have Karen, I don't know what I would do; I haven't felt like talking much, but she lost both parents when she was in her early twenties (both to cancer), and knows how cast-adrift I am feeling.
Lord...I am falling asleep. Hugs, love, and hopefully no flustration. <3
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
I mean, do you honestly mean to tell me that if your little child hand-wrote a card for you which said 'YOUR THE BEST MOM (or Dad)', that you would sit the kid down and talk to them about their grammar? What if it were a Special Ed kid? What if it were just some random app-writing fucknut on Facebook?
One of my really dear friends sent a hug to me on Facebook that contained a your/you're swap. It's not been two hours, and already I have two comments (one of them is a cousin ::hangs head::) trying to show off how 'smart' they are by pointing out the error.
How. Fucking. Rude.
I hate pedants. I make fun of mistakes, but I don't have the urge to invariably piss on *everyone's* parade just to show how so-called intelligent I am. Especially right now -- with both of them fully aware my life is Hell -- when I actually *am* grateful that ANYONE would take two minutes to do something nice for me...it just makes me rage.
It makes me FLUSTRATED. So there. Nyah. I have just proclaimed 'flustrated' to be a real word.
I would have gone off on them on my wall, but I have, like, dignity.
Butsoanyway.
I had an SRP this morning, and I am *still* in pain. I have a ton to write, and am dreading my brother leaving.
Yes, that's right: I'm still scared.
If I didn't have Karen, I don't know what I would do; I haven't felt like talking much, but she lost both parents when she was in her early twenties (both to cancer), and knows how cast-adrift I am feeling.
Lord...I am falling asleep. Hugs, love, and hopefully no flustration. <3
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Monday, December 06, 2010
It's Xmas...for Hitler... o/~
I am okay. Still depressed, nervous, and scared, but okay. My brother leaves for his deployment weekend after next, and I am really wondering what else could possibly happen to make this the worst Holiday Season EVER.
I am sure They'll think of something.
I am only treading water in the classes I am teaching; I am behind in making MOAR changes to my writing. I feel as if my job applications have turned into hail mary passes. Most of my friends are tired of my depression, so I have been staying quiet.
I still miss Mom and think about her every day. I still cry every day. I got invited to go see Tron Legacy weekend after next, and turned it down because I am cutting back so far in my budget and because that is the weekend that my brother leaves, and I don't think I am going to feel like doing anything, anyway. As far as I know, after I see him this weekend, I may never see him -- alive -- again. I will enter into six months of constant terror that something has happened, and I just haven't heard yet. And the way I expect things to go, it won't be for just six months.
And I know this has become tedious to hear...it has become tedious to LIVE. And I don't know how to make it all stop.
I don't know why anyone would want to be still reading this, but I guess I apologise in advance. I must have been a very bad person in a previous life. ::smirk::
And I *am* sorry about being depressing; I hate it, too.
In Other News, the cats are fine (Sweetie, my newfound sleep-buddy, is right beside me), and at Eviljob, Butler II is trying hard to learn to meow at me. He's a sweet cat. I wish I could take him.
Sabra is literally insane; I have been avoiding her like the plague. This person she's decided is The One is a former *student* of hers (this is a very bad area, ethically; it's generally a good idea to not get involved in that way with students), and it turns out that he is *engaged*. So...I am totally avoiding her. She is talking crazy, and...I just cannot deal right now.
This Guy is being sort of okay, but largely no support whatsoever. I tried to talk to him tonight about my brother, and he kept changing the subject back to him. I am tired of it. I almost told him to just quit phoning me, but I held off because I don't want to make a decision out of anger or hurt, and it seems like that is all I feel anymore.
I have to change things. I have to change EVERYTHING. I just don't know how to yet. And I hate feeling like this.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
I am sure They'll think of something.
I am only treading water in the classes I am teaching; I am behind in making MOAR changes to my writing. I feel as if my job applications have turned into hail mary passes. Most of my friends are tired of my depression, so I have been staying quiet.
I still miss Mom and think about her every day. I still cry every day. I got invited to go see Tron Legacy weekend after next, and turned it down because I am cutting back so far in my budget and because that is the weekend that my brother leaves, and I don't think I am going to feel like doing anything, anyway. As far as I know, after I see him this weekend, I may never see him -- alive -- again. I will enter into six months of constant terror that something has happened, and I just haven't heard yet. And the way I expect things to go, it won't be for just six months.
And I know this has become tedious to hear...it has become tedious to LIVE. And I don't know how to make it all stop.
I don't know why anyone would want to be still reading this, but I guess I apologise in advance. I must have been a very bad person in a previous life. ::smirk::
And I *am* sorry about being depressing; I hate it, too.
In Other News, the cats are fine (Sweetie, my newfound sleep-buddy, is right beside me), and at Eviljob, Butler II is trying hard to learn to meow at me. He's a sweet cat. I wish I could take him.
Sabra is literally insane; I have been avoiding her like the plague. This person she's decided is The One is a former *student* of hers (this is a very bad area, ethically; it's generally a good idea to not get involved in that way with students), and it turns out that he is *engaged*. So...I am totally avoiding her. She is talking crazy, and...I just cannot deal right now.
This Guy is being sort of okay, but largely no support whatsoever. I tried to talk to him tonight about my brother, and he kept changing the subject back to him. I am tired of it. I almost told him to just quit phoning me, but I held off because I don't want to make a decision out of anger or hurt, and it seems like that is all I feel anymore.
I have to change things. I have to change EVERYTHING. I just don't know how to yet. And I hate feeling like this.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Running away
I had to get out of the house for an hour, so I am up at this Mom & Pop seafood place that is cheap-but-annoying. I'm meeting Harry and then it's back to writing. When I finish this one project, I'm starting on a personal project while I continue to submit applications and crap. The xmas carols are going in here, and I honestly think I like this place cos it reminds me of a place I used to go sometimes when I was up North. Really similar decor, layout, etc...
Ok...gotta go.
Grr.
So last night was another one of those nights where I don't sleep a wink, obsessing over everything from my finances to Mummers to my brother. And yes, I took pills; they stopped working at least a month ago. I won't take sleeping pills, but I did take clonazepam, and I at least stopped crying. This is how it goes every night.
Did I tell you that I'd been put on blood pressure meds? Well, when Mom was being murdered, I was (I know; shocking). Well, on Sunday, as I was trying to get stuff written, my lip swelled up like a collagen injection nightmare. I could breathe okay, but took 50mg Benadryl just in case. I tried to keep working, but my lip was getting so big that I was looking like Bubba, from Forrest Gump. So I raced to a walk-in clinic run by the hospital that murdered my mother (they have a monopoly here), and was diagnosed with an ACE inhibitor allergy and told to discontinue lisinopril immediately. So I did, and...::drum roll::...my blood pressure is normal. Still. Word to the wise, don't just jump on blood pressure meds after one or two readings, especially if you have major stress in your life. That shit can kill you if you 1) don't need it or 2) are allergic. Just sayin'.
Now I am debating what to do...writing, nap, or...well, those are really my only choices. I have today off from Eviljob, so I'm leaning towards a nap first. I am really having trouble regulating my sleep, but I won't take sleeping pills, ever. They don't help. And they almost killed Mom in the rehab centre.
I have just one small portion to finish on this one project, but it always seems insurmountable at that stage, you know? I'm hoping I can muster up some of that despair that keeps me up at night after an hour of sleep. And I don't write past about one a.m.; I do try to gear down and all, but I turn off the lights and no matter how tired I am, my brain kicks on. I honestly get on my iPod and do stuff just to not feel so alone. Maybe I'll start taking melatonin.
Okay...work or sleep time, followed by sleep or work time. Sigh.
And I haven't even told you about what needless stress This Guy is being. On Sunday, as I'm freaking out over deadlines and my lip, his car died cos he didn't change the timing belt. To me, that counts as a personal oops. Learn better next time. But he phones me as if I am supposed to do anything about it, so I just played Stupid Girl and didn't help him fix it -- no tow, nothing. He's a big boy, older than me, and needs to clean up his own messes, and I refuse to get sucked into his drama. No one rescues me, for fuck's sake.
Anyway, so I am a shitty person. And I don't care.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Did I tell you that I'd been put on blood pressure meds? Well, when Mom was being murdered, I was (I know; shocking). Well, on Sunday, as I was trying to get stuff written, my lip swelled up like a collagen injection nightmare. I could breathe okay, but took 50mg Benadryl just in case. I tried to keep working, but my lip was getting so big that I was looking like Bubba, from Forrest Gump. So I raced to a walk-in clinic run by the hospital that murdered my mother (they have a monopoly here), and was diagnosed with an ACE inhibitor allergy and told to discontinue lisinopril immediately. So I did, and...::drum roll::...my blood pressure is normal. Still. Word to the wise, don't just jump on blood pressure meds after one or two readings, especially if you have major stress in your life. That shit can kill you if you 1) don't need it or 2) are allergic. Just sayin'.
Now I am debating what to do...writing, nap, or...well, those are really my only choices. I have today off from Eviljob, so I'm leaning towards a nap first. I am really having trouble regulating my sleep, but I won't take sleeping pills, ever. They don't help. And they almost killed Mom in the rehab centre.
I have just one small portion to finish on this one project, but it always seems insurmountable at that stage, you know? I'm hoping I can muster up some of that despair that keeps me up at night after an hour of sleep. And I don't write past about one a.m.; I do try to gear down and all, but I turn off the lights and no matter how tired I am, my brain kicks on. I honestly get on my iPod and do stuff just to not feel so alone. Maybe I'll start taking melatonin.
Okay...work or sleep time, followed by sleep or work time. Sigh.
And I haven't even told you about what needless stress This Guy is being. On Sunday, as I'm freaking out over deadlines and my lip, his car died cos he didn't change the timing belt. To me, that counts as a personal oops. Learn better next time. But he phones me as if I am supposed to do anything about it, so I just played Stupid Girl and didn't help him fix it -- no tow, nothing. He's a big boy, older than me, and needs to clean up his own messes, and I refuse to get sucked into his drama. No one rescues me, for fuck's sake.
Anyway, so I am a shitty person. And I don't care.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Welcome December...
I think I won't be okay until I get a job. You know -- the Career one, not the 212 other things I do. And yeah, I am a little freaked out. And I'm not over Mom, and I am terrified that I am about to lose my brother. So yeah, I am not all Christmassy yet. :-/
I'm depressed and scared, and it's hard to keep up this front of holding it together when I'm not. Meg isn't much better emotionally, nor is my brother, but they aren't in the mess I am in financially, either. After the spur-of-the moment death expenses, none of us are planning any cruises in the near future (the three of us had to divide the cost because Mom's Master Plan involved not ever dying, so she had nothing planned), but after paying to get my car in shape earlier this year so that I could drive her two hours to chemotherapy, the funeral killed me. And I'm not asking for money, so don't. This is where I talk honestly, so there. Things aren't good.
It may be September-ish before I am employed...it will probably be then, *if* then. And I'm scared. And before Mom went in hospital the first time -- in August -- I did something really stupid; I lent someone money for a new car battery ($100, not counting the 'core charge' of $12 that I never got back either), and then I lent them tuition money ($1180) that I was assured I would get back in September. Well, when I asked at the beginning of November how that 'paying me back' thing was going, I was assured I'd get my $1,000. Somehow what *I* am considering a $1,300 debt became a $1,000 one that I still don't have back. I hate it when people act this way, and were Mom alive (and were I to tell her about it), she would be disgusted with me and probably quote 'neither a borrower, nor a lender be'. Several times. So I'm a goose, true. Never again, though. Never, ever again.
It sucks so badly that good people with honest hearts end up getting fucked. It seems at times that the only way to survive is to cut everyone away and focus only on saving oneself. I am not worried about any kind of karmic repercussions, as Karma never seems to get around to kicking the asses of my foes. Sigh.
I was told on Monday that I look like Death, and that's not the first time someone's told me that. It's not meant in a bad way, they meant Gaiman's personification of Death (on my To Read list, if ever time allows, and I'll try to attach 'the' drawing if I can here, it's one drawing in particular; if someone Nagled me, this'd be close) but...if I were she, I would certainly spend this weekend righting some wrongs. No, really...I would. Actually, I would be a lot more relaxed if I were Death. I'd not have taken Mom, and I'd know my cats and brother will be okay, too. Meg as well, for that matter. And then I would go after Evildoers and try to help people. Being Death would rock...at least the way *I* would do it. I've no clue if Gaiman's Death is half as cool as me. Probably not; when on my game, I can be pretty freaking cool. :->
Hugs and love this season. If you are reading this, I <3 you. Do good things.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
I'm depressed and scared, and it's hard to keep up this front of holding it together when I'm not. Meg isn't much better emotionally, nor is my brother, but they aren't in the mess I am in financially, either. After the spur-of-the moment death expenses, none of us are planning any cruises in the near future (the three of us had to divide the cost because Mom's Master Plan involved not ever dying, so she had nothing planned), but after paying to get my car in shape earlier this year so that I could drive her two hours to chemotherapy, the funeral killed me. And I'm not asking for money, so don't. This is where I talk honestly, so there. Things aren't good.
It may be September-ish before I am employed...it will probably be then, *if* then. And I'm scared. And before Mom went in hospital the first time -- in August -- I did something really stupid; I lent someone money for a new car battery ($100, not counting the 'core charge' of $12 that I never got back either), and then I lent them tuition money ($1180) that I was assured I would get back in September. Well, when I asked at the beginning of November how that 'paying me back' thing was going, I was assured I'd get my $1,000. Somehow what *I* am considering a $1,300 debt became a $1,000 one that I still don't have back. I hate it when people act this way, and were Mom alive (and were I to tell her about it), she would be disgusted with me and probably quote 'neither a borrower, nor a lender be'. Several times. So I'm a goose, true. Never again, though. Never, ever again.
It sucks so badly that good people with honest hearts end up getting fucked. It seems at times that the only way to survive is to cut everyone away and focus only on saving oneself. I am not worried about any kind of karmic repercussions, as Karma never seems to get around to kicking the asses of my foes. Sigh.
I was told on Monday that I look like Death, and that's not the first time someone's told me that. It's not meant in a bad way, they meant Gaiman's personification of Death (on my To Read list, if ever time allows, and I'll try to attach 'the' drawing if I can here, it's one drawing in particular; if someone Nagled me, this'd be close) but...if I were she, I would certainly spend this weekend righting some wrongs. No, really...I would. Actually, I would be a lot more relaxed if I were Death. I'd not have taken Mom, and I'd know my cats and brother will be okay, too. Meg as well, for that matter. And then I would go after Evildoers and try to help people. Being Death would rock...at least the way *I* would do it. I've no clue if Gaiman's Death is half as cool as me. Probably not; when on my game, I can be pretty freaking cool. :->
Hugs and love this season. If you are reading this, I <3 you. Do good things.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Happy-ish Squooshgiving
It's one month since Mom died, and I don't feel a bit better. Just in case anyone is keeping track.
Squoosh has a vet appointment today, and I can't tell if this lump has shrunk, which I guess means it hasn't.
I can't sleep much anymore, and I am depressed. And This Guy, who can't be bothered to offer support or anything on my Facebook wall (not that I care, but my point is...), has to make a big deal about my posting something about having a procedure and how I didn't tell him, as if he's my fucking HMO or something. And I *had* told him, he was just too busy rambling on about himself to listen. As usual. And what really enraged me was that he couldn't even be bothered to spell check, he just dashed off this 'I'm raging' post. And then he leaves a voicemail message with this harsh 'call me' shit because, as is clear, he is so worried over my health (that was sarcasm; this seems to me to be a control thing, and no-one controls me). I just figured that I'd kill multiple birds with one stone, and I posted on fbk that it was a colonoscopy (true -- as Mom was being murdered, I cropped up with every physical malady you can think of, including passing blood and constant diarrhoea, even when I'd skip eating for two days, so what the fuck I was crapping out at that point is anyone's guess, but my dr wanted a colorectal surgeon to look at me, and he, in turn, wanted a colonoscopy). Then, after I posted that (why he couldn't have texted, I *still* don't know; I should have told him it was an abortion, haha; I'm so off my game right now), he THEN starts posting about how great I am, and all this other shite, as if I believe it at this point.
Well, I say 'all this other shite', but it was really only two posts. He has never gone on about how great I am. So whatever.
In addition to writing my ass off (dissertation, articles), I am job hunting for university positions, which means I move, and I guess this situation with This Guy will resolve itself then, if not before.
And yes, I did try talking to him about how addressing me that way, especially on my wall when he has my fucking phone number, is not acceptable. I got one email from my cousin with a 'who is This Guy?' in it, and I told her, truthfully, he's no one. He's in the penalty box, and may not emerge from it in this lifetime.
So my colonoscopy probably went okay, I don't know for sure cos I left. The surgeon lied to me; I'd told him I didn't want to deal with the hospital system that killed my mom, and he told me he had an outpatient surgery centre 'around the corner' from his main office, and stupid me didn't realise it was another branch of this same hospital system until I showed up that morning. They were hideous, they fucked up my IV, and I had shooting pain up my arm, and when they gave me the anaesthesia, it felt like my wrist was being pulled apart. When I came to, it was probably closer to that scene in Resident Evil where Alice wakes up and everyone is gone. I pulled my shit (freezing to death and cramping like hell) out from under the bed, and took two tramadol (pills and diet coke in my Bag of Holding, tyvm), got dressed (only falling twice), texted Harry to go get the car, and unhooked myself from everything. I have a blood bruise the size of a small ant hill on my hand. The nurse assigned to me tried to tell me Harry wasn't in the waiting room so I couldn't leave yet, and I pulled this thing I used to do in high school (my friends used to call it my jedi mind trick, and it still fucking works...go figure) -- I looked at her very seriously and said 'he's in the gift shop; go get him'...and she fucking did it -- she literally fucking left the recovery room and (I assume) went to the gift shop, looking for someone who she couldn't pick out of a crowd to save her soul. I have never understood how that works; you have someone who has been under sedation for thirty minutes, and could have no earthly way to know where their ride is, but when they order you to march to the moon, you do. Fucking ridiculous.
Word of warning: the issuing orders thing only works on certain types, so have a back-up plan ready, and you have to say whatever it is like it's a certainty, so have your Mommy Voice ready.
Anyway, my addled nurse had two smarter cohorts in the room, and as soon as she left, I was dressed and unhooked in seconds and walking out. Then they came running over with the 'you can't do that, sit down, I'm phoning Security, blah, blah, blah...' I told them to ban me for life, and walked out (okay, stumbled and staggered out). I just followed the exit signs, cos I had no idea where I was, and thankfully I chose right and exited just as Harry was pulling up.
I had told him that he had better be ready to get me the fuck out of there (the only reason I didn't cancel once I saw where it was being held was in case there *is* something wrong), and he did, so despite the fact that I was in total misery, I stopped at the store with him and bought a turkey and some stuff for Thursday for him and Cindy. Then I went home and took more pills and more or less went to sleep. I had a bunch of dreams that weren't nightmares, so that's a first, and Mom's cat Sweetie slept with me. We're sleep buddies now.
Sweetie's cute, in a big dumb tank kind of way. She's taken one of my fake Halloween spiders (about as big as a child's hand) and put it in a place I've named Spider Training Ground Alpha, where she attacks it from all different scenario angles, royally kicks its ass, and is really happy each day when I put the spider back into starting position (under the broom, facing outwards) at Spider Training Ground Alpha. The damned spider has scared the piss out of me more than once when Sweetie has beaten it all the way into the foyer, the kitchen, the hall, etc... She's cute. I think she is really in training for the upcoming spider apocalypse. Maybe cats worry about that the way we worry about zombies.
Sigh...I'm playing Words With Friends with This Guy, and I just got the push message that he played his turn, which means he's fucking off at work, but also means he's poking me to see if I'm talking to him yet (I yelled at him on the phone last night). I'm not going to text or respond, though. I AM still angry at him, and not just for the colonoscopy thing. Last night I yelled cos he wants me to spend Thanksgiving with him, and I said no. So he asked *again* last night, and I said no...again. So then he asked AGAIN, and I told him that, in case he'd forgotten, one month ago today, my mother, who was batshit crazy, but I loved with all my heart, died right in front of my eyes, with me unable to do anything to save her. So I DON'T feel like hanging out with anyone, or doing anything, on the first Thanksgiving that I won't have Mummers. Every year -- EVERY year -- I, or Meg and I, would come up with something special to do for her for Thanksgiving. Sure, we enjoyed it as well, but we did it for her -- and I heard her more than once talking about 'the girls took me here, the girls took me there', and how nice it was, and so on (this despite the fact that, most of the time she was a raging pain in the ass *during* the actual event).
And honest to god right now, I'm thinking about it, and my heart hurts and I'm actually having this palpitation/flutter thing. Oh, and I'm crying. I want my mommy back. I would give anything to have one more Thanksgiving with her where I kill myself to get a table at some spectacular event, she complains about everything, and then talks about how nice it was the next day. I sound like I am being sarcastic, but I am not. I miss my mom. There is nobody in the world like her, and nothing to even remotely take her place; even her sisters aren't exactly the same flavour of batshit crazy. My life is so empty right now.
I know...I had said that I wouldn't keep posting about Mom. I lied. Deal.
Butsoanyway, so on the phone with This Guy, I finally got harsh because he wasn't listening. Then he started in with some 'I know you are angry with me right now...' shit, and I cut him off and told him that everything in the world wasn't 'him, him, him', and while I hoped he had a good night and pleasant day tomorrow, I did not wish to stay on the phone with him any longer at that time. I didn't hang up on him (I hate people who hang up on others; it is completely immature, and someone has to REALLY enrage me before I would hang up on them and even then, I will attempt to gain acknowledgement that I am disconnecting), but I did terminate the call after he got in the 'goodnight' stuff, and I did respond in kind -- I mean, I wasn't rude about it, I just wanted off the damned line with a fool who personalises everything and does not hold first in his mind what I am going through. And I am not saying that everything has to be 'me, me, me', but I do believe that I am entitled to some leeway at the present time in consideration of all my circumstances -- my mom, Squoosh, my finances, my brother, my school...everything. So when I say that I don't want to do anything, I fucking MEAN it. And I don't need to explain this to him, but if I do anything, it will be with Meg. Maybe my father. And I am not going to get into the discussion of whether or why he is not invited to be with me in whatever I am doing -- now is not the time; he is not family, he is only on the verge of becoming a close friend (and might not make it), he is not mourning my mother (other than in how it affects me), he had not yet *met* my mother...so no. Circumstance has him outside the Circle of Family at this time. Maybe next year. And above all, I do not want him assuming that I am doing any kind of formal 'meet the parents' (the ones I have left, that is) thing, which would be totally inappropriate right now. So I had to shut him the fuck down on that one. I'll have to do it again with Xmas, I just know it. And he knows and understands *nothing* about Jews (or the other non-White American Xtian Honkey from Germany influences in my life), and even though I am not religious, there are huge parts of Jewish culture with which I am just more comfortable; I have gotten more solace regarding bereavement from the Jewish writers I read online than the Christian stuff about 'baby Jesus loves you'. And even when some of the less-secular do start talking Hashem, I frame it in a non-anthropomorphised GAOTU sense, and I'm okay with that.
Yeah, on my father's side, they're all Masons, too (there are a bunch on Mom's side, and she was Eastern Star like decades ago, but on my father's side they all kept the Jewish quiet and became Masons (remember the generation we're talking about here -- my father just turned eighty). I was even a Jobie, though that was some time ago. I forget at the moment what their pedigrees are, but I *think* it's Blue Lodge and Scottish Rite. It's immaterial now; all my grandfathers are dead, and my father has invented his own religion -- Omarianism, followers of Omar Khayyam. But just like in my home growing up I could have a glass of wine or a shot of whisky whenever I wished (both my parents were raised that way as well, and it makes for an adult who doesn't worship drink, I can tell you from experience), but I was allowed to read anything. Literally. If I could get my paws on it, there was no restriction. So I did read my father and grandfathers' Masonic stuff...growing up, I read everything from Hop on Pop to The Happy Hooker, including the bible. Three times. So I am not just being patronising when I am relating Hashem to GAOTU -- if I were assured tomorrow that there is a Supreme Being and had to guess which one, I'd probably pick GAOTU. But I don't want to get into any religious debates, and it's almost time for Squoosh's vet app't. These days, all of the Masonic stuff is online, where growing up, it was all in these big old interesting-looking black tomes that piqued my interest. I'm just nosy like that.
Butsoanyway, I guess I am going to have to finish later. Sorry for the super-long post. And sorry about still talking about Mom. And sorry for rambling, I am sure there's several half-finished ideas up there. Hugs and ttyl.
Okay: this didn't send, so I'll add the good news. Yes, GOOD news!!! Squoosh only has an abscess. This replacement vet (Dr Superhero was bitten by some kind of poisonous spider almost a year ago, and has his sixth surgery to try to fix it today) I'll call Dr H, and he is a nice 'Old South' kind of man who has to be at *least* seventy-something. He wanted to shave Squoosh, to look for puncture marks or a scratch, cos he said fibrosarcomae are very rare, and in all his years, he's only ever seen two on a cat. Squoosh refused to be shaved, so Dr H had me hold him while he felt Squoosh's lump. He said it seems smaller than what was recorded last week, and he could separate the lump from the muscle in all places, so he said that can't be a fibrosarcoma. Plus, and this was cute, as he was pulling Squoosh's skin up to feel that the lump was nowhere a part of the muscle (he explained that a fibrosarcoma becomes part of the muscle, basically), he said, 'look -- look -- this pains him, and cancer don't pain a cat, not this early on; this here's an infection in his skin'. At that point, the only thing missing from the Old Country Vet image was a tech sitting out on the porch, playing the fiddle. So he explained that he'd not do a biopsy just yet, instead he changed Squoosh to a stronger antibiotic for skin (Keflex -- Cephalexin, I think), and explained that probably Squoosh got bacteria into the under part of his skin, through another cat swatting him, a scratch, or maybe even the vaccination (he pointed out that since we don't swab an animal's skin like a human, the needle can push anything under into the skin), and now it's an abscess, but it's very localised. So Squoosh is now on Cephalexin or whatever, and Dr H wants me to phone early Saturday morning if the abscess is all gone to tell him so, or come in early Saturday if there's still some lump left, so he can decide if we need to remove the abscess surgically. But he assures me that the odds of it being a cancer are slim to none because after a week on Clindamycin and prednisone, it's not as big or hard as what they'd recorded last Wednesday, plus it obviously hurts. I'd expected to do the biopsy today, but Dr H was against opening up the cat if we don't have to (his words, lol). So...thank god, GAOTU, Mom, or whomever. I still have a Squooshable.
Okay. Now I am going to take something for this headache that is my life.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Squoosh has a vet appointment today, and I can't tell if this lump has shrunk, which I guess means it hasn't.
I can't sleep much anymore, and I am depressed. And This Guy, who can't be bothered to offer support or anything on my Facebook wall (not that I care, but my point is...), has to make a big deal about my posting something about having a procedure and how I didn't tell him, as if he's my fucking HMO or something. And I *had* told him, he was just too busy rambling on about himself to listen. As usual. And what really enraged me was that he couldn't even be bothered to spell check, he just dashed off this 'I'm raging' post. And then he leaves a voicemail message with this harsh 'call me' shit because, as is clear, he is so worried over my health (that was sarcasm; this seems to me to be a control thing, and no-one controls me). I just figured that I'd kill multiple birds with one stone, and I posted on fbk that it was a colonoscopy (true -- as Mom was being murdered, I cropped up with every physical malady you can think of, including passing blood and constant diarrhoea, even when I'd skip eating for two days, so what the fuck I was crapping out at that point is anyone's guess, but my dr wanted a colorectal surgeon to look at me, and he, in turn, wanted a colonoscopy). Then, after I posted that (why he couldn't have texted, I *still* don't know; I should have told him it was an abortion, haha; I'm so off my game right now), he THEN starts posting about how great I am, and all this other shite, as if I believe it at this point.
Well, I say 'all this other shite', but it was really only two posts. He has never gone on about how great I am. So whatever.
In addition to writing my ass off (dissertation, articles), I am job hunting for university positions, which means I move, and I guess this situation with This Guy will resolve itself then, if not before.
And yes, I did try talking to him about how addressing me that way, especially on my wall when he has my fucking phone number, is not acceptable. I got one email from my cousin with a 'who is This Guy?' in it, and I told her, truthfully, he's no one. He's in the penalty box, and may not emerge from it in this lifetime.
So my colonoscopy probably went okay, I don't know for sure cos I left. The surgeon lied to me; I'd told him I didn't want to deal with the hospital system that killed my mom, and he told me he had an outpatient surgery centre 'around the corner' from his main office, and stupid me didn't realise it was another branch of this same hospital system until I showed up that morning. They were hideous, they fucked up my IV, and I had shooting pain up my arm, and when they gave me the anaesthesia, it felt like my wrist was being pulled apart. When I came to, it was probably closer to that scene in Resident Evil where Alice wakes up and everyone is gone. I pulled my shit (freezing to death and cramping like hell) out from under the bed, and took two tramadol (pills and diet coke in my Bag of Holding, tyvm), got dressed (only falling twice), texted Harry to go get the car, and unhooked myself from everything. I have a blood bruise the size of a small ant hill on my hand. The nurse assigned to me tried to tell me Harry wasn't in the waiting room so I couldn't leave yet, and I pulled this thing I used to do in high school (my friends used to call it my jedi mind trick, and it still fucking works...go figure) -- I looked at her very seriously and said 'he's in the gift shop; go get him'...and she fucking did it -- she literally fucking left the recovery room and (I assume) went to the gift shop, looking for someone who she couldn't pick out of a crowd to save her soul. I have never understood how that works; you have someone who has been under sedation for thirty minutes, and could have no earthly way to know where their ride is, but when they order you to march to the moon, you do. Fucking ridiculous.
Word of warning: the issuing orders thing only works on certain types, so have a back-up plan ready, and you have to say whatever it is like it's a certainty, so have your Mommy Voice ready.
Anyway, my addled nurse had two smarter cohorts in the room, and as soon as she left, I was dressed and unhooked in seconds and walking out. Then they came running over with the 'you can't do that, sit down, I'm phoning Security, blah, blah, blah...' I told them to ban me for life, and walked out (okay, stumbled and staggered out). I just followed the exit signs, cos I had no idea where I was, and thankfully I chose right and exited just as Harry was pulling up.
I had told him that he had better be ready to get me the fuck out of there (the only reason I didn't cancel once I saw where it was being held was in case there *is* something wrong), and he did, so despite the fact that I was in total misery, I stopped at the store with him and bought a turkey and some stuff for Thursday for him and Cindy. Then I went home and took more pills and more or less went to sleep. I had a bunch of dreams that weren't nightmares, so that's a first, and Mom's cat Sweetie slept with me. We're sleep buddies now.
Sweetie's cute, in a big dumb tank kind of way. She's taken one of my fake Halloween spiders (about as big as a child's hand) and put it in a place I've named Spider Training Ground Alpha, where she attacks it from all different scenario angles, royally kicks its ass, and is really happy each day when I put the spider back into starting position (under the broom, facing outwards) at Spider Training Ground Alpha. The damned spider has scared the piss out of me more than once when Sweetie has beaten it all the way into the foyer, the kitchen, the hall, etc... She's cute. I think she is really in training for the upcoming spider apocalypse. Maybe cats worry about that the way we worry about zombies.
Sigh...I'm playing Words With Friends with This Guy, and I just got the push message that he played his turn, which means he's fucking off at work, but also means he's poking me to see if I'm talking to him yet (I yelled at him on the phone last night). I'm not going to text or respond, though. I AM still angry at him, and not just for the colonoscopy thing. Last night I yelled cos he wants me to spend Thanksgiving with him, and I said no. So he asked *again* last night, and I said no...again. So then he asked AGAIN, and I told him that, in case he'd forgotten, one month ago today, my mother, who was batshit crazy, but I loved with all my heart, died right in front of my eyes, with me unable to do anything to save her. So I DON'T feel like hanging out with anyone, or doing anything, on the first Thanksgiving that I won't have Mummers. Every year -- EVERY year -- I, or Meg and I, would come up with something special to do for her for Thanksgiving. Sure, we enjoyed it as well, but we did it for her -- and I heard her more than once talking about 'the girls took me here, the girls took me there', and how nice it was, and so on (this despite the fact that, most of the time she was a raging pain in the ass *during* the actual event).
And honest to god right now, I'm thinking about it, and my heart hurts and I'm actually having this palpitation/flutter thing. Oh, and I'm crying. I want my mommy back. I would give anything to have one more Thanksgiving with her where I kill myself to get a table at some spectacular event, she complains about everything, and then talks about how nice it was the next day. I sound like I am being sarcastic, but I am not. I miss my mom. There is nobody in the world like her, and nothing to even remotely take her place; even her sisters aren't exactly the same flavour of batshit crazy. My life is so empty right now.
I know...I had said that I wouldn't keep posting about Mom. I lied. Deal.
Butsoanyway, so on the phone with This Guy, I finally got harsh because he wasn't listening. Then he started in with some 'I know you are angry with me right now...' shit, and I cut him off and told him that everything in the world wasn't 'him, him, him', and while I hoped he had a good night and pleasant day tomorrow, I did not wish to stay on the phone with him any longer at that time. I didn't hang up on him (I hate people who hang up on others; it is completely immature, and someone has to REALLY enrage me before I would hang up on them and even then, I will attempt to gain acknowledgement that I am disconnecting), but I did terminate the call after he got in the 'goodnight' stuff, and I did respond in kind -- I mean, I wasn't rude about it, I just wanted off the damned line with a fool who personalises everything and does not hold first in his mind what I am going through. And I am not saying that everything has to be 'me, me, me', but I do believe that I am entitled to some leeway at the present time in consideration of all my circumstances -- my mom, Squoosh, my finances, my brother, my school...everything. So when I say that I don't want to do anything, I fucking MEAN it. And I don't need to explain this to him, but if I do anything, it will be with Meg. Maybe my father. And I am not going to get into the discussion of whether or why he is not invited to be with me in whatever I am doing -- now is not the time; he is not family, he is only on the verge of becoming a close friend (and might not make it), he is not mourning my mother (other than in how it affects me), he had not yet *met* my mother...so no. Circumstance has him outside the Circle of Family at this time. Maybe next year. And above all, I do not want him assuming that I am doing any kind of formal 'meet the parents' (the ones I have left, that is) thing, which would be totally inappropriate right now. So I had to shut him the fuck down on that one. I'll have to do it again with Xmas, I just know it. And he knows and understands *nothing* about Jews (or the other non-White American Xtian Honkey from Germany influences in my life), and even though I am not religious, there are huge parts of Jewish culture with which I am just more comfortable; I have gotten more solace regarding bereavement from the Jewish writers I read online than the Christian stuff about 'baby Jesus loves you'. And even when some of the less-secular do start talking Hashem, I frame it in a non-anthropomorphised GAOTU sense, and I'm okay with that.
Yeah, on my father's side, they're all Masons, too (there are a bunch on Mom's side, and she was Eastern Star like decades ago, but on my father's side they all kept the Jewish quiet and became Masons (remember the generation we're talking about here -- my father just turned eighty). I was even a Jobie, though that was some time ago. I forget at the moment what their pedigrees are, but I *think* it's Blue Lodge and Scottish Rite. It's immaterial now; all my grandfathers are dead, and my father has invented his own religion -- Omarianism, followers of Omar Khayyam. But just like in my home growing up I could have a glass of wine or a shot of whisky whenever I wished (both my parents were raised that way as well, and it makes for an adult who doesn't worship drink, I can tell you from experience), but I was allowed to read anything. Literally. If I could get my paws on it, there was no restriction. So I did read my father and grandfathers' Masonic stuff...growing up, I read everything from Hop on Pop to The Happy Hooker, including the bible. Three times. So I am not just being patronising when I am relating Hashem to GAOTU -- if I were assured tomorrow that there is a Supreme Being and had to guess which one, I'd probably pick GAOTU. But I don't want to get into any religious debates, and it's almost time for Squoosh's vet app't. These days, all of the Masonic stuff is online, where growing up, it was all in these big old interesting-looking black tomes that piqued my interest. I'm just nosy like that.
Butsoanyway, I guess I am going to have to finish later. Sorry for the super-long post. And sorry about still talking about Mom. And sorry for rambling, I am sure there's several half-finished ideas up there. Hugs and ttyl.
Okay: this didn't send, so I'll add the good news. Yes, GOOD news!!! Squoosh only has an abscess. This replacement vet (Dr Superhero was bitten by some kind of poisonous spider almost a year ago, and has his sixth surgery to try to fix it today) I'll call Dr H, and he is a nice 'Old South' kind of man who has to be at *least* seventy-something. He wanted to shave Squoosh, to look for puncture marks or a scratch, cos he said fibrosarcomae are very rare, and in all his years, he's only ever seen two on a cat. Squoosh refused to be shaved, so Dr H had me hold him while he felt Squoosh's lump. He said it seems smaller than what was recorded last week, and he could separate the lump from the muscle in all places, so he said that can't be a fibrosarcoma. Plus, and this was cute, as he was pulling Squoosh's skin up to feel that the lump was nowhere a part of the muscle (he explained that a fibrosarcoma becomes part of the muscle, basically), he said, 'look -- look -- this pains him, and cancer don't pain a cat, not this early on; this here's an infection in his skin'. At that point, the only thing missing from the Old Country Vet image was a tech sitting out on the porch, playing the fiddle. So he explained that he'd not do a biopsy just yet, instead he changed Squoosh to a stronger antibiotic for skin (Keflex -- Cephalexin, I think), and explained that probably Squoosh got bacteria into the under part of his skin, through another cat swatting him, a scratch, or maybe even the vaccination (he pointed out that since we don't swab an animal's skin like a human, the needle can push anything under into the skin), and now it's an abscess, but it's very localised. So Squoosh is now on Cephalexin or whatever, and Dr H wants me to phone early Saturday morning if the abscess is all gone to tell him so, or come in early Saturday if there's still some lump left, so he can decide if we need to remove the abscess surgically. But he assures me that the odds of it being a cancer are slim to none because after a week on Clindamycin and prednisone, it's not as big or hard as what they'd recorded last Wednesday, plus it obviously hurts. I'd expected to do the biopsy today, but Dr H was against opening up the cat if we don't have to (his words, lol). So...thank god, GAOTU, Mom, or whomever. I still have a Squooshable.
Okay. Now I am going to take something for this headache that is my life.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Sleep, then no sleep...
I'm in bed, and Mom's cat Sweetie is lying on my butt, conked out and snoring like a pig. I got Sweetie, Meg took Arby. I was asleep for a bit, then I had a nightmare and woke up. I know that these nightmares and times that I can't stop thinking about certain things are the brain's way of dealing with danger and disaster -- our minds replay over and over what happened so that we can remember the importance (that's our glutamate working), and replaying it all over and over gives us a chance to fix things so whatever bad thing it was doesn't happen ever again -- we are basically running through an After-Action Review to critique and improve our performance...over and over again. I know this. I *teach* this. But the process itself is hellish, especially when there *is* no 'be safe' action, or the chain of cause and effect is so entangled that there are too many 'if/then/else' paths for our primitive brain to hold on to.
Basically, our brain wants an easy answer, and in this fucked-up world, few things are as easy as realising that going hunting for lions wearing an antelope pelt is stupid because lions hunt antelope, and that's why our antelope-pelt wearing friend Urg was ripped apart by lions right in front of us.
And that is why such things as post-traumatic stress disorder occur -- because there is a distinct lack of easy answers and simple connections to make any longer, and our brains aren't really *that* evolved. We can 'learn' simple (and often stupid and meaningless) rules through the connections our brains make to try to stay safe -- hating certain smells, an aversion to blondes, refusing to drive through Texas -- but that doesn't *fix* the deficit in our performance, and our brain knows it...so we play incidents over and over in our heads, day and night.
What I am saying is that I am becoming emotionally exhausted from going over all of this again and again. And I know how it works, but I don't know how to make it stop. The truth is, no-one does. There are a lot of theories, but not a lot of *facts*. And I am still tired. Very, very tired.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Basically, our brain wants an easy answer, and in this fucked-up world, few things are as easy as realising that going hunting for lions wearing an antelope pelt is stupid because lions hunt antelope, and that's why our antelope-pelt wearing friend Urg was ripped apart by lions right in front of us.
And that is why such things as post-traumatic stress disorder occur -- because there is a distinct lack of easy answers and simple connections to make any longer, and our brains aren't really *that* evolved. We can 'learn' simple (and often stupid and meaningless) rules through the connections our brains make to try to stay safe -- hating certain smells, an aversion to blondes, refusing to drive through Texas -- but that doesn't *fix* the deficit in our performance, and our brain knows it...so we play incidents over and over in our heads, day and night.
What I am saying is that I am becoming emotionally exhausted from going over all of this again and again. And I know how it works, but I don't know how to make it stop. The truth is, no-one does. There are a lot of theories, but not a lot of *facts*. And I am still tired. Very, very tired.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Friday, November 19, 2010
Quickly...
I am okay. I am taking the night off to see a movie with Meg. She made me go after yesterday. I wish we had decided to do something else, but dinner and movie (Harry Potter) are okay. Squoosh is okay, i am hoping the clinda and prednisone work, that this really is just an abscess.
And I need a job...a better one. I cannot go on worrying all the time like this. This year has beaten the crap out of me financially and emotionally. I want a quiet job at a university doing teaching and research, but at this point, I don't care.
And i have to go. Meg's here.
And I have to find a job...a better one.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Fuck this life.
Squoosh has a lump on his shoulders, behind his neck, that Dr Superhero thinks is a fibrosarcoma from vaccines. Squoosh is on Clindamycin and prednisone until his biopsy next week in the hopes that it is an abscess, even though it couldn't be aspirated. If the biopsy is fibrosarcoma, Squoosh would have to have it removed by a specialist, and I don't have the money, period. Financially, 2010 has killed me. So I would either have to just put Squoosh down, or give him to someone who could afford to treat him (like Meg's friend, who is a vet). I would probably give him away, even though that will kill me.
I am so sad. Please don't vaccinate your cats. It's not worth it. Cats only need rabies vaccines every five years, not every year, that's just a money-making scheme. Fuck state laws. Vets are supposed to vaccinate on arms and legs, so that they can be amputated, but they don't. Dr Vet, the vet before Dr S did Squoosh between the shoulderblades all the time.
Then add to that the fact that yesterday -- YESTERDAY -- my PhD program tells us that we have to register for next semester by FRIDAY, or we get our assistantships yanked. I owe $550 in jackass fees that aren't covered by my tuition waiver, and no way to come up with it in less than twenty-four hours, especially now that I just paid what is basically my last $200 on Squoosh tonight.
And yes, that was after a STEEP discount; the original bill was almost three times that.
And what is SO fucking stupid is that our program just instituted this cos of lower years' students' fuckery where they'd wait too long to sign up and in-program classes wouldn't make. Well, hello, I'm DONE. I'm fucking ABD. I am taking dissertation hours ONLY. My 'classes' CAN'T close...they are fucking created for me ONLY, just like everyone else's dissertation hours. But yet I now lose my assistantship, research position, dissertation hours, and everything else all because of a handful of fucktards who aren't going to pass qualifiers anyway because they are too stupid to follow rules have peed in the pool for everyone. And here I HAVE to graduate next term, and find an industry position before that (to pay bills) which I didn't intend to stay in (shhh), just so I can afford to live, because I have to move, cos I can't afford to live here much longer. And I have lost my mom, who i miss more than i can explain, my brother has had his deployment moved up to December (what kind of a bullshit country takes a man who just lost his mother away from his children at fucking Christmas just to sit in some hospital in some god-forsaken asshole of the earth third-world shithole?), and the way things are going in my life, he will probably die over there, and I am going to lose Squoosh. I am losing everything. EVERYTHING.
It's all already gone, really.
I am just about done, Folks.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
I am so sad. Please don't vaccinate your cats. It's not worth it. Cats only need rabies vaccines every five years, not every year, that's just a money-making scheme. Fuck state laws. Vets are supposed to vaccinate on arms and legs, so that they can be amputated, but they don't. Dr Vet, the vet before Dr S did Squoosh between the shoulderblades all the time.
Then add to that the fact that yesterday -- YESTERDAY -- my PhD program tells us that we have to register for next semester by FRIDAY, or we get our assistantships yanked. I owe $550 in jackass fees that aren't covered by my tuition waiver, and no way to come up with it in less than twenty-four hours, especially now that I just paid what is basically my last $200 on Squoosh tonight.
And yes, that was after a STEEP discount; the original bill was almost three times that.
And what is SO fucking stupid is that our program just instituted this cos of lower years' students' fuckery where they'd wait too long to sign up and in-program classes wouldn't make. Well, hello, I'm DONE. I'm fucking ABD. I am taking dissertation hours ONLY. My 'classes' CAN'T close...they are fucking created for me ONLY, just like everyone else's dissertation hours. But yet I now lose my assistantship, research position, dissertation hours, and everything else all because of a handful of fucktards who aren't going to pass qualifiers anyway because they are too stupid to follow rules have peed in the pool for everyone. And here I HAVE to graduate next term, and find an industry position before that (to pay bills) which I didn't intend to stay in (shhh), just so I can afford to live, because I have to move, cos I can't afford to live here much longer. And I have lost my mom, who i miss more than i can explain, my brother has had his deployment moved up to December (what kind of a bullshit country takes a man who just lost his mother away from his children at fucking Christmas just to sit in some hospital in some god-forsaken asshole of the earth third-world shithole?), and the way things are going in my life, he will probably die over there, and I am going to lose Squoosh. I am losing everything. EVERYTHING.
It's all already gone, really.
I am just about done, Folks.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
More November.
I have two hundred presentations to grade, and they all suck. I miss my mom. This Guy has me halfway convinced that I am wrong about him. I need a higher-paying job. I am scared. I still don't want to talk to anyone, but I am lonely. I hate to belabour a point, but... I can't believe my mother is gone. It's like I don't know what to do anymore...like my whole life has ended. I have no one to look out for any longer, no one who loves me, albeit weirdly.
I don't know what to do.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
I don't know what to do.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
November
This is what I'd wanted. Recorded as Opus 4 by Art of Noise.
No sun no moon!
No morn no noon
No dawn no dusk
No proper time of day
No sky no earthly view
No distance looking blue
No road no street
No "t'other side the way"
No end to any Row
No indications where the Crescents go
No top to any steeple
No recognitions of familiar people
No courtesies for showing 'em
No knowing 'em!
No travelling at all
No locomotion,
No inkling of the way
No notion
No go" by land or ocean
No mail no post
No news fom any foreign coast
No Park - no Ring
No afternoon gentility
No company no nobility
No warmth, no cheerfilness,
No healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member
No shade, no shine,
No butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flow'rs,
No leaves, no birds,
November!
-Thomas Hood, 1842.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
No sun no moon!
No morn no noon
No dawn no dusk
No proper time of day
No sky no earthly view
No distance looking blue
No road no street
No "t'other side the way"
No end to any Row
No indications where the Crescents go
No top to any steeple
No recognitions of familiar people
No courtesies for showing 'em
No knowing 'em!
No travelling at all
No locomotion,
No inkling of the way
No notion
No go" by land or ocean
No mail no post
No news fom any foreign coast
No Park - no Ring
No afternoon gentility
No company no nobility
No warmth, no cheerfilness,
No healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member
No shade, no shine,
No butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flow'rs,
No leaves, no birds,
November!
-Thomas Hood, 1842.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
November
November
I cannot figure out how to embed something. Hope that worked. Anyway, I am off Eviljob still on bereavement, and just got back from unboarding the cats. The only one who didn't care was Squooshable.
It is rainy here, and looks like it should be colder. I took a pill when I got home, so I am waiting for it to kick in. I have stuff to write, but it will wait. It would be so easy to hate Spring, why does everything bad have to wreck my autumn and winter?
I am still not up to seeing anyone. I want to make pumpkin, shrimp, and coconut soup. I know, the two don't seem to fit together. :->
But the cats are home and fed, and I may just order pizza. I keep having strange dreams. And Sabra really pissed me the hell off with a post on Facebook about how she is 'celebrating life, not mourning death'. She didn't know my mother, no-one asked her to mourn, and she is only making the allusion in the hopes that it will pique the interest of the bodybuilder she is still stalking. As I said, I am very angry over that.
This Guy swears to me that he wasn't at the game with this ladyfriend, that they met at the tailgating by chance, and those are the only pics she is in. I looked this morning, and those *are* the only pics she is in. So...I don't know. I do know that I don't need extra shit right now.
So I am going to nap now, I think. <3
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
I cannot figure out how to embed something. Hope that worked. Anyway, I am off Eviljob still on bereavement, and just got back from unboarding the cats. The only one who didn't care was Squooshable.
It is rainy here, and looks like it should be colder. I took a pill when I got home, so I am waiting for it to kick in. I have stuff to write, but it will wait. It would be so easy to hate Spring, why does everything bad have to wreck my autumn and winter?
I am still not up to seeing anyone. I want to make pumpkin, shrimp, and coconut soup. I know, the two don't seem to fit together. :->
But the cats are home and fed, and I may just order pizza. I keep having strange dreams. And Sabra really pissed me the hell off with a post on Facebook about how she is 'celebrating life, not mourning death'. She didn't know my mother, no-one asked her to mourn, and she is only making the allusion in the hopes that it will pique the interest of the bodybuilder she is still stalking. As I said, I am very angry over that.
This Guy swears to me that he wasn't at the game with this ladyfriend, that they met at the tailgating by chance, and those are the only pics she is in. I looked this morning, and those *are* the only pics she is in. So...I don't know. I do know that I don't need extra shit right now.
So I am going to nap now, I think. <3
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Monday, November 01, 2010
Trying for Normal
I am so sad and regretful for any and every moment that I did not completely express to my mom how much I love her. I hate myself for this.
And I have a titanic number of problems now. Not that I don't deserve every single one.
Anyone who has emailed or commented, I have read them and love you for caring. I can't figure out how to comment back on this app, and my laptop is giving me issues. Bear with me as my life falls apart. Tyvm.
I will try to not whine about Mom too much. I promise.
And I have a titanic number of problems now. Not that I don't deserve every single one.
Anyone who has emailed or commented, I have read them and love you for caring. I can't figure out how to comment back on this app, and my laptop is giving me issues. Bear with me as my life falls apart. Tyvm.
I will try to not whine about Mom too much. I promise.
Missing Mom
We buried Mom today (now yesterday). It was okay, I guess. I picked out her favourite coat and Meg and I got a cute soft hat for her that looked adorable. She would have loved it.
I can't talk more about this right now. My heart hurts. I miss her so much.
So then we drove four hours to Baton Rouge to have dinner at my SiL's parents' home, and on the way we stopped for gas, and I saw a black cat with a hurt paw. My brother (whom we were following) was upset, but under the pretence of buying cigarettes, I bought a can of cat food at the gas station and asked the clerk about the cat. She said the cat's paw has been hurt for 'a minute' (which I guess is Southern for 'some time'), and it lives with other cats in the woods behind the gas station. A lady feeds them every day and tries to catch Mr Wounded Paw. I looked to the side of the station and saw fresh paper plates and a big round tinfoil baking pan of water where the cats are fed, so I opened my can and set it there, and Wounded Paw came over and ate. On a Saturday out in the sticks, there was little else I could do. I hope WP gets trapped, and I feel bad over not being able to have done anything other than feed him.
If it had been Mom and I, we'd have tried to get him.
Butsoanyway.
When we got to Baton Rouge, we got led to my SiL's parents' home in the Garden District, and then got take-away from George's, which was nice (catfish po boy = doubleplus good), and it made me sad to think of how Mom would have enjoyed the trip, the food, the adventure...all the things she loved.
So now Meg and I are at a casino hotel, and I am sad. After the funeral I tried texting This Guy and got no response, so after we got to the hotel, I tried to phone him and at first he sounded really annoyed that I'd awakened him, so I said I would just phone tomorrow, then he started with the 'no, talk to me, blah blah' stuff, and I just told him I was fine and ttyl and crap. Then I go to update my Facebook status and pull up his page, and he went to...
omfg, I just fell asleep and slept for three hours and just woke up with hideous indigestion and a sore throat. :-/
Anyway, as I was saying, he posted pictures of a local university's football game, and it appears he went there with another woman, one whom I personally do not know, but one who is FB-friended with him (I fucking hate Facebook),and with whom he has exchanged flirty comments in the past (which I pretended to not have read). So while I will allow that he has no business being in mourning, that the very fact that he is with some woman (who looks like a stripper, IMO) while I am away and being ripped emotionally apart by memories of all the things with my mother that were beyond my control and tormenting to me (no one should ever have to hear their own mother cry in delirium for *her* mother's help, for example, not that he knows that 'cos he has, oh, ASKED or anything) suggest that at the very least, it is an inappropriate way to conduct oneself, and indicates that he may not actually give a damn about me at all, or has seized upon this opportunity to 'show' me, or whatnot. I think that when I phoned, he was guilted into waking up and trying to talk to me and for all I know still had that woman over, or something.
I guess that what I am trying to say is so much for him. I am not beautiful or anything great, but I am a human being who feels things very deeply, and deserves treatment better than this from someone who professes to love me. So oh-well.
And so I sit here in bed in St. Whatthefuck parish, a single woman with a dead mom and hellacious indigestion. Bleurgh.
Oh, guys... My mother was so wonderful that I wish it didn't tear my heart out to talk about her right now. I mean, I am not being unwarrantedly nostalgic; the woman was crazy as a loon, and possibly one of the most negligent mothers on Earth, but she was intelligent, funny, loving in her own way, and I wouldn't trade her for anything.
I have to try to sleep more; I took two Tagamet (jes, my indigestion is *that* bad) and am cold...so I am going to try to get sleep. I miss my mother. Hugs and love to you.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
I can't talk more about this right now. My heart hurts. I miss her so much.
So then we drove four hours to Baton Rouge to have dinner at my SiL's parents' home, and on the way we stopped for gas, and I saw a black cat with a hurt paw. My brother (whom we were following) was upset, but under the pretence of buying cigarettes, I bought a can of cat food at the gas station and asked the clerk about the cat. She said the cat's paw has been hurt for 'a minute' (which I guess is Southern for 'some time'), and it lives with other cats in the woods behind the gas station. A lady feeds them every day and tries to catch Mr Wounded Paw. I looked to the side of the station and saw fresh paper plates and a big round tinfoil baking pan of water where the cats are fed, so I opened my can and set it there, and Wounded Paw came over and ate. On a Saturday out in the sticks, there was little else I could do. I hope WP gets trapped, and I feel bad over not being able to have done anything other than feed him.
If it had been Mom and I, we'd have tried to get him.
Butsoanyway.
When we got to Baton Rouge, we got led to my SiL's parents' home in the Garden District, and then got take-away from George's, which was nice (catfish po boy = doubleplus good), and it made me sad to think of how Mom would have enjoyed the trip, the food, the adventure...all the things she loved.
So now Meg and I are at a casino hotel, and I am sad. After the funeral I tried texting This Guy and got no response, so after we got to the hotel, I tried to phone him and at first he sounded really annoyed that I'd awakened him, so I said I would just phone tomorrow, then he started with the 'no, talk to me, blah blah' stuff, and I just told him I was fine and ttyl and crap. Then I go to update my Facebook status and pull up his page, and he went to...
omfg, I just fell asleep and slept for three hours and just woke up with hideous indigestion and a sore throat. :-/
Anyway, as I was saying, he posted pictures of a local university's football game, and it appears he went there with another woman, one whom I personally do not know, but one who is FB-friended with him (I fucking hate Facebook),and with whom he has exchanged flirty comments in the past (which I pretended to not have read). So while I will allow that he has no business being in mourning, that the very fact that he is with some woman (who looks like a stripper, IMO) while I am away and being ripped emotionally apart by memories of all the things with my mother that were beyond my control and tormenting to me (no one should ever have to hear their own mother cry in delirium for *her* mother's help, for example, not that he knows that 'cos he has, oh, ASKED or anything) suggest that at the very least, it is an inappropriate way to conduct oneself, and indicates that he may not actually give a damn about me at all, or has seized upon this opportunity to 'show' me, or whatnot. I think that when I phoned, he was guilted into waking up and trying to talk to me and for all I know still had that woman over, or something.
I guess that what I am trying to say is so much for him. I am not beautiful or anything great, but I am a human being who feels things very deeply, and deserves treatment better than this from someone who professes to love me. So oh-well.
And so I sit here in bed in St. Whatthefuck parish, a single woman with a dead mom and hellacious indigestion. Bleurgh.
Oh, guys... My mother was so wonderful that I wish it didn't tear my heart out to talk about her right now. I mean, I am not being unwarrantedly nostalgic; the woman was crazy as a loon, and possibly one of the most negligent mothers on Earth, but she was intelligent, funny, loving in her own way, and I wouldn't trade her for anything.
I have to try to sleep more; I took two Tagamet (jes, my indigestion is *that* bad) and am cold...so I am going to try to get sleep. I miss my mother. Hugs and love to you.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Saying goodbye
Meg is an addict; I am currently in a comped executive suite at a Harrah's property. She has apparently raised the bar for her comps since I last travelled with her, cos we have it for free. o_O This is easily the nicest place I have stayed in, and I know that makes me sound like a rube, but I don't care.
We are burying Mummers on Saturday, and I really feel as if my soul has been ripped out. There is just no reason for what happened. None. And I feel such guilt over my not having figured out what was going on that I do not know if I will ever get over this.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Leaving Twice
I am good at reading faces, especially if I know the person. For example, when Mom was in CICU before and swacked out of her mind, I could tell when she was 'available' to be roused, and when it would be futile to try. I can't really explain how, but it was a change in her face; when I tried to pick apart how I could tell, I think I attended more to the eye area -- beneath her eye, still in the orbital area, there was a change when she was rousable, almost like the muscle tone changed.
I did not see that at all today. She stayed 'gone' and unreachable. So my mother may have left today...at least the part of her that I guess is the mind or spirit, the part of her that was Her. At least I feel this may be so.
I love you, Mommy.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
I did not see that at all today. She stayed 'gone' and unreachable. So my mother may have left today...at least the part of her that I guess is the mind or spirit, the part of her that was Her. At least I feel this may be so.
I love you, Mommy.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Friday, October 22, 2010
My Mommy.
So far is still holding on. My heart is breaking. My mother is a fighter.
It is sad that it takes tragedy to make us see how precious we are to each other. I am afraid to sleep. I am afraid of The Phone Call.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
It is sad that it takes tragedy to make us see how precious we are to each other. I am afraid to sleep. I am afraid of The Phone Call.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Today.
I can't think of good titles anymore. At least not right now.
We found out today that Mom has a yeast infection in her blood...which basically means this idiotic hospital let her cultivate one for too long. She started Micafungin tonight, and I am hoping it does something towards improving her. We are having to fight still to get a paracentesis done cos her INR is high; they want her at 1.5, and she may never see that again. When she was brought to CICU, she was at 2.2. She's been getting FFP (fresh frozen plasma) and vitamin K to bring it down. I --we -- are continuing to fight for her because that is what she wanted. She flatly refused Hospice. So let us hope and believe, because that was what she would want.
The cat she rescued, Sweetie, is sleeping on my stomach now, and she comes with me to the bathroom every freaking time I go. I'm crying. I am so sad that I cannot even begin to put words to it. I don't know what my life will be like without my crazy mommy. I can't think, and I can't sleep. I hope she pulls out of this...somehow. Even though I know that is unrealistic. I am devastated. And it will only get worse, I fear.
I guess now, with Sweetie, I have five cats. Meg will take Arby, and I may have to give Meg Weebie, cos I can't afford five cats, and Weebie gets along better with Arby than with Squooshable, Cookie, Rhett, or Sweetie. Or maybe I will find a way somehow, Ohana being what it is, and all.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
We found out today that Mom has a yeast infection in her blood...which basically means this idiotic hospital let her cultivate one for too long. She started Micafungin tonight, and I am hoping it does something towards improving her. We are having to fight still to get a paracentesis done cos her INR is high; they want her at 1.5, and she may never see that again. When she was brought to CICU, she was at 2.2. She's been getting FFP (fresh frozen plasma) and vitamin K to bring it down. I --we -- are continuing to fight for her because that is what she wanted. She flatly refused Hospice. So let us hope and believe, because that was what she would want.
The cat she rescued, Sweetie, is sleeping on my stomach now, and she comes with me to the bathroom every freaking time I go. I'm crying. I am so sad that I cannot even begin to put words to it. I don't know what my life will be like without my crazy mommy. I can't think, and I can't sleep. I hope she pulls out of this...somehow. Even though I know that is unrealistic. I am devastated. And it will only get worse, I fear.
I guess now, with Sweetie, I have five cats. Meg will take Arby, and I may have to give Meg Weebie, cos I can't afford five cats, and Weebie gets along better with Arby than with Squooshable, Cookie, Rhett, or Sweetie. Or maybe I will find a way somehow, Ohana being what it is, and all.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
:-/
Mom is back in CICU and vented again because the hospital dragged their feet despite my raging and didn't perform a paracentesis today. All positive thoughts are welcomed. I hope Mom knows I love her.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Happy Monday
Things are okay. Mom has developed some fluid around her liver (and jaundice to go with it), an that was supposed to have been drained today, but will be tomorrow. The cats are fine. I should have spent the weekend writing, but was mostly with Mummers. I am trying to keep my spirits up, and it is sort of working. I had a wonderful dinner with Meg on Saturday night, and a really nice lunch with her today where we accomplished a lot as far as hammering out some ideas she and I have for projects that will, hopefully, be publishable. I am working hard on fitting peace and tranquility into what I do. I did skip spending time with This Guy this weekend, and I guess that is going to have to be okay if he is going to fit into Ancodialand. Sabra is, I believe, batshit crazy, in addition to being perpetually high; I have tried to back down my involvement with her because I just don't need the nutso right now. Or the drugs use. How she thinks she is going to be able to steal away a bodybuilder from his equally-buff girlfriend and still smoke -- anything -- I'll never understand.
There is more going on, but I will have to update in the lull I'll have between my final submission and my next round of work. In the meantime, I am just plugging away at everything.
When this is all over, I am taking a vacation. I have earned it.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
There is more going on, but I will have to update in the lull I'll have between my final submission and my next round of work. In the meantime, I am just plugging away at everything.
When this is all over, I am taking a vacation. I have earned it.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Uppdayte
I should update, even though things keep changing, so here goes: I'm tired, Mom is in the hospital getting over being overdosed on Ambien at the rehab centre, and her liver enzymes aren't looking so hot. I destroyed my right Achilles tendon, and am walking like a total cripple. I think my potassium went into the toilet, and I spiked a bp of 180/115 (no, not joking) cos I went without sleep Tuesday with Mom in the ED, and she was disoriented (dialysis pts will have stuff like Ambien build up in their systems) and didn't feel well, and was calling for her mother, which is really something no one should ever have to hear. So then on Friday I again turned up at my GP's with 169/110, so for the time being I am on Lisinopril and have to learn to meditate, or something. Doc said I am better off getting the diastolic value down by any means necessary, cos otherwise I am at risk of a stroke. Neither he nor my gyn (who took the 180/115 value) believe me about the stress and potassium, but whatever. They have my best interest at heart.
I need some sleep, but am up looking for something to fall asleep listening to. :-/ I prefer stuff that is lightly brain-occupying, so that I can focus just on that. I am half-settled on some lecture podcasts, either that or something similar. Hugs. G'night.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
I need some sleep, but am up looking for something to fall asleep listening to. :-/ I prefer stuff that is lightly brain-occupying, so that I can focus just on that. I am half-settled on some lecture podcasts, either that or something similar. Hugs. G'night.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Friday, October 08, 2010
To Catch Up...
Okay; Mom got out of hospital and was in rehab for six or seven days when we found they'd been overdosing her on Ambien. So it was back to the ED and after two rounds of dialysis, she is getting back to normal. In the meantime, I am getting NO work done, at least not productive work. And I am achy. But the 'mom being alive' thing is of the utmost importance.
In Other News, Sabra's launched a campaign to snare a physical trainer. She's cute. She has taken up everything from dance to, well, physical training. But she won't quit smoking, neither cigarettes nor pot. At least not yet. Ah, l'amour...
Meg is as stressed as I am. 'Nuff said.
This Guy may be turning out to be a royal pain in the arse; I think he is nervous, or trying to impress me, but I keep hearing that 'I Want To Talk About Me' song in my head when I am on the phone with him, unable to get a complete sentence out. And with everything else going on, this is the wrong time to be doing that stuff. I am really only able to talk to a handful of people, and some of my support *should* be coming from him, albeit from a respectful distance, as we're not that far into a relationship. Chat support, yes; moving in and offering total emotional support, no. At least he is understanding of the fact that my family and career come first and second. So there's one favour point.
Butsoanyway.
I have to finish writing and get fully employed in my field, that's just the bottom line. And everything else will work out. I hope.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
I don't know what to say...
Mom is fine, really well in fact, and This Guy today asked me to go with him to a football game in October.
And no, I didn't hint at all.
I am behind on writing. All my cats are wonderful, including my feral family.
And I am not sure what is going on with This Guy. I mean, and me. I'm uncomfortable.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
And no, I didn't hint at all.
I am behind on writing. All my cats are wonderful, including my feral family.
And I am not sure what is going on with This Guy. I mean, and me. I'm uncomfortable.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
The Calm
Mom is in rehab, and everything is mostly okay. After I got Mom settled in her room and such, I spent a few hours with This Guy, and it was nice, but...I don't know. I have bouts of jealousy, and I hate feeling like that. I don't let him know, of course. It's feeling like this that is making me consider ending it while it is still mostly pleasant. I have to gear up to GTFO and land my 'real' job, anyway.
More later, I have to swing by Mom's dialysis cos it's her first day in the new place, and she is scared.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
More later, I have to swing by Mom's dialysis cos it's her first day in the new place, and she is scared.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Breaking Out
Mom goes to rehab today. It turned out that the Case Management woman was batshit crazy -- the *hospital* arranges all of that stuff, not the pt. We had a lot of problems with that woman, and it came to a head on Monday, when she phoned Meg raging and threatening. While Meg was on with her, I phoned the Patient Advocate Liason (functions like an Ombudsman) and told her that if she didn't go down to Psychowoman's office and put her in a straitjacket, my next call was to my attorney.
She did, and we got a new CM on Monday.
So if you ever need the knowledge, and I sure hope you don't, your hospital arranges 100% of all 'lifeline' stuff like dialysis, including transportation. And I need a drink.
I would discuss how things are going with This Guy, but I have a lot of background to catch up on. I think I upset him last night when I told him I couldn't talk when I was trying to write, but I do not know if I care; he has a little dramatic streak which I abhor, and he already has a 'the one love of my life' person from ages ago, and she is much prettier than I am (if you like the Jamie Lee Curtis-kind of look). And true, she seems to be stupid, but...I don't compete. So I guess this will fade away in short order. I may come out and suggest he get back with her, even though it has been something like ten years since they were together. I am supposed to go over tonight, and I think I will then. It's just that if I am going to muck up my life with someone, I want to be special to them, and not end up being so alone. Barring that, I would rather be alone. I like being alone. And I hope someday I will be special to someone, but if not, I don't want to have to be the 'good enough' person. So this has all made me fairly sad. I am smart, funny, bold, I hardly ever cry in public, I fight and am very resourceful, and I am very strong. I am not pretty, but I am loyal, faithful, and trustworthy. I have a *slight* shopping problem, but there are worse things I could do. And he doesn't seem to want to talk about my ideas or anything. I just kind of feel like I am the 'she'll do' girl. I mean, I still am not okay with no birthday recognition at all when I had bought very nice presents for his birthday (and his son's), and then tonight he suggests I should buy his son a leather wallet (I understand that this is a 'bonding' opportunity, but it's inappropriate at this time, considering my recent ignoring), and wants to phone me at 12:30am when I am writing and chatting Sabra up (who did buy a birthday dinner for me, the sweetness) to discuss my getting faculty passes for our uni's game...for his son and himself.
Ummm...I like football, too. :-/
I just told him to text me to remind me and I was on the other line and had to go. He said that he was upset with me cos I didn't tell him that it was my birthday, and that he wanted to learn more about my likes and dislikes so that he knew me better and knows what to buy for me, but cannot be arsed to remember that I like gridiron and association football, which I have mentioned a thousand times. Or maybe he doesn't want me there, who knows. I have too much going on to worry about it, and I am going to have my wonderful holiday season alone, then. And it has been many moons since I actually had an 'official' boyfriend, and when this is over, it will be an even longer time. Like never again.
Because of all the expense with Mom, I am currently not doing so well financially, and I can't afford to go all over and go to movies and stuff, and when I do spend the money, right now I would rather be with Meg or friends who know me. At least most of them I trust.
And I think he has ADD or something. It's annoying, especially when I want to talk, or just be quiet. A lot of the time, he has to be the first to get his story out, and *then* it's my turn. Even if his turn is something funny online, or crap that happened at his work, and my turn was going to be about Mom, how I am (after six weeks) tired of fighting with the hospital, or something. Or that I am tired of eating salmon salad cos I stocked up on it at the warehouse store before I got so destitute. Sigh. It's just that it's never me being the important one. Or at least it doesn't feel that way. I do not care, honestly, if I am important to someone or not, but if you are telling someone they are your GF and that you love them, I don't get why after sex I am at Tchotchkes with Sabra at 2am for food and talk when if he's a BF, that's *his* job.
And I haven't had time in the past six weeks to deal with this. There are good things, and I am a very private person who is not ready to invite him completely into my life (doing that at this stage would be premature) but some things I get the feeling could be different with just a little introspective reflection on his part. I mean, do you think that I am going through enough to want to talk? I do. Enough that I am going to have a hard time being interested in a play-by-play of what happened at his job that day? I mean, I listen, sure, but it is hard to focus on trivial issues when I feel like the wolves are at my door. That's all. I can listen sometimes, but not every time. And I don't know I'd he really *is* interested in me as a person, and I understand that he seems to think that he is taking my mind off things, but...it's not working.
Ok...I have to get to work now. More later.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
She did, and we got a new CM on Monday.
So if you ever need the knowledge, and I sure hope you don't, your hospital arranges 100% of all 'lifeline' stuff like dialysis, including transportation. And I need a drink.
I would discuss how things are going with This Guy, but I have a lot of background to catch up on. I think I upset him last night when I told him I couldn't talk when I was trying to write, but I do not know if I care; he has a little dramatic streak which I abhor, and he already has a 'the one love of my life' person from ages ago, and she is much prettier than I am (if you like the Jamie Lee Curtis-kind of look). And true, she seems to be stupid, but...I don't compete. So I guess this will fade away in short order. I may come out and suggest he get back with her, even though it has been something like ten years since they were together. I am supposed to go over tonight, and I think I will then. It's just that if I am going to muck up my life with someone, I want to be special to them, and not end up being so alone. Barring that, I would rather be alone. I like being alone. And I hope someday I will be special to someone, but if not, I don't want to have to be the 'good enough' person. So this has all made me fairly sad. I am smart, funny, bold, I hardly ever cry in public, I fight and am very resourceful, and I am very strong. I am not pretty, but I am loyal, faithful, and trustworthy. I have a *slight* shopping problem, but there are worse things I could do. And he doesn't seem to want to talk about my ideas or anything. I just kind of feel like I am the 'she'll do' girl. I mean, I still am not okay with no birthday recognition at all when I had bought very nice presents for his birthday (and his son's), and then tonight he suggests I should buy his son a leather wallet (I understand that this is a 'bonding' opportunity, but it's inappropriate at this time, considering my recent ignoring), and wants to phone me at 12:30am when I am writing and chatting Sabra up (who did buy a birthday dinner for me, the sweetness) to discuss my getting faculty passes for our uni's game...for his son and himself.
Ummm...I like football, too. :-/
I just told him to text me to remind me and I was on the other line and had to go. He said that he was upset with me cos I didn't tell him that it was my birthday, and that he wanted to learn more about my likes and dislikes so that he knew me better and knows what to buy for me, but cannot be arsed to remember that I like gridiron and association football, which I have mentioned a thousand times. Or maybe he doesn't want me there, who knows. I have too much going on to worry about it, and I am going to have my wonderful holiday season alone, then. And it has been many moons since I actually had an 'official' boyfriend, and when this is over, it will be an even longer time. Like never again.
Because of all the expense with Mom, I am currently not doing so well financially, and I can't afford to go all over and go to movies and stuff, and when I do spend the money, right now I would rather be with Meg or friends who know me. At least most of them I trust.
And I think he has ADD or something. It's annoying, especially when I want to talk, or just be quiet. A lot of the time, he has to be the first to get his story out, and *then* it's my turn. Even if his turn is something funny online, or crap that happened at his work, and my turn was going to be about Mom, how I am (after six weeks) tired of fighting with the hospital, or something. Or that I am tired of eating salmon salad cos I stocked up on it at the warehouse store before I got so destitute. Sigh. It's just that it's never me being the important one. Or at least it doesn't feel that way. I do not care, honestly, if I am important to someone or not, but if you are telling someone they are your GF and that you love them, I don't get why after sex I am at Tchotchkes with Sabra at 2am for food and talk when if he's a BF, that's *his* job.
And I haven't had time in the past six weeks to deal with this. There are good things, and I am a very private person who is not ready to invite him completely into my life (doing that at this stage would be premature) but some things I get the feeling could be different with just a little introspective reflection on his part. I mean, do you think that I am going through enough to want to talk? I do. Enough that I am going to have a hard time being interested in a play-by-play of what happened at his job that day? I mean, I listen, sure, but it is hard to focus on trivial issues when I feel like the wolves are at my door. That's all. I can listen sometimes, but not every time. And I don't know I'd he really *is* interested in me as a person, and I understand that he seems to think that he is taking my mind off things, but...it's not working.
Ok...I have to get to work now. More later.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Goes, so it goes, so it goes, and so it goes...
Mom is doing well. I have to find a place to do her dialysis once she goes to rehab, and I don't know how to do that. I guess I will learn tomorrow. I will let you know what to do when I find out. <3
Everything is okay. This Guy misunderstood and didn't know it was my birthday. He says I need to talk to him more. I don't want to right now. It doesn't matter anyway, cos I have to leave here and get a job very soon when I graduate, so this will all be for nothing. He would never care enough about me to change or leave here. I found a job I would be good at here, but I will probably not get it.
Butsoanyway.
I went out to dinner with Sabra, yes, I am sorta stealing Meg's friend and coworker, and we talked about *her* This Guy. It was nice to not think for a while.
I have to figure out how to find a dialysis place. Wish me luck...I am winging it.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Everything is okay. This Guy misunderstood and didn't know it was my birthday. He says I need to talk to him more. I don't want to right now. It doesn't matter anyway, cos I have to leave here and get a job very soon when I graduate, so this will all be for nothing. He would never care enough about me to change or leave here. I found a job I would be good at here, but I will probably not get it.
Butsoanyway.
I went out to dinner with Sabra, yes, I am sorta stealing Meg's friend and coworker, and we talked about *her* This Guy. It was nice to not think for a while.
I have to figure out how to find a dialysis place. Wish me luck...I am winging it.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
I has a sad.
Mom is doing very well now, this new pulmonologist has worked wonders on her. And today was my birthday, and while most everyone who knows me knows that I celebrate alone, it would have been nice to at least get a 'hope you have a good day, mwah!' from my (alleged) boyfriend. On top of that, I had to buy a new battery for my car last night, and then it turned out to be my alternator, so today I had to spend the last of my spare money on a fucking alternator. On my birthday. And when I tried to discuss this, I got a total brush off. So I'm on the phone with Sabra, and he's in the penalty box for a few days.
I'll write more, but I have to get Butler off my bed, he's kneading the crap out of me.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
I'll write more, but I have to get Butler off my bed, he's kneading the crap out of me.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Update of sorts
Mom is still alive, doing okay...as okay as she can be doing. I am exhausted. But I did get a bunch of stuff written. Hopefully she'll get off the vent tomorrow. She's alert and all, so that's good.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Code Mommy
We fired my mother's pulmonologist today; I am honestly at this point too tired to recount the entire day, but it started with my having an outpatient procedure and being signed out by Meg, then (as I'm coming off my sedation) hearing 'code blue, Dr Fucktard, call xxx-xxxx' repeated over the hospital intercom. I turned to Meg and asked, 'Mom?' and Meg dialled Mom's unit, cos she knows how I am.
Yep, Mummers.
Dr Fucktard had, without disclosure, had Mom taken down for a 'procedure' (I get the Code Log tomorrow), where Mom went into respiratory arrest. Meg said she was in Unit X, but we were to go to Multiple ICU and wait. I said 'fuck that', and ran to Unit X with Meg behind me. We saw her wheeled out with her crash team, and I raged at them to stop steering and keep manual ventilation going. At some point in time, we acquired a Nursing Administrator, probably because we weren't supposed to be down there, and I was a little loud. I tried to get in the tiny elevator with them, and there was no room, so Meg and I rode up with the Nursing Administrator. NA asked what she could do to calm me down, and I told her she could arrange transfer to City Hospital and stop trying to murder my mother. As my life goes, NA turned out to be the one from last year's Foam Party, but I was still coming off my own dose of Versed, Benedryl, and Fentanyl, and didn't recognise her just then; after I raged a bit up in MICU, all of a sudden I recognised her, and when I reminded her, she remembered me and actually stopped trying to calm me down, believe it or not. She gave Meg her number and left.
They tried to keep us out of MICU until she was stablised, and I pushed some blonde on the team out of my way and told her that if they were going to kill my mother, they were going to do it in front of me, that they lost my trust earlier today when Dr Fucktard manufactured a conversation with my mother where she expressed a DNR wish (bullshit) and a desire to go into Hospice care and stop curative efforts (more bullshit). I'll get to that conversation later, let it suffice now to say that we told him no. Mummers has been VERY clear on her beliefs for as long as I have ever known her, and she has never ONCE wavered, or expressed ANY consideration of the possibility that her beliefs are wrong. My mother is headstrong like a horse, and would tell you that *I* am a cat murderer because I have euthanised some of my cats (like Romeo, for instance; Mummers holds to this day that I was wrong to have him put down). My mother believes, unwaveringly, that the body must be given time to heal itself, and that God plays a role in this healing, and He must be given a chance to work. I have lived in mortal fear that Mummers would keep Veggiecodia alive for decades on life support for the majority of my life. My mother does not believe in refusal to treat, withholding any curative attempt, or the hastening of death in any manner, be it by commission or omission. PERIOD. And I may not agree, but I am under a moral obligation (and my brother and Meg agree on her position; she isn't shy about stating it) to honour her wishes at all times, until the end.
So she is back on a ventilator, after having unattended respiratory distress for over twenty-four hours. Yes, Meg and I left multiple orders for her pulmonologist to contact us in that time, and he finally responded with today's fuckery. So we fired him and placed her with another pulmonologist (despite my brother telling me I couldn't do it that fast, at six p.m., no-one would take her actively tonight, she would lounge uselessly with time ticking away on the vent until tomorrow, blah, blah, blah; I literally screamed at him 'You don't believe in me, motherfucker? Just you wait!' and hung up on him in the MICU waiting room {shift change kick-out after Mummers was stable}, where I had collected quite an audience, having no god damned idea how I was going to dig up another competent pulmonary physician).
So then I cried. And I tried to think of what to do, and I phoned the hospital pharmacy to see if I could get my prescriptions filled while I thought. With ten minutes to close, the pharmacist declined, saying it would be 'impossible' to fill two common prescriptions over the phone as I walked the chits down to him in less than ten minutes. Impossible. IMPOSSIBLE. I told him he had a bright future here at St God's Memorial Hospital, and to have a good night.
So I let myself back into MICU (I told Meg, who had left to teach her evening class, that I phoned because she really disapproves of my scenes) by coat-tailing some doctor who swiped in, and glaring at him when he started to say something to me. I am sure that he left me alone because I looked like a sweaty psycho by that point. I went to the MICU front desk and asked if there was anyone in charge of this shit hole. Then I remembered my brother warning me to not alienate people, and amended my question to include a 'well?' and exchanged 'shit hole' for 'unit'. A nurse I had earlier told that she had better get out of my way said that she was (oops), and she would finish her paperwork and come talk to me if I would wait in the Family Consultation room. I didn't have any better offers, so I did. I figured I was going to be blown off, so I tried some Internet searches (as if I know how to dope pulmonologists), and tried to think of where I could find one in-hospital to force up to MICU. When the nurse came in, she told me that she was the Charge Nurse, and I told her that I was sorry about before, but if she would listen to today's events and understand that I am still dry-and-foul-mouthed and woozy, she would maybe understand. So I unloaded the whole thing on her -- from the ignored respiratory distress to the fabricated 'wishes', to the failure to advise and seek family authorisation for a procedure that stood such a likelihood of CAUSING my mother to code, and I told her that I needed someone NOW, not later, and if she wanted to get me back for being a bitch that was fine, but there was a woman lying in her unit who never did a god-damned thing to her, and it would be immoral to make her suffer because her daughter tries to protect her by being a bitch.
Let me make a very long story short, cos I am tired. I won. Charge Nurse Rita may wish me death on a stick, and rightfully so, but she fixed Mom's chart to reflect Mom's wishes for no palliative (only) care, because I told her if one more person tried to talk our family into putting Mom to sleep against her wishes, I was going to rip their oesophagus out of their body with my bare hands. And she corrected all of the old doctors' names, so there would be no confusion over who her hospitalist is (we're on Round Three). And she phoned Mom's current hospitalist and changed her pulmonologist. And got him to come to Mom tonight; he showed up at nine p.m. And she stayed almost two hours over her shift to do it (even though I am sure she justified it by figuring that she will be less likely to come tomorrow to find that this psychotic bitch has destroyed her nice, pretty MSICU). When the new pulmonologist showed up, he won me over immediately by asking if Mom was responsive; I told him yes, that she was on a Versed drip, so her alertness came in waves, but if he needed me to rouse her, I could get a hand-squeeze or something out of her at the next window of alertness (I can see it around her eyes, even though they are closed). He said that was okay, that sometimes the family can see because they know the patient, while the doctor does not. He adjusted her ventilator settings, and left to read her history. My brother texted me during this, and I snuck out a reply (no cell phone policy) that I'd get back to him 'cos her NEW PULMONOLOGIST is evaluating her right now...ha, HA!!'
Teach him to doubt me. And yes, if honey (well, as honeyed as *I* get) hadn't worked, I would have tried going down to Surg and dragging one up or something. I don't know. One of these days, I am going to get into serious trouble...I just don't carry a gun on me. You can all see it coming, can't you?
So...she hates me, but I am in love with Charge Nurse Rita.
And my brother admitted that I amaze him. :D after the new guy left, I phoned him and read Mom's new vent settings, and he said they are good. And he said Mom's old pulmonologist was a total tool. Then Meg came back, and Dr New Guy came back a few minutes later. He wants a PICC line run, and I don't remember why, but it's what Mom would want, and my brother ok'd the decision cos Dr New Guy agrees with him that the goal is to get her off-vent as soon as humanly possible, ideally within 48 hours.
I will fill the rest in later. I have to sleep now.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Yep, Mummers.
Dr Fucktard had, without disclosure, had Mom taken down for a 'procedure' (I get the Code Log tomorrow), where Mom went into respiratory arrest. Meg said she was in Unit X, but we were to go to Multiple ICU and wait. I said 'fuck that', and ran to Unit X with Meg behind me. We saw her wheeled out with her crash team, and I raged at them to stop steering and keep manual ventilation going. At some point in time, we acquired a Nursing Administrator, probably because we weren't supposed to be down there, and I was a little loud. I tried to get in the tiny elevator with them, and there was no room, so Meg and I rode up with the Nursing Administrator. NA asked what she could do to calm me down, and I told her she could arrange transfer to City Hospital and stop trying to murder my mother. As my life goes, NA turned out to be the one from last year's Foam Party, but I was still coming off my own dose of Versed, Benedryl, and Fentanyl, and didn't recognise her just then; after I raged a bit up in MICU, all of a sudden I recognised her, and when I reminded her, she remembered me and actually stopped trying to calm me down, believe it or not. She gave Meg her number and left.
They tried to keep us out of MICU until she was stablised, and I pushed some blonde on the team out of my way and told her that if they were going to kill my mother, they were going to do it in front of me, that they lost my trust earlier today when Dr Fucktard manufactured a conversation with my mother where she expressed a DNR wish (bullshit) and a desire to go into Hospice care and stop curative efforts (more bullshit). I'll get to that conversation later, let it suffice now to say that we told him no. Mummers has been VERY clear on her beliefs for as long as I have ever known her, and she has never ONCE wavered, or expressed ANY consideration of the possibility that her beliefs are wrong. My mother is headstrong like a horse, and would tell you that *I* am a cat murderer because I have euthanised some of my cats (like Romeo, for instance; Mummers holds to this day that I was wrong to have him put down). My mother believes, unwaveringly, that the body must be given time to heal itself, and that God plays a role in this healing, and He must be given a chance to work. I have lived in mortal fear that Mummers would keep Veggiecodia alive for decades on life support for the majority of my life. My mother does not believe in refusal to treat, withholding any curative attempt, or the hastening of death in any manner, be it by commission or omission. PERIOD. And I may not agree, but I am under a moral obligation (and my brother and Meg agree on her position; she isn't shy about stating it) to honour her wishes at all times, until the end.
So she is back on a ventilator, after having unattended respiratory distress for over twenty-four hours. Yes, Meg and I left multiple orders for her pulmonologist to contact us in that time, and he finally responded with today's fuckery. So we fired him and placed her with another pulmonologist (despite my brother telling me I couldn't do it that fast, at six p.m., no-one would take her actively tonight, she would lounge uselessly with time ticking away on the vent until tomorrow, blah, blah, blah; I literally screamed at him 'You don't believe in me, motherfucker? Just you wait!' and hung up on him in the MICU waiting room {shift change kick-out after Mummers was stable}, where I had collected quite an audience, having no god damned idea how I was going to dig up another competent pulmonary physician).
So then I cried. And I tried to think of what to do, and I phoned the hospital pharmacy to see if I could get my prescriptions filled while I thought. With ten minutes to close, the pharmacist declined, saying it would be 'impossible' to fill two common prescriptions over the phone as I walked the chits down to him in less than ten minutes. Impossible. IMPOSSIBLE. I told him he had a bright future here at St God's Memorial Hospital, and to have a good night.
So I let myself back into MICU (I told Meg, who had left to teach her evening class, that I phoned because she really disapproves of my scenes) by coat-tailing some doctor who swiped in, and glaring at him when he started to say something to me. I am sure that he left me alone because I looked like a sweaty psycho by that point. I went to the MICU front desk and asked if there was anyone in charge of this shit hole. Then I remembered my brother warning me to not alienate people, and amended my question to include a 'well?' and exchanged 'shit hole' for 'unit'. A nurse I had earlier told that she had better get out of my way said that she was (oops), and she would finish her paperwork and come talk to me if I would wait in the Family Consultation room. I didn't have any better offers, so I did. I figured I was going to be blown off, so I tried some Internet searches (as if I know how to dope pulmonologists), and tried to think of where I could find one in-hospital to force up to MICU. When the nurse came in, she told me that she was the Charge Nurse, and I told her that I was sorry about before, but if she would listen to today's events and understand that I am still dry-and-foul-mouthed and woozy, she would maybe understand. So I unloaded the whole thing on her -- from the ignored respiratory distress to the fabricated 'wishes', to the failure to advise and seek family authorisation for a procedure that stood such a likelihood of CAUSING my mother to code, and I told her that I needed someone NOW, not later, and if she wanted to get me back for being a bitch that was fine, but there was a woman lying in her unit who never did a god-damned thing to her, and it would be immoral to make her suffer because her daughter tries to protect her by being a bitch.
Let me make a very long story short, cos I am tired. I won. Charge Nurse Rita may wish me death on a stick, and rightfully so, but she fixed Mom's chart to reflect Mom's wishes for no palliative (only) care, because I told her if one more person tried to talk our family into putting Mom to sleep against her wishes, I was going to rip their oesophagus out of their body with my bare hands. And she corrected all of the old doctors' names, so there would be no confusion over who her hospitalist is (we're on Round Three). And she phoned Mom's current hospitalist and changed her pulmonologist. And got him to come to Mom tonight; he showed up at nine p.m. And she stayed almost two hours over her shift to do it (even though I am sure she justified it by figuring that she will be less likely to come tomorrow to find that this psychotic bitch has destroyed her nice, pretty MSICU). When the new pulmonologist showed up, he won me over immediately by asking if Mom was responsive; I told him yes, that she was on a Versed drip, so her alertness came in waves, but if he needed me to rouse her, I could get a hand-squeeze or something out of her at the next window of alertness (I can see it around her eyes, even though they are closed). He said that was okay, that sometimes the family can see because they know the patient, while the doctor does not. He adjusted her ventilator settings, and left to read her history. My brother texted me during this, and I snuck out a reply (no cell phone policy) that I'd get back to him 'cos her NEW PULMONOLOGIST is evaluating her right now...ha, HA!!'
Teach him to doubt me. And yes, if honey (well, as honeyed as *I* get) hadn't worked, I would have tried going down to Surg and dragging one up or something. I don't know. One of these days, I am going to get into serious trouble...I just don't carry a gun on me. You can all see it coming, can't you?
So...she hates me, but I am in love with Charge Nurse Rita.
And my brother admitted that I amaze him. :D after the new guy left, I phoned him and read Mom's new vent settings, and he said they are good. And he said Mom's old pulmonologist was a total tool. Then Meg came back, and Dr New Guy came back a few minutes later. He wants a PICC line run, and I don't remember why, but it's what Mom would want, and my brother ok'd the decision cos Dr New Guy agrees with him that the goal is to get her off-vent as soon as humanly possible, ideally within 48 hours.
I will fill the rest in later. I have to sleep now.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Still awake
I fucked up on Facebook and posted a status about Mummers' being on a ventilator, something we've withheld from her sisters because (1) it was Mom's express wish that everything humanly possible be done to prolong her life and give her body the chance to heal, and I am morally obligated to comply; (2) there's nothing they can do about it, or to help; (3) hovering over her and shaking her awake to say good-bye would only confuse and distress her, it is a wholly selfish act on the part of the person who gets to stay living, and I will not tolerate this happening to my mother; (4) because her older sister, if anything, is in worse health than Mommy overall, and does not need the emotional roller coaster of progress-setback-progress we are riding, and yes, that is not my aunt's decision, but I don't give a fuck what she wants, I know what is best for her. We are doing everything possible, and complying with Mom's wishes, and we do not need either interference or to put my aunt in hospital from panic attacks or something.
But anyway, I fucked up and mentioned Mom's spontaneous trial (off-ventilator, to see how you are breathing on your own, and mom has done smashingly; she is still intubated, but the vent is being used as a CPAP, now for over twenty-four hours, and Mom is not tiring). My one cousin who is the sister of my fuckhead televangelist cousin seems to have seen my post, though it was only up for about an hour. Meg read the Riot Act to me. I deleted it asap, and being older (my televangelist cousin and his sister are too old to understand how Teh Intarwebz actually work), now they can't 'find' the post I made (I got a voicemail about this, so I know my one cousin told the other to look, or something). So the short of it is that I guess I am having to really censor my FB posts for right now.
I think everyone has my IRL FB, but if not, just let me know. I have decided, I believe, to open my doors here to some friends who already know everything, anyway. I'm mulling over that decision.
Anyway, I know some may not agree with the way all of us siblings have decided to run this -- the withholding of information and so on -- and if you feel that way, I am sorry we disagree on this point. My thoughts are that while you are in this nice, healthy body you may disagree, but if you lived in a frail, 80-year old body that had constant aches and pains, and complained that the evening news moves too fast to keep up with, if you could spend a day or two having anxiety and chest pains because your little cat got outside, and won't come back in, and you are too weak to go hunting for her, so you have to wait until the neighbour girl will go look for you...if you had empathy for that, you might understand our decision a little better. Not everyone gets to ride the rollercoaster, and there are reasons why. It is in their best interest to be protected.
More later...I have to try to sleep, even if it is for twenty minutes. I have such a headache, and I need to be held. :-/ Or, I need someone to put a nice cartoon movie like Disney or something on TV and pet my hair and rub my back while I sleep, and talk to me about non-stupid things (keeping an ear out for when I need to say something, which I mostly don't except when sadness or fear become too much) and I know I am too specific in what I need, and this is why I will never find anyone, but...at least I know my own heart. Sigh.
My boy is doing okay in some departments, but that is another post for another day. Since mom was transferred to CICU in a non-communicative state, I've told him to leave me alone. He also turned up sick yesterday, so I told him to stay the fuck away from me physically; my mother is too immunocompromised to be able to fend off even a summer head cold at this point. I've dried my skin out, as has Meg, switching to Dial soap in the shower to help de-contaminate us, and we're constantly washing our hands, both in hospital and at home. I have virtually no fingernails to speak of from all the washings and foamings. Sigh. But...this is my mother. I need her, and I am obligated to take good care of her, regardless.
Ok...sleep for a bit. More later. <3
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
But anyway, I fucked up and mentioned Mom's spontaneous trial (off-ventilator, to see how you are breathing on your own, and mom has done smashingly; she is still intubated, but the vent is being used as a CPAP, now for over twenty-four hours, and Mom is not tiring). My one cousin who is the sister of my fuckhead televangelist cousin seems to have seen my post, though it was only up for about an hour. Meg read the Riot Act to me. I deleted it asap, and being older (my televangelist cousin and his sister are too old to understand how Teh Intarwebz actually work), now they can't 'find' the post I made (I got a voicemail about this, so I know my one cousin told the other to look, or something). So the short of it is that I guess I am having to really censor my FB posts for right now.
I think everyone has my IRL FB, but if not, just let me know. I have decided, I believe, to open my doors here to some friends who already know everything, anyway. I'm mulling over that decision.
Anyway, I know some may not agree with the way all of us siblings have decided to run this -- the withholding of information and so on -- and if you feel that way, I am sorry we disagree on this point. My thoughts are that while you are in this nice, healthy body you may disagree, but if you lived in a frail, 80-year old body that had constant aches and pains, and complained that the evening news moves too fast to keep up with, if you could spend a day or two having anxiety and chest pains because your little cat got outside, and won't come back in, and you are too weak to go hunting for her, so you have to wait until the neighbour girl will go look for you...if you had empathy for that, you might understand our decision a little better. Not everyone gets to ride the rollercoaster, and there are reasons why. It is in their best interest to be protected.
More later...I have to try to sleep, even if it is for twenty minutes. I have such a headache, and I need to be held. :-/ Or, I need someone to put a nice cartoon movie like Disney or something on TV and pet my hair and rub my back while I sleep, and talk to me about non-stupid things (keeping an ear out for when I need to say something, which I mostly don't except when sadness or fear become too much) and I know I am too specific in what I need, and this is why I will never find anyone, but...at least I know my own heart. Sigh.
My boy is doing okay in some departments, but that is another post for another day. Since mom was transferred to CICU in a non-communicative state, I've told him to leave me alone. He also turned up sick yesterday, so I told him to stay the fuck away from me physically; my mother is too immunocompromised to be able to fend off even a summer head cold at this point. I've dried my skin out, as has Meg, switching to Dial soap in the shower to help de-contaminate us, and we're constantly washing our hands, both in hospital and at home. I have virtually no fingernails to speak of from all the washings and foamings. Sigh. But...this is my mother. I need her, and I am obligated to take good care of her, regardless.
Ok...sleep for a bit. More later. <3
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Hoping Mom will heal...
Mom is a little better, but I am terrified to count this as a plus, because it can all get taken away so quickly. I am still very scared and sad, and I have no one I can tell.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Friday, September 03, 2010
Family Meeting
About Mom tomorrow morning, doctor-requested. She has only had three rounds of dialysis, and does perk up after a little. But I am scared. My brother, who is even more pro plug-pulling than I am, says she needs more time, and her numbers look good. I guess i will let you know what happens. I am not ready to lose my mother, though who ever is...I know.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
More mommystuffs
Mom had dialysis today, and I am so tired that I could die. She had some sudden decline, I don't know why yet. If I find out it is DKA, I am burning the fucking hospital to the ground. I am atheist, so I won't ask for prayers, but please think good thoughts of her. She isn't a bad woman...as if that matters. :-/
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Monday, August 30, 2010
Adventures in Dialysis...
Mom's STILL in hospital. Tonight she gets dialysis for the first time. We're hoping it will clear up her confusion, 'cos it's bad. She is asleep now, but rouses to mumble incoherencies and then go back to sleep. I swear, if I had known this was what Romeo was going through, not knowing where he was half the time, I would have let him go sooner. I have made so many mistakes in my life, but they have been out of love, and that is really the worst kind of all.
I was a little upset when Betty responded to my telling her that Mummers was getting dialysis by asking me how much more am I going to put her through -- that maybe she is ready to go -- and I am trying to remember that Betty does so much Hospice care that it may be hard to think outside of that box. Betty's a damn good nurse, and I know she isn't that...defeatest, or whatever.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Feels bad, man.
Mummers is still in hospital. A lot has happened, but one of them is that mom went psychotic. She has two bad infections, cdiff and enterococcus, and the e. faecalis can turn into a meningitis, and basically this is what they think happened, I think.
On top of all this, I am ABD, semester starts this week, and I cannot get a hold of my advisor. But the good news is that I am on the verge of creating a really nice spread for a wrap I make by cooking down in olive oil to near mush shallots and garlic cloves, then adding a little creamy horseradish. Yum.
Oh, and my back hurts and I need to be held and no one gives a fuck. I have had to battle l'hôpital of course, but right now I have to go get ready to melt...or mould...snowflakes' minds. I keep forgetting. XD
I want to take a looooong vacation. And I have been trying so hard to help this boy, and sometimes he seems so self-centred, I just don't know.
Oh, and: I want to take Butler II and keep him. :( he loves me.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
On top of all this, I am ABD, semester starts this week, and I cannot get a hold of my advisor. But the good news is that I am on the verge of creating a really nice spread for a wrap I make by cooking down in olive oil to near mush shallots and garlic cloves, then adding a little creamy horseradish. Yum.
Oh, and my back hurts and I need to be held and no one gives a fuck. I have had to battle l'hôpital of course, but right now I have to go get ready to melt...or mould...snowflakes' minds. I keep forgetting. XD
I want to take a looooong vacation. And I have been trying so hard to help this boy, and sometimes he seems so self-centred, I just don't know.
Oh, and: I want to take Butler II and keep him. :( he loves me.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Four legs good...
One of the things that bothers me the most about this 'having a dying mom' thing is getting all the loose ends tied up...property, titles, and so forth. Makes me want to just let the state have it all.
In Other News, Butler II is letting me pet him now. And I am tired and depressed.
Mom's 'avoidance behaviors' are going to be the death of me. She tries to get out of chemo app'ts, and we even had the hospital suggest *not* letting her drive herself (we aren't anyway) because pts like her will cancel app'ts and so forth.
Anyway, I'm watching True Blood. More later.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
In Other News, Butler II is letting me pet him now. And I am tired and depressed.
Mom's 'avoidance behaviors' are going to be the death of me. She tries to get out of chemo app'ts, and we even had the hospital suggest *not* letting her drive herself (we aren't anyway) because pts like her will cancel app'ts and so forth.
Anyway, I'm watching True Blood. More later.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Still tarred.
Ok, so I finished and submitted. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I need a hug. :-/
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Well, then.
Okay, so I am -- almost -- finished. I am going to take a nap, though. This has been hellish; I have someone involved in this project who seems to be hell-bent upon proving their worthlessness. I feel as if I am trudging up a wintry mountain, dragging a dead body behind me. I know that I sound melodramatic, but frankly, at this point I *feel* melodramatic. Let the take-away message here be to NEVER work with fuckheads. Before you can get the words 'this should be easy' out, they'll have sucked you into their Borderline Personality Disorder maelstrom, and you will find yourself sobbing away on your bedroom floor, blowing your nose on the cat, and saying 'why me?' as you type eleventy thousand pages of utter shite, because this was not supposed to be something you did all alone, with no feedback.
Just trust me.
I don't like this app, but at least I can sorta use it. And it was, like, a dollar or something. For the record, I am currently straddling three devices, just 'cos 'complicated' is how I roll. And I would wish that it was Winter, but that'll mean my mother will probably be sicker, so...I don't. I think her haemoglobin is low again, I guess that means another transfusion on Tuesday. Last week she took two units, and just even thinking about it is depressing. Her breast is not healing well, Meg and I are changing bandages multiple times a day, the house smells, but it is nothing that can be fixed. At least not quickly. We are following the wound care specialist's instructions, and at least the profuse bleeding has stopped. Now all the necrotic tissue has to slough off of its own accord, and the only thing we can really do is use Enzymatic Rain to control the smell, god damn her lazy fuck of an oncologist.
Sorry...I am tired. Very tired. And lonely.
K...g'night.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Just trust me.
I don't like this app, but at least I can sorta use it. And it was, like, a dollar or something. For the record, I am currently straddling three devices, just 'cos 'complicated' is how I roll. And I would wish that it was Winter, but that'll mean my mother will probably be sicker, so...I don't. I think her haemoglobin is low again, I guess that means another transfusion on Tuesday. Last week she took two units, and just even thinking about it is depressing. Her breast is not healing well, Meg and I are changing bandages multiple times a day, the house smells, but it is nothing that can be fixed. At least not quickly. We are following the wound care specialist's instructions, and at least the profuse bleeding has stopped. Now all the necrotic tissue has to slough off of its own accord, and the only thing we can really do is use Enzymatic Rain to control the smell, god damn her lazy fuck of an oncologist.
Sorry...I am tired. Very tired. And lonely.
K...g'night.
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
::sniffle::
I am so tired and lonely...sigh. I am writing this huge thing, and it is terrible. I will get around to taking this private, just as soon as I lift my self-imposed moratorium on getting on the Intarwebz for screwing around. I have cut off all chat, all anything, save wandering onto facebook (they don't deserve the majuscule) to keep up in that damned vampire game. Oh, and I have a headache. And I HATE this one person I work with, but I cannot go into it here. Let it suffice to say that even though I use the word 'hate' a lot, I do not *actually* hate most anyone. Well, I HATE this person, and I hope they die. So hmph.
Ok...back to work. :-/
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Ok...back to work. :-/
- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O
Sunday, July 11, 2010
sigh.
I just got in from what Meg would call wildcatting about...more on this later. In the meantime, on Thursday, when I was feeding the ferals at Eviljob, in addition to seeing Butler 2: Electric Butleroo (who has let me pet him!), I saw...
Are you ready for this?
Oscar, Rhett Butler's real brother. It has been a LONG time since I have seen Oscar...like YEARS. I posted a pic of Oscar when he was trapped and neutered, and my heart simply *sang* when I saw his fuzzy face. So yay.
I tried to post via email on Monday, but I screwed up the email address, so I have included it below. I have a project due Monday now, and I'll be killing myself to get it finished today. For now, I have to sleep for a while. So until later...hugs. I mean it, whomever you are. Life is too short to not allow yourself a little love and happiness. G'night.
==============
Here's the post from Monday:
I just found out that my great aunt died. This is sad because even though she was ninety-five, I did love her, and I wanted to see her again. But she had a bad fall at her home, and her heart stopped twice in the emergency room, then it stopped a final time after her nurse left to go back home to get her living will, or whatever it is that says whether one wants to be revived or not.
And my piece-of-crap evangelist cousin is in charge of her estate. I cannot *believe* he is such a vulture, but he has done it to other members of our family...I think he scares them, frankly. I mean into thinking about their salvation and crap. I hate him. I think that the only reason he is not ingratiating himself in with mom is because she has three children, where others in our family often haven't anyone in close physical proximity.
Oh, did I say that I hate him?
I have to get back to work, but...so far, 2010 is sucking ass.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Omgwtfbbq
I have been away with...complications.
Don't panic; I'm fine. Physically, that is.
As if everything else in my life weren't enough already, i am adding to it. And i need someone to talk to, so i may be taking this blog private for a bit. If you are an interested party, let me know what email addess you'd be logging into Blogger on, and I will include you. If you have been silently following, that's cool, and I admire your tenacity, as I have been a tich on the boring side for a while...ever since I had a little oopsie at Job 1, which I will be more than happy to talk about...later.
In Other News, Mummers is still terminal. Film at eleven.
I am just dying to tell you what I did today. Simply *dying*.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Tarred.
Had Mummers' all-day chemo eval, and i am *tired*. She'll be three weeks on and one week off Taxol for up to a year and a half, i guess assuming the chemo is effective and she lives that long.
I have to sleep now...soon. have to check my classes first and make sure no one asploded while i was gone today.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Ain't no party like a hospital party, 'cos a hospital party don't stop.
I am sitting and waiting for my laptop to be repaired (because I am a control freak, and do not like leaving things which I consider ultra-personal with strangers, or anyone who isn't, well, *me*) before driving out to Botany Bay to meet Laura for a ton of rescue-cat cat food for my babies at Eviljob. And hopefully to meet Betty for, as I texted, 'coffee, dinner, or kinky sex with a pooled-fund male prostitute'.
She picked coffee, btw.
Butsoanyway.
Of course, this PC repair place is housed in an xtian motivational place, and I have eyerolled so much that i have a headache. Does no one understand that the entire world is not xtian? Well, the total lack of reading material allows me to blog. Except for this needing a bathroom thing.
Speaking of xtians, i have re-friended IRL (like i have the time to go to the bathroom IRL) a guy from ever ago that i sort-of knew, and don't you know, he's still an awesome person (now divorced with a sweet son), and ::drumroll:: an xtian. Bleurgh. Why is it that when everyone loses their crackers, they find Jesus? Is there not some corelational thing there? 'I went batshit, then found my lord, jeebus mice'? If, then...if, then...
I'm just sayin'.
Mommy is ok; she was put in hospital for breathing difficulties which turned out to be fluid surrounding he lungs, most of which was drained yesterday, but a large part of her lung was still not filling up, so i had to rage at the day nurse to get mom a spirometer and PT orders, then when i stopped by after work, i had to rage again cos she had basically been abandoned for over five hours with a blood sugar of over 200, in pain, needing to go to the bathroom, etc... i asked for her nurse, the charge nurse, and finally when a tech told me she couldn't do anything more (almost crying), i told her that as fucked-up as this place is, i empathised with her dilemma, and to go take a smoke break or something, and i'd handle it. She left, and the same gaggle of scrubs was clustered around the nurses' station as when I'd been there before, way up at the end of the hall, so i just walked around and removed an arm-full of Steris foam from the dispensers all around, and started having a foam party in the hall.
That got their attention.
All of a sudden, room 5802 was The Place To Be; i can get a party started better than Alig, guys. Not only did i get the charge nurse, but i got the charge nurse phoning a director who was still on. I vented my spleen at the charge nurse, and she assured me that she would (1) get mom's meds immediately, (2) change the dressing herself, and etc.; then Heidi The Director showed up and told me to give back the cans of Steris, or get trespassed off the property. I set them down, and told her to walk around the corner away from pt rooms to talk with me, and she did. By the time i told her the whole thing, she was writing down names, incidents, and times. I told her that if i had ONE more burden added to my caretaking in the form of a broken hip cos no one would spot my mother bathrooming herself, i was going to burn the fucking hospital to the ground to keep their inferior standards of care from hurting one more person, even if it meant i was trapped in it, i was *really* that far beyond caring, and i figured they were on the road to murdering half the people in there, so all I'd be doing was speeding up things a little.
Then she told me about losing her sister to cancer, and how if all of this had happened to her sister, she would feel the same way, and...well...she was being serious. I felt like crap. She gave me her number, and said to phone her before i went off on any more foam parties, and i said that i would.
The poor tech had already cleaned up my mess by the time we came back, so i felt even worse. :-/ i sat with mom until she began to feel drowsy (mind you, i started my foam party at around 11:15 - 11:30), and while we were waiting, more bedlam erupted; an elderly man a few doors down (who was aparrently also being ignored) simply unhooked himself from his shit, and got up and started walking down the hall, screaming 'isn't there a god damned doctor in this hospital? I want to see a doctor!'. And once again, the techs and charge nurse (and Heidi, who was still on the wing) came a-running.
Next time, we are taking Mummers to a different hospital. i can't take this anymore.
Oh, and when i came back in Mummers' room (I'd done all this away enough that she thought I had just summoned all this help), mom told me she was impressed that I had maturely handled a situation instead of flying off the handle, as i usually do. I just smiled at her. Why try to introduce yourself to a dying person? You and I know I am about as low-key as Tank Girl. Snort.
And I am *starving*. And i am hoping that my PC repair guy isn't pawing through my porn. o_O. Ok, kidding...but i have my blogstuffs and shit on there. And research shit. Well, ok, and porn. XD
Though if i gave in and became a xtian, i guess i could do away with all that, right? Haha.
Ok...more later, cos i'm getting grumpy.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
I has a headache.
I am (I know; my mother is dying, and I'm all 'me, me, me') exhausted, and I cannot write anything for shit right now. And i cannot get uninterrupted blocks of time to write. And my mother feels understandably crappy, but she won't take anything for her mood swings, and she is driving me to tears every day.
Sigh...gtg.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
still cannot sleep
i am in hell. a/c is still broken, because the tech mom was supposed to meet on Thursday (and missed) had Friday off. the company was kind enough to send out a portable unit that is in Mom's bedroom. the radiation is hard on her, and we are going to have to change radiation oncologists because this one is an idiot. my back hurts so badly that i am cramping. i have no more things to update, i guess. i am so depressed. there is more stuff, but it will have to wait, i don't feel like talking, i guess i am just lonely.
still cannot sleep
i am in hell. a/c is still broken, because the tech mom was supposed to meet on Thursday (and missed) had Friday off. the company was kind enough to send out a portable unit that is in Mom's bedroom. the radiation is hard on her, and we are going to have to change radiation oncologists because this one is an idiot. my back hurts so badly that i am cramping. i have no more things to update, i guess. i am so depressed. there is more stuff, but it will have to wait, i don't feel like talking, i guess i am just lonely.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Radioactive mommy
She was sick from the radiation yesterday, and i still need to finish Saturday's post. Sorry. Classes have begun again already, and i am doomed and damned if i cannot get this sleeping in hand. I am having nightmares about EVERYTHING, from trying to help mom stop her haematomas from bleeding, and i am all alone and can't get the bleeding to stop, to other shit, being beaten, assaulted, every night is another nightmare. I am not telling anyone about this, so shhh. I am on Facebook til all hours some nights, others i just drug the crap out of myself.
I cannot believe i am losing my batshit crazy mommy. I honest to elvis always thought she would be too bleeding insane to die, actually.
In other news, i am still kinda in love. I don't write about this here, cos it falls somewhere in between mom's dying and my coping with what is appearing to be a hellacious case of PTSD, and it is just out of place. For now.
I am working on getting some shit out as far as pubs, but now i am re-focussed on my actual graduation...i want mom to see it. That means it is sped up a tich.
Well, now back to work...and of course, *now* i am tired. ::sob::
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
For ages; for fifty years.
Today Mummers gets her results. I cannot sleep, Harry's new job doesn't allow him to come suck water out of my carpet until tomorrow from the flooded a/c (did i mention the a/c?) And I am watching Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band, which I've not seen in years. Ever notice the LV print on Mr Big's coat during A Day In The Life? Well, I just noticed it. And where as a child I had thought Steven Tyler was the hawtness, now I acknowledge that this is an excellent example of the motif of harmful sensation (no, really -- it's one of my interests, trust me), which means that I am getting old and pedantic, or I might be in love.
Whatever I am, i cannot sleep.
I have been in such turmoil that I am having difficulty focussing, and have been too self-indulgent, possibly. I have less than one week to pull some magic out of my ass at Job 2. And I am in *pain*. Everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer cramps to a backache which runs from the base of my skull to my SI area, which is in constant pain most of the time.
Enough about me. I need rest.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Everything good is bad...everything bad is good.
Meg and Mummers are still in Baltimore and even though this is moving faster than here, I have adjusted, and it feels like a snail's pace. I am, for once in my life, so tied up in knots that I am having a hard time thinking.
In other news, Karen is coming back to the program that I am about to leave, and...I am very behind. I just feel sick. Screw it, there isn't Other News, except that I am going to beat Meg half to death if she doesn't start being more forceful. Oh, and, I have totally violated the sanctity of this blog by bringing someone in from Outside. Oh, and have I mentioned that I feel sick all the time anymore? :-\
This really is not like me...it just isn't. Can't we just go back to having fun on here, rescuing cats, and kvetching about stupid people?
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Desperation
I can't sleep. Betty's at work, and wanted to know if I will be in Baltimore for her surgery. Probably I will not, but I will tell you that if she has not metastisised, my skin graft scars will be the greatest source of pride for me ever. I might just wear shorts to show them off, because skin grafting means she's savable.
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Don't Panic
Those of you who actually know me, know that I am ok. That being said, though...
I have never thought so seriously about just plathing the bejeezus out of myself as I do now.
In between life in general, the fact that I feel *way* too possessive about someone I am in like with (and things keep happening that hurt me), and that I worry what this year will bring career-wise, PLUS my mother's cancer, well...
I just feel as if things will never be okay. At least right now.
But I am fine, so just leave me alone.
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
trashed, but not sleeping
i can't sleep. i am so, so worried. and angry. mom went to her oncologist in november about her breast area, and was told by his partner that rapidly-progressing breast cancer was an 'old wives' tale'. i am seriously overmedicated at this point, and i can't turn off. help.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Whatevs.
Butsoanyway.
So I am sitting here silently raging, and Meg informs me that 'this'
(meaning my way) is not how it is done. I finally asked her how she
became such an expert, and she tells me that she already phoned the
number I gave her, and they told her they have a huge waiting list,
referral is required, blah, blah, blah. I at least give her kudos for
phoning. As she is droning on, I just honestly feel like giving up. I
mean, it is clear that feet (and knuckles, imo) are being dragged. So
I tell Meg, just factually, 'you know that, at this rate, if this is
angiosarcoma, Mom is not going to get treatment in time, and she is
going to die'. Then Meg blew up at me and told me she didn't think I
could do any better than she has of getting a TENTATIVE local second
opinion, and a promise that pathology reports would be made available
'asap' (a quote which, if you will note, does not contain an actual
date and time). I told her to give me the number to the oncologist,
and we'll see about that.
...so I just got off the phone with Johns Hopkins' centre (see the
super-informative link in my tweets), and Mummers' appointment is the
first of next week. I spoke with them and got it set up (and already
approved through Mom's insurance, tyvm) after I got off the phone with
Mom's local (and probably former, snicker) oncologist and explained to
them that I has an Intarweb, and I know they have fucked up. His nurse
came up with some farkakteh tale about how this has all already been
discussed with Mom (erm, not), and Dr Oncologist was going to sit down
with her 'sometime' next week and discuss options, and then...
...you know, I would really love to tell you the rest, but about that
time her voice kind of trailed off, and I started seeing swimmy things
in my eyes. I may have raged. Not sure. Oops.
Butsoanyway, while I was typing the above, Meg was giving (because Dr
Oncologist's nurse has expressed a preference to not speak with me
again, something about a bleeding eardrum) to the oncologist the fax #
and address for all the mammography, MRI, ultrasound, and biopsy
materials to be sent to Baltimore. Meg wanted to know what I was
typing here, and I told her 'death threats'. :D. She said she wouldn't
be surprised. She wanted to know why she got pushed off when she
phoned Johns Hopkins, yet I can get Mom an appointment 'just like
that'. I told her, honestly, that I have no fucking idea. All I did
was the same thing I did last night: I phoned and told my boggle to
the nice person on the other end, and I got help. To make her feel
better, I suggested perhaps it is that she sounds uber-competent on
the phone, so everyone thinks she's got it all taken care of.
Well, what in the fuck was I supposed to say? I *don't* know why
people did stuff for me and not her. I would love to know why, when
she asked, there was a waiting list, but I got an appointment (already
rec'd the confirmation email, new pt # assigned, insurance approved)
for the soonest possible surgery consulting. I have no idea.
If you ever face a similar issue, I guess just keep phoning people, or
walking down the hall, knocking on doors, until you get the answer you
*want*, not whatever is convenient? Maybe that is it? But I really
didn't phone all over...maybe I just sound like I need help?
So...mission (kinda) accomplished. I should be writing, but I have to
lie down for an hour 'cos I have a really awful headache. I hate it
when people are discouraging and all giving up and shit, and I am
really having issues from all the 'wowzy-wowzy-woo-woo'
knuckle-dragging shit going on before I accepted Meg's challenge to
'do better'. Feeling overwhelmed, desperate, stressed...all that I can
handle; feeling as if there is no hope makes me feel ill, and I've no
tolerance for it. Hugs and love to you if you read this. And if you
do know me and don't already know, because I am friended with several
of Meg's coworkers and cohorts (much to her chagrin, I'm *that*
lovable), I have been ordered by Meg to NEVER post anything regarding
family crises or disputes on Facebook, especially as regards Mom's
health matters. I did it once, and was read the Riot Act for a week
solid. So, as always, this is the only place I can *really* be me.
Whatthefuckever.
Christ, I have a headache and nausea now. Blecch.
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