Last week was a long long time ago...

So.. continuing on from my last blog but more slowly sine now I have this cast thing-y on my hand. The doctor said I'd still be able to type but there is really only one usable finger on the right hand -so basically my usual typing skills. Any way I foolishly thought what with the Lyme's disease and shots and injuries I'd just laugh at the next thing. Ha ha ha. Then the phone rang. Grandma's blood was at the recharge level and since the doctor for that is in my sister's state he wasn't at all sure where we would get blood. She actually kept saying that until I had to bite my tongue not to explain to her that here in my county and state we just pick up some at Walmart - but only if Sheetz's is all out. So finally they say, aha -call her primary care where you are so I think hey I have this covered. Only it turns out he doesn't do blood... or hospitals so call back the out of state doctor who says just go to an ER and they'll handle it from there. I should have laughed some more. I did wait for someone (my poor daughter) to make come with me since the O2 etc etc was proving difficult to drag behind the wheel chair all with one hand. The wait time at the ER was only about 10 minutes just as they advertised. And then of course we waited 3 hours for anyone to do anything. And what they did was to admit her as soon as I left for a nap at a friends house. The "ED" wanted her to see a GI doc because of some blood -present right where you would expect it to be present if one had been swallowing blood from several nights of nosebleeds. Also her blood numbers looked higher she was dehydrated so that was misleading. I was pretty mad but the mischief was done and since I didn't trust the hemoglobin number an overnight seemed reasonable.
 Next day the first doctor who calls says she is looking much better from her transfusion. What transfusion I say. Oh, wait he misread the chart - she needs a transfusion because the numbers are now the same as what sent us in to begin with. Next doctor calls and suggests perhaps she has MDS - yes indeed I say just as I told everyone last night as you can confirm from the number of her hematologist I gave them. Basically he then goes on to get her entire history from me just as I had given the first doctor just as I gave in the ER and just as I gave at 1am in the floor room. The 3rd doctor (you did see this coming right?) calls when I was driving home from my evening visit with her. He's there for a GI consult and seems bemused because he has been told there was a 96 year old, anemic, possible intestinal bleeding and a history of "multiple colonoscopies" - that took me a minute, it really did. "Perhaps you mean she has a co-lost-omy?" I ask politely. The next pause was all worth it. I gave him her history but more loudly than before and with a few comments regarding the ED thrown in. Gratifyingly he was in complete agreement. He told me he'd kept his surgical team on hand when he got the report of this in extremis 96 year old only to come in and find her "chowing down" (the nurse told me this morning he used that actual phrase even in his notes on her chart). The nurse also told me this morning the "family" would be bringing in her thyroid but I (the family) told her no one had mentioned that to us. So now she (grandma, not the nurse) is on her way home and I am on my way to bed. I looked for a picture for this post and find the above from just a little over a week ago I wonder why I can hardly remember May at all.

Ifs

If this hadn't been so boring maybe he wouldn't have switched to the ball and bat set. And if I had played with him instead of working on the yard I wouldn't have picked up all those ticks. And if I hadn't collected  quite so many ticks maybe I wouldn't have missed one. If I hadn't overlooked that one maybe I  wouldn't have gotten the rash and mildly flu-like symptoms that sent me to a walk-in clinic on a lovely Saturday and missed out on being outside -in which case I might not have gone out at dusk to weed my own garden and not have accidentally pulled the  rose branch that sprang back and clobbered my knuckle with its iron like thorns. If that hadn't happened I wouldn't have gone into a different walk-in clinic Sunday to have my very swollen hand x-rayed and my growing tick rash admired and the antibiotic the first clinic prescribed changed to the far more appropriate (and nauseating) doxycycline, my finger taped to a splint and a TDaP shot in my now swollen left arm. And if my charming husband had not had to drive me in for the required follow-up with the real doctor on a Monday afternoon and if we hadn't run into a friend after seeing the doctor and if we hadn't accepted their invitation to hang out with them (and some interesting beers) and if our sweet daughter hadn't agreed to take care of the homefront with the added enticement that she was going to have to give Grandma her shot anyway (my hand, remember?) and if Grandma hadn't had nose bleeds all night because of the oxygen and she had to ring her bell for help and if I hadn't been told not to use my possibly broken hand THEN he wouldn't have only had 2 hours of sleep and really be bit grumpy today.

the picture tells the story

... but mostly it's staged. Yes, he hit a plastic ball with a plastic bat into a very old window. But the look on my face is from trying not to laugh and he was simply being a ham posing there and looking remorseful. I mean he was sorry -kinda. But mostly he was living the drama. Probably if this had been either of his brothers 18 or 20 years ago I'd have been truly upset. Also, this being Grandma's house she would have been in on it too along with any aunts or uncles who heard about it. There would have been no need of acting skills. But this isn't 18 or 20 years ago and although it is Grandma's house she knew we'd be the ones replacing the pane and she only knew about the break because we told her -she needs something exciting. And this being 18 or 20 years later I've pretty well used up any outrage over the things little boys do (I don't mean in general of course -that would be sexist. I just mean as far as my boys and girls were concerned). Broken windows are easy now. They are fixable. It's not cold  so no warmth can escape and since there's no "central cooling" more ventilation is fine.
  What isn't fixable is being 96. I can't slow time down and I can't... . The thing about taking care of a very old and ill person is the only way my job will get easier is if... or if... Do I need to say I don't want my mother to die? Of course I don't! Except when I do. I am pretty sure I am not supposed to say that. If someone would tell me what else she has to look forward to here on earth (besides a nice dinner and a glass of wine) please do. The thing is I never want her to die now. Not too long from now, but never now. When she was so weak she couldn't make it to the table yesterday I tenderly fed her. (Grilled salmon and asparagus, OK?) She felt better after that. Back to normal today. And by normal I mean tired and in pain and grumpily making it to the table and asking for her coffee to be hotter and I find my tenderness all for myself. I may even feed myself... but very tenderly.
  So the good news is I don't sweat the windows because this job has an end I can freely look forward to. He's going to grow up and have to take care of me.

waiting (rolling and waiting)

Here "we" are at a Children's hospital. The parking lot security asked if we were there for a meeting and I had to wave the crutches at him and say, "No, appointment." Actually the car was too small to actually wave the crutches at him so I more sort of just shook them. Garmin had directed us via the most densely populated city streets possible to get there but some how we were still on time. Even after waiting in line to check in. We waited in line with all the small children and and a few teenagers. I felt very sorry for myself. Then I'd see the children in the special strollers with the head supports and with various tubes strapped here and there and then my self-pity vanished. Not really. Then it became guilty self pity.
At least my boy here said he rather enjoyed the Disney Princess show on the waiting room tv. He thought it was really amusingly odd.
 We got home in time for me to give Grandma her shot and to pick up the boy in 3rd grade and his best friend for a play date. And I made dinner (and did the laundry). I'm not sure my self-pity was guilty at that point. I mean it probably should have been but I was on a roll.

Far far away

 It wasn't that long ago though. But I have noticed the last few years that every time I run away when I get back I can't quite remember what it was like anywhere else. This is why I have 5,000 pictures of Kauia on my computer -and that's after editing out the un-necessary ones.
My sweet sweet husband told me the other day that I am not good with the elderly or the handicapped.  It's true. I seem nice on the outside. I look very perky at the hospital and doctor's offices. I cheerfully give shots, and pack wounds and smile and nod when the surgeon explains how easy it will be to just gently push my mom's ... whatever you call the lump escaping through the hernia - back where it belongs. I stay at the table and smile and nod. But then I am afraid it must show that I really need to get to the other room to do some meaningful work -which turns out to be another round of spider solitaire.
 And lately I have made the discovery that while emotional outbursts are exhausting it is almost more exhausting to constantly push down the emotional outbursts and not run screaming out of the room saying , "No, no, no more." The people (and by this I mostly mean my mom) who have told me all my life how much easier it would be to stay calm aren't people who actually have to STAY calm -they simply are calm. One of my mother's biggest complaints (after the coffee being too cold and the water too warm) is that after years of calmness she find herself ready to cry often -and I say, "Welcome to my world."  It turns out that there is a price to pay for all this self control, all the saying, "yes, yes, the more the merrier." I'm not saying it isn't worth it. I'm just saying it's not as cheap as I thought. And every now and then it just seems to burst out anyway...

Crashing

I am trying to blog as a way to let off steam and then I realized the kettle has burned dry. So maybe I am like the double minded man crashing helpless on the shore only to roll back into the endless sea of despair and regret. Other than this being an excellent description of motherhood it only barely fits in with my Kauai rainbow picture. But I will make it work.

Nobody getting much work done here between taking one for ears to be cleaned and one for bloodwork -always a hunt for her tiny little veins. Neither patient was the kitten by the by.

Fairly well

 .. but not fair THEE well.
  Today's topic is fairness. Or  How fairness almost ruined my life.

Once upon a time a boy was born too soon, too small, too weak, too blue. Then time went by too fast. Trying to find a pre-school meant running the gauntlet of administrators who worried if it would be "fair to the teachers,"  "fair to the other students," and probably, most of all, fair to the liability lawyers (they are so busy!). Time kept going by far too fast and many more things happened. It became more and more difficult to calculate the fairness factor. Grandma came and didn't feel it was "fair" to ask the young man to help her. It was hard to decide who had the unfair part. The mother (daughter) became confused and tired. Help came in packets of what was "fair". The statistician part of the narrator tried to regress the entire function. It didn't look good. The kitten scratched her hand, tried to eat her hair...

    Oh, that's what I meant to blog about: We got a girl-kitten. Grandma loves it. So does the 9 year old, the daughter with her first job saving up for her first (non-college) apartment and the here and there son and girlfriend. The husband and the eldest (the once upon a time boy) aren't so sure. I'm still nursing my hand (when I'm not dangling it temptingly over her). Grandma turned 96 last month. I'll tell you about the hernia later.