In Which I Challenge the Medical Establishment

It is 2:27 a.m. on Tuesday morning as I type this. I am FUCKING FURIOUS. I am also trying not to weep out of frustration, anger, anxiety, stress, and utter complete despair. Why? Well, it's like this... as regular readers know, my mother is dealing with kidney disease. She's in kidney failure and undergoing dialysis three times a week. She comes home from dialysis loopy--unsteady on her feet, out in left field, weak, and just not on this planet. She's also been falling. A lot. She's blacked her eye at least four times since December--she's fallen on her face on the front walk coming from (or heading to) dialysis. This is NOT a good thing. This is, in fact, a VERY BAD thing. And today was the kicker--she went out on my uncle and hurt her back. He had the sense to call an ambulance. They rushed her to Lawrence Memorial. He called me around 6 to tell me, I went up and took over the watch, and then, convinced they were going to keep her, left for home around 12:15 a.m. Yeah, quarter after midnight. I hadn't had dinner. I was exhausted (loooong but productive day at work). I had been trying to keep Ma calm while dealing with assorted head-splitting beeps and lots of horrible energy (psychically, emergency rooms fuck me up completely, and tonight, all four bays were filled with elderly patients; the woman in the bay next to us had the single most annoying son... I wanted to strangle him to make him stop talking; yes, my nerves were shot, and to have done so would have been MOST insensitive of me because the poor bastard was in the same horrible position as myself). I got home, reheated some leftover Harrow's chicken pie (mmmmm... chicken pie) for me and the cat (even though she has nothing to do with my mother, she still likes the company in the house--she likes to have someone to nag), managed to eat most of it (sans the bit for the cat) when the phone rings. It's 1:00 a.m. I KNOW it's the fucking hospital before I even answer it. Sure enough, it's the hospital telling me that they're releasing my mother because there's no reason to keep her. Allow me to repeat that: they are releasing her because there is no reason to keep her. Less than 45 minutes before, I had left my mother, ditzy and out of it, dehydrated, weak, in the hospital, secure in the knowledge that she would be safe for the night. She would be watched over in a place where they could monitor her and find some answers. Now, they were telling me they weren't keeping her. I put on my hoodie over my sweats (I had shucked the clothes and contact lenses), slipped on the sneaks, heated up another hunk of chicken pie and grabbed a water for her because she hadn't eaten since breakfast and I proceeded to drive like I was trying to qualify for NASCAR up to LMH. I found my mother still loopy, still dehydrated, unfed, undressed, and out of it. And they said she was fine. I lost it. To use a favorite Britism, I went spare. I flipped the fuck out. Folks, my heart is being ripped out of my chest watching what is happening to my mother, seeing the bullshit going on. She's dying. Slowly, horribly dying. There is nothing good, just, or clean about her decline. It's horrible, unfair, and if I had a direct line to God or whoever is running the show, I would call the fucker out and kick his or her ass six ways to Sunday for this, and FUCK the ineffable plan and everything happening for a reason. This is my Mum and she's suffered enough. The long and the short of it is that they kept her over night. I'm not going into details--suffice to say that the words "malpractice" and "lawyer" and "don't fuck with me" were used. I mean, she couldn't even sit up without help. They were going to let her go home? Over my dead fucking body. So now, I am going to finally get some sleep. I had planned to bake tonight. And make chicken chili in the crockpot. And maybe even some homemade pasta sauce (because my honey's back is out and I owe people cookies). Tomorrow, I have a slate of phone calls to make. Including one to her GP to tell him he's an ass and to her nephrologist to ask WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE DOING TO HER IN THAT SODDING CLINIC! Plus Elder Services to find out where the fucking cleaners have been because her room MUST be cleaned out of all of the clothes in there so she can move around. I leave for Halifax in ten days. Provided Ma is functioning. And I don't end up in either jail or McLean's for flipping out completely. Pass the Xanax, will ya?

Blog Shog: The Magic of Jim Jefferies

Regular readers will know that I spent yesterday afternoon in the emergency room at LMH whilst Mum was CAT-scanned & her head stitched after doing a faceplant on the kitchen floor.

Well, because I am not a TV person (I'm not; I think it SUCKS), I had music on the lappie whilst I was blogging and surfing. And when I finally got bored out of my fucking skull, I said, screw it, gonna watch Alcoholocaust and have a laugh because I am getting FUCKING STRESSED.

So, I popped the Silversun Pickups out of the DVD/CD drive, slipped in Alcoholocaust (after stopping to admire the pics of Mr. J inside), and fired that fucker up.

Sounds like I'm talking about weed; well, good comedy has the same affect on me, so... it's comparable.

Anyway, I chose the "play feature," double-clicked, watched Jim Jefferies hustling through the West End, pint in fist (actually filmed after the show was filmed), heard the intro, watched the audience start to go mad, and then Jim hit the stage, began to speak... and Mum appeared in the doorway.

Like magic!

Brought back the moment in July of 1983, Sullivan Stadium in Foxboro... had been pissing rain all day, and Maggie and I were going to see David Bowie on his "comeback" tour--his first tour since 1977. We were excited as only teenage girls can get excited. But it was pissing rain.

As soon as Bowie hit the stage and started to sing, the rain stopped. Stopped dead. Not a drop. I looked at Maggie and said, "God is a Bowie fan." Even the papers commented on it.

(This was very funny yesterday while sitting there. It's not as funny today, which just goes to show... ya had to be there. Well, no, you didn't, because that would mean you would either have a) been injured or b) been dealing with someone who was injured, and I wouldn't wish that on you. I was getting a bit punchy by that time, and the old lady perfume and gangbanger BO & alcohol fug was starting to make me doofy.)

I'm still a little punch today. Almost getting jumped outside of a store last night can do that to you. But that story isn't so funny, so I will tell it in a non-fuckery post.

Well, that blew today's plans...

Greetings, oh, my cherished blurkers, from the emergency room of Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Medford, MA.

NOT where I'd planned to start my day--I was planning to go to the gym when I woke this morning, get back in the swing of lifting again, trim down the flab and tone up the muscles again, get the body beautiful and drop at least four more pants sizes.

For once, something utterly inane is not on the television--Quigley Down Under, an amusing film that I'm tuning out thanks to the Silversun Pickups on the lappie. I like Tom Selleck--likable fella, not a half bad actor, and of course, Alan Rickman playing an asshole. That man is still hotter than sin... it's the voice. I would have gladly ripped off the Ken doll bit of makeup in Dogma and shagged him so long as he kept talking.

Yes, I am distracting myself. It's 2:30 p.m. I was woken from a sound sleep around 11ish because Ma fell in the kitchen. Full face plant. I mean, flat down. "Help me!" I'm trying to get up, get out of the tangle of blankets and put on pj bottoms, while shaking off sleep and the cat. Let me tell you, lifting someone off their face is not easy. It's fuck-all difficult. It's a good thing she only weighs about 150ish. Maybe less at this point, who knows. I couldn't have done it before her gastric bypass in 2000.

Yeah, fat runs in the family, at least over on this stout branch of it. She's dropped over 200 pounds since her surgery; the kidney disease over the past few years has helped her to keep it off and lose more, which is a good thing, considering she still tries to eat like a fat person. *sigh* It's really annoying. Seh actually misses "her best friend" i.e. food. I don't get that part of things. Food has never been my friend--I mean, I'm allergic to so much stuff, things that are both good and bad for me, and so much makes me puke and always has--do you know how frustrating it is not to be able to eat seafood, fish, sweet potatoes? IT SUCKS. All this good stuff that is so good for the body, and it just makes me either vomit or stink like a garbage pail in high summer.

And Mum... Mum still sees herself as fat and ugly. *shakes head* Sad.

Anyway, she did a full face plant. I had to shift all kinds of crap in the kitchen (surprise, surprise. The cleaners are going to be ordered to finish that shithole next and forget the rest of the house until it's completely cleared and organized. I am NOT doing this again; strong as I am and back to the gym as I'm going, my back and knees don't like deadlifting in non-ideal situations that do not have soft mats and safety stops built in), lift her to her knees, and then get her on her feet.

And she promptly stomped on mine, making me scream. "TOES! MY TOES!" And she pitched over the kitchen table, with me trying to hold her steady from behind to keep her from slipping back to the floor while trying to get my naked feet out from under her Frankensteinish stompers, screaming in pain, and catching sight of the blood on the floor.

I really hate the site of blood. It stresses me out.

Finally managed to get her into the chair and saw her face. *sigh* HUGE goose egg over her right eye--gigantic--cut and bleeding all over. I said, "You're going to the hospital. Let me get dressed."

Ten minutes later, I'm back down from the bathroom, she's got a tissue held to her head to catch the blood. Got her to wash it off while I dressed, got nagged by the cat whilst I dressed because she wanted the bed back, got out there to find she'd taped a bit of gauze over it and fed the cat.

Progress.

"You're still going to the hospital."
"Yeah, after I looked at it, Lee, I think I should."

More progress.

So by the time we got to LMH, her eye is swollen to the point it looks like a purple bag of blood, and she's walking incredibly unsteady. She's had a CAT scan by now, and I'm sitting here, writing and waiting, dealing with the reek of old lady perfume drowning out the stench of hangover & fresh alcohol on one of the gang members sleeping at the kids table across from me. Forgot my writing music, so I'm listening to the Silversuns. Hoping the new Zune will have arrived so I can fully load my music up and download the stuff I want and am missing.

And yeah, I'm hoping Mum is all right--no concussion or stitches. It would be a relief. But it also means I have to talk to her doc on Monday because this is bad fall number two in a week. And she needs a cognitive functioning test. I'm trying not to think too much about it because I will start weeping. I love my mother, but I don't see things getting better. It's not fair, not for her or me.

But then, life never is.