For starters, let me just say that there is nothing wrong with me as I write this. I used the tag "cancer" up there because this post talks about cancer screening. Also, as I finish and polish this post up a few days later I found out that nothing unusual was found, "You're good, see you in ten years."
Second, I'll try my best to not be gratuitous given the subject matter. Believe me, the prospect of writing about the far end of my gastrointestinal tract does not thrill me. I'll try to give the topic the gravitas it deserves …
As I write this, it's just shy of the end of 2023.ev. I'm now up and around and functional enough actually think about writing. Not because of any New Year's festivities, unfortunately.
If you guessed that I caught covid-19 in December, you'd be right.
I went on travel for a week for work in December, which is probably when I was exposed. It might've been at work, it might've been at the hotel (where, during that week, two wedding receptions and four holiday parties were held), for all I know it might've been at the airport when the TSA …
Yesterday afternoon I took some time out to get a third vaccination, because I'm worried that the stress from everything going on, and all the travel I'm doing leaves me at greater risk of contracting covid. As before I got the same vaccine that I got earlier in the year, the Pfizer variant. Unfortunately, the third shot kicked my ass so hard I'm pretty sure it broke one of its feet off in my rectum.
By the time I got home that afternoon (because I had to run a few errands after getting the shot) I was feeling a little …
The title pretty much says it all. If you want to punch out now, go right ahead.
There's no other way to put it. No polite way, no delicate way...
Cancer is neither polite nor delicate.
...
The evening of 12 October, Lyssa chose to spend the night at bedside with mom while cousin Suzy and I went home to get some sleep. I don't remember exactly when we crashed but it was reasonably normal for us, maybe 2300 or midnight.
At 0622 hours (which I don't think I'll ever forget), Suzy knocked on my bedroom door and said that Lyssa …
Mom was moved to a hospice facility yesterday. Let's start there, because today's been a day.
Things were all over the place today. I had a good quote lined up to open this post with (it's funny what subprocesses in your head can do when things are going pear shaped) but it's kind of pointless at the moment.
Suzy and I drove over to the hospice this morning to see mom and talk with the hospice team to figure out what to do and how. Lyssa took a cab in before we let. The nasogastric tube is still in place …
Mom was moved to a hospice facility this afternoon. For how long, we don't know. We're supposed to meet with a social worker tomorrow morning to figure out what to do next. Technically she's still under palliative care, but she's wasn't able to stay in the hospital in her condition.
Mom is still insistent that she wants to go home. To die.
That's going to take some doing, and it's not something that we can decide to half-ass, nor is it something that we can decide to do as we please (even on my mother's say-so). Her state has to …
Judy and I slept at mom's bedside in the hospital last night on recliners that the nursing staff was kind enough to bring in. Mom's fever spiked to 103 degrees Fahrenheit in the span of about four hours, she was febrile, and her breathing was agonal. In an attempt to make her comfortable, the nurses gave her a couple of doses of IV zofran and reglan, with a side of haloperidol for anxiety and fear. Later in the evening they gave her a dose of IV benadryl because my mom was scratching at her arms and chest, and was making …
Someone asked me why these blog posts are always backdated. The reason is that I can't write about a day's that's happened until that day's... happened. Plus, if I wrote it up late at night and posted it, probably nobody would see it (the churn of social media being what it is). And, it seems wrong to liveblog somebody's impending death. Especially my mom's.
I guess the cat's out of the bag.
Yesterday morning when I woke up, I made myself breakfast and coffee and then took Dora outside in her stroller for some fresh air. Around my second cup …
Every time I sit down to work on this post, something else changes.
A long time ago, when my grandfather was taking care of my grandmother when she was in the hospital, he used to come home and say that she had good days and bad days. I was too young to understand what that meant. I think I do now. Some days mom looks and sounds like hell and sleeps a lot, other days she's awake and glad to have company.
I'm all kinds of messed up right now. My short term memory is still hosed from not sleeping …
As I write this, it's 1930 hours UTC-4 on 2 October 2021.
I am exhausted, fried, kind of in shock, and numb. My short term memory is shot to shit so I'm going to do the best I can to reconstruct the day.
I'm writing it a day ahead of time because I don't have the slightest idea what tomorrow will bring. The last couple of days have been a roller coaster of turns for the better and then the worse. I need to start from the beginning (as today reckons it) and go …
