a relief . . . however temporary
You know, I get how bothered people sometimes get by having to get news via Facebook post rather than a direct phone call or even message. But, I also understand the efficiency of a social media post getting information out to the most people in the quickest amount of time. Do you think I have time to sit here and call ten people about something that's already upsetting enough?
Now, okay, back up Matthew -- today the news is not so upsetting. In fact it's truly a relief. That said, part of why I sent out that Facebook update this morning is because between last night and this morning, I was asked multiple times if I knew yet how Mom is doing. Cyndi in particular, who is Mom's biological sister who lives in Michigan and I met in person for the first time last year, texted me multiple times. Early on she wrote, Would you keep me posted on what's going on cause it isn't much fun learning about it on Facebook and I miss a lot. Thanks
Okay, so . . . well, maybe? I tried to be as diplomatic as I could with this response, given that this text had come from her yesterday not long after I had really been freaking out about Mom being back in the hospital: I'll do what I can. Sometimes getting news out on Facebook is easiest because contacting everyone separately gets very time consuming. I'll let you know if something happens that is significant but not too major for me to be out of my head. I got pretty upset this morning myself but am better now
To her credit, Cyndi seemed understanding about that. Bear in mind that although they are biological sisters, they did not grow up as family and didn't even meet until they were adults. If something truly horrible happened to Mom and I had to start telling people, Cyndi would not exactly be, you know, in the top ten in terms of priority there. Same goes for Darcy, Mom's longtime close friend who asked me on Facebook if I had any updates. I totally get everyone's concern, but I'm her son and have more to worry about with Mom's well-being itself than with relaying news about it to everyone she knows.
It was much easier to send out the update this morning after getting reassuring news. So I'll paste here what I wrote there:
Okay everyone, I know many of you are eager for updates on my mom, and as of right now the news seems to be very reassuring.
I just spoke to a nurse at Kootenai Medical Center in Coeur d'Alene where she's in the ICU, but I was told she will be transferred out of there today to another part of the hospital, for a day or two for observation, and it sounds like she should be back home this week.
It seems her blood pressure medication may have been too strong (and as an aside, she takes many medications for many things, which I assume also complicates things), and they are going to re-calibrate and likely put her on a lower dose. This may have been the cause of the nausea and vomiting that got her back into the hospital in the first place.
The woman I spoke with characterized Mom today as "Eating, and perky . . . all her vitals were stable through the night." I was then transferred to Mom herself, and she sounded about as good as could be expected. She does still have moderate struggles with speech but that's almost certainly stemming from the stroke she had in 2014. Oddly, the news that she'll be leaving the ICU today was not something she knew yet, and she found that out from me.
Bearing in mind, again, that Mom's speech isn't quite at 100%, she told me, "The adrenals were worn out, in the throat," whatever that means, if anything. In any case, she basically sounded okay.
She also noted that she can't call out from the phone in her current room. I asked if people can call her, and she suggested they can, but if you do you probably want to wait until this evening when she should be out of the ICU. The number to Kootenai Medical Center is (208) 625-4000, and, assuming they feel she's okay and available to talk (Mom cracked me up this morning when she said "Everyone thinks I'm very personable"), someone should be able to transfer you. I know many of you were very worried about her so I wanted to get another update out.
. . . It would be tempting to say I freaked out yesterday over nothing. I'm still being a little more pragmatic about it than that. Mom has countless health issues that only get more exacerbated over time. If she doesn't drop dead from one of those issues directly, hell, it could happen just from complications with the countless medications she's on -- as suggested by the very reason she's in the hospital now. Something rather sobering occurred to me this morning. I'd like to say this would be particularly terrible timing if it had been more serious, but for fuck's sake, when would it be good timing?
I feel like we had a close call here, but it's not like how it impacts me is going to be any different when it inevitably happens later. Mom might well last another decade -- that would be great, but also honestly a little surprising. She could also last only another year, another month, who knows? The point is, I don't have a lot of faith in her longevity at this point. 66 is not especially old anymore, for someone in good health. My mom, however, has never been in good health. Both she and Bill are in such bad shape that we can't even take them out places anymore. Their outings are exclusively for hospital visits now. That's not exactly reassuring. But, the news today, at least, has been.
As for the rest of yesterday? I rode my bike home from work, which gave me half an hour of cardiovascular exercise that was basically the perfect antidote to the tension of the day. I think regularly about how much I love my bike, particularly riding it. I love it so much that I even regularly think about how much I appreciate the inventor of the wheel.
Anyway, then Shobhit and I did a few hours doing rounds of shopping: Costco, MacPherson's Produce, PCC Columbia City, Trader Joe's. We took a ton of coupons we got for joining Vegetarians of Washington at VegFest in April, and, along with both my staff discount and using the once-monthly further 10% member discount, the receipt at PCC resulted in nearly half off the stuff we brought -- largely because a couple of the coupons were for free product. We got several things we don’t usually buy due to the coupons, including a couple of juices (Evoluton Juice makes the best orange juice, which is super expensive at regular price, and I used that bottle to make us Tequila Sunrises when we got home) and even a couple of Daiya Vegan Cheese products (one free, one $1 off). I don't expect the latter to be all that great, honestly, but hey -- free food! Very little motivates me more than free food.
We had to add Trader Joe's to the rounds, though, because Shobhit didn't like the onions or the eggplants available at MacPherson's. In fact, he decided Monday is a bad day to shop there as the available produce wasn't of the quality he feels is usually found earlier in the weekend. I mean, whatever -- I don't really give a shit; to me an eggplant is an eggplant.
I got paid on Friday last week, so under normal circumstances we would have done this shopping on Saturday -- but that was the day we traveled home from West Yellowstone. Then, Shobhit worked all afternoon and evening yesterday, and Danielle was over in the morning. So, Monday night shopping it was. We have a lot of TV to catch up on, but all we managed last night after making dinner was the Sunday before last's episode of Westworld. We still have this week's episode of that to watch, and two episodes each of Bill Maher and John Oliver. We'll have to make our way through that backlog steadily over the week, I guess -- I'm seeing movies tonight and probably tomorrow night; will likely go to Steamworks Thursday night; then this coming weekend is Pride, which will surely be plenty busy in its own right. Ah, summer!
Speaking of which, with highs in the eighties, I wore shorts to work both yesterday and today. I will again tomorrow. But it gets back to a more comfortable mid-seventies by Thursday and Friday, and I look forward to that. It's quite the change to come home to such warm weather after it was just in the seventies in Yellowstone and then quite a lot colder and rainy both Friday and Saturday.
[posted 12:30 pm]