Crisis mode

It has been such an intense week. My dad became very ill and was rushed to the hospital. He was not expected to make it through the night on Tuesday. After they did everything they could for him, it was a waiting game. We spent the entire night at the hospital.

They sent us home in the morning to get some rest when he was finally stable but still in critical condition. The nurse explained that he was at the doorway of life and death and he would decide which way he was going to go.

Later in the evening we went back to see him. He was AWAKE and coherent. They allowed all nine of us into his room and told us to surround him with love. Every time one of the grandchildren came into the room he began to cry. It was so touching to see how happy he was to have all his family there. It was astounding to see how well he was doing compared to the night before, even though he was still critical. The nurse said he was a tough old bird and a fighter. He was talking about baseball to my son and he was back to his old self.

The next day he was still stable, but later in the evening they called us and told us to get to the hospital because there were many complications and they did not think he would make it once again. We all rushed up there to find him in quite a bit of distress.

I can't go into all the details of that night but it was truly a very difficult night. Difficult because he was in distress, difficult because we thought it was the end, but the most difficult part was being told all our options and trying to make those hard decisions. What made it so hard was there were conflicting opinions between the nurse practitioner and the doctor, and families members were not on the same page. But how could we be on the same page when some of us did not even understand the options?

It was a long night, but he began to make progress and the crisis passed. We all went home to get some sleep. When I called later in they said he was better.

Fast forward two days and he is off the critical list and moved into a regular room. He is still fighting some serious health issues, but he is improving daily and holding his own.

I am still sorting out the experience of the other night. I hated feeling so ill prepared and uneducated. So I plan to do some good research so I can be more informed for the next crisis, if that is even possible.

Ordinary Day

Yesterday was just an ordinary day and one that I totally enjoyed. I had taken a comp day from work because I had worked on Saturday and Thursday evening, my husband was home from his parents' house for the weekend, and my son didn't have to go into work until the afternoon. It has been awhile since we were all home at once so we had a good deal of catching up to do, so we all went to lunch together. It was so nice.

After we came home from lunch, I received an e-mail from my older son. He was friended on Facebook by a former neighbor who lived next door to us when we lived at the apartment. My son was only 2 years old when we moved, so he doesn't recall the neighbor per say, but he remembers seeing pictures of him and his sister and us telling him about them. At the time, the neighbors were just little kids themselves, around 6 and 10. We haven't seen them for 28 years.

So imagine my surprise to read the email that he forwarded to us from the neighbor who is now 38 years old! He told my son that he remembered me when I was pregnant with him and when he first walked, and now nice my husband and I were to the family. He said they were talking about us the other day and wondering what happened to us. So he looked my son up on Facebook. He said it was cool to see my son as a grown up married man.

Something so small, just made my day. Those kids were so sweet and they loved coming over to play with my son who was a baby/ toddler when we lived there. They were the happiest and in the neighborhood, but didn't have kids their own age to play with.

He hoped we remembered them, so I was excited to friend him right away to tell him of course we remember them! My husband scanned a picture of him and my son from our old photo album and e-mailed it to him.

So we all friended one another and I got caught up on the last 28 years of his life from his Facebook albums. Facebook is really amazing the way it connects people. Astounding isn't it?

I seemed to get on a roll yesterday afternoon and started organizing my part time business because I had stuff all over the house from it. Starting the business in the middle of all the wedding prep wasn't the best idea, but I think I have finally made sense of everything and can devote some time to it now.

We stayed in last night because it was a cold rainy evening and just ordered Chinese food and watched the rest of the Curb Your Enthusiasm DVD.

Just a nice quiet rainy Friday night.

Turning the corner

Looks like the elders are starting to make some progress. My dad is working hard in rehab and they feel he needs just a couple more weeks to build endurance and they believe they will have him walking with a walker by then. He doesn't seem to be bouncing back like last time though, as he has been confused some and often back in bed by late afternoon. So when I go to see him after work, he is so tired that it looked like he wasn't making progress and we thought he was giving up. It was nice to find out today that wasn't the case, and he was going to all of his sessions and giving it his all.

My husband is still at his parents' house. They are getting better as well. His mom is up after being ill in bed for a week, and she is getting stronger every day. His dad will be heading back to day care tomorrow, and hopefully they will be on their normal schedule. His brother is coming to relieve him tomorrow for a couple of days so he can come home! Maybe by next week, he can wean himself away from staying there 24/7.

I have been visiting my dad, keeping my mom company and helping out my husband with grocery shopping and some cooking. He is a great cook and has been making meals for his parents for the most part.

So it goes. We are trying to figure out what to do for Thanksgiving. We may decide to split up. He go to his parents and I go to mine and we will cook for both. It isn't convenient for either set of elders to leave their homes, so that is how I will plan to do it so that everyone gets a turkey dinner!

The other night I was very moved when I was visiting my dad. He had a new room mate who was having a terrible time and the poor man was screaming out and trying to rip off his clothes. The staff could not seem to make him comfortable. My dad wasn't in good shape that night, he was so tired and in pain and the nurse came in to give him his meds and all my dad could talk about was how sorry he felt for the man. He never complained about him at all. It made me want to cry. I didn't think I could last all night in that room with all that noise, but all my dad had was compassion for the poor soul.

Last week was hectic. On Sunday my dad had another fall and he was rushed to the ER and admitted. So that meant spending all day at the hospital while they s l o w l y took tests and finally got him settled into a room. Long day.

On Tuesday, my mother in law became very ill and she needed full time care. She is the care taker for my father in law who had just came home from rehab. There was no choice except for my husband to move in and take care of both of his parents. It is hard when both sides of elders are having a crisis! My husband's brother came down for the weekend to take a turn taking care of them so my husband got two days off.

Hopefully, my dad will be able to come home soon, and my mother in law will begin to feel better this week.

I had to work today at a resource fair. I wish I had a job that did not have occasional Saturdays and evenings. I resent giving up my personal time at this point in my life. I so need my weekends to regroup and recuperate from the week.

When I got home from work, my husband and I took a ride to our favorite fish house and had our favorite dinners. In the summer it is overflowing with people and all the outside picnic tables are full. Tonight, empty tables inside and dark and lonely outside. Summer is so over.

Tonight we watched another DVD of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry David. We find it a pretty funny show and since we do not have HBO we are catching up with it on Netflix. I enjoy shows more on DVD's because of no commercials and we can watch two or three in a row.

Tomorrow I will visit my dad again and also try to spend some time with my mom. I know it is hard on her when he is not at home.

Between all of the elders taking turns going to ER, admission to the hospital, and then rehab, it is all becoming so normal to me. Now I know what to expect and how long things take, so I make sure I arm myself with magazines and snacks to help pass the time waiting for the tests and doctors, etc.

I don't know how much longer both sets of parents can continue living in their homes without more support.

Happy Halloween

Slow Halloween night. Maybe about 50 kids came, usually double I would say. Balmy here, so the weather was good. I did not recognize one family. All the kids I used to know have grown up and moved on (including mine). Lots of folks drive to our neighborhood from downtown and trick or treat here. I was glad for less kids so I could do other things besides answer the door all night.

Meet some friends from my old job for breakfast this morning and that was good. I worked at my old job for 10 years and have been gone for 10 years. I am so glad I was able to keep in touch with them. I enjoy their company and we have some good memories.

She's so h e a v y...

So I went on my business trip 3 days after the wedding. After a full day of meetings we were expected to go to dinner with everyone. My colleagues were from all over the country, some I have met before and some I met for the first time that day.

Dinner was good, great food and I was feeling comfortable. As the waiter was clearing the dishes from dinner and asking who wanted dessert, one of my colleagues (who I had met before)pointed at me and said, "Ask her she has an eating disorder." I was mortified. This particular guy had been making lots of inappropriate cracks all day and evening, mostly so far out that they were outrageous. But now he was hitting me close to home. I didn't even know what he meant. Does he believe that anorexia was the only eating disorder there was and because I am heavy, it would be funny? I didn't laugh and I ignored him, but part of me wanted to say, "Yes, I do have an eating disorder and that is not funny." But of course I didn't and would not. He kind of looked at me waiting for me to say"something."

I felt bad that he did that, and remembered that is exactly why I don't like being with people socially because there is always talk of weight and losing weight and how uncomfortable it makes me. When I was younger, I was always made fun of or lectured at in social situations. It always made me angry and I guess I would just slither off into my room and cry and probably eat more because I felt so bad about myself.

This time I didn't have the feelings hit me in my core. I can't explain it other than to say, I was able to shrug it off and that made me feel like I had made some progress. Maybe a tougher skin, at last?

When I got back to work the next week there is a flier in my mail box about a weight loss program that they are doing at work and how they want everyone to join and it was based on a popular weight loss television show. My heart sank. I would never be comfortable trying to lose weight with my co-workers. I felt ashamed and I wanted to hide. No one out right asked me to participate, maybe they knew better. I did hear one male co-worker ask another female co-worker if she was going to join and I heard her get all insulted saying back to him, "Don't you know that you never ask a lady about her weight?" She is a young one who is very athletic and very thin. Why would he ask her?

Some people clearly don't need to lose one ounce, mostly the young females, but they are involved. Oh you know, it is all in the name of health, but there is nothing mentally healthy about it. At 8:00 A.M. one morning I had a co-worker singing a made up theme song about the show outside my door. When I got up to shut the door, he apologized. But I think he was apologizing for being so loud. Don't know.

We have more than one building on the campus. One building is not participating. In that building is a co-worker who has a child with a serious eating disorder and my co-worker has railed against such programs in the workplace. A couple of years ago when they tried to institute a weight loss program, she was very vocal about it and it was stopped. She said many staff members came to her expressing their discomfort. Some disclosed their own battles with eating disorders and did not want to have to come to work and have to listen to it all day long and feel self conscious when they were eating.

She is feeling bad for me that my building is promoting this, all in the name of team work commitment and health. She wants to go and talk to someone but not use my name. She said she was so upset she was crying about it. I felt so awful. I did not want her to be so upset for me. I am an adult and I feel I have to learn to deal with things that make me uncomfortable, or learn to advocate for myself. I don't know if there are others in my building who feel as uncomfortable as I do, as I would not be bringing it up. And if there are other people who are uncomfortable, is that reason enough to try to put an end to it when there are people who want to do it?

I hate feeling like this and I know if i was just normal with food, none of this would bother me. But I am not normal with food. I am a compulsive over eater who is not able to get a handle on it at this point in my life. Other times I have. But this issue has affected my life in a negative way since I was five years old. I am almost 60 and still the same issue. It is said that we make our own misery and I agree and I am sick of it.

Nuptials

Sunday, the weather was just beautiful and we were able to have the ceremony and cocktails outside just like we had hoped. Everything went so well. Better than I could have ever imagined. We all had so much fun. The dance floor was full most of the night.

The bride was smiling all night long. Everyone commented on how they never saw a bride smile so much. My son was pretty happy, too! They danced all night long as well.

Our guests were raving about the food, the flowers, and even the wait staff! I don't think we could have asked for anything better, things were just perfect.

My knee held up pretty well! I was on the dance floor just about the whole night, too! ME! With the bad knee. The next morning it was throbbing so I just went down to the hot tub and boy did that help me so much. I saw my massage therapist again on Tuesday for a Feldenkrais lesson and she said my muscles were unusually relaxed. So being happy and dancing is really relaxing!

I really tried to enjoy the wedding as it was happening and while it did go by fast, not so fast that the evening got away from us.

The DJ played a half hour longer than we planned because everyone was having a great time.

My cousin who had been so ill from chemo made it! And she looked great!

We are still on a wedding high and my sisters and I can't stop talking about it!