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Jul. 9th, 2009 01:49 amI am alternating between, "Happy, in a subdued, heavy and calm way" and "sad, in a loved and blessed but still down" way.
The pediatrician called back and my Jakey is ok, just a flu and he's been seeing fevers go for days and days with this flu. Lots of fluids, keep on nursing. Jake's in sweet sleepy spirits most of the time.
My Mom talked with the neurologist and he's saying my mom and Pa need to make a decision about whether or not to "let" my Nana die by no longer feeding her.
Elise is stringing words together and wants nothing more than to kiss me 500 times a day. She makes hilariously confused faces at me when she sees me crying my eyes out.
My Nana is only 61. She was in good health with a full time job 3 months ago. She was going in for a planned, scheduled preventative surgery.
Aaron is not only riding all over the house on his back-from-the-shop unicycle (and the repair was free as it's under warranty, woo-hoo!) but he's done little HOPS on it twice now that I've seen, AND he just finished his first chapter book. He also teared up with me in the kitchen discussing Nana, he understands so well. "This is how it would be for me and Annie if Laura died, isn't it?".
My Mom will be so alone if my Nana is gone, she's newly separated from her douchebag husband and her father just died a couple of months ago, TOTALLY unexpectedly and out of nowhere. She's lived at the bedside for the past 2+ months...
Grant is holding strong not eating sugar or white flour with me. The last time we did this particular thing together was late 2004, and we lost a ton of weight and it was great. We're also doing Wii Fit together and watching this new to us show Kings that is a great thing to cuddle up with when the kids are in bed, while I work on Isaac's ripple blanket. I'm going to need more yarn soon. My blasted cat has learned to cut my strand in half with her teeth, too, which is hilarious yet irritating.
We all had so much HOPE because of this hydrocephalus thing, they were putting in a drain to take out excess fluid and that would explain how she was acting, it would FIX how she was acting, but instead she now talks in what my Pa calls a "Linda Blair voice" and has conspiracy theories and has lost what little vision and short term memory she seemed to have.
Numb and heavy, I worked with A and A to clean out their entire room this afternoon. I feel better just knowing that room is squared completely away, it was HORRENDOUS. Tonight, slightly lighter from Grant being home to talk with for awhile, we put their faces in the Daily Prophet on the Harry Potter website, complete with swirling mist and captions like, "Newest Azkaban Resident".
I had this ridiculous thought today, so shallow and dumb but it just cracked me in two to think, when thinking of Nana actually DYING, "I should have written her secret barbecue sauce recipe down somewhere safer..." I cried until I could laugh at myself. I think I keep blocking it out, because she is in the back of my mind all the time now.
I reach up for a loaf of bread and remember reaching into the pantry pregnant with Annie and her warning me the baby's umbilical cord would get strangled around it's neck if I reached up that way.
I see that the top is off the cannister of oats and remember her warning me about oat bugs.
I pick up a package of sausage and remember the weird Pennsylvania Dutch accent that made her say it weird. Summer sausage, usually. Or "Keeyoobossa".
And I always come back around to the ironing board outside of the utility room, popsicles with the wrappers around the sticks delivered straight to the pool (Don't let those stick end up in the drain, Pa will have a fit!) and then I end up leaning against the sink with Grant holding me and it just sucks, you know?
My Nana made a lot of wacky mistakes, she cut our hair while it was in ponytails? She said rooms "reemed" of smells, she drank too much when I was younger.
But she stopped, because I was going to have a baby.
I took showers with her, when I was little, light streaming in the window and Pa mowing outside.
We made fun of her too much. She said, "If you keep eating that way the whole pregnancy, you're gonna be as big as a house!" and Laura said, "SHE HAS A TENANT!" She said, when I started my period for the first time, to "wipe until it's ALL GONE" and Laura and I talked years later about how it just keeps coming, Laura said, "Does she want me to light myself on fire?" and we almost died laughing. She was always leaning her head into the dark room threatening us with some imaginary dire consequence if we didn't hush and go to sleep, because we spent all weekend there so many weekends.
Bows stuck on her head at Christmas Eve (27 Christmas Eves), my horrible menopausal overbearingly temperamental boss at the warehouse as a teenager, I told her I was pregnant and she actually stood up and yelled, "DON'T EVEN TELL ME IT'S FUCKING BOBBY!" But we laughed about that years later. She laughed about it with me last year.
She grilled us steaks every Saturday night and she is why I love Elvis and why I hate Savage Garden and newer Cher. She dusts the lightbulbs and the top of the fridge religiously. She made me use a damp cloth to go over trailing philodendrons LEAF BY LEAF to pull tiny little white bugs off by the hundreds so the plants wouldn't die.
She is why I always had good bras and Laura got braces. And she tried, so hard, standing in the bathroom with Frank with the light off to see his glow in the dark tongue ring. "Man, that is SO NEAT".
When my Nana wants to pull something off the front of your shirt, first she has to say, "Now, I'm not getting fresh with you" and she still holds a grudge, I'll bet from her bed in Lakeland Regional, that I bit her so badly when I was 2.
When we stopped on the way back from Boston she told me "that baby is just fine. There is not one thing wrong with her, you can see it plain as day. She is perfect, Nana has spoken".
And she is perfect, and as Ananda pointed out today, she will probably never remember those first two Christmas Eves.
Writing this all down makes Nana seem so close that it makes me nervous, like I need to keep glancing behind me in the too-quiet house and I just want to close this and run and dive into my bed with Grant and Elise.
How are they supposed to make this kind of decision? To give up? It is wild, just wild, how different the rollercoaster of ongoing hospital stay and shifting updates is, than the finality of death. Part of me thinks it's right, that she would not have wanted to be this way, me wondering whether it's right to take the kids around her how she is and my mom a mess taking her abuse day in and day out. Diapers and can't move one side at all and spoonfed by other people. Another part of me thinks, what is wrong with this neurologist? She's not hooked to life support machines. Or anything like that. The only drugs she takes are psych meds, xanex and wellbutrin and sometimes sleeping pills. There's a new anti-hallucination one, that is obviously not working. Part of me thinks, take her off all the drugs and see if her brain does any better. What is there to lose? I mean he says 60 years ago she would have already been dead, but what does that even mean - 60 years ago there wasn't enough compassion to feed a person or change their diapers? They didn't have spoons back then? I'm recommending a second opinion. I'm trying to let Pa know we love him even if he is not part of "Nana and". I'm trying to be there for my Mom. I'm trying to block it out, unsuccessfully. I'm doing not enough, because I am too far away. I feel guilty, because it is easier being far away.
*heaving sigh*
The pediatrician called back and my Jakey is ok, just a flu and he's been seeing fevers go for days and days with this flu. Lots of fluids, keep on nursing. Jake's in sweet sleepy spirits most of the time.
My Mom talked with the neurologist and he's saying my mom and Pa need to make a decision about whether or not to "let" my Nana die by no longer feeding her.
Elise is stringing words together and wants nothing more than to kiss me 500 times a day. She makes hilariously confused faces at me when she sees me crying my eyes out.
My Nana is only 61. She was in good health with a full time job 3 months ago. She was going in for a planned, scheduled preventative surgery.
Aaron is not only riding all over the house on his back-from-the-shop unicycle (and the repair was free as it's under warranty, woo-hoo!) but he's done little HOPS on it twice now that I've seen, AND he just finished his first chapter book. He also teared up with me in the kitchen discussing Nana, he understands so well. "This is how it would be for me and Annie if Laura died, isn't it?".
My Mom will be so alone if my Nana is gone, she's newly separated from her douchebag husband and her father just died a couple of months ago, TOTALLY unexpectedly and out of nowhere. She's lived at the bedside for the past 2+ months...
Grant is holding strong not eating sugar or white flour with me. The last time we did this particular thing together was late 2004, and we lost a ton of weight and it was great. We're also doing Wii Fit together and watching this new to us show Kings that is a great thing to cuddle up with when the kids are in bed, while I work on Isaac's ripple blanket. I'm going to need more yarn soon. My blasted cat has learned to cut my strand in half with her teeth, too, which is hilarious yet irritating.
We all had so much HOPE because of this hydrocephalus thing, they were putting in a drain to take out excess fluid and that would explain how she was acting, it would FIX how she was acting, but instead she now talks in what my Pa calls a "Linda Blair voice" and has conspiracy theories and has lost what little vision and short term memory she seemed to have.
Numb and heavy, I worked with A and A to clean out their entire room this afternoon. I feel better just knowing that room is squared completely away, it was HORRENDOUS. Tonight, slightly lighter from Grant being home to talk with for awhile, we put their faces in the Daily Prophet on the Harry Potter website, complete with swirling mist and captions like, "Newest Azkaban Resident".
I had this ridiculous thought today, so shallow and dumb but it just cracked me in two to think, when thinking of Nana actually DYING, "I should have written her secret barbecue sauce recipe down somewhere safer..." I cried until I could laugh at myself. I think I keep blocking it out, because she is in the back of my mind all the time now.
I reach up for a loaf of bread and remember reaching into the pantry pregnant with Annie and her warning me the baby's umbilical cord would get strangled around it's neck if I reached up that way.
I see that the top is off the cannister of oats and remember her warning me about oat bugs.
I pick up a package of sausage and remember the weird Pennsylvania Dutch accent that made her say it weird. Summer sausage, usually. Or "Keeyoobossa".
And I always come back around to the ironing board outside of the utility room, popsicles with the wrappers around the sticks delivered straight to the pool (Don't let those stick end up in the drain, Pa will have a fit!) and then I end up leaning against the sink with Grant holding me and it just sucks, you know?
My Nana made a lot of wacky mistakes, she cut our hair while it was in ponytails? She said rooms "reemed" of smells, she drank too much when I was younger.
But she stopped, because I was going to have a baby.
I took showers with her, when I was little, light streaming in the window and Pa mowing outside.
We made fun of her too much. She said, "If you keep eating that way the whole pregnancy, you're gonna be as big as a house!" and Laura said, "SHE HAS A TENANT!" She said, when I started my period for the first time, to "wipe until it's ALL GONE" and Laura and I talked years later about how it just keeps coming, Laura said, "Does she want me to light myself on fire?" and we almost died laughing. She was always leaning her head into the dark room threatening us with some imaginary dire consequence if we didn't hush and go to sleep, because we spent all weekend there so many weekends.
Bows stuck on her head at Christmas Eve (27 Christmas Eves), my horrible menopausal overbearingly temperamental boss at the warehouse as a teenager, I told her I was pregnant and she actually stood up and yelled, "DON'T EVEN TELL ME IT'S FUCKING BOBBY!" But we laughed about that years later. She laughed about it with me last year.
She grilled us steaks every Saturday night and she is why I love Elvis and why I hate Savage Garden and newer Cher. She dusts the lightbulbs and the top of the fridge religiously. She made me use a damp cloth to go over trailing philodendrons LEAF BY LEAF to pull tiny little white bugs off by the hundreds so the plants wouldn't die.
She is why I always had good bras and Laura got braces. And she tried, so hard, standing in the bathroom with Frank with the light off to see his glow in the dark tongue ring. "Man, that is SO NEAT".
When my Nana wants to pull something off the front of your shirt, first she has to say, "Now, I'm not getting fresh with you" and she still holds a grudge, I'll bet from her bed in Lakeland Regional, that I bit her so badly when I was 2.
When we stopped on the way back from Boston she told me "that baby is just fine. There is not one thing wrong with her, you can see it plain as day. She is perfect, Nana has spoken".
And she is perfect, and as Ananda pointed out today, she will probably never remember those first two Christmas Eves.
Writing this all down makes Nana seem so close that it makes me nervous, like I need to keep glancing behind me in the too-quiet house and I just want to close this and run and dive into my bed with Grant and Elise.
How are they supposed to make this kind of decision? To give up? It is wild, just wild, how different the rollercoaster of ongoing hospital stay and shifting updates is, than the finality of death. Part of me thinks it's right, that she would not have wanted to be this way, me wondering whether it's right to take the kids around her how she is and my mom a mess taking her abuse day in and day out. Diapers and can't move one side at all and spoonfed by other people. Another part of me thinks, what is wrong with this neurologist? She's not hooked to life support machines. Or anything like that. The only drugs she takes are psych meds, xanex and wellbutrin and sometimes sleeping pills. There's a new anti-hallucination one, that is obviously not working. Part of me thinks, take her off all the drugs and see if her brain does any better. What is there to lose? I mean he says 60 years ago she would have already been dead, but what does that even mean - 60 years ago there wasn't enough compassion to feed a person or change their diapers? They didn't have spoons back then? I'm recommending a second opinion. I'm trying to let Pa know we love him even if he is not part of "Nana and". I'm trying to be there for my Mom. I'm trying to block it out, unsuccessfully. I'm doing not enough, because I am too far away. I feel guilty, because it is easier being far away.
*heaving sigh*
