Battle Kitten: Ascension

[Severine]

Your brother is a genius @Owlet! And a good cat parent.

[Dagger]

11 hours ago, Severine said:

Your brother is a genius @Owlet! And a good cat parent.

Seconded.

[fleaball]

On 5/31/2017 at 11:34 PM, Owlet said:

Unrelated but cool: my brother just moved house and his cat went missing. I definitely got really upset about that. Good news is he came back a few days later and I got a message straight away (near midnight last night) so I could relax.

 

The best part? My brother rigged up a webcam connected to the cat flap so he would get an alert and a photo the second the cat came in XD 

This is the best ever. 

[fleaball]

So the thing my father was upset about the other day is that he could have done overtime but didn't because he doesn't want to leave my mother home alone. Then he got home and it turned out my brother was off. My mother's been on him for years to write his schedule on the calendar for years, but he doesn't. My father asked him to again, he got bitchy, the end. I texted him yesterday and asked him to just suck it up and play along, if only because they're going to need that overtime pay once hospital bills start rolling in. (They have pretty good insurance, afaik, since it's through the police union. But I'm still super worried about what the bills are going to look like.) He didn't respond, which isn't unusual but still pisses me off that he's such a fucking child. 

 

Appointment yesterday apparently went okay. My father said that scans and blood tests are showing that nothing has grown, which is good, but nothing is shrinking, which is meh. Also one of the blood tests could be better, but it's still not awful? She's not doing the 20 minutes a day of walking that she's supposed to do for the clots, and she's not eating enough. My father and the doctor are both on her about it but that doesn't seem to mean anything. 

[fleaball]

Today in stupid things to cry over: she was supposed to make me meatballs when I went home after graduation because I haven't had them in forever. But she couldn't because their oven is busted and they need to buy a new one. And now I'll never get them. 

 

It's not like they're the best meatballs on the planet. And I keep saying I'll go vegan anyway. 

 

The past two days when I've talked to her on the phone, she's sounded so weak. She's tired all the time. My father didn't say what her weight was yesterday, but she'd lost 10 pounds between the kidney stones in April and the appointment I went to in May. Before spending another week in the hospital barely eating anything. 

 

I don't know what's going to happen. My father is going to need help making the arrangements and everything and I have no idea whether I'll pull it together and take charge like I usually do with him or if I'll just completely lose it and be totally useless the whole time. I hope it will be the former but I don't know. 

[Sloth the Enduring]

I'm sorry Fleaball. My mother died from cancer a couple of years ago. It's harder than you imagine right now, but I think you'll find you and your dad are stronger than you think.

[fleaball]

13 minutes ago, Sloth the Enduring said:

I'm sorry Fleaball. My mother died from cancer a couple of years ago. It's harder than you imagine right now, but I think you'll find you and your dad are stronger than you think.

Thanks. I hope you're right.

[Severine]

I'm sorry your brother is so useless. Like, I understand he's got issues and he's not 100% well but he could put his bloody schedule on a calendar.

[fleaball]

I feel like we're getting to the end and I don't know how I feel about that. Obviously I'm not thrilled but again, it's not like there's any other outcome to be expected. She had chemo today, so her bloodwork was obviously good enough for it. But when I texted earlier my father said she was sleeping. Usually she leaves chemo feeling pretty good and they go out to lunch and whatnot. He also said she's still cold all the time. Which could just be the weight loss. (She's probably in the 140s now and she's 5'5". She was around 200 before she went to the hospital with the blood clots in December so that's a pretty substantial difference.) I'm not a medical professional of any kind, but constantly sleeping + constantly cold seems like a red flag to me? I hope to god that when she dies it's in the hospital though. Neither my father nor my brother could handle the trauma of finding her dead at home, plus I'm pretty sure you have to call an ambulance to take the body away and having people go through the house is going to be such a clusterfuck. 

 

It's going to be interesting. When my first grandmother died I was a wreck; she was the one I was closest to and I really didn't get a chance to process it or say goodbye. I cried a lot by my standards then, but got back to 'normal' fairly easily. My grandfather died less than a year later, and I cried more about the fact that he was dying, once it got to that point, than I did when he was dead. My younger cousins crying at the funeral made me tear up and sniffle a little bit, but nothing major. When my other grandmother died two years later I'm not sure I cried at all, except tearing up at the funeral because of my cousins again. I think what gets me is the thought of saying goodbye, vs the actual doing it/facing life without someone. I mean right now it kills me that I can't call my mother just to chat, or to complain about the epic root canal bullshit saga, but I think that's because she's still here and I should be able to call her but I can't because she's not up for it. As soon as she's gone and calling her isn't even a hypothetical option it probably won't bother me nearly as much. This entire paragraph started as I was musing on how blasé I can be about her health and "yeah, my mother's dying, that's a thing." I'm not judging myself for it because there's no right way to deal with this shit and no right way to mourn. But I'm wondering how I'll handle it when she dies. Go into super pragmatic mode and take over and still be a mostly functional human being? Or be a complete disaster and struggle through it all? Like will a switch flip and "oh, it's over, time to get down to business until there's a better time to do the crying thing." When my father was in a car accident a few years ago I went to the hospital with my mother mostly because we thought someone would be driving his car home. It was a lot worse than that and she was definitely freaking out but I was the one who kept it together and paid attention to the doctors and whatnot. Somehow I can keep my shit together super well so long as I'm not in the center of the crisis. So I'd like to think that I can handle this when it gets to that point. My mother had to walk my father through pretty much everything when his mother died and I can't imagine him doing any better this time. Not in the shape he's in right now. 

 

My father called me tonight (at 8:30, after a text that said "are you busy?" and hoo boy did I get nervous) because he hit a button on one of the TV remotes and couldn't get it back to the way it was supposed to be. So I had to walk him through fixing it, including texting me a photo of the remote in question so I could tell him exactly what to press. God help me when she dies. He's useless when it comes to technology, and it's worse because he's one of those people who's like "I'm so stupid because I don't understand this, but I'll never understand this because I'm so stupid." So he won't even try. He doesn't understand that literally all I do when I fix things for them is hit buttons until something works. Even the intuitive stuff is just not something he can figure out. Ugh. I don't want to live at home forever and I can't hold his hand and do everything for him either, but he's going to need it for a while. At least until he retires (which could be any day now, and which would be disastrous because he has no friends and would never leave the house) and I can convince him to get his ass to therapy. 

 

Part of me is hoping I get an interview at the Boston job if only for a legitimate reason to go home and then start cleaning their house. "Well yeah I had to come back for this interview and I may as well stay in case they want another one right? So let me do this in the meantime." It's stressing my father the hell out. He's really not dealing with any of this well and I know it's not my responsibility to fix anything but it feels so shitty to listen to all of it and not be able to do anything. My mother's handicapped parking placard has gone missing in the abyss and he's going crazy because he remembers seeing it and telling himself he should move it back to where it belonged, but not doing it. And now they can't figure it out. Which means she really can't go anywhere alone because she can't walk the distances (and refuses to use her cane or the walker she has).

 

Super fun: my brother has an emergency dentist appointment tomorrow and the dentist is in an area where parking nearby is practically impossible and apparently she insists she's going to drive him but god knows how that's actually supposed to happen. He has fucking Uber and Lyft on his phone and there's a bus that stops about 100 feet from the house and goes to two blocks away from the dentist, but he won't do either. I have a feeling she's not going to be able to take him because she'll be too tired/sick and he'll just skip the appointment because that's what he does. Which is super fun because this is apparently because a piece of his tooth broke off? So yeah. I'll be really interested to see how it turns out. 

[fleaball]

It would be really nice if every TV show I watch didn't have someone dying of cancer.

[Owlet]

18 minutes ago, fleaball said:

It would be really nice if every TV show I watch didn't have someone dying of cancer.

Surely that isn't too much to ask for. My Mum just finished watching season 2 of Vikings because she enjoyed the first episode I showed her. Now she's traumatised because it's so gory. Oops. 

[fleaball]

3 hours ago, Owlet said:

Surely that isn't too much to ask for. My Mum just finished watching season 2 of Vikings because she enjoyed the first episode I showed her. Now she's traumatised because it's so gory. Oops. 

I keep thinking I should rewatch Buffy but I know when it gets to the part where her mom dies it will wreck me. It wrecked me the first time I watched it (2010) because my grandmother had died a few months earlier and I was totally unprepared. So it seems like a bad idea. Ugh, tv. Why can't you just be a mindless escape from reality?

 

 

 

and in other news, my mother did wind up driving my brother to the dentist yesterday. Apparently she did okay with it. But it wasn't until they were leaving that she realized he could have ubered and he was like "oh yeah." You stupid asshole, who the fuck do you think will chauffeur you around when she dies? Unless he doesn't plan on being here for that. It aggravates the hell out of me though because when she was going to the hospital after that fall he said something like "I want you to know it goes both ways. I want to help, I just don't know how." And I want to fucking scream because you know how you can help? Stop being a useless lump. Stop picking fights with our father. Do things they ask you to do without bitching about. Step the fuck up and act like a fucking adult because you're going to be 27 in a month. No ones asking you to go to the hospital with her, or give her shots or baths or whatever at home that would genuinely be challenging. You're being given the easiest of tasks that would go a long way in making life easier for both our parents, and you can't even fucking do that. In the meantime I'm over here agonizing over everything I cant do to help. Just fuck off please. 

[Dagger]

>______< Your brother.... >_________<

[Countess D'If]

Just popping in to say hi and send long distance love and support.

[fleaball]

I live. 

 

And I'm writing this using Amtrak's shitty wifi. Currently on a train home. An 8.5-hour train, because it was half the price of flying. 

 

A friend emailed me yesterday while I was on the train to therapy and asked if I was staying in DC and what I was doing now. I was replying that I was staying in DC but also looking at jobs in Boston. And then I realized I may as well just move home and job hunt from there. It's stupid to sit here paying rent when I haven't seen a job I really want in weeks. I keep hoping I'll get something in Boston and there's no reason I can't move there without one. 

 

I talked it over with my therapist. We both have some reservations about my going back since being there is a huge drain on my mental health. But honestly I think it's a trade off. If I'm there for good, I won't necessarily feel the need to spend every waking moment with my mother since my time won't be limited. And because it's a familiar area, I'll have more outlets. I haven't gone out running in DC since last year because my area is super sketch and I don't feel safe on some of the side streets. At home I felt safe running through my neighborhood at 5:30 in the morning and there's also a park that's a 5-minute walk from my house that has trails you can loop. And also coyotes, but better than people with guns and knives. I also won't spend half my time waiting for a phone call telling me she's dead, or even in the hospital again, and the other half worrying about my father and how he's coping and the condition of the house. It will be difficult but the change in circumstances should make a difference. If I feel less like a guest with limited time I won't feel as guilty for doing my own thing. Every time I've been home since Christmas I've had no way of knowing if that would be the last time I saw her so I was reluctant to do anything at all. 

 

They're going to kill me because tomorrow I'm going to jump right the fuck into cleaning and looking for her handicapped parking placard but I'm tired of hearing about it. Also because the funeral director we use prefers to make house calls rather than have people come to his funeral home, and when she had a procedure done on Tuesday I was having visions of my father calling to say she died and throwing a fit about having the guy come to the house. Not a thing I want to be dealing with when the time comes. And also because their oven has been busted for months but the house has to be relatively presentable for a new one to be delivered/installed. Not that I want to be using the oven much in the summer but they're all picky eaters and not having it severely limits the options. 

 

I'll talk it over with them tomorrow, but I plan on job hunting still. While I'm looking, my father can get a break of shuttling her to doctor appointments and worrying about her being home alone. If I get a job, he can pick it back up since he has FMLA, and I'll ask if working from home in emergencies would be an option, depending on the job I get. I don't want to be a freeloader, but if it somehow comes up that it's better for them both that I don't work, I'll consider it. Maybe try to tutor online or something. Maybe see about renting a car through Lyft, since it's free if you do X rides a week and that's something I could do when my father's not at work. I don't want to put my entire life on hold and have another gap in my resume to explain, but I'll see what comes of it. For now I just have to focus on doing a few things around the house, getting my room in some kind of order since my father made a mess of it, and then figuring out how to pack all my shit and load a U-Haul when I go back to DC next week. 

[Plazmotic]

On 6/15/2017 at 5:54 PM, fleaball said:

I also won't spend half my time waiting for a phone call telling me she's dead, or even in the hospital again, and the other half worrying about my father and how he's coping and the condition of the house.

As someone who likes to be in control and in-the-know, I know very well you can’t put a price on peace of mind, even in sad situations like this. Hang in there!

[fleaball]

Ugh fuck. She had chemo today and it went well but she didn't feel so good after and yup, this is why I've been grateful not to be here, because I've been hella nervous all night. This is going to suck. And now I'm questioning whether I want to go get my tooth pulled tomorrow if they have an appointment available because what if she needs help? Fml.

[fleaball]

My father is flying down next week and driving the uhaul back with me. He kept making noise last week along the lines of "are you sure you don't want me to drive down and we can load up my car?" He has a Subaru Outback, which is not as big as he thinks it is. When I moved here originally we loaded up his car and my tiny Saturn and just barely made it; I've acquired more things since then and I'm not getting rid of my queen mattress, which would not fit in his car and would be a bitch to tie on the top for 500 miles. But constantly bringing it up (as well as the fact that he was worried about me driving such a large unfamiliar vehicle) and offering to help me was his way of implying he wanted to be involved without actually saying it. (And I wonder why I have communication issues myself. ) So after talking it over with my mother, I asked if he wanted to fly down one day and help me move back. I've just booked his ticket (thank you, JetBlue points) and reserved the uhaul, so I'm officially moving back on Thursday the 29th. And he'll be with me unless there's an emergency. 

 

My roommate had already volunteered herself and/or her boyfriend to help me load the van, so having my father around isn't strictly necessary. It will be nice to have someone else to split the driving with since it's 8 hours without any traffic, but I've also made the 10-12 hour drive from Boston to Richmond and back myself so again, not necessary. But this is him trying to be helpful. He's anxious about leaving my mother alone (my brother will be there and will probably get a lecture about needing to be available) but she says she'll be okay. And she's looking forward to a break from him since he hovers and drives her crazy. So he gets to drive me crazy instead. He's going to shit a brick when he sees where I've been living. But oh well, not going to be living here anymore. Anyway. He was fishing for a way to be helpful. So I'm giving it to him. Even though he's been doing everything for my mother since Christmas and practically running himself into the ground, all he focuses on are the things he hasn't been doing. (Cleaning, one-off errands at the bottom of the priority list, etc.) So this gives him a concrete thing to do to be useful.

 

My therapist also thinks it's maybe a way he can thank me for coming home and taking care of shit? Which makes sense. He asked a half dozen times whether I'm moving back because I want to or if it's just to be a buffer between him and my brother or some other reason that I feel like I have to. Which, no. I'm coming home because my mother is dying. Later rather than sooner, hopefully, but why should I stick around here when I could be spending time with her and helping out? And have better chances of finding a job? But when I was home last week I did get a few things done that they'd been trying to get done forever and didn't/couldn't. And before I left for the airport he thanked me for coming back and doing that shit. So meh. I'll survive ~30 hours with him. It could be worse.

[NeverThatBored]

26 minutes ago, fleaball said:

He's going to shit a brick when he sees where I've been living.

 

Please give us a play-by-play of his reaction! 

[fleaball]

4 minutes ago, NeverThatBored said:

 

Please give us a play-by-play of his reaction! 

Oh I'm sure you'll get one. It's going to be something else. 

 

I haven't heard any gunshots since the night K was here. Watch it happen Wednesday night. 

 

Eta: I lied. I heard them once since. But it was a fluke that I heard them because it happened relatively far away. 

[fleaball]

Aaaaaand I'm at the ER because I've convinced myself I'm having a heart issue.

[NeverThatBored]

6 minutes ago, fleaball said:

Aaaaaand I'm at the ER because I've convinced myself I'm having a heart issue.

 

Nooooooo

[fleaball]

Just now, NeverThatBored said:

 

Nooooooo

I mean I'm probably crazy. Dude at registration doesn't seem super concerned. But I was watching tv and it felt like the room was closing in around me, I've been lightheaded for a while, and out of nowhere my left arm started feeling tingly. 

 

All I did today was pack a single suitcase, and that was over well before this started.  It's probably just my anxiety. But the more I sat and tried to talk myself out of it, the more worried I got. 

[fleaball]

Took the worlds slowest Uber ride here with the only driver in metro DC who obeys speed limits. Check in, the system is malfunctioning so they can't print wristbands or actually check people in. Dude asked me what's happening anyway, apparently isn't concerned by my responses, although they can't take vitals since they can't pull up info about who's checked in. I realize I'm probably fine but this wait isn't helping. 

 

I obviously don't want anything to be wrong but I know tomorrow I'm going to be pissed I came here and was fine and am still going to pay a shit ton of money for nothing. 

[Emma]

New here.  Hi! Sorry about your problems and family issues. Been identifying with a lot of them. Difference being my dad died when I was 16, and not close to him at all. Never knew my grandparents. My mom died a couple of years ago at 93, but she was a religious fruitcake and we weren't close either. My ex's mom had a stroke and hung on for weeks. He kept going to LA to see her (8 hour drive) and it was breaking him up never knowing if it was going to be the last time.

Moving back home right now I think is a good idea. Help out your folks, ease some of your anxiety about the situation and look for a job where you want to live.

Stress can do all kinds of wonky things to one's body. And you are going through a hellacious amount of stress right now. Done a lot of them to myself.  Latest was a new heart thingy. Fortunately I have access to an EKG machine (work) and did one on myself. It read something that I forget now, but I was able to look it up online and it wasn't horribly serious and then, only then, I was able to calm down and the heart went back to normal. We human beings are such odd creatures, aren't we? Anyway, you should get it checked out just in case. You will feel better knowing one way or another. Peace of mind is a valuable thing. Best wishes to you, fleaball.