Just a short note

I will not be continuing this particular blog after the negative wishes directed toward my health and life. Shortly though I will be establishing a new one on which I will be tracking my current adventure as it goes along.

It's going to be a very lonely next few months

I'm sitting here at home. I am alone. No transportation. My daughter will not stay in the same room with me for more than a few minutes. A couple of hours ago she left to go see a friend. When I called to ask if she was going to come home for dinner, she wouldn't answer her telephone. So I am going to have to struggle to cook dinner, though I don't really have enough energy to do it.

I don't have a car. Something went wrong with David driving Susan's truck and as a result I will not have transportation again until Susan manages to get it all sorted out. I'm sort of wondering what will happen if I can't even go to doctor's appointment for up to a week.

Mostly I am bored and lonely. I could distract myself with WoW, but it no longer works on this machine, and my laptop is really to slow for any play at the level I would have to play at.

I keep trying to do stuff such as work on my afghan and other such things, but I have almost no energy and my body isn't really happy with the pain pills I'm taking. Not that they do all that much anyway to be honest. Well, no more than for a short time. If I lay down then it seems to help a lot, but who wants to spend all their time in bed?

Right now I need to go fix the brussel sprouts for dinner and check the pot roast. In a bit more then I'll put on the rice and cook the sprouts, and make gravy, though I don't actually know if anyone is going to even be here. What is certain is that they won't eat in the same room with me.

Well, the verdict is in.

It's not my gallbladder as they suspected/hoped. It's cancer. At least that's what they figure it is right now and frankly they're not all that wrong all that often. So I am facing a long tough fight here, and one that I am not guaranteed to win. I'm not giving up on this.

People are being really supportive. If prayer actually works then I will be completely free shortly. *grin* Still, it is nice of people to care that much. My family is in shock. My daughter is the worst thus far. She's just not coping at all.

I talked to my sister, who is also a mess. She is coming out to stay with us next week. At first I argued that she really doesn't need to do that. We don't even have the full diagnosis yet, much less a treatment plan. Then I realized she needs to do this. For her. My ex has offered to pay my entire funeral expenses should it come to that. He made the offer to my daughter. That's a lot of money, but oh well. I am hoping not to have to take him up on it any time soon.

The odd thing about all of this is that I'm not really scared or upset. Obviously I would much prefer not to have to face it, but we don't get to choose what challenges life throws at us. As I told a friend, I've never been afraid of dying. We all do it at one time or another.

So for now, I'm sort of in a holding pattern. I need to know a lot more before we begin moving ahead toward whatever is out there.

I'm Getting Sicker

Seems I'm getting sicker by the day. While the dizziness and the severe upset stomach and sore spot are gone...sort of anyway....I'm very weak and I lack anything resembling energy. I don't just choose to lie down several times a day, I have to. I've developed an intermittent deep throbbing pain. With some Aleve it will generally go away in maybe an hour. I am not eating much. Nothing sounds good to me.

According to the tests my liver functions are off. That would explain most of what is happening I think. On Friday I get an ultra sound but because of my ongoing transportation issues, it will then be another entire week before I can go in to see the doctor again. I think this is going to be the longest ten days in my life.

I am thankfully still getting my paying work done, though it's an enormous struggle. I don't do sick well. It's very disheartening to be pretty much ignored by everyone in the house. When I'm too sick to cook they go out and eat. I'm still waiting for one person to ask me how I am feeling and/or ask if I am feeling better. That sort of hurts. Yeah I am whining. I'm allowed. I'm sick.

Being Sick is the Pits

I hate being sick. It's not something I do well. I've been sick for about a week and a half now. Since I had transportation today, I went to the walk-in clinic where I go. The doctor checked me out and did some tests. She pretty much agrees with me that it's my gallbladder. Depending on what the tests show I will probably need an ultrasound, which I won't be able to go get until Friday or Saturday at the earliest, depending on David's work schedule.

When I loaned him my car, it was supposed to be for 4 days tops. It's going on two weeks. Last weekend they laid around all day and did nothing whatever to start fixing the car he's going to use. At least this week they are out doing some stuff, so I assume they will get the battery and other stuff they need to fix the car. It would be very nice if that's what they're doing.

For now I'm not sure if I'm getting better or getting worse. The soreness is gone, but my stomach still isn't happy and I'm weak and tired. My guess is rather than having stones, I have an infection. That would explain feeling so rotten and the absence of any acute pain. I simply feel exhausted all the time. And I am cold. The heat is on. Oh well.

I finally had a smoothie for lunch. That set well with my tummy. I've sort of been more or less living on smoothies, cottage cheese, and fruit these past five days or so. I just want this to blow over. I want what little energy I have back.

Update: I got the results back on my tests. Liver function tests are way off. This is, as the doctor says, completely consistent with a gallbladder problem. I should be able to call and schedule an ultrasound for Friday. Cannot get it sooner, but will have a car on Friday. From there we'll decide if this is an infection that can be treated or stones, which means the gallbladder has to come out. That will wait until June unless I'm really sick. I need to keep working as long as I can.

Busy Sunday

This was a very busy Sunday for me. For the past couple of weeks I have been increasingly discontented with the part of the living room that represents one of my two personal spaces in the house. On Friday I decided that today I was going to get it clean.

After breakfast this morning I began very systematically cleaning the area. I emptied the magazine rack, then either stored away or tossed everything that didn't belong there. I emptied the trash, cleaned off the top of my little sewing table, cleaned off the top of a small storage box I have there as sort of a secondary end table. I cleaned off the end table itself then polished the wooden items. I dusted everything then moved it all out of the immediate area and moved my recliner. It's absolutely amazing how many dust bunnies make their home under recliners.

I collected all the books I had in numerous places around my chair and divided them into three piles. One would stay, one went into the Half Price Books box, and the other one came into the bedroom for later.

Then I dusted and de-cobwebbed, then vacuumed the entire area. I could not believe the amount of dust and lint I got off of it. By then I had to empty the waste basket again. After that I systematically put everything back where I got it. I had even found a nice nylon tote to put a lot of my craft projects into so they are in one place, and out of the way. It really looks good. Of course I misplaced one small item I really really needed to have at arm's length, but after a brief search I found it and returned it to where it belonged in the first place.

This was a lot of work and took me several hours. The next target is my bedroom. It shouldn't take as long as it's not as messy, but then again it has a lot less room for putting things than the living room area. I'll probably chip away at it this coming week between getting other stuff done. I am on a mission to get some things tidied up around here before I get homicidal about it.

Same Stuff, Different Day.

It is somewhere approaching midnight. I had a nice nap. Maybe an hour. Then my daughter got home. They've been yelling for the past hour and it's not likely to stop this time. Apparently he hit her in the cab on the way home tonight. At first he was denying it, then he said she hit him first, but now he's saying he's sorry, he made a huge mistake, and that he won't ever do it again.

I can all but guarantee he will never do it again. My daughter was in an extremely abusive relationship at one time, and she has vowed never to be in another one. I don't see her backing down with this, particularly since it involves physical violence.

Stress is such a wonderful thing. It keeps you up at night and keeps you alert. If stress were money, I would now be a multi-millionaire. Susan just got the dog. To get him out of my room now she has to bribe him when they are fighting. So she gets him a treat, and treat whore that he is he leaves. This is quite fine with me to be honest. I really don't sleep well with the dog anyway.

I'm out a bit of money, since I loaned him the money for her Christmas present, but that's ok. It is worth it in the long run. The constant fighting is going to leave me with a breakdown if it goes on much longer. The only thing that really worries me is that she will now go back to drinking like a fish, when she was making some progress toward at least slowing down.

In the end, however, I will survive this as will she.

Late Night Misery

I am sitting in my bedroom with my daughter's dog snoring on the bed. In the next room my daughter and her husband are in another of their seemingly endless yelling matches. It happens several times a week. I can't go to bed.

First off when they fight like this the dog is absolutely terrified and growls at everyone other than me. He won't leave my room unless I am with him. So I will be sleeping with the dog tonight because I cannot leave him alone and scared like that. He literally shakes all over at times.

It will do me no good to go to bed. I knew that this afternoon. If my daughter goes out then there is a huge battle when she comes home. They both yell and swear so sleep would be impossible. I didn't try earlier because once I am awake, then it's next to impossible to get back to sleep. I have this severe sleep problem that makes good sleep something to just wish for. It's already coming up on 11:00 and I have to be up at six to drive into the city so my son in law can go to a job interview. That means another of my work days is shot to hell, and I'll be exhausted. I'll have to work all or most of the weekend now just so I can be caught up by Monday.

We will come home and I'll stop on the way and pick up a few groceries for dinner tomorrow night. Then I'll start working. Between the housework and the work-work I'll be busy all day. Busy and exhausted. I don't nap because then sleep at night is a joke. This goes on week after endless week after endless week. I'm so stressed it's unreal. I got a biofeedback unit recently with the idea that I could maybe use it to help me sleep. Shoot. After almost a week I cannot get it into a normal zone. It just beeps at me telling me my stress levels are off the charts. This is not exactly news. I'm sticking with it though. Maybe one of these days things will calm down.

There is nothing I can do and I feel helpless about that. Or really anywhere I can go. My daughter depends on me for so much that I cannot just leave her alone to deal with everything. Besides (wry grin) the stupid dog thinks I'm its mother or something and runs to me for everything. I am not sure how he would survive if I wasn't here to calm him down and make sure he's safe. He even sometimes climbs into my lap shivering in fear from the noise. He weighs 60+ pounds and has sharp corners everywhere.

They're still fighting.

Exciting Family News

I just got a call from my daughter and our family just got some really exciting news today.

First a bit of background. Last spring my great niece got the opportunity to work as a goffer on a movie set in her town. She really enjoyed the opportunity and had a great time. Plus she knew that if any other movie companies were to be making films nearby, having worked on one would mean she would have an easier time finding work on another.

Fast forward to yesterday. Her school was in a tizzy. Will Farrel (an actor) was at the school for some reason. As my niece was walking down the hall he saw her and yelled out her name. He had been in the movie on which she had worked and she had come to know him over the weeks she had been there. They chatted for a bit while her stock in the eyes of her friends went through the room. As they were parting he asked her if she would like to be in a movie. She asked doing what, and he laughed and said no. He meant how would she like to be in a movie as in having a part in his next film. She was thrilled and said yes of course and gave him her home phone number.

Today his assistant called and formally offered her a small speaking part in his next movie, and set the wheels in motion for her and her father to make a trip to New York city next month. She will, of course, get paid and all expenses are taken care of.

To say that she's excited would somehow cheapen the word. The girl is 16 years old. She's so excited she can hardly breathe. Of course by tomorrow she will be a huge celebrity at her school.

I'm excited for her because this is something so few people ever get to do. Good for her and I hope it is everything she could ever hope for.

I hate bureacrats

Grrrr!!!!!!! I am so mad today I could spit nails. I have always known about bureacracies and the brain-dead loop you can get into with them, but it's been some time since I found myself in the middle of one of their insane catch 22s. Let me reiterate the fun time I have been having over the past two days.

A week or so ago I received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying they will no longer automatically deduct the premiums for my Medicare supplemental insurance plan from my monthly benefit. They did not say why they had made this decision.

Yesterday I received a letter from my service provider telling me that the reason the Social Security Administration had given them was that my benefit was not large enough to cover the premium. My benefit is 10-12 times as large as the premium. This did not make any sense.

I tried to call Social Security. Good luck with that. At first I tried to call my local office. I got two responses from that: in the first I got a recorded greeting, a notice that all their people were busy, and could I please hold. From there after maybe three minutes they apologized and asked me to continue holding. Three more minutes I was automatically sent to a full mailbox, then bounced back to the end of the line. Rinse and repeat endlessly. The second was even more fun. The message said "Thank you for calling the Social Security Administration. Goodbye." Then they hung up on me.

So I called the main office on the toll free line. After maybe half an hour of the most irritating telephone hell you can imagine I got to talk to a real person. She told me that the Medicare people has ordered the stop to the automatic deductions and there was nothing she could do without them telling her to do so.

The Medicare office just kept hanging up on me so I got irritated and stopped trying that. I called my service provider and told them what was going on. They told me that only a letter from the Social Security agency could fix things with them. Back to square one. I had a glass of Scotch and vowed to return to the fight the next day.

I reached the Medicare office the next morning (this morning). They checked their records and said that their records show that the authorization to automatically withhold my premiums was in effect and they had not nor could they tell Social Security to stop payment since they do not know the size of my retirement benefit, so had no way of knowing if it would cover the premiums or not. They sent me back to Social Security.

After endlessly trying to reach a real person in Social Security both nationally and locally I gave up and drove to my local Social Security office. The woman there confirmed that their records show that the automatic deduction had been stopped but there was no reason given. They tried to tell me I had requested it be stopped, but I squashed that one fast. She called Medicare who confirmed that my automatic deduction was valid and fine with them. She confirmed that the Social Security records showed they had ordered the deduction halted. She could not give me a reason and suggested that I should talk to my provider again, who had already sayd they could do nothing.

So here is where I stand. My premiums are not being automatically deducted. Nobody knows why. Nobody ordered it. Nobody requested it. And Nobody can fix it. Nobody has been really busy. My next step is to send a copy of something similar to this rant to my U.S. Senator and as that this be resolved. I need a drink. I need two; they're small.

Mike Huckabee is a Nut

Yesterday Mike Huckabee stated publicly that he wants to change the Constitution of the United States to conform with his version of "god's" law. How exactly he knows exactly what god wants is questionable, and what is more questionable is how one would determine which brand of god's teaching would be imposed on us.

There are as many versions of Christianity as there are stars. The definitions and interpretations of what the bible means fills libraries. Yet Mr. Huckabee wants to try to change the Constitution to impose what appears to be the Christian version of Sharia law on the United States.

I am very thankful that what he proposes is actually next to impossible. Changing the Constitution requires extraordinary cooperation between two parties who cannot even agree on what day of the week it is most of the time. Then it requires a 2/3 or 3/4 majority vote of the states in order to put something new in or take something old out of the document. This is as it should be. I'm really thankful after hearing him talking about what he wanted to do that he's simply spitting into the wind. I would hate like hell to believe for an instant that someone was willing to try to subvert this document.

People are already trying to explain away what he said. They're saying he only meant he wanted to force his views on abortion, gay marriage, and giving citizenship to anchor babies onto us, not the whole of the bible. But that's not what he said. For me, amending the constitution to conform with someone's religious beliefs is not only ridiculous it is the first step down a very slippery slope. I have my fingers crossed tightly that this will never happen.

I Am Bored

If I were any more bored I would be in a coma. It seems all I do these days is clean house, work, run errands, and putter. I cannot think of a single thing except playing WoW from time to time that doesn't bore me nearly to tears.

Most of this, I admit is my own fault. I've drawn more and more away from people and the world as I have gotten older. I'm simply no longer willing to put forth the effort it takes to find, make, and sustain friendships. Then one day I woke up and discovered I am a total hermit. What is even worse is that I have little if any real incentive to want to change that even if I had the slightest idea of how to do that at my age.

I'm very self-conscious when I am out in public. Not, as you might think, because of my weight. I made peace with that years ago and figure anyone who judges another by the breadth of their ass rather than by the depth of their soul isn't worth the powder to blow them to hell anyway. I am self conscious mainly about my teeth. I have nice dentures on the top, but on the bottom we got half way and I lost my job/insurance so I never could afford to have them finished. As a result when I smile I look like a jack-o-lantern on crack. So I rarely smile.

It's just easier and more comfortable (and lots more boring) to just stay home and fill my life with chores and projects. But I do admit that sometimes I really miss having someone to talk to. Year before last in the summer I went to Hawaii for a week and met some of my brothers friends. We talked politics and other things for literally hours. It was like being drunk but without the booze. I looked forward to every single day and couldn't wait to get up in the morning. I had a big grin on my face (at home of course) for two days recently when one of those guys sent a wave and a hi through my sister. It was so great to even be remembered.

Tonight, however, I am just bored. My daughter has been sick for days and is just now beginning to get better. She and her friend and husband are in the other room watching American Idol. Personally I would rather watch paint dry, so I am here writing this, then will do one of my Spanish lessons and read a bit in my new book "An Incomplete Education." It's a rather interesting big book of odd facts and information across a spectrum of subjects.

After another hour or two I will go to bed and thus ends another boring day. With more to follow. Thank heavens all of the errands were completed today. I don't have to go anywhere or do anything outside tomorrow. Yay!