I feel like posting something, but I don’t know what. I’m exhausted. My dad’s getting worse day by day, but it seems like it’s taking too long, probably because it’s already been two years. My dad doesn’t deserve what’s happening to him and I don’t deserve to have my last memories of him filled with terrible experiences. I don’t even write most of what’s happening because it’s surreal, dehumanizing and utterly too personal. Losing a beloved parent is horrible enough to change a person. This situation is testing the boundaries of my psychology.

Uncharacteristically for me my mind keeps contemplating families -- specifically husbands and babies, the former of which is highly unlikely and the latter is out of the question. I understand it, though. I’m not just losing my father but my mother is seriously ill and my remaining grandparents are very old. Add onto that my decision to simply remove myself from both sides of my biological family in favour of building a new family of my own choosing. The fact that I’m the only child of the eldest son on my father’s side and the last female of direct descent on my mother’s is bringing up issues I’d already resolved years ago.

All the history, stories, cultural knowledge and traditions sadly stop with me. I’m the only one who paid attention, who sat at the feet of my immigrant Elders and memorized everything. Their children were too busy obtaining the American dream and their grandchildren were too busy being typical Americans, detached from their heritage and lacking a sense of culture. It’s also a sad statement that I am, indeed, the last witch in my family. All the others are Roman Catholics or agnotics of some kind; I’m the only witch like my aunts, grandmothers and great-grandmothers. I either learned the core of my knowledge from them or from being told stories about them. It was handed down to me, but I have no one to pass it on to.

Is it any wonder I’m thinking of husbands and babies? The truth is I’ve no heart for it. I’m selfish and entirely too comfortable in my independence and detachment. No one who’s caught my eye in recent years, and there have been a very rare few of those, has felt compelled to return that attention. C’est la vie. Besides, this sort of thinking is what lead to my cousin’s disastrous first marriage after his mother died. It’s normal to think of new life when you’re surrounded by death and grief, but it’s not normal to act on it. That sort of procreative trap is what’s lead to overpopulation and the various complications stemming from it.

I seriously cannot describe how seriously fucked up this situation is with my father. My mother's essentially holding my father hostage, threatening to cut me out of their lives and saying, "If you really loved your father you'd do anything for him." Excuse me? I've quit my job and moved halfway across the country because the man asked me to come home. I've driven myself to exhaustion and sickness to spend time with him. Even now I have to drive for an hour and a half through traffic from work to them just to stay for a few hours before I drive another hour and a half without traffic to get home, often after midnight. Meanwhile I found out she's been denying my dad his morphine and anti-anxiety meds because she doesn't "want him doped up." The man's dying of cancer, he's had at least two strokes (maybe more), he's in constant pain and/or discomfort, and she doesn't want him to take the meds they've prescribed for him because they make him sleep. She's such a victim and it's all bullshit.

I don't think I'll ever forgive my mother for this. She's done some pretty horrible things over the years -- stealing from me, physical abuse throughout my teens, emotional and psychological abuse that's still going on since I was a kid -- but this really is way more fucked up than I could have imagined her capable of. Is anyone still wondering why I have issues forming and keeping any type of relationship at all?

Next month I'm seeing Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama in the same week.

I'm posting this with my Droid, Alice. As in Resident Evil. Mwuahahaha!

The following is a letter I received from another doctor's office, minus the physician's information and the patient's name. Don't get me wrong, I'm painfully aware of the fact that a number of people are incompetently literate and incapable of writing adequate letters, but that's why they have templates for professional documents. This doctor should be embarassed. Are his medical summaries as atrocious?

"Thank you for talking to me on Thursday morning regarding the above-captioned patient.

I need caution you that this patient is horrible he abusing his medication and arrived in my office totally and completely obtuned, barely arousable even for a grunt of response.

He was in my office for a Social Security disability evaluation which was horribly difficult to conclude as a result of his mental status.

He is totally irresponsible with medications and seriously overdosed and I in a very friendly way am notifying you that his medications need to be severely cut back because he is irresponsible and may wind up as a unintended overdose and death which will come back to trouble you because you have written the medications.

I wish you well with this very difficult patient."

True quote. How about wishing me well reading this very difficult and horrible letter? I really must resist the urge to write back.

"22 January 2010



Idiot Doctor's Office
So far outside intelligence
It's not even humourous 00000-0000

Re: The previously addressed patient
DOB: You failed to include this for identification purposes

To the person who doesn't even know how to address a letter,

I would suggest that you cut back on your own supply of opiates and narcotics before offering off-handed suggestions on treating our patients.

If you have any questions, please don't bother to call our office. I might be forced to ridicule you further.

Seriously,
E.R.
Clinical Manager"

This weekend was incredibly difficult. Early Saturday afternoon my mother called me in tears, asking for help with my father. Hospice wasn’t scheduled to begin until Monday and it was clear she hadn’t had any sleep. I dropped what I was doing, stuffed some clothes in my backpack and made the trip up there. Once I got my mom calmed down and my dad sedated I took her grocery shopping and let her vent her frustrations before I vented mine.* When we got back to their apartment I told her to go take her pain medications, which often make her drowsy and ineffective, so that she could get some sleep while I stayed up with my dad.

When I get stressed out I clean, and so I had the apartment sterilized and sparkling within hours. By 11:00 p.m. I was exhausted and ready to crawl into bed. Then I learned why my mom hadn’t gotten any sleep since I left Friday morning – in such a short amount of time my father’s grown fearful of being left alone and constantly called me to come sit with him, begging me not to leave him by himself. I didn’t really get him settled into sleep until almost 6:30 a.m., and that was after inflating an air mattress and putting it at the foot of the bed so he knew I was right there. I slept while I could, then I got up and started all over again.

I probably had to scrub the bathroom with bleach water more than a dozen times – I’m sure you can guess why – and rearranged the entire apartment to suit my dad’s wheelchair without destroying the integrity of my mother’s interior design. She’s so proud of the apartment and it’s so beautiful, I didn’t want to make it look like it was being rearranged for a wheelchair. However, several pathways along with the mild weather allowed me to take my dad outside for the first time in weeks. I shelled peanuts so he could feed his little squirrel friends. According to him Sunday was the best day he’d had in months. I left Sunday night exhausted and crying, but glad I’d been able to do so much for my parents. Hospice will take care of the rest and I can focus on just visiting them like a daughter, not a caretaker.

___________________________________________________________________

* Only one of my cousins responded to the e-mail I sent them about my father’s condition. D has hardly left my side more than she has to and R feels properly chastised for not making peace with my parents, but the rest have contacted neither me nor my parents. Truth be told it’s too late for them to offer their love and support to me. I needed them when I was still coming to terms with my father’s diagnosis and when I was caring for both he and my mother. Not now, not when my father’s dying, and certainly not when he’s dead. If any of them so much as touches me or murmurs an apology or a regret there’s going to be hell to pay. Even my uncles haven’t asked me how I’m doing. This is one of those times where I’m learning exactly who really loves me.

I used to have a reputation for telling people to fuck off and moving on with my life as if they’d never been a part of that. Some of the friends I’ve had here the longest have seen several examples of that, but it’s been years since I’ve actually done it. I grew a little softer around the edges and less suspicious and guarded when I reached my early thirties. The idea that love and even hurt might actually belong in my life began to creep into my life and I began to see the benefits of letting people close to me. Perhaps I was seriously mistaken. I can’t imagine the benefit of supporting someone with love and faith only to have them vanish when you need them most. And to know that every single one of my cousins has already lost a parent and knows how it feels just makes it that much worse.

___________________________________________________________________

My mother has Essential Tremors and Dystonia, a pair of neurological diseases caused by a genetic mutation that runs in our family. Years ago, when my mother was first properly diagnosed – they initially thought she had Parkinson’s Syndrome – her neurologist tagged me as a carrier of the mutation because of my own history. Apparently because a particular combination of antidepressants and antipsychotics I took as a teenager caused me to have seizures, and because they found abnormal areas of my brain when I was a child, it was apparent to him that I was exhibiting the same tendencies as my mother. However, he took care to point out that it doesn’t normally show up until the fifties or sixties, and since I’m only halfway through my thirties I should be safe.

Should be. Last Thursday, while we were at the VA waiting for my father to finish with his MRI, my mother noticed my left hand has a perceptible shake to it. Not horrible, not nearly as bad as hers, but noticeable. She asked me when it started and when I said more than a year ago she dropped the subject. She’s been too afraid to talk about it since. Today Dr. F asked me about my migraines (I’m still battling one from yesterday) and why I don’t take Fiorinal. When I said it gives me the shakes he felt along my neck and spine, asked me if my neck hurts and where, did anything else hurt, and how/when the pain comes. Once he got his answers he said he wants me to see a neurologist. I told him we would talk about it after lunch, but the answer’s no. There are some things I just don’t want to deal with right now.

ET’s can be caused by extreme stress and can vanish as quickly as they started. Or it can be a trigger for full-blown symptoms, like it was with my mother. Either way I’ve got years before it becomes an issue, and so it’s going to remain a non-issue until it actually affects my life, assuming the worst. There are a number of things I’d much rather deal with than this. This is more of a notation to myself, a reminder of the date if I ever do have to see someone about this. I know for certain, though, no matter what happens I’m not getting DBS like my mother did. I fail to see how it improved her quality of life; it only extended the quantity without sufficiently relieving her symptoms. That in itself is a reason not to discuss this further.

Today we met with my dad's oncologist for the last time. We had to do another MRI of his brain because the PET scan he did Tuesday showed damage they want to focus on. Although it didn't reveal any cancer in his brain yet -- which, the oncologist pointed out, doesn't mean it isn't there, but that it may be still too small to see -- it did reveal that he had a stroke within the past few weeks. We're comfortable blaming it for his confusion, lack of cognition, severe weakness in his right arm and leg and his imbalance. The damage from the stroke, however, supports our suspicions that the cancer has invaded his brain and just hasn't grown large enough for testing.

It's a moot point. Today he was put on palliative care, which means they'll only address his symptoms as they arise: increasing pain medications as needed, giving him cough syrup with codeine to ease his breathing and giving him aspirin to help stave off another stroke. There'll be no more tests, medications and or appointments. A social worker gave us the brochures of several hospice services that will work in Deerfield; we'll pick one of them and work with them to keep him home. The advice given to us based on his choices was not to call 911 if anything happens; just let him die peacefully in his own bed, no matter how it happens. No one can predict how long he has, whether it's weeks or months. This has already taken too long as it is.

Note: The rest of this letter is for biological family.

So now I get to the truly unpleasant part. My father doesn't deserve to be ignored or forgotten by his own family. He doesn't deserve being left as a footnote in the history of a family that crumbled years ago. My father's illness and pending death can't be all that difficult to deal with if you don't even call to see how he's doing. That's really the very least anyone can do. And before the protests about my parents not answering the phone begin, let me remind you of something I've said all along: it's on you to take the responsibility of showing someone you love them, whether it's accepted or not. Assuming you don't have to tell a person you love them because "they should know" means the other person knows they're not loved. Stop and ask yourself about the message you've been sending all this time. How do you like the answer?

- E.R.

Ps: As angry as the end of this letter may sound it's been edited a great deal to remove myself from the equation as much as possible. No one wants to know how I really feel right now and I genuinely hope I'm able to keep it in check.

I'm one of those people that has a knack for knowing what's wrong with people. Those on the fringes of the scientific research call it "medical intuition," though they can't offer any explanations to it. Doctors and nurses, on the whole, don't ascribe to it. However, when they find someone who's consistently right about every diagnosis before the tests even come in, they begin to listen. My mother's neurologist learned to listen to me from the very beginning, and so did my father's oncologist.

My father's latest PET scan was Tuesday, but I already know it's spread to his brain, has grown in his liver and digestive tract, and has taken over at least fifty percent of his lungs. Apparently I may be pretty close to being right because his oncologist called me and asked me to be at the meeting tomorrow. She always said that she'd only call me in when she was at the end of the line. There isn't anything more that can be done for my father except make the final preparations and wait for the inevitable.

Well, that's not entirely true. Most of his plans have already been finalized and I've even written his eulogy, but there's one thing he never got around to finishing -- a shadowbox of the medals he collected during his service in the military. I think this weekend I'll get him to sit down (or up, as the case may be) and start putting it together with me. He wanted to leave it to me when he dies so I'd have something material to be proud of. Apparently just leaving me stories and a knack for telling them isn't good enough even for an Irishman.

- Dropkick Murphys in Ft. Lauderdale on March 6th! Whoohoo!

- Why is my bedroom so much colder than the rest of the apartment? Did something unseen move in while I was out? Good thing I had my Cthulu slippers to keep me warm!

- O and I found this in Walgreens this evening. It's... yeah. I know a couple of people who would have taken pictures of them trying to eat it.

My dad's declining rapidly, although not rapidly enough to prevent him from suffering. He's in constant pain, forbidden to drive, has to use a wheelchair or walker, and he's starting to lose control of his body and faculties. I'll be very surprised if he makes it to my birthday in May. Hell, at this rate I'll be surprised if he makes it to the end of March. I'm going to have to start coming up here more often and staying longer, which means returning to my long commute to and from work. For now he just asked me to come up once a week; we'll just have to wait and see how long that lasts. As for my mother, it's a universal truth that evil lives forever.

Note: This is where I start turning off my comments if I post anything about my dad. Don't take it personally; I don't do well with hand-holding and placating and I can't be bothered to get people to understand I accepted the inevitable quite some time ago.

"Even if you’ve let others direct your life path in the past, today can be the day that you choose to make your independent mark on the world. You may be highly driven to achieve success on your own terms, and your assertiveness and need for self-determination could confuse those you’ve previously relied on for guidance. You’ll likely feel more confident about your abilities and fulfilled by success if you make your own choices. Being the master of your destiny can help you discover a life path that is molded from your values and dreams. If you can take stock of what is important to you before you move forward today, your decisions will likely be the right ones."

You know what's important to me right now? Pursuing a double major in Abnormal Psychology and Anthropology with a minor in Religious and Cultural Studies and examining Medieval Studies at Cambridge for four weeks, despite the objects, complaints and negative comments of others. I want to attend university in Chicago while working in a bookstore until I pass my boards and can begin to practice on my own. This probably doesn't fit into anybody's plan for what they want me to do, but guess what? "Sometimes goodbye is a second chance."

Edit: I have to save a little under $500 a month in order to afford the fees for Cambridge next year, so I'm going to need a second job. Not that I don't make good money at this one, but a second job dedicated to that goal would be excellent. To that end I applied for a sales position at a small Ren fair running for the next three weekends, which would net me $480 this month on short notice. They also have a booth at my regular Ren fair, which runs for five and would draw in another $800. Of course, I'd really like to go back to working for a bookstore, even if it's Barnes & Noble again.

Holy cow, I just added the International Summer School Program at the University of Cambridge! They have two and four week courses earning three to six credits. And they're offering Medieval Studies at St. Catherine's College! I would be housed in St. Catherine's with a walk across the courtyard to lectures taught by Cambridge professors. Leisure activities include trips to London, Bath, Edinburgh, Stonehenge, Dublin, Paris and Amsterdam. It's $7k just for the fees, not including airfare, personal expenses, etc., but it's Cambridge, dude! Cambridge!

Reading a book you really enjoy, deciding to read another book by the same author(s) you just happen to have lying around, and discovering that they're actually part of a series when they allude to "something happening" to one of the main characters in the first book. And then you realize there's actually six books between the one you just finished and the one you're starting, and that the one you're starting isn't even the latest one in the series! Now I need to stop reading the one I started this morning and get the next in the series so I can read them in the proper order. While reading reviews for the other books some asshat actually says which one of the major characters dies and how, the motherfucker. The good news is I've already finished the first book of 2010: The Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

As most of you know I post this every New Year's Eve at the stroke of midnight. This year, however, I'll be in Orlando. Woot!

I had a glycemic episode today, the first bad one in a long time. I've had a few small episodes, extreme fatigue and that sort of thing at the most inopportune moments, but this one left me shaking, nauseous, sleepy and my head swimming. I checked my sugar more than an hour after I'd last eaten something and it was 125, which means it was coming down from a higher number. In most people that wouldn't be cause for concern; for me, because of my normally low blood sugar, that's the equivalent of a 300, which is full-blown diabetes. Tomorrow I have to have a set of blood tests I've managed to avoid for a year and a half now. In fact, when I ran out of test strips for my at-home machine I never bothered to replace them, and that's back when I broke my wrist last year.

Ps: I don't even start school again until the end of May, but I already know the title of my dissertation -- Lycanthropy: How Fear of the Unknown Shaped Societal Laws and Structures of Human Civilizations or Where Have All the Werewolves Gone?

They come in a variety of forms. Someone in one of my communities posted a bunch of Sherlock Holmes icons and someone responded with an Irene Adler icon. Now I know the plot of the story and I haven't even seen it yet.

Rebel Jesus by Jackson Brown
Performed by The Chieftains

All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants' windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
While the sky darkens and freezes
Will be gathering around the hearths and tables
Giving thanks for God's graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus

Well they call him by 'the Prince of Peace'
And they call him by 'the Savior'
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavor
And they fill his churches with their pride and gold
As their faith in him increases
But they've turned the nature that I worship in
From a temple to a robber's den
In the words of the rebel Jesus

Well we guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

Now pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgement
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In a life of hardship and of earthly toil
There's a need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus

Last night I went to the memorial service of our office handyman’s mother. That’s a mouthful. I never met the woman, but F is an incredibly sweet guy who comes on a moment’s notice to help us with anything, and I can only imagine that’s the way she raised him. If that’s the case then she was one hell of a good woman, not to mention very beautiful in her glory days. Think of Elizabeth Taylor with a permanently mischievous twinkle. F was touched that the girls, Doc and I all worked a full day, then went home to change and drive out to the funeral home to spend the entire time there. The service was very small – maybe a little less than two dozen people – and quite simple: a slideshow of pictures, a speech from a Reverend* at her hospice and a candle lighting ceremony.

Be assured that my own memorial service will not be quite so mundane. I’ve had a will and funeral instructions written up since I was eighteen and I update it occasionally. I’m currently working on another update to change what my parents get in their will, for obvious reasons, and changing a few things around. I need to update my photo and my burial instructions; if they won’t allow me to be buried without embalming with a tree planted in lieu of a headstone then I’ll just be cremated and tossed into the wilderness. I also need to update my euology. I wrote it myself to make sure no one lies about me. And I’ve come up with an awesome game anyone in attendance will have to play to celebrate my life and the things I enjoyed.

I’m compiling a second list of songs from movie soundtracks (the first just being my favourite songs, rather than boring funeral appropriate music). Every person will have until the end of the song to shout out what movie the song came from. For example, Mr. Sandman would be from Halloween and Fire by Jimi Hendrix is from Reign of Fire. The first person to get it right gets a point. If you can’t guess the movie or get it wrong you have to shout “Sláinte!” and take a shot. Just for kicks I’ll throw in songs that aren’t from any movie and they’ll be followed by “Haha, gotcha! Sláinte!” and everyone will have to take a shot. At the end of the list the person with the most points will get a bottle of Southern Comfort to remember me by. Oh, and there’ll be real food, not polite finger food. An open bar will be accompanied by pizza, sushi, Chinese food and a list of other things.

Basically I want a movie nerd’s Irish wake.

Ps: Nerds and geeks will be rewarded with two points if they shout out Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan if they don't get sucked into the bagpipe playing Amazing Grace

My Jeep purchase was hampered a little by a front that brought flooding and tornadoes before it got cold. The Jeep Cherokee I’m getting was so thoroughly drenched it took us fifteen minutes to get the poor thing dried out enough to start up. I won't be able to pick it up until after work today because the guy wanted to flush the fuel line and put clean gas in, check the engine and transmission, and put in a new battery because the other one was acting hinky. It already has new tires and a new spare in the back. It’s fairly clean, although I’ll no doubt give it a good scrubbing because it’s not clean enough for me. I want to wash the windows and give them all a liberal coating of RainX and scrub the dashboard down, but the carpet and upholstery just need some Febreeze after sitting in the Florida heat. After that it’s good to go for window and bumper stickers, a Sunpass (electronic toll payment) and a bunch of other crap that normally accumulates in cars. I will name it Caradog, “dearly loved.” Pictures to follow eventually.

The office is flooded. Thankfully only in the patient areas and nowhere near our electronics, but still. But I'm going to buy my Jeep today, no matter what!