What. The. Fudgemonkeys....
Apr. 30th, 2011 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quidamlingOk, if I had posted this Thursday night, it would have been all 'woe is me' and self-flagellation of how awful I feel for making a mistake.
If I had posted this.... hmm... Friday around dinner time, this would have been "stupid stuff happens, and everything's pretty ok."
If I had posted this Friday night around 3 am, this would have been terribly annoyed and frustrated.
But I am posting this now. At some time after noon on Saturday, so I am really just a few cognitive markers above comatose. It's long, too long. I just had to recount and rant. It's better now.
Alright, so Thursday was woken up by a call for my sister. It's her doctor, saying that despite swearing up and down that the pain is all in her head, after finally looking closely at the x-rays with a bone specialist, lo and behold there is breakdown of the bones and cartilage in her wrist. And wait, that amount of damage at her age at the speed it happened is only (and I take the only with a grain of salt, the doc is "sure" that this is many things, but seems to have no evidence to back any of her determinations up) possible with an infection. So, a flesh eating... no no, bone eating bacteria. FAAAAAAAAAAAAN-TASTIC.
So they make an appointment for Friday to put sis on in-frickin-sane IV antibiotics. Ok, fine.
We decide to groom sister's little dog. Bath, goes fine. Trimming her with the buzzy clippers. Goes ok. But she is little. Way little. So big trimmers can't get close in her nooks and crannies. And I try to clip her long armpit with scissors, and she yelps. And she is bleeding. And holy shit, there is a hole in her skin.
And funny thing about dogs? They are, like, not attached to their skin. It's like they happen to be in a skin suit, but it's only barely attached to their body. It like, moves around, and I probably could have filled her with candy through this little hole and it scares the fuck out of me. So she definitely needs stitches.
Thankfully, it was Thursday, so the vet is open late. We go, I cry, sis tries to tell me doggie will live, I cry more, the vets say "yeah, cutting with scissors is bad..." I am beating the hell out of myself, doggie is put under, stitched up, put in a cone of shame, woken up and given back to us.
Three hundred dollars later...
She is an almost frighteningly floppy doggie. And once home, laying in a pathetic little flop on my lap, I realize bitty thing has no control over her bladder when stoned. When she is back with sis, I give her a towel for leaky dog. Sis gets up to get something from the kitchen, passing flop dog off to mom, saying off the cuff "She's really really warm."
Only when sis goes back to her seat does she realize "Oh, oh, she peed on me a lot."
I can stop beating myself up to laugh. And to do laundry.
And to bed for getting up ass crack of dawn early to go to sister's appointment.
Friday. Bitty doggy is way better, and she wakes me up by bounding around on the bed and we have to keep her from running too hard. This helps my emotional state immensely.
Off to the hospital. Sister gets a PICC line, (big, permanent IV so she can do her own injections at home) and her first dose of INSANE antibiotic. Thankfully, the infusion center, which is really for people getting scary antibiotics, very very sick people, or those unfortunate enough to be getting something like chemo, randomly puts her in a private room instead of one of the lazy boy chairs. Yes, we both nap.
More stress, lots of phone tag about the price. IV drugs are massively expensive. And health insurance with a five grand deductible sounds fine, but if you get zinged for large chunks of that five grand all within the same month? It is fairly stressful.
Oh, and the fire alarm in the hospital had been going off randomly throughout the entire... oh, 5 hour visit. So yeah, that was fun. Though when mom called to ask if we had called insurance and "what's going on, what's going on, what's going on... SPEAK UP, I can't understand you, why do you always mumble on the phone?" I was able to holler "THE FIRE ALARM IS GOING OFF" and hang up on her. Felt good, man.
Sister has a breakdown waiting for the valet people to get the car. I bought her a bagel and a frozen Mountain Dew (which they have at... at least THAT Dunkin Donuts, which I think we might need more of) because that is the scale of what I can afford at the moment.
We get home, lunch, more insurance phone tags, I valiantly take a nap so that the doggies will come nap with me and be out of the way when the visiting nurse comes to drop off more drugs and train dad how to administer them.
Then dinner... wow, what the hell did we do? I think I lost the evening. There was giving sis a round of her meds in there. Anyway.
Mom came home, she was determined to watch the royal wedding. I had zero interest and went to hide in the mancave. Parents went to bed, sis called me back upstairs. Yay. Day over. Should have been peachy. Sure.
No.
Time comes for putting sister to bed. Give her painkillers, deal with PICC line, deal with wrist, neck brace, she's a justifiable mess so every night I tuck her in, arrange the pillows, make sure the drugs and water are accessible, put the doggie on the bed since now she shouldn't be jumping... yeah. Fine.
We're like, halfway through this, and mom stumbles out of her bedroom groaning. Sis and I sort of side-eye. We KNOW mom has zero threshold for discomfort, and is an utter drama queen. Mother starts moaning that she is having a heart attack. Sis... being in the medical field in some fashion goes through the symptoms, and it doesn't have any of the earmarks, but... yeah. Mom moans and groans and whines and sits with her wrist on her forehead crying about the vapors.
As sis says, "When you have to knock on your parent's bedroom saying... 'Dad... Mom thinks she's having a heart attack...' in that same flat tone..." geez, imagine a bored teenager presenting their fail paper "The Gettysburg address is about an address in Gettysburg..."
It sounds awful! I know! But we knew nothing was wrong. We knew, because our mother is infinitely not smart when it comes to certain things. One, is pain.
She was complaining something hurt. It's always something. We tune it out. She has fibromyalgia, I have fibromyalgia. I know, I get it. Things hurt. You have to fucking get over it or you will never move or do anything. Oh wait, that's exactly what she does. Like, to the point where she will call me upstairs to get something for her inches beyond her fingertips. I, found out that I walked around for a week in Florida heat, and then ANOTHER week in Chicago stalking the TF set, with a kidney stone. There is a break in pain thresholds in my household, I know it.
So what was last night's grand and glorious idea? Stealing one of sister's morphine because something hurts.
Now, sister had a reaction to the morphine, she got all chest hurty, really icky, sucked it up, stopped taking it, moved on. I stole one - yes, do as I say, not as I do - because I have given up my bed-snobbery inducing bed to my sick sister and have been sleeping on an air mattress for... weeks and my back was messed up. I got loopy, slightly nauseous, but that's it and I sucked it up and moved on.
Mom. Had the same reaction one of her daughters did. Shocking, huh? Really seriously nauseous, and chest hurty, really icky. But mom doesn't suck it up. She makes us call 911.
Sis was on the phone, she admitted after, so that she could talk to someone coherent on the phone, instead of mom huffing "I'm not gonna make it!"
Ambulance comes, oh joy and glee, small town. We know all of the EMTs and the cop but one. Hi, guys! Yes. Mom in nightgown. Welcome to Casa de Fail.
And the EMT ASKS "Did you take anything?"
"A morphine."
"Has it been prescribed for you before?"
"mgggbbbrrr..."
"Was it prescribed for you?"
BINGO! EMT is sharp.
Sis and I are rolling our eyes out of our heads.
And there is a reason taking prescriptions and particularly painkillers not prescribed for you is frowned upon-cum-illegal. Meanwhile, sis is growling that being in the medical field, this could, well, negatively impact the fact that she holds a medical license. Geez. Thanks, mom.
They get her mom into a chair to cart her down the stairs, the gurney in the driveway, dad hops in the ambulance and off they go.
Transcript of annoyance in IM telling kitteh that mom just made our night infinitely more exciting.
kitteh: oh no
me:
she... something her hip was sore and she stole one of sister's morphine
that sis had a reaction to
and surprise, mom did, too
kitteh:
omg. that... yeah
>^< *huggles*
me:
but mom is a bad patient, and she made us just call 911
and she is off in ambulance. >.<
and EMTs were infinitely confused that person with arm cast and a picc line that answered the door was NOT the patient
Then, barely 2 hours later, dad calls. It was nothing. Surprise, surprise. And I can go pick them up.
Poor sis is feeling icky from her meds, and asks me to check if the CVS near the hospital is all-night on my way.
No, it's not. Though swinging into the parking lot of the darkened building at 2:30ish AM and then swinging back out makes the cop driving by stop, flick his lights and make you pull out in front of him so he can follow you to the hospital and make sure you are not a dumb teen up to late night shenanigans.
Sigh.
And I have to sit and wait on the parking lot for the rest of the discharge procedures.
Mom tries to be funny on the ride home. I don't remember what she tried to joke about. Something like "Oh, it was stomach spasms, hehehe, like that time in the car? Remember?"
I was biting my tongue too hard to answer. And no, I didn't remember. Mom pulls this kind of stuff all the time.
I drop them off at the house, then leave again to hit up the single, solitary 24 hour thing in town to get sister's request. And once again, a cop! Ha! The same cop that came with the ambulance to get my mom. When you are the overnight shift cop in a small town, there is nothing to do between calls BUT go to the single, solitary 24 hour place in town, apparently. He waved to me. Whether he actually recognized me in the car and it was a "Hi, you again," or simply a cop-ly "Carry on, Citizen," I don't know. It was 3 am by that point.
I go home, give sister the pills she wanted. Claim the white dog. Go to bed.
Holy, fuck.
If I had posted this.... hmm... Friday around dinner time, this would have been "stupid stuff happens, and everything's pretty ok."
If I had posted this Friday night around 3 am, this would have been terribly annoyed and frustrated.
But I am posting this now. At some time after noon on Saturday, so I am really just a few cognitive markers above comatose. It's long, too long. I just had to recount and rant. It's better now.
Alright, so Thursday was woken up by a call for my sister. It's her doctor, saying that despite swearing up and down that the pain is all in her head, after finally looking closely at the x-rays with a bone specialist, lo and behold there is breakdown of the bones and cartilage in her wrist. And wait, that amount of damage at her age at the speed it happened is only (and I take the only with a grain of salt, the doc is "sure" that this is many things, but seems to have no evidence to back any of her determinations up) possible with an infection. So, a flesh eating... no no, bone eating bacteria. FAAAAAAAAAAAAN-TASTIC.
So they make an appointment for Friday to put sis on in-frickin-sane IV antibiotics. Ok, fine.
We decide to groom sister's little dog. Bath, goes fine. Trimming her with the buzzy clippers. Goes ok. But she is little. Way little. So big trimmers can't get close in her nooks and crannies. And I try to clip her long armpit with scissors, and she yelps. And she is bleeding. And holy shit, there is a hole in her skin.
And funny thing about dogs? They are, like, not attached to their skin. It's like they happen to be in a skin suit, but it's only barely attached to their body. It like, moves around, and I probably could have filled her with candy through this little hole and it scares the fuck out of me. So she definitely needs stitches.
Thankfully, it was Thursday, so the vet is open late. We go, I cry, sis tries to tell me doggie will live, I cry more, the vets say "yeah, cutting with scissors is bad..." I am beating the hell out of myself, doggie is put under, stitched up, put in a cone of shame, woken up and given back to us.
Three hundred dollars later...
She is an almost frighteningly floppy doggie. And once home, laying in a pathetic little flop on my lap, I realize bitty thing has no control over her bladder when stoned. When she is back with sis, I give her a towel for leaky dog. Sis gets up to get something from the kitchen, passing flop dog off to mom, saying off the cuff "She's really really warm."
Only when sis goes back to her seat does she realize "Oh, oh, she peed on me a lot."
I can stop beating myself up to laugh. And to do laundry.
And to bed for getting up ass crack of dawn early to go to sister's appointment.
Friday. Bitty doggy is way better, and she wakes me up by bounding around on the bed and we have to keep her from running too hard. This helps my emotional state immensely.
Off to the hospital. Sister gets a PICC line, (big, permanent IV so she can do her own injections at home) and her first dose of INSANE antibiotic. Thankfully, the infusion center, which is really for people getting scary antibiotics, very very sick people, or those unfortunate enough to be getting something like chemo, randomly puts her in a private room instead of one of the lazy boy chairs. Yes, we both nap.
More stress, lots of phone tag about the price. IV drugs are massively expensive. And health insurance with a five grand deductible sounds fine, but if you get zinged for large chunks of that five grand all within the same month? It is fairly stressful.
Oh, and the fire alarm in the hospital had been going off randomly throughout the entire... oh, 5 hour visit. So yeah, that was fun. Though when mom called to ask if we had called insurance and "what's going on, what's going on, what's going on... SPEAK UP, I can't understand you, why do you always mumble on the phone?" I was able to holler "THE FIRE ALARM IS GOING OFF" and hang up on her. Felt good, man.
Sister has a breakdown waiting for the valet people to get the car. I bought her a bagel and a frozen Mountain Dew (which they have at... at least THAT Dunkin Donuts, which I think we might need more of) because that is the scale of what I can afford at the moment.
We get home, lunch, more insurance phone tags, I valiantly take a nap so that the doggies will come nap with me and be out of the way when the visiting nurse comes to drop off more drugs and train dad how to administer them.
Then dinner... wow, what the hell did we do? I think I lost the evening. There was giving sis a round of her meds in there. Anyway.
Mom came home, she was determined to watch the royal wedding. I had zero interest and went to hide in the mancave. Parents went to bed, sis called me back upstairs. Yay. Day over. Should have been peachy. Sure.
No.
Time comes for putting sister to bed. Give her painkillers, deal with PICC line, deal with wrist, neck brace, she's a justifiable mess so every night I tuck her in, arrange the pillows, make sure the drugs and water are accessible, put the doggie on the bed since now she shouldn't be jumping... yeah. Fine.
We're like, halfway through this, and mom stumbles out of her bedroom groaning. Sis and I sort of side-eye. We KNOW mom has zero threshold for discomfort, and is an utter drama queen. Mother starts moaning that she is having a heart attack. Sis... being in the medical field in some fashion goes through the symptoms, and it doesn't have any of the earmarks, but... yeah. Mom moans and groans and whines and sits with her wrist on her forehead crying about the vapors.
As sis says, "When you have to knock on your parent's bedroom saying... 'Dad... Mom thinks she's having a heart attack...' in that same flat tone..." geez, imagine a bored teenager presenting their fail paper "The Gettysburg address is about an address in Gettysburg..."
It sounds awful! I know! But we knew nothing was wrong. We knew, because our mother is infinitely not smart when it comes to certain things. One, is pain.
She was complaining something hurt. It's always something. We tune it out. She has fibromyalgia, I have fibromyalgia. I know, I get it. Things hurt. You have to fucking get over it or you will never move or do anything. Oh wait, that's exactly what she does. Like, to the point where she will call me upstairs to get something for her inches beyond her fingertips. I, found out that I walked around for a week in Florida heat, and then ANOTHER week in Chicago stalking the TF set, with a kidney stone. There is a break in pain thresholds in my household, I know it.
So what was last night's grand and glorious idea? Stealing one of sister's morphine because something hurts.
Now, sister had a reaction to the morphine, she got all chest hurty, really icky, sucked it up, stopped taking it, moved on. I stole one - yes, do as I say, not as I do - because I have given up my bed-snobbery inducing bed to my sick sister and have been sleeping on an air mattress for... weeks and my back was messed up. I got loopy, slightly nauseous, but that's it and I sucked it up and moved on.
Mom. Had the same reaction one of her daughters did. Shocking, huh? Really seriously nauseous, and chest hurty, really icky. But mom doesn't suck it up. She makes us call 911.
Sis was on the phone, she admitted after, so that she could talk to someone coherent on the phone, instead of mom huffing "I'm not gonna make it!"
Ambulance comes, oh joy and glee, small town. We know all of the EMTs and the cop but one. Hi, guys! Yes. Mom in nightgown. Welcome to Casa de Fail.
And the EMT ASKS "Did you take anything?"
"A morphine."
"Has it been prescribed for you before?"
"mgggbbbrrr..."
"Was it prescribed for you?"
BINGO! EMT is sharp.
Sis and I are rolling our eyes out of our heads.
And there is a reason taking prescriptions and particularly painkillers not prescribed for you is frowned upon-cum-illegal. Meanwhile, sis is growling that being in the medical field, this could, well, negatively impact the fact that she holds a medical license. Geez. Thanks, mom.
They get her mom into a chair to cart her down the stairs, the gurney in the driveway, dad hops in the ambulance and off they go.
Transcript of annoyance in IM telling kitteh that mom just made our night infinitely more exciting.
kitteh: oh no
me:
she... something her hip was sore and she stole one of sister's morphine
that sis had a reaction to
and surprise, mom did, too
kitteh:
omg. that... yeah
>^< *huggles*
me:
but mom is a bad patient, and she made us just call 911
and she is off in ambulance. >.<
and EMTs were infinitely confused that person with arm cast and a picc line that answered the door was NOT the patient
Then, barely 2 hours later, dad calls. It was nothing. Surprise, surprise. And I can go pick them up.
Poor sis is feeling icky from her meds, and asks me to check if the CVS near the hospital is all-night on my way.
No, it's not. Though swinging into the parking lot of the darkened building at 2:30ish AM and then swinging back out makes the cop driving by stop, flick his lights and make you pull out in front of him so he can follow you to the hospital and make sure you are not a dumb teen up to late night shenanigans.
Sigh.
And I have to sit and wait on the parking lot for the rest of the discharge procedures.
Mom tries to be funny on the ride home. I don't remember what she tried to joke about. Something like "Oh, it was stomach spasms, hehehe, like that time in the car? Remember?"
I was biting my tongue too hard to answer. And no, I didn't remember. Mom pulls this kind of stuff all the time.
I drop them off at the house, then leave again to hit up the single, solitary 24 hour thing in town to get sister's request. And once again, a cop! Ha! The same cop that came with the ambulance to get my mom. When you are the overnight shift cop in a small town, there is nothing to do between calls BUT go to the single, solitary 24 hour place in town, apparently. He waved to me. Whether he actually recognized me in the car and it was a "Hi, you again," or simply a cop-ly "Carry on, Citizen," I don't know. It was 3 am by that point.
I go home, give sister the pills she wanted. Claim the white dog. Go to bed.
Holy, fuck.
