At a party yesterday, I spoke with someone who's at the beginning end of a good bout of parental health care issues. This person's family health issue will involve open heart surgery. I've been there w/ a much younger (40-something) patient, so I can speak to some matters (6 weeks is a long time to be the one lifting anything over 5 pounds, and doing all the driving-- which is needful while a crack-the-sternum open heart surgery patient allows the broken bones to heal). Plus, of course, there are other family issues, too.
This person will need to vent and rant over the course of the parent's healing from surgery.
I got an idea: We need to have a support group (in the form of happy hour) for those of us who're dealing with this. Get together to rant. And do so in the style of peace pipe (or other item): Whoever holds the item has the floor for the duration of the rant... and then pass on the item to the next person.
As a reward for finishing my dissertation and passing the defense, I'm about to start reading Stephen King books. MacAllister is going to be my expert guide, what with writing an M.A. thesis on Pet Semetary and all. This will be both fun and interesting, since I'm not well versed in horror as a genre, and the only King novel I've ever read was Carrie way way back in high school, sitting in the back of "Music Listening" class.
Here's the reading list, in order:
The Dead Zone
Pet Semetary
The Shining
The Stand
Dolores Claiborne
Bag of Bones
I picked this up in January and it has become a favorite very quickly. It is simple recipes with great background for understanding the food.
It's a strange term, that. Congestive heart failure. There are all sorts of articles about it, but it comes down to this: The heart doesn't work as well as it used to. It doesn't have oomph, and leaky valves on bloodflow's heartbound leg and narrower valves on the outgoing leg mean that fluid accumulates in the legs and the lungs, and the body is starved of oxygen.
I'm one of several adult children. My brother, who's been the point person on Dad's medical situation, needs to go outta town for a couple of weeks, and so I'm now the point person. We had our transition handoff visit on Friday when Dad, Bro and I went to the cardiologist to get briefed on the results of Dad's echocardiogram. Three bad valves, swelling in legs, and fluid in the chest cavity, weak "pump" output... that's the state of my Dad's heart. When I wrote up the results in an email to my siblings, and reflected on it more, I was struck by the picture. Inbound from the rest of the body... leaky valve. That explains the accumulation of fluid in his legs. Inbound oxygenated blood from the lungs, there's a leaky mitral valve.. which explains the high blood pressure in the veins in the lungs. And (possibly) the liquid. And the valve on the outbound from the heart to the rest of the body is too narrow.... The doc said that Dad is not a good candidate for surgery. So he'll be treated by diuretics to keep the extra fluids down.
I don't know why the swollen legs -- on their own -- don't speak as eloquently to me as the swollen legs plus knowledge of the leaky valves, but it was this meditation on the systemic cause that tickled a kind of despair inside me. Because legs can be raised, but the valve will continue to leak and backwash. There's no real fix.
I see the writing on the wall. No one knows the day or the hour, but the trend is clear.
While doing some research this evening -- at Thanksgiving, Dad showed some signs of mental deterioration -- I looked up Alzheimer's and dementia. Then checked out related dementias, and found this little gem called Wernicke-Korsakoff (not a character from a Saturday morning cartoon). It's a dementia found in those who have a history of heavy alcohol use.
Caring for a family member who has WKS or alcohol-related dementia presents multiple challenges for family caregivers. Individuals with a history of alcohol abuse have often isolated themselves from their families and loved ones. Strained relationships are common in families of alcoholics. As a caregiver, you may feel resentful of caring for a parent or spouse with a life-long history of alcohol abuse.
I'm stuck in something extremely arcane. It's painful and arcane, and am taking hours to figure out what is the best way to fill out some form in the obscure backwaters of the United States Tax Code. The amount?
Five dollars.
I kid you not. Five freakin' dollars.
But it's been reported to the IRS, so I jolly well better jump through these hoops. Except that I try to do the reading comprehension test in TurboTax, and the software tells me I'm doing it wrong, and I need to fill out a separate workseet. Oh, and the forms given me and their options in TurboTax do not match, either.
All for sums that are so small as to not make a difference in my bottom line.
But it must be done, it must be done.
And while I work on this, I am not working for money. I am not contributing to the Gross National Product. See a problem here?
I am realizing I have been travelling a lot so far this year, as being home and in the office seems really strange.I really enjoy hanging out with the kid on a daily basis, but I am missing the conversation of hanging out with like minds. But I am also missing wonderful cities. I really miss Portland, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Vancouver, London, Oxford, and Brighton. I am also missing Sydney, Boston, New York, Innsbruck, Chapel Hill (Raleigh), Paris, Lyon, and Berlin.
I am off to Toronto this week for a real business trip, in Wednesday night and have all day meeting Thursday and out Thursday evening. I really would enjoy looking around Toronto and seeing the geek friends that live there (those I have met and those who have just been digital friends).
I really love cities and exploring them and hanging out with local friends. I am always seem to find the local flavor, which is increasingly hard these days. The changing of social rhythm is something I really enjoy.
This summer I will have lived in one rough location more than any other location in my life. The odd thing is I am not a huge fan of the Washington, DC area. It seems to be a really good place to raise a kid, but I am not so sure it is a good fit for me and I never really have been sure. I am not sure if it is a suburbia thing (there is a huge amount of suburbia in the DC area) or just an odd fit. Many of my friends I have in the DC area have moved away over the years.
At the moment I don't know that I have an image of stationary life that I can live with, which is a stretch as I could easily see myself back in the SF Bay Area (home) or the UK (a social home thanks nearly all of my day care solutions growing up run by British women and my last semester of undergrad was there as well).
I had cut my travel back to work on the book, but last week was a writing vacation (to some degree) to Hershey, Pennsylvania. This week Toronto for a really quick trip. I have a trip to Mexico City that may be in store in the near future as well as a trip to the shore (this depends on how the book is progressing).
Have you ever served on a jury? What was your experience?
Submitted by jacolily.
I have my first jury duty coming up in a week or two. Not sure how I have made it this far with out being requested to serve where it is valid that I serve (been requested a 2 times after I moved away).
The month-long December gig that fell through after a week and a half is back on again. I'm working at the office of a design studio in town; "The Client" is actually his client. I worked a few hours this afternoon; what changes has The Client made and what alterations do we need to do to the December files? I dug in and got to work. Toward the end of my time there, Design Studio Guy and I talk about the schedule. I can come in on Wedesday, Thursday afternoon. Friday, no (and it's not because it's Good Friday; it's because I'm presenting an event Saturday)
DSG: What about the weekend? Can you come in Saturday afternoon?
Pencil: No, I'll be doing that event all day, and I'll be toast afterwards.
DSG: --Any other time over the weekend?
Pencil: No, Sunday is Easter.
pause.
Oh (just remembering) and I have family in town this week! (er, that's visiting family w/in an hour's drive, not staying with me)
DSG: (thinks a moment). How about next week?
Pencil: Next week's much better. This week... well, I think passover starts tonight, at sunset. And Friday's Good Friday. This really is holy week.
pause.
You know, the Client's timing is uncanny. When they bailed on the job, it didn't ruin our Christmas this year, like it did the year before. It just figures that they'd pick up the ball again right in time for Easter.
I have not forgotten about Vox, it is just that I have been sharing the bits I would put here in my "friends only" Twitter. Vox homepage is in my start-up tabs for my Firefox browser, but after a quick scan that tab moves on to Flickr and stays there. The homepage in Vox is my biggest downfall, I want to see the "Question of the Day", but the other things important are thing you share and comments from you (yes you is being used in the plural and were I from Brooklyn like a former boss it would be a proper use of yous, or my occasionally adopted Southern Y'all).
I wish I could share my "friends" Twitter feed to my friends here on Vox (a wonderful solution for a real social network and not to difficult to do with OpenID actually, just surprised it has not been done).
I am off to SXSW tomorrow and hope to see many of you Vox friends there.
I will be back around these parts soon. Until then, drop a line, would ya'?
