Sweet!

A guy from my hometown just scored a brillint goal for the Red Wings! And hell, the Wings are ahead and dad's trying to talk - it's a good night!

Now What?

According to Dr Cancer Doctor, if (IF, keep this in mind) Dad's kidneys continue deteriorating, he has two or three weeks. Except she hasn't done a creatinin (sp?) test in a week, since she took him the Metformin. So how the hell do we know his kidneys are actually shutting down? We don't. We won't until we get the results back from the blood draw Dr Cancer Doctor authorized. So. He's either dying sooner or later. It's the 'ifs' that are driving me mad.

I give up

Hauled my ass out of bed at waaaay to fucking early o'clock this morning to see the doc. She confirmed my suspicions: Not only are my sinuses infected, my back is torn to shit, too. Stress turns me into SUCH a fucking klutz! So, I have painkillers and antibiotics and muscle relaxants, along with strict orders to stay the fuck in bed for a couple of days. Luckily, SisterB is home for a few days, and she can stay with mom and dad. Fun times!

Mom is putting off the Hospice discussion - she's trying to work up the nerve to broach the subject with dad. Who, btw, is looking 100% better today than yesterday. He was actually trimming junipers when I got home! he also ate a whole cup of yogurt - might not seem like a lot, but it's more than he's eaten in a good long while.

Well, SHIT

Dad's not doing very well. His kidneys are failing - we thought it might be a reaction to his diabetes meds, but his creatine levels are sky-high after a weekend off the metformin, so... My brother gave me the best advice I've ever gotten last week: Treat every day we have with Dad as a bonus and a blessing, because we don't know how much longer we have. And that's so very, very true. Obsessing over every symptom or change isn't going to do anything but make me sick - it probably already has, I'm pretty sure the headache I've had for a few days is a sinus infection...

On the bright side, BrotherB helped me rewire the power supply on my beloved Monster laptop, and it's working again!

OMG!

I've been a fan of Israeli singer Noa for... Lord and Lady, fifteen years now (I still have the ticket stub from the concert I went to in 1994. I feel old now). She's a dedicated peace activist who performed just before Rabin was assassinated. She and Palestinian artist Mira Awad are Israel's entry into the 2009 Eurovision song contest. I don't pretend to understand the contest - it's not really European Idol, and it's been around forever (ABBA won...). Their song is called 'There Must be Another Way," and Mira was interviewed on... oh, hells, some NPR show, I can't remember. The interviewer said that one of the criticisms of their duet was that it's too optimistic, and she said (paraphrasing somewhat), "I reserve my right to be optimistic!" Anyway, here's the youtube, the song is great:

Death and Taxes

I'm putting this up for any Shakers who live in the Midrealm and might want to meet up at D&T. Maybe I'll get more than three people reading my blog!

A really true story

To break up the doom and gloom, i thought I'd share what happened somewhere around our first anniversary. HubbyB and i got to talking about what we were going to do to celebrate, and I mentioned that it coincided with Cinco de Mayo - a big deal in Denver. He insisted (insisted) that it was on the fourth. We had a good natured disagreement over this until I called my Mom. turns out it was the sixth. We were both wrong.

So, HubbyB and I will have eight years tomorrow. Love ya!

The gods have no fucking sense of proportion

Dad didn't get out of his (outpatient) blood transfusion until midnight. We got him up the stairs, got our books together, and headed to Meijer to grab some food on the Bridge card. Get checked out, and the self scanner machine spits out a receipt for a bout double what our actual order was. The math worked, the time stamp was plausible... Long story short, I got a leeetle bit bitchy at the clerk. When I apologized after checking the balance on our card, she just told me, "Girl, I didn't pay you no mind." We're late night regulars at that particular store, to the point where this clerk comments if she sees us during the day. So very, very glad she wasn't offended.

We get home, hauling our crap up the stairs, and find that grandma's front door is wide open. Had to wake her up to make sure everything was okay. It was. Yay.

So now, it's ass early and we have to go get dad down the steps again because heaven forefend they scedule a decent amount of time between transfusions... The only silver lining in thie particular cloud is that my parents have a memory foam mattress topper. I might actually get some sleep.

You know you're having a bad week when...

You start bawling in front of the UPS guy when he asks how your dad is doing. The UPS guy who works my parents route is great. He's one of the coolest guys I know. And while I wouldn't call him a family friend, exactly, he's cool. And he asked how Dad is, and I started crying. I fucking hate cancer. HATE it.

ETA: Dad's in the hospital AGAIN - outpatient for more blood and platelets. They're not going to look at the bladder infection until after he's through the course of levaquin. So, fun!

LET ME MAKE THIS CLEAR

If you don't like gay marriage, don't marry someone of the same sex.

If you don't like abortion, don't have an abortion.

Gay marriage is not a threat to my marriage. Gay marriage is not a threat to your marriage. Gay marriage is not a threat to anyone except yourself and your own prejudices.

Abortion is not a threat to you. Abortion is not a threat to me, unless I have to have an unsafe one (go ahead and google the number of deaths from unsafe abortions pre Roe V Wade. I'll wait.) Plan B does not threaten you.

In short, stop being asshats and remember what Jefferson said; "I care not if my neighbor has one god or twenty, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

This is why I love the internet

I just had a brain flash - what if Dad's reaction last night was a rejection of the blood transfusion he got for low white cell count? I did teh googles, and no, it wasn't. Yay!

If only I'd done teh googles when Hubby couldn't string two words together (migraine aura), it would have saved us a trip to the ER!

It's a minefield out there

After Dad finished dry heaving, and after the 'if it gets worse, I don't care what you want, I'm dragging your ass to the ER' conversation (Dad and I are a lot alike - we both sometimes need a kick in the arse to do what needs done), Mom and I played a very relaxing game of Scrabble - relaxing because I won by something like 100 points). I could feel a tension headache lurking in my neck on the drive over, but figured helping the trees grow and getting my arse kicked at Scrabble would help relax me. HA! HA, I say!

So I was a pretty unhappy camper when Mom asked me to go shopping for her and gave me enough money for my xanax and firornal. Target andMeijer were both filled with screeching kids, team member radios squawking, the whole nine yards. To add insult to injury, my blood sugar crashed BIG TIME in the checkout line. Happy fun times! I got some McD's, went home, tried to play some more Scrabble (had to concede when I got something like my fifth round of NO FUCKING VOWELS!). The 'migraine' was so bad that trying to watch numb3rs literally amde me sick. The flickering... Have been alternating fiornal and vikes for a few hours, that's taken the edge off.

I think I'm going to throw up

Literally. Dad's not taking the levaquin so well. Or the levaquin's not taking well to some of the other crap in his system - whichever, he slept until almost five, and has been dry heaving since then, with a hellish nosebleed. We're thinking about bundling him up and dragging him to the ER.