snoozan

I've been wanting to blog for awhile, but I prefer to do it at 3am while I'm laying in my bed surfing before I go to bed. However, the laptop has been out of commission and my attention has been torn in so many directions at once lately that I can barely string together a sentence.

My mom's been in the hospital or a nursing home now since mid-December, with a 2-day break for Christmas. She finally came out of the hospital and was put in a nursing home about a week and a half ago.

While in the hospital she became delusional and ended up having a severe breathing attack and ended up on 100% oxygen ventilation with a BiPAP machine. Those last few days in the hospital had me on edge and truly scared, more than I was when she was in the ICU. In the ICU she was sick but lucid, and I was handling that okay. I expected her to be that sick. I was prepared for it. Seeing her get worse, specifically, seeing the essence of "her" disappear into delirum over that last week in the hospital scared the shit out of me. I watched it build over a period of days until one day she was actively hallucinating, fixed pinpoint pupils, and only semi-lucid. It was scary because she was like my father when he was dying-- there but not all there. I didn't want to watch my mom slip away like that.

The nurses and doctors seemed relatively unconcerned, and I finally insisted that they call in a neurologist. The neurologist was a smarmy old prick of the worst kind, and he didn't seem all that concerned either, citing my mother's mental health history (which never involved hallucinating or delirium). He and one of the nurses were of the consensus that she needed to get up and walk more to get better, which made me furious since she was completely batshit crazy and her oxygen sats were dropping when she walked even though she was on a high amount of oxygen. I knew she was doing her best, and they wanted to blame her for being sick.

The day she had to be put on ventilation, apparently one of the orderlies turned off her oxyegn tank and forgot about it, so she wasn't getting oxygen until she had an attack. That was the day she was supposed to be released, and no one told me about the oxygen tank mishap until my mother did. Seeing her breathing get to a crisis like that for seemingly no reason shook me. Just the day before the delirium seemed to have been passing.

They moved her to a nursing home the next day once they got her off of the ventilator, which I thought was really premature. Once they moved her, we were no longer hampered by visiting hours and rules about kids. For two weeks we'd been rushing to the hospital the second my husband got home and we'd take shifts-- one with my mom, one in the lobby herding the kid while he got stared for being a toddler. Finally we could go in a bit later, not rush, and take the baby which was good for us and for my mom.

The change in her when she went from the hospital to the nursing home was shockingly sudden and unexpected. I imagine it was because her medication was changed once she was discharged from the hospital. The hallucinations stopped, she was lucid, and for the first time in a month she was my mom again, not a sick shell of herself. I met her physical therapist who commented to me that my mom was working hard instead of bitching that she wasn't doing enough. Hearing that really did my heart some good.

Along with all of this, we've had my mom's very elderly dogs who have managed to track in about 3 tons of dirt and eat through a six-panel door and doorframe. Our house is for sale (still), and as the economy tanks, things get more and more grim. I've had to refuse all showings because we're simply not here and the house is in a shambles. We reduced our price by $10K, but to be honest, I'm ready to reduce it as low as we can go to just get out. The cost of gas and the stress of everything isn't worth it to me. I just want out of this house-- I'm sick of scrounging to pay a mortgage that was somehow affordable for the last 5 years and now has us stretched to the limit. I don't know what happened, really, except that taxes, insurance, and energy went up all at the same time.

All of this has been crashing down on me today. Then I spoke to my mom and they are trying to send her home on Saturday. She's on 5 liters of oxygen still 24/7-- I have no idea how the insurance company thinks she's going to make that workable. She's have to change tanks every 1-2 hours, and those things are dangerous and heavy. Her therapist yesterday said she expects that my mom needs at least 4 more weeks of rehab in the nursing home. Now the insurance is pulling the plug on that, wanting to send her a visiting nurse instead. My mom isn't ready to go home and she's said so.

So to cap all this off, I had a stress meltdown and ate about 17 million calories because I'm also stressed out that I didn't make it to the gym today and the whole process of getting in shape has taken 15 months so far, and this home stretch is just awful.

So just, fuck fuck fuck.

Mr. Snoozan goes back to work in the morning after having off all of last week and the beginning of this one. The sad part is that we didn't really get to spend much family time because of my mom being in and out of the hospital, but I am glad he was here to help me out.

Tomorrow is going to be hard. Back to the routine of getting up alone at sunup, taking care of the baby and being alone with him until about 8pm. I am really going to miss being able to sleep in some mornings.

Christmas was good. We are knee deep in toys, and the best piece of furniture in the house is my son's new train table. That thing is a solid piece of furniture, and thank God because it looks like it's going to get a lot of use.

My mom goes back into the hospital for round 3 of her surgery on Thursday. This time my husband will be at work so it's going to be harder to manage logistics. This is the open heart surgery, and though it's less dangerous than the carotid was in terms of the surgery itself, it's going to mean she's in intensive care for awhile and recovery is going to be long and difficult. I'm not so much worried about how the surgery itself will go as I am about how hard recovery is going to be on us all, especially once she comes home. She's going to need a lot, I know that.

We officially went over to the darkside this year regarding Santa. I'm doing it all the way-- I'm perpetuating the myth of the guy in the red suit. The magic of it for kids started to dawn on me a few weeks ago as I watched my son get to know Santa when I was taking photos, but last night we watched the Polar Express together and I realized how magical that holidays are and can be especially for children.

I feel like we've missed out on a lot of that magic as a family this year, but then again we've made some of our own. I don't think I've spent this much time with my brother since we were kids as we have since my mom's been in the hospital. There was something special about all of us gathered around her in here hospital room talking and not watching the 7 inch TV that rarely happens.

I'm hoping that this next week I can find some time with friends that I've missed and wanted to see this holiday season. I have a long list of people and things I dropped over the last 10 days. It seems like it's been 10 years, not 10 days. Unfortunately, I do have to work-- and though the location is wonderful and I like doing winter weddings, sometimes I really get annoyed at how my work schedule can alienate me from most of humanity at times. I work when other people party. It can be a real bummer, especially since I don't get out much anyway.

I still have more shopping to do for some get-togethers later in the week, but for now it's still back to the old grind.

I thought now might be a good time to start a blog. I always have too much to say, but now I have a spt all my own where I can rant about whatever foolish notion enters my sleep-deprived, addled brain. So here I go...

I got new hair. I think I like it. I really need to have some decent photos taken of me in my holiday dress with my hair and makeup done, but since I'm the photographer it may prove difficult. I have so little time lately for anything.

I'm really sad that I'm not doing my Christmas/Holiday card this year. I've been leaning more towards doing winter-themed New Year's cards over Christmas cards the past two years. This year I wanted to make a huge papier mache snowman and a bare tree made out of wire and have my son in pajamas interacting with the tree and snowman. I would have shot it one a royal blue backdrop. Unfortunately, my MGM spectacular cards take a lot of time and a lot of money, two things I'm short on this year. I hope that I can do it at some point just to have in my portfolio. I have so many ideas and so little time.

My mom is home from the hospital until after Christmas, and I'm glad, but I'm also worried. She seems to be much happier to be in her house with her dogs. She was scared tonight to watch my son alone even though she really wanted to. We left him for about 2 hours and I know she was really happy to have done it. I think everyone in my family depends on my son to lighten the loads we carry. Last night as I went to bed I found myself saying out loud his words-- he's not saying things perfectly yet and it's so endearing. He says "lellow" for yellow, "dia-saw" for dinosaur, "telepint" for elephant, "giwaffe" for giraffe, etc. etc. It's still amazing to me how much simple things like the way he says words or how he uses a fork like a pro make me feel so good. I've never felt this way before, and when I step back from how grueling and stressful being a mom can be, it's truly a blessing. I never thought I'd want children.

I'm having trouble staying with my healthy eating and exercise, and it's frustration. I've been getting heatburn again and I hate how my legs aren't as muscled as they were when I was walking so much. I know I need to start doing some weights and some pilates, but I'm having trouble getting started. I really have to tone up to get the results I want on top of losing the last 20 pounds. When I fall off the wagon like this, getting back on is much more difficult than if I'd stayed on in the first place.

I'm making an effort to stop dressing like a mom. When I was younger I was always dressed up-- I didn't even own a pair of jeans. Now that I'm starting to feel good about myself again, I'm realizing I want to go back to wearing skirts, dresses and fun, interesting clothing. It makes me feel good to look on the outside how I feel on the inside-- creative, quirky, and in love with pretty, interesting things.

And that is the news from the head of the Snooz. I think it's time for bed.