a story, part four

part four really starts at day three of the journey.  monday, november 22nd is 'day three', for all intents and purposes.  late saturday mom went to the er, early sunday we got the first diagnosis of cancer, and monday morning had me waking up at revbobdad's after having slept in the same bed my mom was staying in.  i packed up some underwear and tee shirts for her (in case they let her put them on) and asked my dad to drop me off at the hospital on his way to work.  he obliged and i landed in icu with mom around 8:30am. 

of course, not normal visiting hours.  yours truly has devised ways of getting around those annoying visiting hours.  they involve 'but i'm visiting from florida', 'but i can't come later', 'but the nurse said i could', etc.  my technique with icu nurses is to be super cute and super nice and smiley and superhelpful.  mom needs a pee?  i'll grab the bedpan and ring when she's done.  more ice water?  i got it.  lights on or off?  done.  after the icu nurses have seen me assist with 'their' job a few times, i mention that i really would like to spend time with mom while she's here, and i have my (book, computer, ipod, whatever) to keep me busy while she's resting.  i usually do this while handing someone water or being otherwise helpful.  icu nurse usually tells me 'oh, sure - just tell them up front that nurse fillinmynamehere said you can come back'.  it's worked every time i have had a parent in the icu so far.

yes, it's happened more than once.  revbobdad had a few bouts with ketoacidosis that landed him in the hospital/icu a few times now.  yup.

anyway.  so i set up camp in mom's little icu cubby and tried to get her to eat.  she ate a little bit but was kind of weak.  which is understandable because she hadn''t actually eaten anything useful since saturday morning.  i got her some ginger ale and turned on the television.  and sat with her all day.  she was talkative and jokey some of the time, and resting the rest of the time.  i'm sure this is the day they did the biopsy and some other tests, but i can't be sure without looking at the HUGE PILE of medical forms and bills that i'm steadfastly ignoring.  my aunt came to visit that night and was like 'stay at our place, use our extra car' and i was all yes, please.  so i had a car for a few days while mom was in the hospital.

monday was the day, if i remember correctly, where we heard the other organs were involved.  originally we had lung and brain.  monday we added liver and spleen to the list.  no one was even mentioning chemotherapy, just radiation to keep the swelling in the brain down.

so, nothing for the lung mass?  the actual cancery bits?

nope.  and no one would give us a time frame.  this is when we (when i say we, i really mean mom, my brother, and i - awesome husband and revbob dad figure into a lot of this too, but so much of this was really me, mom, and my bro) realized that the family vacation might not be an option.  but we'd have the holidays - mom would stay in new york, awesome husband and i would dump the house and just settle the mortgage, and we could be together for the time we had left.  we were kind of guesstimating a couple of months, three or four maybe.

tuesday i set off a bit later, and it was more of the same.  except this day we had some visits from social workers.  one who helped mom and i set up her healthcare proxy (me).  one who started the paperwork for her medicaid application.  we had long conversations with the worker who helped us set up the proxy.  sharon.  she was very nice, very smart, and cursed in front of me.  i appreciate a professional who can say 'shit' in the right context and know it won't offend me.  it makes me feel like i can be more like myself.  my mom's best friend from childhood came by and made mom eat some cake.  which was nice.  mom was still not eating a lot, mostly sipping water and eating bits off the trays of food they brought in.  but she was still 'mom'.

we knew we didn't have long.  we were talking about being able to take her out for thanksgiving.  her friend was talking about taking mom to her house to care for her because she would need help - real help, not the kind of help i could give her.  mom's brother and sister offered rooms to sleep in, cars to drive mom to appointments, whatever we needed until we could all be together again.

my one aunt even offered to let our loud, shouty, obnoxious cat taylor come stay with her so mom could see him one last time.  i would have liked that.  i think taylor would have too.

we had that blow on monday, that the cancer had spread.  tuesday was the first time anyone offered a stage - stage IV.  lung cancer, stage IV, also attacking her brain, liver, and spleen.  and gods knew what else at that point.  we revamped our ideas - a few weeks, right?  it was almost thanksgiving, we'd have till the holidays.  the new year.  we'd spend it together in new york, as a family.

yeah, our lives change every day.  they change depending on choices we make, paths we take.  saturday we had a mom that was freaking out because she couldn't see right.  by tuesday night we had a mom in icu with stage IV lung cancer that had spread to multiple sites and was not treatable.

things were about to change again.

and on top of that, it's sunday.

i'm sorry i've been such a bad blog buddy.  really.  it's just some days, i don't know what to blog about.  some days, i think about blogging and then i chase a cat into mom's room and am overwhelmed with her smell.  then i forget what i was going to blog about.  i had SO MANY ideas on the cruise that i wanted to blog about.  stuff about nassau, royal caribbean, the lady that i decided i wanted to adopt as my new grandma, the multitude of scantily clad spring breakers (thank you, who ever invented the bikini).  all the rum i drank, dark rum mixed with ice and fruit juices and other rums with a bit more rum on top.  the amount of money i spent. ergh, no i don't really want to blog about that one lol.  we did spend more than i wanted to on an excursion, but it was really fun and we might do it our own way next time around.  because i really don't think there is much point to nassau.  it's like queens, but with more islanders and less greeks and jews.  and they're much more open about offering you pot or coke.

anyway.

i woke up early today thanks to the fucking cats.  they cannot stop fighting and/or waking me up for no apparent reason.  it's okay though, awesome husband and i had plans today.  of course, plans never go according to plan.  we were supposed to wake up, have breakfast, do some organizing/cleaning/packing, play some video games, have some dinner, and watch some movies. 

breakfast was had.  i made bacon (not nearly as good as my father's bacon).  well, i didn't MAKE it.  i cooked it.  it was okay.  and there were eggs to be had.  then awesome husband was on garage-cleaning duty and i was going to start packing up some of the tchotchkes we have around this house. 


*editor's note: blogger is trying to tell me that 'tchotchkes' is misspelled.  blogger is wrong.  

mom had lots of little, breakable things that i've been saving shoe boxes to pack in.  so i packed up some of her glass paperweights, her little breakable thingamajigs, and some of my belleek.

*editor's note AGAIN.  blogger says 'thingamajigs' is correctly spelled.  fucking blogger.

so i packed up all these teensy things in shoe boxes, then packed the shoe boxes in one bigger box.  and then i made awesome husband help go through some of the totes and boxes he found in the garage.  and then i wanted to go through some of mom's clothes - might as well get rid of what's left.  especially since i listed some of the cooler stuff on ebay TWO TIMES to donate 90% of the proceeds to the american cancer society and only three things sold.  out of like 18.  damn it.  so the rest goes to charity.  and now i'm not sure i should bother listing any of her shoes.  so i'm keeping two pairs that are meaningful until i get to new york so my brother and i can decide what to do with them.

anyway.

and there was a mets game on.  that i was watching while we were packing shit up.  and awesome husband gets all 'i guess i won't be able to play video games' and i got all pissy like WHAT THE FUCK I'M WATCHING A METS GAME NOW IT WILL NOT BE ON ALL FUCKING DAY.  i didn't say that.  i just thought it.  but really, it was like 2pm and we were still pack-clean-organizing and no WAY i'm doing that shit while he plays fucking red dead redemption.  i don't care how excited he is about it.

so finally we're done and we jump in the shower, and the mets game is almost over.  we watch the mets kick the marlin's collective fishy asses and then awesome husband boots up the xbox in the middle of a conversation.

most women in a long-term relationship probably all made the same noise just now.  it's remarkably like an 'nuh UH'.  or 'no way'.  or 'whatthefuckiswrongwithhim'.

we were having a discussion about when he wants to put his notice in at work.  we've settled on june 1st as our goal date to be in new york.  i've gotten some reports from realtors on what the house is worth, we've discussed getting a small storage unit to keep the boxes in, we've discussed what's going and what's not, and we paid some guy named manuel to rip a bush out of the ground on the side of the house.  we're hoping to have a realtor in by friday to get the house listed.  so we're in the middle of 'when can i put my two weeks notice in?' and 'but then we lose medical and i need my pristiq-tarzipan cocktail' and 'are we even going to bother going to new york for easter?' and nothing has been settled.

nothing.

and he turns on the fucking xbox.  so i kind of lost it.

well, i got mopey and all 'whatever, play your game' and awesome husband is like 'you can play yours too' (i got the sims medieval and while i'm excited about it, i still haven't even loaded it on my mac).  and i was all WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A CONVERSATION and he just didn't fucking get it and i got tired, like really tired to my bones.  so i went to lie down for a nap, figuring he'd play his stupid fucking game.

and of course, THAT'S when he decides that the game can wait, after i've already EXHAUSTED myself emotionally by packing up mom's shit and trying to decide my life and arguing with him.  he comes in all apologetic and adorable and carrying the macbook pro like 'let's see if mom's name was removed from the mortgage, at least' because we can't really do ANYTHING until that happens (which it has).  and then he starts making sense and talking like a grown up and instead of being happy that it's getting settled and we're talking about it, i get ANGRIER because why the fuck are you doing this NOW?  what about an hour ago when i was OBVIOUSLY pissed about you playing your game?  instead of wasting that hour of me whining and bitching and trying not to cry and getting headachy while you stare blankly at me, silently enough that i'm not sure you're even fucking listening to me, WHY didn't we have this convo an hour ago?  because now it's even later, and we've still not solved anything, and you're still not playing your stupidfuckinggame.


so then he started playing his game.  and i started this blog post.  and he was like 'why don't i set a time on how long i can play, so i don't play too long and we can watch a movie together' and i'm thinking, 'gosh, that's thoughtful, he's not so bad after all' and he says, yeah, i'll only play for AN HOUR AND A HALF. 

yeah, that's not too long at all.

then awesome husband got all squirrely like 'why don't you load the sims on your mac and play?' because he just can't understand how i'm not like ZOMGIHAVEANEWGAMEIHAVETOPLAYITRIGHTAWAYFORHOURSONEND. like he is.

anyway.  so i spent the day smelling my dead mom while going through her shit and being pissed at awesome husband.  and all i have to show for it is three boxes, a raging headache, and this blog post.

sorry for being a downer, guys.  hey, at least you have house selling blogs to look forward to!  hopefully i end up with lots of interesting people looking at the house that i can make fun of with you.