update

Things are actually very good on the father front. He’s back at home, sprung from the VA by my brother yesterday. To everyone’s vast relief. The cancer hasn’t spread and is in a spot where they can, as we very much hoped, just snip out that bit of the colon and then stitch it back together – no bag required. He’s making an appointment with the surgeon Friday for the operation, so it will probably be a couple of weeks. And, oddly, he’s got to get a pacemaker. When he had his bypass operation three years ago they said first that he’d need a pacemaker, and then said he wouldn’t – now they have decided that may be what made him faint in the kitchen and why he’s felt so tired – his heart is not beating regularly. Not the anemia. Although he was very anemic as well, so who knows. That wacky VA!

So he gets a pacemaker Friday too. Apparently that’s a REAL simple process – it takes 15 minutes, and sounds like they just plug you up and you’re good to go.

I’m going down to Asheville tomorrow night as I originally had planned, and not coming back till Monday. My mom has a Memory Doctor appointment Monday so I’d already scheduled that off. And now I can take him down to the VA Friday for the pacemaker installation and to set the operation date. It should be a much easier trip because now he’s home I won’t have to spend every waking moment with my mother. Which, after three or four days, is a lot of waking moments. To be sitting around answering the same questions over and over and over. And not be able to concentrate enough on anything to read, or even watch TV because you’re being asked the same questions over and over and over. Poor thing. Her mother, my grandmother, was the exact same way, although they never diagnosed her with Alzheimers and she didn’t get this bad until she was in her late 80s. But I remember Mama sitting with her in the hospital overnight once, a few years before my grandmother died, and she said my grandmother spent the entire night asking her when she was going home and where she was and why was she there and when was she going home. All.Night.Long. And Mama said she seriously thought she’d lose her own mind. But I know that she answered every single question just as patiently the 10,000th time as she did the first time, so that’s what I think of when I am afraid I’ll lose MY mind. Mama went through this with her mother. And I better be nice because somebody’s probably going to end up with ME asking the same thing over and over and over and over. I’m sure I’m SO doomed. 

The good thing was that I got a whole lot of cleaning done. And when I talked to my SIL yesterday as she was on MamaWatch Duty, she said, "I’m cleaning!!" Cleaning was actually very enjoyable and therapeutic, compared with being bored out of my mind. And it’s something that really needed to be done.

Anyhow. I’ll be able to escape now and then. And with Daddy back, she won’t be nearly as bad, I’m sure. The break in routine and having him gone made her WAY worse. And Baker B will come down Friday night and Kim is off all weekend too so I’ll have some company.

It’s hard to get used to not calling the VA daily to see how he is. It’s funny, Daddy used to work at the VA – he retired from there when I was in college – and I still remember their phone number. But now it’s an automated answering voice that gives you options. The first thing the automated voice says, after "Thank you for calling the VA Hospital in Asheville", is "if you are having a mental health emergency…" and I’d think, "Why yes!! Yes, I AM having a mental health emergency!!! Thanks for asking!"

And now I really need to get back to work. I was in a workshop from 9-12 learning how to post job openings in the new computer system – something I don’t think I’ll be doing, but now that I supervise people I had to go. And it did touch on reviews and evaluations, which are all tied into the job descriptions which are a part of the posting process, so that is something that will probably be useful. But it was loooooong and booooooooooring and about 10 degrees in that room so I froze to death because I forgot to take a jacket even though I’ve been in that room many times before and it’s always about 10 degrees. And it’s JULY.

Thanks again for all the encouraging notes, and I will, one day, catch up reading!