Sunday

I am actually at home all weekend, and working on some new work; while fielding calls from Mom and Dad asking medicine questions.

This is good, because not only are things getting a little better there, I also got pancakes yesterday!

Hubby makes a mean pancake and I am only to happy to be part of the taste testing as he explores new recipes. He loves my belly...so I am happy to fill it with pancakes!

Sunday for some reason is one of most favorite days...I don't really know why, as the looming following day of work is one that makes the day seem shorter...as its casualness is often interrupted with chores and crap like that....but I really love the sleepiness of Sunday.

One of my many favorite things to do is make tents for the cats.
Yes, I am that woman

Mental health time

So my mind is pretty cooked, I am sure that comes as no surprise to most of you.

(the fact that I can say that is still amazing to me,

I have people that actually read this blog

and write lovely little notes to me )

Anyhoo, it might be another week before I can really put words together in a way that makes sense*.

I am currently re-charging my laughter cells, and heart with a book a dear wonderful friend sent me:

book info

I literally can only read for moments before I am laughing so hard tears are rolling down my cheeks

I am so thankful for that

This weekend, I spent my first two days away from mom

(well, except for calling at medicine taking times to make sure dad was on top of things)

I read, napped

and hung out with hubby.

I totally had nothing in me when Sunday came around....I came to peace with this

as I was soaking in the tub Saturday night.

I looked up at hubby; who was keeping me company

 so I don't fall asleep and drown

and I said

" I don't think I have anything left to give to mom right now...I gonna have to call her instead"

He said: "well you did just mostly kind of spend the last month keeping her alive, I think she'll understand"

She seemed to; she called me last night to tell me that she went to the Farmers Market and met with some friends and then came home and fell asleep for four hours.

Today she meets with the doctor who last did his exam on her while she was out cold...she snored thru the whole exam. I think he'll be happy with her progress.

A toast to antibiotics!

*see I am a little loopy still, I'll me more normalish soon

***p.s. I just got a call from my mother, telling me she has decided to stop taking some of her medications.

She is fine.

It might be a little longer then a week....

So many days have past....

blood transfusion

I am sad to report that I have been spending this last month in the hospital.

I am not the patient but instead my mother still is.

The infection spread to her knee, or started there, or her mouth post dental work or in her bladder or in her kidney or....the theories are stacked but none hold a clear answer.

Not all of us are cut out to be caregivers, it requires a kind of patience that after serval days wears thin...and then thinner and thinner and thinner. My parents dealt with it over and over again, with grandparents living with us because no one else stepped up.

I was the person who stepped up first and stayed the latest.
I am not tooting my horn, in fact I have a really hard time accepting compliments or accolades for anything I do. Which makes acknowledgements of what I have done this past month make me want to run for the hills.

pages of observation

So, I have essentially been living by my mothers side this last month; so my father could get some sleep and do some work that was piling up and visit his clients.
I worked when I could at my other job, for an hour here and there; waking at 4:30am to call the nurses station and then send 10 people text message early am updates, then get myself dressed and drive the 45minutes into town to sit at the hospital all day.

Write down every pill she took, every temperture recorded, every minute of how long she slept and what she was hallucinating about. Ask the correct questions of doctors and chase down nurses or get cups of ice. Send my father home to make sure he ate and took his evening pills and got some time with his eyes closed. Send text messages all day long to additional people as they requested new information and came up with questions of their own. Then around 7pm, put myself into a car, drive the 45minutes home, arrive home and remember that I had not eaten all day, find something in the fridge or on the counter to push into my mouth before taking a shower, kissing my already sleeping hubby and crying myself to sleep to start it all again.

I haven't seen hubby but for the evenings, as I crawl into bed. I haven't had any studio time in the last month. I have missed submission deadlines, avoided answering emails, gave up my garden plot, and put everything else on the back burner.

Although I speak to my brother throughout the day, my brother took the time to send me a text thanking my for everything I have done, as he is not able to be as patient as is needed or as compassionate as the situation requires. It made me cry.

My hubby told me on the phone that a co-worker asked how he was, he said:

" my wife leaves really early in the morning, and I don't see her all day.

Then she comes home really late at night,;she sits for half an hour and cries and then

falls asleep. Night after night"

I got a call from my father last night while driving home telling me that my mother chose me to be her physical therapst for her home care. I started to cry, weep...I am spent.

After a sleepless night, I found the inner advocate this morning and told my father during our early am call that I can not be everything, mother needs an outside PT person. I can help do the homework but someone else needs to be added to the mix.

It was amazing to hear those words come from my mouth, I felt horrible telling my father that I couldn't do something for my mother or him. I struggle with that but know that I need some mental health time too.

As I was sitting next to my narcotic doozing mother today, wondering if I would ever see the fighter that she once was again, she sat strait up and said " I want to walk outside"

We got up and out the door....it was her longest walk in the last month.

She went out the door, to the neighbors, turned and up a walking path...and back inside.

It was like winning the lottery, like maybe it will be ok afterall.

Maybe I will get my life back again and have breakfast with my hubby again soon.

Breaking out of her box

Once a year

Once a year I reveal who I am...the rest of the time I am simply The Barreness

In honor of National Infertility Awareness Week:
I revealed myself...and now I am in the shadows for another year.

xoxxo

Open Love Letter from The Barren

image by Lewis W Hine

As a total surprise to me, hubby wrote an open love letter to me for my birthday.

It was so unexpected, so deeply moving and honest that it took me to my knees.

I will share it here with you:

" I hope it's not too boastful to say I'm the luckiest man on this wall. Other walls have lucky men and women, i'm quite sure, but if you've landed here to celebrate The Barreness's 42nd orbit around the sun, I'm here to say I win. The amazing thing about The Barreness is that she's got enough awesome to make sure all of us win too! (just not quite as much as me)

She is gentle and kind-hearted with everyone (...except drivers on cell phones, these she curses and gestures at wildly...it is kind of scary); she is generous and giving with a casualness that belies the focused consideration she has for those around her; she has an infectious smile that she hides too often; she is honest, and wears her heart on her sleeve even when she knows it might get hurt; and she has a wellspring of creative talent that constantly surprises.

There are more personal aspects of her awesomeness, of course. She's beautiful, and she's got mad sexiness (rawr!). She can calm the crazy in my head with a simple hug. She's the perfect source of stinging criticisms that I know are true (I can't seem to listen to myself for some reason). Her eyes give credence to the saying that they are the windows to the soul.

I feel so lucky to have known her these last 20 years, to have grown up with her, to have tackled the many difficulties in life together that would have been so much harder to face without her. For these reasons, I feel like I've won...I feel like all of us have won (just not as much as me).

Happy Birthday, my love! "

Clearly I have won the jackpot,

found the pot of gold,

went over the rainbow

and eaten the last piece of the award winning pie

My birthday wish is that each of you find this kind of love in life:

in a person,

in a passion,

in a hope.

It is my birthday

image from Vintage Rose Girl

It is my birthday, smack dab in the middle of NIAW...

I use to feel miffed that it fell on "secretary's day" but

I think being reminded of being infertile all week might trump it.

Anyways, there has been enough thick emotional sludge to drag myself through in these last two weeks that I decided that yesterday was the perfect day to start the party.

I sat and had a pity party yesterday afternoon...and then by the early evening I had blown off

enough sorrow to re-focus on some art and my submission to "the way I see it" exhibit over at

The Ladies In Waiting Bookclub site.

I arrived at work this morning, convinced it would be just another day, and my little brother surprised

me and had gotten up early and made me cookies.

They were even warm when he haded them to me.

I am feeling very loved

May this be the start of a wonderful birthday week!

(after the age of 30 you get to celebrate your birthday for a longer time each year,

 didn't you know that? )

Happy Birthday to me

Fragile

I was rushing off to the ER again yesterday to meet my parents. My mother was in pain once again and her bladder was not letting her sleep; making her go to the bathroom every 15minutes.

As I was racing into town, I sent a text message to a friend
 " mom back in ER, I am off to meet her there"

Within a moment, I got a response
" do you need help"

this caused me to cry....not only was the response immediate, but it was an offer from the heart.

I responded
 " I might need an ear to listen later"

immediately followed with a
 " I am here for you"

I felt comforted...and not alone in my journey back into the dark of emotion.

Last week when my mother was in a sleep deprivation state of delusion (she hadn't slept in 4 days and was given an anti anxiety drug to help her sleep; but all it did was agitate her further) she started directing her anger at me.
My father was not allowed in the room (she didn't want to see him) and so heartbroken,
he sat all day in the waiting area.

My mother was convinced that we had put her away. 

I had disappointed her terribly and that "you don't know what it means to give motherly love"

(that was the mildest of her thinking about me) 

after being berated for over two hours I finally called in my brother.

text read:

" I need your help, mom is convinced we have put her away"

My brother arrived and repeated the words I had been saying to her for hours:

No you can not go home yet, you are not healthy enough to go home

Don't pull on your catheter

Your oxygen needs to be in your nose

You can not stand up, your legs are weak from being in bed for four days

She heard him, and aside from removing the batteries from her heart monitor
she behaved herself for him and her nurses.

She refused to make eye contact with me,
 and when she finally fell asleep at 5pm on the 4th day, she slept for 8.5 hours.

I spent the night in the hospital (dad was not allowed in the room still and my brother needed to get back to work), so they wouldn't restain her;
 I feared when she came to from her sleep she would feak out she was restained
 and I got her cathater removed so she " had no strings"

I stayed awake all night.
Watching her and making sure she was safe

When sleeping beauty awoke from her first slumber, she was confused but remembered that she had said some really mean things to me, and started to cry.

I held it together, just barely...

She thought she was in a mental health ward, I told her she was in the hospital

She had a lot of gray areas, and I was happy to answer any questions she had.

I stayed until my father arrived and they were kissing and my dad was proposing to her again.

Then I drove home and took a nap.

I was shaking for most of that day.

Yesterday when the ER call came, I went into "figure it all out" mode again.

I left the house this time and set up a catch-net for myself.

I cried on the way there, and by the time I arrived I was together and able to listen to what doctors said, what my mother wanted and what my father needed.

Consoling my father and advising my mother

When I arrived home at the end of the day Hubby made me a HUGE bowl of Mac and Cheese
 and I sat in my PJ's staring at the wall for a while.

When I finally said something I said: "we are all so fragile"