My mother was having a pretty rough night. Not the worst I’ve seen, but really not good. I had to give her the extra pain med, only two hours after she had the main pill. She stopped pacing around 10:30 and she was able to lie down. There hasn’t been any noise from her room since around 11:00 (half an hour ago) when I heard some snoring. That’s good news.
The Bruins won.
The Red Sox won.
Mom was asleep by 11:00.
These are a few of my favorite things.
G’night everyone!
I just heard that my father’s physical therapy for the last two days involved climbing stairs. He was able to manage one step yesterday, and today he managed two.
I know that doesn’t sound like much, but given the state of things over the last five months, that’s about as huge as huge can get.
Good work, Dad!
It’s five minutes passed 4:00 which means I have less than an hour and a half to go for today’s work day. 85 minutes to quittin’ time.
I took Tuesday off for the drive to Vermont, and I took an hour yesterday morning for the hospital conference call. These two events have had the unintended side effect of turning my internal calendar inside out and upside down. I have no idea what day it is. At varying times during the day yesterday I was convinced that it was Monday. Other times I was equally convinced that it was Friday. It was Wednesday. What chance does that give me?
I have had my Google Calendar open all day today and it clearly shows that today is Thursday, yet I have been positive that it’s Friday. I had to mess with the Nana Sitting schedule for the weekend too, and that’s going to mess me up even more. Instead of leaving after work on Thursday and coming back after dinner on Saturday, I am going to leave on Thursday and come back after work on Friday. The reason behind it is excellent (happy birthday to Bellana) but it’s messing with my head.
It’s been a wacky week, I tells ya. I’m hoping I have the energy to play some guitar tonight. If I put the leads on one of the May songs tonight I can mix it while I Nana Sit tomorrow.
Back to work. 75 minutes to go. I just got asked to evaluate a custom code project for one of our customers and it’s something I’ve already written. Kick ass, dude. I love it when that happens. Reusing code is totally where it’s at.
Talk to you later. Probably after I get home. Probably with a picture of the cat. Rock on, ladies and germs.
Two hours ago I ate a granola bar. It feels like the teeny, tiniest little spec of granola, barely a molecule or two, has some how gotten stuck near the back of my throat. I’ve been coughing ever since. I brought a water bottle full of our delicious Poland Spring water, flavored with some delicious grape flavoring. I drank the whole thing while trying to dislodge the speck of granola. I failed. There’s no delicious spring water here at my parents house. I filled up the water bottle with tap water. Then I remembered I was supposed to bring a grape flavoring bottle with me tonight. I had some here, but not enough to adequately grape-ify my water bottle. Shit, cough cough. Shit.
The Bruins and Capitals are playing game three of their first round series. Similar to games one and two, game three has gone to overtime. The Bruins have been rolling in the overtime period with nothing to show for it. I could really go for a Bruins game winning goal right now. Two minute left in the overtime period. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this one. Shit, cough cough. Shit.
For the second consecutive Nana-Sitting night I am having all kinds of bad allergies. Sniffles, runny nose, the works. All of that on top of my stupid granola bar cough. Shit, cough cough. Shit.
I have a pimple on my left ear lobe. It hurts like furious, bloody murder. Shit, cough cough. Shit.
I wanna go home.
We just had a call with the rehab hospital staff who have been taking care of my father over the last few weeks. All of the news is positive. He’s not ready to come home yet, but he’s improving in every area they are focusing on. I should be happy right now, and for the most part I am, but there is just this little thing nagging me and I am pretty sure I know what it is.
We talked a bit about his insurance company. I was on the phone getting annoyed at my home owners insurance company this morning. I think insurance companies in general are just pissing me off in general today.
Good news on the dad front. Let’s focus on that.
I did a lot of work around the house today. I haven’t had a day like this in a while and it hurt. My back hurt and my legs hurt and my arms hurt and my me hurt. My general outlook on life hurt too and I was grumpy and snarky and pissy and not very fun to be around. Jen was the only person I saw all day long so I apologize to her for being an ass. Sorry, sweetie. I wasn’t being a schmuck on purpose, but I was definitely being a schmuck and I’m sorry.
Karma kinda kicked me in the dick in response. It’s Nana Sitting night tonight and I got stuck behind a train in Tewksbury. At first I was on East Street and it was a massive freight train crossing the street at the Demoulas warehouse. Shit. Those trains can stop traffic forever. I was pretty sure the same train track crossed Shawsheen Street but I figured I’d double back and check for sure. Yup, I got stopped by the same train on a different road.
I thought about getting back on route 93 and heading South one exit, but that would potentially hit the same train on Salem Road (probably not, but I didn’t want to get stuck that far away from my mother’s house). I thought about going North one exit and getting off at route 133 in Andover. Yeah, that’s the way to go. But then I thought, why not jump onto Frontage road and go around that way? Frontage to Osgood to Blanchard to Pinnacle and… I hit the train again. DAMN IT.
Third time was the charm. I sat there and waited it out. Friggin’ train.
My mother was asleep when I got here, around 6:30. I had to wake her up for her 8:00 pills. Here’s hoping she has a better night than the last time I was here.
I’m watching game one of the Tampa Bay vs Florida playoff series. Pretty good game so far, about one period in. I think at 9:00 I will switch over to the train wreck that is Fear the Walking Dead. I wonder how they’ll try to top the still born baby shit from last week.
I’ve been playing loose with the intermittent fasting rules. Starting late and ending early. This week is going to be a shit show of crazy busy insanity. I’m considering the possibility of blowing off the whole process for a few days. There are some early morning things in the works this week that are going to benefit from a great big breakfast, not to mention buckets of morning caffeine. I’ll share the details when they happen.
Most of you won’t get this. However, if you have an Apple Watch and you use the Activity app then this will be a little behind the scenes peek into the kind of day I had yesterday…..
Sure this is a smidge too “inside baseball” for the average web surfer, but I thought it was interesting. Whatevs, right?
I got to my mother’s house around 6:30pm yesterday. My sister filled me in on how she’d been during the day and she was fine. No supplemental (physician approved) pain meds, no physical complaints beyond the norm. One little memory lapse, but that’s normal.
Shortly after my sister left to go home, my mother started complaining about pain. She got her regular pain meds at 8:00pm and I thought it would be okay from there. It takes a while to kick in, but once it does she’s usually all right for the night. Usually.
By 9:30 she’d had the physician approved supplemental pain med and it wasn’t helping. Her doctor told her that if the pain ever gets too much to sit in a hot shower and just let the water run over it. She did that last night and it did not help. There are two other physician approved, prescribed supplemental meds that she holds in reserve for bad nights. I thought I could tell which one she needed just by the way she was moving around, but she didn’t want it. She wanted my dad. I texted him around 10:00pm to see if he was still awake and he called almost immediately. They talked for a few minutes, which she said helped her even if it doesn’t help the pain (aww), and we decided to go with the other reserved, prescribed, physician approved med. Dad asked me to call back in 30 minutes to give an update.
For 29 minutes nothing changed. She was pacing around the house because sometimes the pain won’t let her sit still. Just as I was reaching for the phone though she went into her room, turned off the TV, closed the door, and got into bed. Hmmm… Dad called a minute later. She was still awake, but she was calm and seemed to be relaxed. A few minutes later I could hear her snoring a little. I told dad to go to sleep. I hope he did.
I, however, was freaked. Back when I was nana sitting on Friday nights, there were times when she was bad like this, but on those nights dad always came home. I had the experienced safety net. I didn’t have that last night. I sat in the living room in the chair closest to her bedroom door with at least one ear firmly focused on her.
She had conked out around 10:30. I didn’t lay down until about 12:30. I slept for an hour, woke up to go to the bathroom (because I’m old now and that’s what old people do). An hour later I woke up again. This time I saw that her bedroom door was open. She was asleep in bed, but I had clearly missed her getting up at some point. An hour later I woke up again. This time it was 3:30am. She was in the kitchen making breakfast. I got up and asked her if she knew what time it was. She did. She said that she had been asleep since 8:00 so getting up a bit before 4:00 was normal. I told her she didn’t go to sleep at 8:00, she went to sleep at 10:30 and was having a really bad night. She said that didn’t happen.
She sat at the dining room table to eat her breakfast and I sat in the living room listening. After half an hour or so she was sound asleep at the table. I didn’t wake her up. I can’t imagine it was comfortable, but she clearly needed to sleep and I wasn’t going to interrupt. It was after 4:00am by then. My alarm was set for 6:00. I goosed it up to 6:45 and went to sleep. I woke up around 5:30 for a minute or two, long enough to see that Mom was back in bed sound asleep, then woke up again around 6:15 and I’ve been up ever since.
She gets her next round of pills at 8:00am. 15 minutes from now. I really don’t want to wake her up, but there’s pain meds in the morning batch and I don’t want her to miss them.
Happy Friday morning, everyone!
Note: If you didn’t figure it out by the post above, all of the medications she takes are prescribed, and all of the medication delivery plans we follow came from the doctors who prescribed said medications. We aren’t making this shit up on our own.
I brought the CPAP machine with me. It’s in its case…
I think I’m afraid to use it though. My mother has been having a really bad night. She finally fell asleep a little while ago, but I’m afraid if I use the machine, the background noise it makes plus the deeper sleep it brings I won’t hear her if she wakes up.
Catch 22, yeah?
I’m at my mother’s house, nana sitting for the night. As soon as I pulled up to the house I realized I forgot my Air Pods Pro at home. Damn it. I’ve sort of been relying on the transparency setting to let me listen to music or podcasts while I work while still being able to hear what my mother is up to.
Duh. You dope.
Inside the Red Head's Head 