Vacation Plans

I need a little help here. Next month Donny and I are supposed to drive up to Lake Tahoe, spend the night, and then go on to Carson City. We're currently debating what route to take. We're looking at 80, 50, or 88. We're more interested in scenery and stuff to do on the way than we are in making good time. If anybody out there knows any of these routes I'd appreciate a little inside info.

This is not necessarily a trip that I'm looking forward to, but Donny has been begging to go for a long time. And his best friend, whom we're going to visit with, has offered to pay for our trip. He's even giving us a night in Tahoe to ourselves as an anniversary present. I had to agree to the trip sometime.

I'm still alive

I just realized how long it's been since I posted. There were computer problems, which got followed up by husband problems. I've also been working hard at not whining about life so much. Everyone has problems and I need to learn to deal with mine.

I wish that I could write that Donny's doing well, but this is the one place where I try to force myself to be honest. This last week has been really hard. As his mind goes he becomes more and more hostile. He yells at me a lot and spends a lot of time telling me how bad of a job I do with taking care of him. I know in my head that it's the disease talking, but my heart still takes it hard.

It's worse because angry at him for being an ass, and then I feel guilty for getting angry at him. And there's always that part of me that says to just shut up and take it because he's sick and doesn't have a lot of time left. Talk about conflicting emotions.

The part of me that I try to deny exists wants to know just how much longer this is going to take. When things are really bad and he's yelling at me I find myself wishing for a guide that tells me how long this will last. Is this just a phase and things will improve again? From what I've read I think that it's just going to get worse. And how much worse will it get? Will he become physically abusive? And if a disease causes your husband to be abusive how much should you put up with? I normally have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to abuse, but what about when it's caused by a disease?

As I was writing this just now Donny woke up and came to get me. He's recently developed a problem with wetting the bed and I needed to change the bed again. Fortunately I have a lot of sheets and blankets. This time my sheets didn't even have a chance to get dirty from being slept on. I guess this means that I need to go get a plastic cover for the bed this week.

These are some of the issues that I'm wrestling with right now. My head is not a fun place to be. On top of everything that's going on with Donny there are always family problems as well. My mom's going through a tough time right now. I suspect that a new memory is about to surface and she could really benefit from some loving support from her daughter.

My sister, who lives in Arkansas, is getting a divorce. There's a part of me that wants to say it's about time, but she doesn't need to hear it. We've all seen this coming for a while now, but they did last longer than we thought they would. Her and her husband have been separated for a little while now, which is why I wasn't surprised to hear that she's already got the next husband picked out. My mom said that from what my sister says he sounds like a really nice guy, but I haven't talked to her about any of this yet. I know she could use a call from her sister, but I just don't have it in m e right now.

Right now my heart is breaking for my niece. She's really going through a tough time, and there's nothing that I can do to fix it. She's 18 and getting ready to graduate high school. We also recently found out that when she was 14 she was raped. Her attacker told her that if she told anyone he would kill her and her family, so she kept it a secret. She was only a 14 year old kid, but she had the presence of mind to take the city bus to a clinic and get a pregnancy test and tested for STDs. She even had follow up testing done. All of this only came out because her mom found out that she was behaving a little too wildly. My sister-in-law wrote my niece this long letter about how disappointed she was and how if her dad was still alive he'd be really disappointed too. (He died of cancer about a year and a half ago, when my niece was 16.) My niece wrote back to her mom and let her know what was going on. Because this niece is from Donny's side of the family I haven't known her long, which makes it hard for me to know how to help her. I really love her and I'm very worried about her. I just don't know what to do to help her. Please pray for her, it's all I know to do.

Okay, I think that just about covers all the garbage running through my mind right now. It's amazing how helpful it is to just write it all down.

Remembering

I was just listening to George Jones sing "50,000 Names Carved in the Wall" and it started me thinking. I currently have at least 3 cousins overseas and another one getting ready to go back. I say at least because I have cousins in the military that I don't do a good job of keeping track of them. But the ones that I do keep track of, I worry about them.

These boys, no, men now, are the ones that I used to babysit. They're the ones who were like really annoying little brothers at one time. They're two sets of brothers, and I have a lot of great memories with them. Even if we haven't done a good job keeping in touch, I love them.

The one set of brothers were like little brothers when I was younger. They stayed with an aunt of ours for a while and when they lived with her family my family was there a lot too. I can remember being so annoyed at the little nerds who just wanted to be considered cool by the only other boy in the group. (Of course that meant declaring war on the girls.) We used to joke about if you set them loose on a town they would have it leveled in a few days. Now one of them is training to be a demolitions expert. I tease him mercilessly about how fitting the job is.

The other set of brothers are the ones that I remember babysitting when I was a teenager. They tried to convince me that a good game to play would be to tie me up and put me in the closet and then time how long it would take me to get out. (I never fell for that.) The youngest also tried to tell me that his mom fed him 5 pounds of sugar every night before putting him to bed. I can remember them deciding that it would be fun to start calling me mom when we were out in public. Even when we went to get icecream at the diner that my latest crush worked at. They loved to embarrass me. The youngest ended up guarding President Reagan's remains during the viewing at the rotunda. He's now somewhere in Africa. The oldest took a post closer to the front lines because he was put in charge of that camp (or whatever it's called).

I don't talk about them much, but I worry about them. It just doesn't seem possible that the little terrors are old enough to fight and die for our country. Please pray for our military members, they need it.

It Never Stops

I really do need to remember to update my blog more often. I took Donny for the endoscopy and we should get the results either the 5th or the 13th. I expect that all will be fine, but it's nice to have a doctor confirm it.

On Tuesday afternoon, as I was getting ready for Donny's appointment, my mom called me into the other room to talk to me. I go in and she tells me that she's having chest pains that radiate to her left. She wasn't sure if she needed to see a doctor. As I was working on convincing her to go to ER the nurse from her doctor's office called. After they talked to her doctor it was decided that she needed to go to ER. My uncle was getting ready to take my grandma to see her sister who's in the hospital, so I asked him to take my mom to the ER that she likes on his way out of town. I called my dad and arranged for him to meet her there since I couldn't go.

A few hours later I was waiting for Donny to finish his time in recovery so we could go home when my dad called to let me know what was going on. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong with my mom so they wanted to keep her overnight for observation. She would need her CPAP machine and was not wanting my dad to drive all the way home, pick it up, and drive all the way back again. I agreed to take it to her once I got Donny home since I wanted to go by and check on her anyway.

I got there and my mom was still in ER waiting for a room. My father and I both decided to sit with her for awhile. For some reason the ER had not yet put an IV in her, so when it was time to get her ready for a transfer they had to do that. My dad and I are both squeamish around needles, but for my dad it's almost a phobia, so you can imagine what that was like for us. It sounded like the nurse was finishing so my dad looked over, just in time to see the nurse pull the needle out. From where he was standing it looked like she broke the needle in my mom's hand, and you could see the blood drain from my dad's face. He sat down and recovered some of his color and then he left to go home.

When it was time to take my mom upstairs she decided to go in her wheelchair, so the transport was a lot less dramatic than you usually see. We got to her room and the ER guy helped her into bed and then he left. We sat there and visited for about a half hour before a nurse came in and acknowledged that there was now a patient in the room. I know nurses are busy people, but it seems to me that somebody could have poked their head in the door and said hello before then. Even if all they said was that her nurse would be with her shortly, at least we would have known that somebody on the floor was aware of our presence.

The nurse came in to do her part of the admit and she seemed like a really nice person. She asked all the questions that we expected and seemed to really know what she was doing. She changed my mom's wristband from the one that ER had given her to one that looked like it was designed to last a little longer. That's when she noticed that my mom hadn't been given an allergy bracelet. Since my mom has several drug allergies that cause her throat to close this is an important item. She said that she'd bring it in later. When I left around 11:00 it still hadn't happened.

The next day I went back to the hospital to pick my mom up and was still rather unimpressed with the nursing staff. My mom was told by the doctor around 9:30 that he would be discharging her. Somewhere around 10:00 the nurse stopped in for a moment and said that she'd be back shortly to start the discharge. I got there around 11:30 and the nurse hadn't been back yet. We waited patiently and about 15 minutes later the nurse came in to check on my mom. When my mom asked about the discharge you would have thought the nurse had never heard about it from her reaction. She checked the paperwork and said that the order was in there, then she left.

Somewhere around 12:30 the nurse popped in for a minute and my mom asked about getting her IV and heart monitor removed so that she could take a shower. The nurse talked to her for a minute and they decided that after lunch she would be discharged. Then the nurse said that she needed to go get gauze so she could remove my mom's IV. We didn't see her again until after lunch.

When the nurse finally came in and removed the IV my mom repeated that she needed to shower and the nurse seemed a little put out at the 5 minute delay, but went and got her some towels. After my mom showered we finished packing her up and the nurse came back to finish discharging her. It wasn't until the nurse said something that I realized that my mom's allergy bracelet was still in her chart, rather than on her arm. I was glad that we were leaving, since I started getting really angry at this point. It seems to me that there's a reason that allergy bracelets are used, and it was rather risky not putting one on somebody who has a lot of severe allergies. All in all, I was really disappointed with the hospital on this visit.

Now that mom's home things are settling down again. Which is nice since I seem to be fighting off a flu bug. I'm really hoping for a few more days of calm.

Just a note

It's 1:30 in the morning and I'm barely starting to unwind. I spent my day yesterday closing out my office. My manager, the most senior preparer and I met at 9:00 for breakfast and then we attacked the office. I didn't get done until a little after 7:00, and we didn't take any breaks. It was a long day.

I found out yesterday that I'm not getting hired to work off season. They had a lot of really experienced preparers apply, and seniority always counts. Today Donny and I looked at our finances and realized that we can actually afford for me to take the time off, so I'm not worried. I thought that I'd have to get a job at Burger King to make ends meet, but all is well. I'm really looking forward to the break.

Of course I'm not real good at relaxing, so it won't be long until my schedule is full again. Tomorrow (I guess it's actually today) I'm taking Donny to get the final fitting on his teeth. Last time we tried this he puked on the dentist, so I'm hoping for better results this time. Next Tuesday Donny's scheduled for an endoscopy. He's complained of black tarry stools off and on just enough for me to be worried, but not enough for me to be convinced that I'm right to worry. Which is why I'm thrilled that the liver doctor considers this a routine test for anyone with cirrhosis. The test was ordered and I don't have to look like an overreacting idiot for worrying about nothing.

I know that I thought of something earlier today that I wanted to blog about, but now I'm too damn tired to remember what it was. That must mean it's bedtime.

April 13th

I've been looking at the dates on my posts and realized that I've had nothing to say for a while. My job must be boring, since I don't even have any good work stories. That could explain the lack of tax blogs available. There really isn't anything exciting about taxes.

Although, the other day I was excited about a test I passed. We're required to do continuing education hours to get rehired next year and several of us started working on our hours already. There are a lot of courses available to us online and we'd do those when things were slow. By taking the same classes we've been able to help each other pass.

There's a preparer in my office who this was her ninth season and she'd been helping all of us. She decided that one of the courses that she wanted to take was unitary theory. This is something that you see mostly with big corporations and is considered a rather advanced class. Half of the text for the class is just citing which court cases had decided the issues. It was not easy to read. This experienced preparer had taken the test a couple of times and couldn't pass it, so she decided to challenge me to see if I could do it. I passed it on the first try. I printed out my results and left them on her desk for her, I was so proud. (I still don't understand any of it, but I passed the test!)

Tax season is almost over and it's a little sad for me. I've become friends with my coworkers and now I won't be seeing them on a regular basis. If the statistics aren't lying then one or two of us won't be back next year. It'll be different and I don't want different. I don't like change, the unknown is my biggest fear. This is strange for me.

One last bit of advice, if you haven't done your taxes yet, HURRY UP!!! There are only two days left if you want to get the rebate that everybody is talking about. Quit dragging your feet and get it done. If you need help, just ask. I love answering questions because it shows me how much I've learned, and how much I have yet to learn.

Improvements

This was supposed to post last night, but due to technical problems that didn't happen.

Things started looking up today. I went to the doctor with my grandma and there's no blood clot in her leg. Apparently the swelling is just the normal post-op fluid build up. So she has to wear support hose and keep elevating her legs. The good news was that her kidney function is up to 80%. This is higher than we thought we'd get it, so it's really wonderful news.

The doctor has released grandma to return to physical therapy. The guy who was doing her therapy at home signed her out of his care when she had to stop because of her leg swelling. So instead of getting her back on with that guy she's being sent to a place here in town. The nice thing is that it's the same physical therapist that my mom's doctor is sending her to, so they can get appointments at the same time and save trips.

My mom's liver test came back and they're saying that the whole problem is the weight. As it comes off her liver should improve. Her kidney test is back and they told my mom to drink lots of water and she'll be fine. Again, true improvement won't happen until the weight comes off, but the water will keep her okay in the mean time. This pancreas test came back fine, so they're running another one. If the tests continue to be all over the place then more in depth testing will be done. All in all, I'm not so freaked out about her health now, it's all fixable.

Donny has agreed to continue seeing his regular doctor. I don't know if he came to his senses, or if he's just tired of fighting with me, but I won this round. I called them today for an appointment and when I mentioned that he's having black tarry stools there was suddenly an opening tomorrow morning. I finally feel like we might be able to get him back on track.

This latest ordeal with Donny got me thinking. He absolutely refuses to see the truth about himself in some areas. He has this ideal person set in his mind as to who he wants to be and there's no convincing him that he's different. Realizing that I started wondering if I truly see who I am. I try to be honest with myself, but am I successful? Do I see the truth about myself? And if I don't, would I like the things that I don't see? Are they good or bad? It's something to ponder.