I'm not really sure yet what I'm going to be doing here, initially I thought I'd setup someplace for me to vent, or "talk" when I don't have a real person to talk to, or do a bit of self-analysis, or all of the above. I guess I'm approaching this as an old-fashioned diary - except everyone has the key to it. Anyway, lets start......
Things are in the shitter right now. To put this into chronological order, here's what is been happening lately.
My mother-in-law has had a series of strokes over the past 5 - 6 years. At first they didn't know what was wrong, her doctors were thinking some unidentified brain disorder. You'd think that a stroke is pretty hard to miss..... Anyway, three weeks ago my father-in-law took her to the doctor because she had a sore on her foot that wasn't healing. (MIL is @79 and has diabetes among other things). Her doctor didn't like the look of it and admitted her to the hospital to treat the dry gangrene (read un-healed sore here). She's wheelchair bound (79, strokes, etc) and her hospital visit weakened her, so after a week she was to be moved to a rehab place. She was literally just inside the door when she had some kind of seizure. So she goes back to the hospital (via ER) and is diagnosed with having had a heart attack as a result of congestive heart failure and pneumonia. So. We pack our bags and head off to KC. (I am really trying to keep this the Reader's Digest condensed version). She stabilizes and after a week they talk the doctor into letting her go home (Friday).
Meanwhile (back at the ranch) I hear from my best friend that his mother is in the hospital, her congestive heart failure is acting up and has pneumonia too. (see a pattern here?)
Anyway, we head back home (16 hour trip over two days starting Saturday). We arrive home Sunday and get a call that MIL is back in the ER - this time for a heart attack AND a stroke. We head back to KC (15 hours in one day). She is much worse (duh), stable, but her prognosis is that she has a limited time left. She is lucid, but very weak. She cannot swallow anything without choking and/or aspirating so what nourishment she gets is intravenous. Liquids are building up around her heart and in her lungs. Not good. Meetings are held with family to discuss what to do. MIL has 5 (surviving) daughters and a son. These discussions were many and varied and, at times, heated. Should life sustaining measures be taken? Should she go into hospice care? etc, etc, etc. (gist: they are putting a feeding tube into her stomach, she'll move to a rehab place for skilled nursing for a week, then go home. To die.). So, I come home on Sunday (bills to pay) (14 hours, one day - I'm getting good at this), my wife having taken FMLA is staying with her mother.
I talked to my best friend on the way home on Sunday, his mom is not doing well, but she's had a good weekend. Monday I start back to work after being gone two weeks (jesus at the emails. maybe this place can't do without me. ha). Tuesday (yesterday) my friend calls, his mom just died.
My best friend and I met as roommates at college 26 years ago. He would invite me home over weekends where I met his mom and dad. She welcomed me into her home and made it mine. She treated me as family from the beginning and over the years told me several times that she thought of me as a son. That was actually the last thing she said to me when I saw her last. I'm having a hard time with this. (especially as her husband died last December. They were my family as much as my parents or my wife's.)
Anyway, I am to be a pallbearer. However, I took my only suit to KC on our second trip up (thinking I might be going to a funeral) and managed to leave it there. So, I had to buy a suit yesterday. The pants are being altered and through much persuasion will be ready this afternoon. I don't know if the funeral will be tomorrow (as I told the alterations staff when begging) or Friday.
What the hell am I going to do?
