This weekend I got my hands on my grandmother’s memoir manuscript. My mother has been keeping it unavailable for as long as I’ve known about it. That’s because it is my grandmother’s first-person account of her descent into what she straight-up calls insanity, and that is a particularly and understandably painful subject for my mom. Nana was bipolar (I) and schizophrenic, with a long stretch of alcoholism thrown in there. She spent some time in…
I woke up early Sunday and hit the road damn near at the time I was aiming for — a feat for me — so I could make it to the parents’ around noon, as my dad had to leave for work at 1:30. We wanted to squeeze in some Father’s Day time in that small window, and we eked it out with great aplomb, I have to say. There was crying. The good kind.…
Krissie’s prognosis is better. I visited yesterday and she had apparently just tried to get out of her room before the nurse corralled her. She’s ready to get out of that place. I would be too. She’s texting now, and checking Twitter to read back on all my updates (she was so out of it for most of that stuff that it’s probably a pretty bizarre timeline to read), and generally feeling more upbeat. Which…
Night one: After the hospital’s 10 p.m. lockdown Thursday, My brother and I took to the halls in search of distraction. I was mostly looking for a wifi signal. We discovered a cafeteria gearing up for its nightly output, and I fed myself forkfuls of chocolate chess pie and gulps of coffee as he watched crap TV in the dining room. We continued the sugar dump in the vending area, with him knocking…
Home for the night. Tired. I wouldn’t have left the hospital if I didn’t feel pretty good about Kris’ status, even though it’s still pretty shaky (still in ICU isolation, on liquid diet, immune system really weak) and any road to full recovery is going to be long. But I’m in check-phone-constantly mode. Naturally. And I’ll see her again soon.
I’m stealing a moment on the ICU computer to get an update into the ether. It’s warranted. It’s a good one. The doctors put off surgery overnight to just observe Krissie and see how she would do on her fluids and meds. She’s on a saline drip and some antibiotics — not freaking Cipro, which is what probably caused this awfulness — and she is slowly, so slowly improving every time we see her, which…
It’s 1 a.m. and I am on the public computer in the intensive care waiting room of Jackson Madison County General Hospital. My sister is one floor up in isolation, fighting for her life. That is a sentence I have never typed and never once imagined I’d have to. The doctors have been trying to piece together the puzzle for hours and hours now; I’ve been here since 2 p.m. and since then, no one…
Memorial Day weekend was also the weekend my grandmother turned 78 years old. She’s my only remaining grandparent and I am working on the technology to allow her to live forever.
My grandmother broke her shoulder during a fall a few weeks ago, and now she’s living in Decatur County with my aunt and uncle until she regains control of her arm and can once again perform all those awesome arm functions that differentiate human adults from human babies. Ass wiping, mostly. (Grandmaw, if you ever read this, I hope you will laugh at that joke and not be scandalized. I love you and the internet…
My mom brought me a pot of these little orange flowers and they spent their first week here all wilty, as though they were exasperated and on some sort of floral fainting couch, but now they have perked up and seem to be doing fine. Only problem is I’m not sure what they are. They have long stems. Lazygardenweb, any help? Bonus flowers this week! A lily from my mom’s garden and a daisy (or…
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