Well, Hell...
Mar. 15th, 2020 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teddy_radiator...as my protagonist Sydney is fond of saying.
I'm hanging on by a thread, folks. Every anxiety trigger I have has been pulled so many times this week I'm on permanent open fire. I am normally frightened and anxious about life in general, but when stuff comes around like this, I'm nearly catatonic.
Mom has been extremely ill, as in, I'm really afraid for her. She has RA and Lupus, which have both been in remission since about this time last year, right after she broke her wrist. About three weeks ago, both came out of remission with a vengeance. Added to that was appalling edema, which my mom has never had. Her joints seized up, making even standing up an ordeal. Her doctor, who is only at Mom's office two days per week, wasn't there, and another doctor prescribed diurectics, which did nothing except kill her apetite.
Her doctor wanted her to have bloodwork, but she was too weak to go. For days I went over every morning and afternoon before and after work (all day on days off work) to pester her into eating and to try and get a grip on her housekeeping. Mom is the Queen of Procrastination, so she waited until everything had gone to shit to admit she really needed help with laundry, shopping, bill paying, etc.
One of the problems is that her back porch is horrible, and she actually found herself unable to navigate them (she told me all about this later - too proud to call at the time). She ended up CRAWLING up the stairs and into the house. I bought her a really stable cane, which I thought she would ignore out of pride, but things were so bad she has become quite reliant on it. Bills weren't getting paid because my dad, for some fucking infathomable reason, placed the mailbox at roughly 6'4" up the front wall, and she couldn't reach it anymore.
Mailbox is now at chest height. Friday, our dear friend and resident Angel Fred came over and he and TheHubs™ fashioned a beautiful set of steps to code (the old ones were 12" apart, code is 7") complete with hand rails, and she sailed up them like the QE2. I have done 10 loads of laundry, and there are still 2 more to go. By the time we finally got her to the doc's she had lost over 10 pounds in a couple of weeks. Blood work finally got done, revealing a pretty huge white blood cell count (pathologist said nothing looked cancer-serious, though), and a stiff shot of prednesone has at least got her moving and eating again. I haven't had to make her breakfast for several days, and I actually took a couple of days off.
They're still not really sure what's going on, except that it's Lupus related. I don't know enough about it to know what to think. She goes back to her Rheumatologist Wednesday.
And one of my relatives passed away on Friday morning.
I have been steadily falling apart about this fucking coronavirus. TheHubs™ is convinced that diligence and lots of sanitising will save us, because we still have to work. We haven't really gotten caught up from the long dry spell at Christmas, and now this. I'm not nearly as concerned with catching the virus (still taking every possible precaution, though) as I am not getting enough work to keep the bills paid and the wolf from the door. We have a LOT of pharmacies to go to in the next two weeks. I'm kind of hoping people will just stay home, but knowing the dumbasses around this neck of the woods, they won't. They're like me, they have to work.
We do have a game plan - wearing gloves, not retreiving any paperwork the managers are required to sign, only taking a photo of it, keeping Lysol wipes in the car, coming home and immediately jumping into the shower, clothes in the washer. Beyond that, it's in the lap of the gods. Mom is staying relatively isolated, being extremely vulnerable, since her immune system is fucked, but I'm the one who will bring her all her necessaries. I think we'll need to stock up on extra gloves and wipes, if we can find them. I have 70% alcohol and hopefully some witch hazel coming, which I'm told is better than nothing, but things are getting so scarce. We're also doing the Walmart grocery pickup tomorrow, so we don't have to actually go in, but what does it matter? We have 4 CVSs we have to work tomorrow and a Walgreens. We're in the belly of the beast.
I'm not a praying person, but I would ask for some really positive anti-viral vibes right now.
While I have been at home (and believe me, if I could, we would be staying at home until this shit blows over, but alas, we'd be in the dark eating our shoes), I did manage to do something semi-creative. I tried my hand at book binding, which went okay. I attached it to the cover of a book I found in a charity shop ages ago, and filled it with pages from various old coloring books. It's part coloring book, part journal, part scrapbook, part what-ever-I'm-in-the-mood-for-it-to-be book. Binding the pages, or signatures, was easy; attaching them to the book cover was not. It's alright, as long as you don't look too closely.
The last pic is one of the pages. I spent most of yesterday doing this (thank you,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mywitch, for the incredible Prismacolor pencils) while listening/watching The Repair Shop. It's the lovelist show. Right now, I'm very much trying to adhere to the Hygge concept of simplicity, creativity, calmness, cozy and centered. I'm not succeeding very well, and it's getting on TheHubs™' nerves. I react to things that frighten me by panicking; he reacts with impatience and anger. It's not a good combination. I told him today that I truly needed him to show some patience and a little kindness when I freak out.
I'm hanging on by a thread, folks. Every anxiety trigger I have has been pulled so many times this week I'm on permanent open fire. I am normally frightened and anxious about life in general, but when stuff comes around like this, I'm nearly catatonic.
Mom has been extremely ill, as in, I'm really afraid for her. She has RA and Lupus, which have both been in remission since about this time last year, right after she broke her wrist. About three weeks ago, both came out of remission with a vengeance. Added to that was appalling edema, which my mom has never had. Her joints seized up, making even standing up an ordeal. Her doctor, who is only at Mom's office two days per week, wasn't there, and another doctor prescribed diurectics, which did nothing except kill her apetite.
Her doctor wanted her to have bloodwork, but she was too weak to go. For days I went over every morning and afternoon before and after work (all day on days off work) to pester her into eating and to try and get a grip on her housekeeping. Mom is the Queen of Procrastination, so she waited until everything had gone to shit to admit she really needed help with laundry, shopping, bill paying, etc.
One of the problems is that her back porch is horrible, and she actually found herself unable to navigate them (she told me all about this later - too proud to call at the time). She ended up CRAWLING up the stairs and into the house. I bought her a really stable cane, which I thought she would ignore out of pride, but things were so bad she has become quite reliant on it. Bills weren't getting paid because my dad, for some fucking infathomable reason, placed the mailbox at roughly 6'4" up the front wall, and she couldn't reach it anymore.
Mailbox is now at chest height. Friday, our dear friend and resident Angel Fred came over and he and TheHubs™ fashioned a beautiful set of steps to code (the old ones were 12" apart, code is 7") complete with hand rails, and she sailed up them like the QE2. I have done 10 loads of laundry, and there are still 2 more to go. By the time we finally got her to the doc's she had lost over 10 pounds in a couple of weeks. Blood work finally got done, revealing a pretty huge white blood cell count (pathologist said nothing looked cancer-serious, though), and a stiff shot of prednesone has at least got her moving and eating again. I haven't had to make her breakfast for several days, and I actually took a couple of days off.
They're still not really sure what's going on, except that it's Lupus related. I don't know enough about it to know what to think. She goes back to her Rheumatologist Wednesday.
And one of my relatives passed away on Friday morning.
I have been steadily falling apart about this fucking coronavirus. TheHubs™ is convinced that diligence and lots of sanitising will save us, because we still have to work. We haven't really gotten caught up from the long dry spell at Christmas, and now this. I'm not nearly as concerned with catching the virus (still taking every possible precaution, though) as I am not getting enough work to keep the bills paid and the wolf from the door. We have a LOT of pharmacies to go to in the next two weeks. I'm kind of hoping people will just stay home, but knowing the dumbasses around this neck of the woods, they won't. They're like me, they have to work.
We do have a game plan - wearing gloves, not retreiving any paperwork the managers are required to sign, only taking a photo of it, keeping Lysol wipes in the car, coming home and immediately jumping into the shower, clothes in the washer. Beyond that, it's in the lap of the gods. Mom is staying relatively isolated, being extremely vulnerable, since her immune system is fucked, but I'm the one who will bring her all her necessaries. I think we'll need to stock up on extra gloves and wipes, if we can find them. I have 70% alcohol and hopefully some witch hazel coming, which I'm told is better than nothing, but things are getting so scarce. We're also doing the Walmart grocery pickup tomorrow, so we don't have to actually go in, but what does it matter? We have 4 CVSs we have to work tomorrow and a Walgreens. We're in the belly of the beast.
I'm not a praying person, but I would ask for some really positive anti-viral vibes right now.
While I have been at home (and believe me, if I could, we would be staying at home until this shit blows over, but alas, we'd be in the dark eating our shoes), I did manage to do something semi-creative. I tried my hand at book binding, which went okay. I attached it to the cover of a book I found in a charity shop ages ago, and filled it with pages from various old coloring books. It's part coloring book, part journal, part scrapbook, part what-ever-I'm-in-the-mood-for-it-to-be book. Binding the pages, or signatures, was easy; attaching them to the book cover was not. It's alright, as long as you don't look too closely.
The last pic is one of the pages. I spent most of yesterday doing this (thank you,
mywitch, for the incredible Prismacolor pencils) while listening/watching The Repair Shop. It's the lovelist show. Right now, I'm very much trying to adhere to the Hygge concept of simplicity, creativity, calmness, cozy and centered. I'm not succeeding very well, and it's getting on TheHubs™' nerves. I react to things that frighten me by panicking; he reacts with impatience and anger. It's not a good combination. I told him today that I truly needed him to show some patience and a little kindness when I freak out.
