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It has been raining steadily here for days now and everything is very soggy. The paths have turned to a muddy black mush.The water tanks are overflowing and in the middle of the night, Jeff’s shed and Dave’s bedroom floor suffered minor flood damage. Not enough to cause any real damage, just enough to be a soggy,soggy nuisance.
I am expecting a horde of ravenous teenagers up here tomorrow to celebrate Dave’s birthday,(which is on Tuesday, the day of Mum’s funeral *sigh*) I am deliberately not thinking about the mud that will be tracked through the house via the shed (eeek).
Dave’s original plan was to have his friends, who are all city kids come up here and camp in the bush. Tents, campfires, junkfood and a large bonfire and ‘voila’ with the minimum of fuss, a good time is had by all .
Except that it is the middle of winter and it wont stop raining.
So now the modified plan is for the kids to all cram into Dave’s room as well as take over Jeff’s shed. Jeff is understandably less than thrilled at the prospect of his space being filled with strange teenagers. All I can do at the moment is try not to think about it too much.
I have bought essential supplies as per the list David gave me. Coke, pizza, chippies and ice-cream, seem to have all the essential food groups covered.
Think of me tomorrow. I will be the one rocking in the corner.
When I started to recover from the shock and despair assosciated with Mum’s diagnosis of Lung cancer, the positive side of my nature kicked in and I treat every day with Mum as a gift of time.
Mum and I have always had a close relationship even when I was engaging in ‘destructive behaviours’ Mum was always there as an unwavering constant in my life.
It may seem like a tired cliche but Family is really all that matters.
Now for the update.
We had gathered in Mum’s room and were waiting for the Doctor to arrive. Isaac woke up from his nap and started to scream. And scream and scream and scream and scream. So when he wouldn’t settle at all, Veronica left the room and so did half my brain *sigh*
I had been relying on my daughter to be there for this meeting as Veronica remembers every word the doctors say and she asks proper questions.
So there I was, half of me listening to my grandson screaming and the other half trying to concentrate on Doctor D.
Mum has Radiation Pneumotitis again. This is a side effect from the radiation and it affects her lungs. Mum was sick with RP at Christmas and it was fixed with steroids. This time Mum is already on steroids so there is no fix at all. She is now permanently attached to that oxygen tube. Mum can go for half an hour or thereabouts without the oxygen as long as she is sitting still. As soon as she needs to walk she needs the oxygen.
The Xray showed that the pain in Mum’s shoulder is just Arthritis (yay). But it also showed a cancer in the bone above her right elbow. This is where I am hopeless because as Doctor D was showing us the Xray of Mum’s arm I found myself looking at the line of Mum’s ribcage and thinking that that particular Xray would make a nice template for a series of jugs.I found myself thinking that I must remember to ask if I could have the Xray and then I snapped back to reality. Shit!Shit!Shit! I really annoy myself when I do that.
Doctor D wants to give Mum’s right arm a quick Zap. He also wants an orthapaedic specialist to have a look at Mum’s arm. We have a catch 22 situation here. Do nothing and Mum’s arm could snap, just like that. Zap the cancer and we could find that the cancer is the only thing holding Mum’s bone in place and Mum’s arm could snap.
The orthapaedic specialist could decide to put a pin in Mums arm to strengthen it. Apparently it is a staight forward procedure, a keyhole surgery type of thing. Hmmm we will have to see about that and ask lots of questions. Mum doesn’t want any surgery or any invasive procedures and honestly, I don’t think that she has the reserves of energy required to heal herself as well as fight the cancer.
I don’t know how my brother, Mick is feeling because he is being very stoic and he doesn’t ask questions when the Doctor is in the room. I think that Mick and Fee are a bit shocked by Mum and my open conversations about death. But as I have said before when you have been living with a terminal illness for twelve months your perspectives do change and conversations about death become quite ordinary.
Doctor D gazed into his crystal ball and told Mum that she has weeks possibly months left. I will need to organize some portable oxygen and a wheelchair so that Mum and I can get out for day trips. Or so her friends can kidnap her as well. St John’s isn’t exactly Alcatraz, so organizing a break-out shouldn’t be too hard.
Mum is also contactable via her email or her mobile phone. So dont be afraid to ring her.
I think that is all for now. Please ask me any questions you like because I am flying blind here and I don’t know what you want to know.
Now back to the screaming Grandson, Isaac is normally a sunny, placid baby so we just assumed that he was reacting to the stress in the air. Strange room, Strange people, blahdeblahblah.
Vonnie thought that Isaac might have an ear infection so they left Amy with me and took Isaac to the after hours doctor,who took one look at his hydrocele (enlarged testicle) and immediately sent them to hospital for an ultrasound to check for a strangulating hernia. Veronica and Isaac were admitted to hospital last night as a precaution and that is as much as I know so far.
I do know that Veronica had previously taken Isaac to our GP who had told her that Isaac was too young to have anything done about his hydrocele and to not worry about it until he was a bit older.*sigh*
So that is what’s happening here. What’s happening with you?
Well maybe hyperventilating isn’t what I am actually doing. It is more like a full scale, mini panic attack combined with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. As well as a little ‘nerner’ voice in my head going,”You idiot, you have really done it now.” My heart starts to beat a little bit faster and my fingers get all tingly. I just want to run away from the computer and stop writing this because the more I type, the more I will have to explain what I have just agreed to do.
*takes a deeep breath*
(…and it was all my own idea as well *sigh*)
Last night I received confirmation that my friend Sue and I had secured gallery space for a short exhibition in October. The gallery’s calendar of exhibitions is always booked one year in advance. They squeezed us in as a mid-week exhibition which means we will open on Monday the 12th and close on Friday the 16th.
One half of me is feeling excitement and enthusiasm and the other half thinks, “Oh shit this is madness” and just wants to run away and hide..”
So now I really need to go and have a proper play with Barbara’s Bum because I think that my slipcast work is up to exhibition standard but my thrown work certainly isn’t.
Eeeeeek!!! This is where I pretend to be Tim Brooke-Taylor from “The Goodies” and start to yell “Don’t panic! Don’t panic” whilst pretending to be a tea-pot.
To be continued….
My Mum has been horrendously sick with a multitude of yuckiness that has been caused by the chemotherapy. The two main culprits that have combined to make Mum’s life miserable are a terrible grinding fatigue and horrible nausea.
It is never a pleasant feeling knowing that you are unable to help a loved one.
I feel very frustrated and small in my inability to help my mother.
And now my daughter as well.
Though it has always been a bit different with Veronica. I always hoped that we would find a doctor that would look at Veronica and say, “Oh yes, I know what you have. It is blah blah blah, here take this magic pill and come back and see me Tuesday fortnight…”
*Sigh*Veronica has finally been diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos syndrome. So finally after a seven year long search for answers, a geneticist examined Veronica and said,” Oh yes a straightforward case. Here are your answers, here is your validation.
” Unfortunately he didn’t have a magic pill.
So here I sit at the computer writing away madly,trying to stop myself from being all mimsy and formulate a plan of attack.
There isn’t much that I can do for my Mother or for Veronica either, apart from what I am doing already. And whilst that is a terrible thing for me to have to admit, that I, the supreme control freak cant actually control what is happening to the ones I love the most .” Hi Mum, Hi Von I love you.” It also means that I can stop looking for my vorpal sword and just focus on supporting the two women who mean the most to me in the whole wide world.
Also there is a voice in my head that whispers to me that things could be much worse.I know that it’s true because generally the voices in my head are full of helpful advice, well except for the one that goes on about zombies in the hospital, that voice needs to develop laryngitis…
It feels like time is travelling at an impossibly fast rate. The days seem to be sneakily getting shorter (and not just because it is Autumn either.) I am sure that some days are conspiring with each other and managing to just vanish.
Pfffffttt!!!! Gone in a blaze of almostness.
Like Hello, it is Tuesday already. What happened to Monday? I only just published my weekly winners a minute ago and now it is Tuesday?
Gah!!!! Something is going on but, mind you if I was a day of the week, I would probably try to vanish as well if I had to be a Monday.
I mean honestly what sort of a name is Monday? Munnday? At least Wednesday has tricky spelling to trip the unwary and Sunday has the promise of a good lie in even when it isn’t sunny..
Enough of that drivel. I need to get my internal dialogue under control. Thinking about that sort of stuff is probably why my days sneak off anyway. Now Monday has probably gone and gotten all huffy with me, just because I wanted to know what a Munn was?
You watch, next week it will be Thursday all of a sudden and then I will be really confused. *sigh*
Ceramics! Yay!
I had to type that in order to control myself and get back on track.
This year is all about Focus. Focus and Resolution.
But it is hard to focus on earthly things like housework and making pots, when I am so close to discovering where they keep the Zombies..
I am pretty sure there are Zombies at the Royal Hobart hospital. Mum and I have been traipsing all through the hospital lately. Up corridors and down elevators.There are lots of places in the hospital where you could stash a few Zombies and no-one would ever notice.
Ever.
Unless of course they escaped.
There are lots of closed off sections, with crumbling plaster ceilings and faded yellow tile walls, that look like they could have been used as a set for a Frances Farmer movie.
The last time that Veronica was with us we had to venture down into the dank depths of the hospital to make an appointment for a bone-scan. We had travelled deeper and deeper into the bowels of the hospital, passing locked rooms with innocent looking labels on the doors. Hmmm? Camera room? I wonder if that is where they filmed bits of Shawn of the dead?
We were getting further and further away from the modern section of the hospital. There wasn’t a pastel coloured wall in sight. Veronica and I were loudly discussing discreetly pondering the possibility of Zombies, when we suddenly came to an abrupt halt at a reception cubicle. The receptionist (who looked uncannily similar to Norman Bate’s Mother, btw) didn’t look pleased to see us at all. She was barely civil as she made Mum’s appointment and you could tell,that she knew, that we knew about the zombies. It was a good thing there were three of us,(and a baby) or we mightn’t have gotten out of there quite so easily…
I will try and get some photographic evidence next week when we go in for Mum’s chemo..
Ceramics Yay..
This year is going to be an exciting year in the Ceramic Studio.Very Exciting. But the zombies have exhausted my supply of words and I need to get off my bum and actually do some work..
Cheers Kim
