Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2014-12-30 04:56 am
azurelunatic) wrote2014-12-30 04:56 am
Roller-Coaster Weekend
So! That was an eventful Christmas!
Christmas day: First I chilled out at home, and also slept. Then I went over to my aunt's for dinner. She had decided to have a sausage festival, wherein her loving family would taste different types of sausage, olive oil, and vinegar. In theory it was a good plan! In practice, the sausages were all a little more spicy than anyone else was planning on. The habanero sausage was a bit much for everyone except Infamous Cousin and me, even cut into small chunks. I made a little sandwich of it with some of the nice sourdough, and found it spicy but good. (Infamous Cousin was waiting for me to run wailing for the milk, but bread was sufficient.)
All the kids got the same thing: frying pans. I introduced my aunt to my sister's and my word for "hit upside the head with a frying pan" in our private childhood language before unwrapping. (It is a language of few words, but we had a word for that specifically.) Very nice nonstick ceramic frying pans, it turned out upon opening, and money. I was deeply touched by the unexpected generosity and need to write a proper thank-you note.
Infamous Cousin ran along home after dinner, leaving Hipster Cousin and Woodworking Uncle to play pool, and Guide Dog Aunt and me to play the game that's got the same general mechanics as Jenga, but with slightly different sized sticks and you place them spaced apart and on the second-most-stable edge. Great fun was had by all, in our respective games of physics and skill.
I mentioned Tay. Guide Dog Aunt had been aware that Tay was in Seattle, but had not been aware that she was probably staying there, and had had a very hard conversation with her erstwhile Young Man before going up on the 15th. I credit the internet with drilling me on some of the least helpful things to say to people who are going through breakups, particularly breakups which appear to have been precipitated by often fraught issues like "are we going to have kids" and "they haven't invented mpreg for dudes who weren't born with uteruses, so you're going to have to do the childbearing". Guide Dog Aunt ran through several of the list of things which I was being careful to not say where Tay could hear me, including "But maybe they just need to talk things over more!" While she was still going through the Surprised Relative Bingo Sheet, I texted Tay: "Guide Dog Aunt sends her love and support." Which is what she meant. (And she agreed, when I showed her the text.)
Kit, the guide dog puppy, is much less Sharkface, although she remains very very licky and enthusiastic, with a penchant for up-skirt nosing. The poodle has mostly recovered from his ordeal and is still poodly, although the missing fang has resulted in reduced tongue control and goofy expressions.
Guide Dog Aunt got a book on poodle-trimming, which was equal parts fascinating and alarming. Woodworking Uncle got some nice slippers.
I went home with the bag of leftover sausage bits, as I had more creative ideas of what to do with leftover sausage than Guide Dog Aunt had. The hot ones were isolated in their own little baggie inside the big baggie, so there would be no surprises.
I'd planned to get together with JD, and perhaps Purple, on Boxing Day. I picked up JD; Purple was otherwise occupied (friends needing help moving, most likely, or maybe not wanting to go 40 miles one way to see a movie even if it is with friends). We saw Into the Woods (the new movie adaptation) and had a great time.
Having realized that a deposit on an apartment in a cheaper part of the Bay Area was unexpectedly suddenly within my reach thanks to the generosity of Aunta Claus, I floated the possibility of being roommates to JD. He'll discuss the idea (and the proposed location) with Ryan. I dropped him off and then scampered to a bank location which I hoped did co-branching with my credit union, as a quickly-deposited check clears faster than a tardily-deposited check, and gathers more interest besides.
I was crossing the street when my phone rang. I had been expecting Nora, as she'd called earlier, and I'd called back, and we'd missed each other, but it was a number not in my phonebook. I debated not answering it. Then I peered at the screen as I got to the other side of the road. 907. Alaska. My parents' emergency cell. "Is everything okay?" I asked Mama.
Everything was not okay. My father was in the ICU, his heart having stopped twice that day.
My father has had heart problems for years; last year he went down to one of the bigger hospitals to have cryoablation done to correct some issues where some rogue cells were sending out-of-sync electrical signals and confusing the entire issue. It helped for a time, but things were getting bogus again; just a week before he'd been down in Anchorage for a one-year follow-up and they were talking about next steps and discontinuing a drug which could be messing with things and also getting ready to install a pacemaker in January.
They'd had an appointment to get some bloodwork done in advance of the planned operation in January, just that morning, at the hospital. He'd been driving back, down an infrequently-traveled side street near the hospital, when he passed out behind the wheel as his heart had stopped. Mama couldn't rouse him for about 30 seconds. The car was stopped with no one injured and nothing damaged. A taxi stopped and the driver tried to help. My dad came back around, and was very confused about why Mama was suddenly insisting that he get his ass in the passenger seat so she could drive them back to the hospital, as he had missed the entire commotion due to being unconscious at the time. But get his ass in the passenger seat he did, and she drove back to the hospital just a few blocks away, and marched him into the emergency room under his own power.
They were in the ER queue when his heart stopped a second time. Mama did not detail the fuss that must have ensued, but he ended up in the ICU with a temporary pacemaker to get him back to 40 beats per minute stuffed up a hole in his groin. As he'd still been taking his blood thinner, and because they hadn't got the part in yet, they couldn't install the permanent pacemaker until Sunday. By this time, he had started to become a good deal more cantankerous, which was a good sign.
Mama had been debating whether or not to call Tay. I urged her to do so, as this is the sort of thing which Tay would want to know, whether or not she was attempting to figure out where she was couch-surfing. (And once again Twitter became helpful, as just that morning I'd seen her band retweet a sufficiently surreal quote with her name attached; it's a reasonably common name but I think there's only one of them in her band, and she has a distinctive brand of quotable surrealism. So I convinced Mama that she was most likely ensconced in the arms of her band, and that she should call and not worry about worrying her.)
So Mama got off the phone to call Tay, and I realized that only about five minutes had passed, and I was still in time to head into the bank before it closed. I handled that, I found a place to sit down, I asked the internet for dinner, then I updated Twitter. Twitter sent support. I got dinner. I went home. I curled up in bed and kept myself distracted.
Mama sent updates with varying levels of detail and coherence. It turns out that one way to convince a largely technophobic person to do new tricks like sending email on an iPad is to sit them down in a hospital waiting room with the iPad as their primary means of communication with the outside world. By late Sunday, Mama had determined that actually, the iPad would be an easier way of sending quick notes than firing up the big computer would be, assuming my father gets the wifi working at home. (My father has conceded to install wifi at home, although apparently it's not fully operational yet.)
The operation was on Sunday, and seemed to involve shoving the permanent pacemaker up possibly the same groin-hole as the temporary one. My dad has to keep the relevant side undistubed until the pacemaker leads heal in place, so he has an arm in a sling. (They served spaghetti for lunch after he was out of surgery Sunday, and Mama was indignant, as who serves spaghetti to a guy who's got the use of only one arm?!? Which was a great problem to have.)
They released him on Monday. Mama was a bit later than she might have liked to be and did not get to chat with the cardiologist herself, because she and some neighbors were busy moving the god-damned bed down the fucking stairs. Certain stubborn old coots have been braving the stairs, which haven't the slightest hint of a railing, through back problems, ankle problems, and various iterations of the heart problems, but this was Quite Enough. I gather that Mama made an executive decision, and lo, it was done.
We'll see what happens with the plumbing, also.
Christmas day: First I chilled out at home, and also slept. Then I went over to my aunt's for dinner. She had decided to have a sausage festival, wherein her loving family would taste different types of sausage, olive oil, and vinegar. In theory it was a good plan! In practice, the sausages were all a little more spicy than anyone else was planning on. The habanero sausage was a bit much for everyone except Infamous Cousin and me, even cut into small chunks. I made a little sandwich of it with some of the nice sourdough, and found it spicy but good. (Infamous Cousin was waiting for me to run wailing for the milk, but bread was sufficient.)
All the kids got the same thing: frying pans. I introduced my aunt to my sister's and my word for "hit upside the head with a frying pan" in our private childhood language before unwrapping. (It is a language of few words, but we had a word for that specifically.) Very nice nonstick ceramic frying pans, it turned out upon opening, and money. I was deeply touched by the unexpected generosity and need to write a proper thank-you note.
Infamous Cousin ran along home after dinner, leaving Hipster Cousin and Woodworking Uncle to play pool, and Guide Dog Aunt and me to play the game that's got the same general mechanics as Jenga, but with slightly different sized sticks and you place them spaced apart and on the second-most-stable edge. Great fun was had by all, in our respective games of physics and skill.
I mentioned Tay. Guide Dog Aunt had been aware that Tay was in Seattle, but had not been aware that she was probably staying there, and had had a very hard conversation with her erstwhile Young Man before going up on the 15th. I credit the internet with drilling me on some of the least helpful things to say to people who are going through breakups, particularly breakups which appear to have been precipitated by often fraught issues like "are we going to have kids" and "they haven't invented mpreg for dudes who weren't born with uteruses, so you're going to have to do the childbearing". Guide Dog Aunt ran through several of the list of things which I was being careful to not say where Tay could hear me, including "But maybe they just need to talk things over more!" While she was still going through the Surprised Relative Bingo Sheet, I texted Tay: "Guide Dog Aunt sends her love and support." Which is what she meant. (And she agreed, when I showed her the text.)
Kit, the guide dog puppy, is much less Sharkface, although she remains very very licky and enthusiastic, with a penchant for up-skirt nosing. The poodle has mostly recovered from his ordeal and is still poodly, although the missing fang has resulted in reduced tongue control and goofy expressions.
Guide Dog Aunt got a book on poodle-trimming, which was equal parts fascinating and alarming. Woodworking Uncle got some nice slippers.
I went home with the bag of leftover sausage bits, as I had more creative ideas of what to do with leftover sausage than Guide Dog Aunt had. The hot ones were isolated in their own little baggie inside the big baggie, so there would be no surprises.
I'd planned to get together with JD, and perhaps Purple, on Boxing Day. I picked up JD; Purple was otherwise occupied (friends needing help moving, most likely, or maybe not wanting to go 40 miles one way to see a movie even if it is with friends). We saw Into the Woods (the new movie adaptation) and had a great time.
Having realized that a deposit on an apartment in a cheaper part of the Bay Area was unexpectedly suddenly within my reach thanks to the generosity of Aunta Claus, I floated the possibility of being roommates to JD. He'll discuss the idea (and the proposed location) with Ryan. I dropped him off and then scampered to a bank location which I hoped did co-branching with my credit union, as a quickly-deposited check clears faster than a tardily-deposited check, and gathers more interest besides.
I was crossing the street when my phone rang. I had been expecting Nora, as she'd called earlier, and I'd called back, and we'd missed each other, but it was a number not in my phonebook. I debated not answering it. Then I peered at the screen as I got to the other side of the road. 907. Alaska. My parents' emergency cell. "Is everything okay?" I asked Mama.
Everything was not okay. My father was in the ICU, his heart having stopped twice that day.
My father has had heart problems for years; last year he went down to one of the bigger hospitals to have cryoablation done to correct some issues where some rogue cells were sending out-of-sync electrical signals and confusing the entire issue. It helped for a time, but things were getting bogus again; just a week before he'd been down in Anchorage for a one-year follow-up and they were talking about next steps and discontinuing a drug which could be messing with things and also getting ready to install a pacemaker in January.
They'd had an appointment to get some bloodwork done in advance of the planned operation in January, just that morning, at the hospital. He'd been driving back, down an infrequently-traveled side street near the hospital, when he passed out behind the wheel as his heart had stopped. Mama couldn't rouse him for about 30 seconds. The car was stopped with no one injured and nothing damaged. A taxi stopped and the driver tried to help. My dad came back around, and was very confused about why Mama was suddenly insisting that he get his ass in the passenger seat so she could drive them back to the hospital, as he had missed the entire commotion due to being unconscious at the time. But get his ass in the passenger seat he did, and she drove back to the hospital just a few blocks away, and marched him into the emergency room under his own power.
They were in the ER queue when his heart stopped a second time. Mama did not detail the fuss that must have ensued, but he ended up in the ICU with a temporary pacemaker to get him back to 40 beats per minute stuffed up a hole in his groin. As he'd still been taking his blood thinner, and because they hadn't got the part in yet, they couldn't install the permanent pacemaker until Sunday. By this time, he had started to become a good deal more cantankerous, which was a good sign.
Mama had been debating whether or not to call Tay. I urged her to do so, as this is the sort of thing which Tay would want to know, whether or not she was attempting to figure out where she was couch-surfing. (And once again Twitter became helpful, as just that morning I'd seen her band retweet a sufficiently surreal quote with her name attached; it's a reasonably common name but I think there's only one of them in her band, and she has a distinctive brand of quotable surrealism. So I convinced Mama that she was most likely ensconced in the arms of her band, and that she should call and not worry about worrying her.)
So Mama got off the phone to call Tay, and I realized that only about five minutes had passed, and I was still in time to head into the bank before it closed. I handled that, I found a place to sit down, I asked the internet for dinner, then I updated Twitter. Twitter sent support. I got dinner. I went home. I curled up in bed and kept myself distracted.
Mama sent updates with varying levels of detail and coherence. It turns out that one way to convince a largely technophobic person to do new tricks like sending email on an iPad is to sit them down in a hospital waiting room with the iPad as their primary means of communication with the outside world. By late Sunday, Mama had determined that actually, the iPad would be an easier way of sending quick notes than firing up the big computer would be, assuming my father gets the wifi working at home. (My father has conceded to install wifi at home, although apparently it's not fully operational yet.)
The operation was on Sunday, and seemed to involve shoving the permanent pacemaker up possibly the same groin-hole as the temporary one. My dad has to keep the relevant side undistubed until the pacemaker leads heal in place, so he has an arm in a sling. (They served spaghetti for lunch after he was out of surgery Sunday, and Mama was indignant, as who serves spaghetti to a guy who's got the use of only one arm?!? Which was a great problem to have.)
They released him on Monday. Mama was a bit later than she might have liked to be and did not get to chat with the cardiologist herself, because she and some neighbors were busy moving the god-damned bed down the fucking stairs. Certain stubborn old coots have been braving the stairs, which haven't the slightest hint of a railing, through back problems, ankle problems, and various iterations of the heart problems, but this was Quite Enough. I gather that Mama made an executive decision, and lo, it was done.
We'll see what happens with the plumbing, also.
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<python> He got better! </python>
They are very handy for that.
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Thank you. It's far more ... active ... than most of the Dad vs. Heart Problems to date. But all signs are that it's helping and he is already benefiting from the increased blood flow.
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I hope so too! We are very lucky and it is great that Mama has so many people around to help out. (Several neighbors plus a bunch of virtual family have been elided from the narrative.)
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My folks are up in Alaska, so I could have either gone up and made myself a nuisance and miserable, done the same here, or freak out to a relatively small group of friends and try to give tech support to Mama.
I suspect that I may have a post-shenanigans reaction at some point.
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When there's warning, I tend to pre-react.
I may have done that in 2001, come to think...
http://azurelunatic.dreamwidth.org/2001/08/24/
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Thank you.
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About 4 miles closer by road, 2 hours closer by transit.
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He's very excited about the pacemaker. I have located the installation manual. My takeaway is that a drone may not be the fabulous birthday present it previously would have, but the ham radio gear is more likely to cause undesirable interference.