This past week I felt like I was tripped and kicked while I was down. My dad has been sick for the last 3 months. He was having pain in his hips and stomach. He went from doctor to doctor in urgent care, the emergency room and then his regular doctor. Finally after several blood tests, we got some kind of answer. His doctor said that he has an autoimmune disease, but didn't say which one. Then she spotted something on his arm or something and said that it could be cancer, but said don't worry about it right now. We still don't have an answer and he's been off work for 2 months going on 3 and is wasting away. He's lost like 20lbs and is so weak and tired all the time. I hope that the doctor gives us an answers soon and there is a treatment that will help him get back to normal and allow him to do some work.
Next my great grandma was brought into the hospital because she wasn't feeling well and her feet were swollen. The doctors said that she had a blood clot in her leg and that her heart was in tachycardia. After a week in the hospital and several in a home she went back to the hospital because she was close to the end. She had pneumonia and at 95 that was the last straw. She became so sickly and uncomfortable that when she was finally asked if she wanted to be kept alive or be comfortable she said comfortable. So that night she was given morphine and began to go into the "morphine coma". Within 2 days she was gone. Since it was an ongoing affair I knew it was coming and was prepared for it. What I wasn't prepared for was the stress of the coming week.
Which brings me to the final slap in the face. My sister in an attempt to get to the hospital to see my great grandma, passed out in the shower and broke her leg. As I had described in a previous blog, she has RSD, which in itself is painful and constantly causing problems. This injury is what my family had hoped would never happen, because as much as a broken bone would hurt, a broken leg in a leg that already was so painful because of the disease would be intolerable.
With my father sick, and my mother not as strong as me, I have to be around to be able to lift her up and help her around the house. In the beginning she wasn't able to walk or stand up alone. Her room is upstairs so she was unable to get to her room, so she's been sleeping in my room downstairs and I have been sleeping on the couch/air mattress in the living room so I am close and available if she needs my help. My dad had been so weak and tired that he hadn't been getting out of bed so I was making lunches and taking care of him too when my mom was out of the house working. This past week she was busy helping my grandma set up all the funeral planning and packing up my great grandma's house. I've been taking on double duty, between cooking, cleaning, and being nurse. My mom and I also have been taking care of the lawn, which in my case mowing with a 20 year old lawn mower is like a punishment for prisoners. Just starting it is a long grueling process, then to push it around the yard when its 90 degrees outside.
The past couple of weeks have been hell. I hope that soon things will die down and go back to normal. For now I will trudge on through and keep working on making it to the next day.
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