I spend my evenings figuring out work around to numbers that don't pick up my weird international numbers, transferring my way through back to the nurses' station after we are disconnected for the 4th time because wifi and 3G is having another bad day in Egypt. I worry. I feel helpless. I feel far away.
My my dad is so sick with pneumonia that he can't talk. He let the infection fester for so long before going to the hospital that it caused his kidneys to fail and he is now "on" (is that the word?) dialysis. It is heart breaking. And hearing the nurses talk about health, calming describing how the COPD, the congestive heart failure and the hypertension in combination with pneumonia has led to his kidneys to fail causes such a panic, freezing pain in my chest that I almost vomit. And then It turns to anxious energy. My way to cope with the emotions and the helplessness and the waiting is to take actions in other ways. It is a release. When I was drinking this week would have been long nights of drinking to self sooth, to embody the emotional pain-it seems to distance them zoom in in pain works to really keep for seeing it for what it really looks like. Instead of drinking, I did some smoking, on the porch, talked to nurses, rearranged the living room and front room furniture, made jambalaya, made cards to send my dad, texted the firefighter that dad more sick than ornery. I talked with Husband about how to be a good daughter, how to love my dad in a way he can see and accept, how to honor his terms for how he wants to wrap up his life...when it comes. I feel I failed my mom as she was dying, I want to do better this time, but the rules are different. Im almost to work, the bus blogging, the dwelling on my state will be paused. Work does draw me into the present: puts a spotlight on problems to solve, actions, movement, other's issues.
2 Comments
I Will Start With Water
11/21/2017 07:18:45 am
Thank you for sending love my way back in February. I needed it. My dad died a few days later as I was in a flight to go see him. COPD is horrific, and my dad gasped for breath for decades. He must have been so tired. Even writing this I find myself taking big full enhales for him.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI used to drink with the best of them, but I don't anymore. My life is so much better for it. Archives
July 2018
Helpful Blogs-Mrs. D is Going Without Helpful Podcasts-The Bubble Hour Helpful Books-Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp Helpful Film |