long time, no post

i think a bout blogging. honest, i do. but a lot of my online time is spent doing L&V things, or twitter, or the endless task of catching up on my bloglines, or yahoo, and with the kids out of school, my time is less my own than normal. so posting s uffers.

no pics, although i'll try for some tomorrow. laminaria stopped for a wee bit, cuz i realized i hadn't done much charity crafting last month, and felt the need to do so. hence, the hat/baby sock set, green booties, and 12 squares drying all over the house (they're wool, so no dryer). may's project was for nunavit, in canada, for a birthing center (rankin island, i think?). they asked for wool cuz it never gets truly warm there.

anyway, the real reason why i'm posting.

my mom went in the hospital for a couple of days last week. all in all, it wasn't a big deal, but it scared me to start with. tomorrow is the 7th anniversary of my father's death from a massive stroke. when my mom called me last thursday and told me she was dizzy, i worried. the doctor's office said to take her to the ER, so i drove over there quickly, and hauled ass up to the hospital. she was definitely off balance, because while i was helping her out to the van, i could feel the wobble.

they did a cat scan, and found what they were calling a TIA. a mini-stroke. when the doctor told me that, a large part of me was screaming inside. not again! my grandmother, who also passed away 7 years ago (33 days before my father, it was a WONDERFUL year), had started the downhill slide with a stroke the day after thanksgiving.

she went into AL for the winter, then had another stroke in the spring, which caused her to fall, and break a hip. my mother's cousin was guardian since my mom was so far away, and they had determined the best course of action was to put her in a nursing home. she passed away that night. nurse checked on her at 2 am, and she was sleeping peacefully. checked again at 4 am, and she was gone.

anyway, the dizziness was my mom's ONLY symptom. and it was predominantly light-headedness. this is important. they decided to admit her, so they could do more intensive testing. that afternoon, a neurological med student came up, and got as much info as she could about what happened. the neurologist came thenext morning, and we found out that it wasn't a TIA. apparently, she'd had an incident a long time ago, and that was what they'd found in the cat scan. it's not uncommon in people my mother's age (80) to have those kinds of things. we never knew because she'd never exhibited any symptoms. so, now what? she'd been hanging shower curtains, and had gotten dizzy after looking up and putting her arms up several times. problems with carotids or vertebral arteries? neck ultrasound it is. however, that wasn't it. then, the nurse noticed that when my mom was resting, her heartbeat was normal. when she'd move around, her heartbeat would double. hmmmm. call the cardiologist. they say she'd better stay one more day, and they start discussing meds. they tell me 50 mgs of a medication used to regulate her heartbeat. i'm confused. no, supposed to be 150. so they double check the chart. they called walgreens for the doses, and walgreens told them 50.

it seems there was a mixup between the cardiologist's prescription, and what walgreens interpretted it as, and she'd been short-changed since JANUARY. some days. so they upped it to what it had been before, and things went back to normal. she went home saturday morning, and we even went and wrestled witht he bank about a fuck-up they did.

except. as i age, i see fewer generations ahead of me. it's always felt like the older generations were a barrier between me and time itself. my grandmothers have been gone 7 & 16 years, respectively. my grandfathers died in 67 and 78. in my father's family, the only one left is my aunt frances, and she's 90 and in the nursing home. my mother is an only child, andall her cousins are either aging, or gone themselves. as the youngest granddaughter in my generation, i have several cousins who have retired. the oldest 2 are 78. the barrier is slowly dissolving. the only things standing between me and that vast abyss of time are my mother and aunt. and the aunt is standing on ice with one foot, and a banana peel with the other. my mom is doing alright, but she's got a laundry list of heart-related problems, as well as a laundry list of medications.

today pushed it a little farther along. she called me again this morning, and said she had a cut, and wanted to see the doctor. she's on blood thinners, so this concerned me. she had been folding up a card table last night, andit got away from her, and smacked the back of her right knee, and cut her. she had bandaged it, and gone to bed, not thinking muchof it. she got up this morning to find it bleeding again, and blood on the sheets. i didn't know what was going on, so to the ER again, we went. they removed some torn skin, cauterized the bleeding, bandaged it, and sent us on our way. she's fine. we even went grocery shopping this afternoon (and she's a power shopper, lemme tell you. $105 later, we went on our way).

except. i'm terrified of losing my mother. but i know that i will be the one on the front line when it does finally happen. the brother who truly cares is in georgia, and the other one is too involved in his own life to even bother coming to visit on a regular basis (he goes for months without calling or visiting, and then, visits when it suits him, and he's only 1 1/2 hours away). some day, i will get a call, or find her, or get more bad news. i know it's inevitable.