Den of Wolves

What a long strange trip it’s been…. July 16, 2011

So for the past year, I have been out of commission due to my mom’s health issues.  She went in the hospital last summer needing another angiogram (two years post quintuple bypass surgery) and the contrast dye needed to do the procedure finally completely destroyed her kidneys.  It nearly did the first time but they recovered.  This time, she wasn’t so lucky.  So last summer, her kidneys failed and she had to start dialysis.  She lives in a town about 25 miles away from the hospital with the dialysis unit.  So three times per week, I drove the 19 miles from my house, to mom’s, then the 25 to the hospital to drop her off at dialysis.  My niece then picked her up and took her home about 4 hours later.  In late October, my sister and I went to a week-long training to learn how to do in home dialysis.  For a few months after that, my sister did the dialysis during the week (she lives across the street from my mom) and I did the treatments on the weekend.  At the end of January, my sister told me that she could no  longer help with the dialysis, it had become too much for her.  So I talked with my husband and my mom and at the end of February, my boys and I moved in with my mom so that I could do her dialysis.  Hubby still lives primarily at our old house, for now.  He spends about 3-4 days per week over here and the rest at the old house.  Eventually, we will get rid of our house and we will all move in with her permanently.  In the mean time, I have been trying to help her get bids on a new roof, new siding, a ramp and do a home equity conversion mortgage to pay for it all.  We are in the final stretch for the mortgage so she can replace the roof.  Good thing too.  With the incredible amount of rain we are having, it’s a miracle that the roof is not leaking.  It’s in pretty bad shape.

I have spent a lot of mindless time on Facebook playing stupid games and chatting with friends as my stress relief.  Too much going on in my personal life to think too much about other things I guess.  But that is pretty much the situation.  Working on packing up my old house, working full-time, using up my sick leave and vacation time to take mom to doctors appointments and for hospitalizations.  So far, the more consistent care seems to be helping.  She went in yesterday for an angiogram of the arteries in her legs (she’s diabetic and has developed ulcers on her feet).  The bad news is she has pretty bad circulation (no surprise).  The good news (oddly enough) is that the damage is in a location that she is going to get a leg artery bypass.  It’s a strange thing.  When she had the heart bypass, they took a vein from her left leg to do it.  Now I don’t know where they are going to get the vein for the bypass on the right leg.  But apparently, there is a decent one available. As bad as it sounds, if the damage was lower down, they would not be able to do much and she would lose her feet.  So oddly, them not being able to do angioplasty or put stents in her lower legs has turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

So now I am off to bed.  Just wanted anyone who bothers to read this to know where I have been for an eon.