5:50pm June 14, 2014

I keep thinking weird things.

I keep looking at the pictures I took of my dad during our Skype conversation (I took them after we actually talked to each other, not during the conversation itself).

And I keep thinking weird things like

“Holy crap he looks like an Okie.”  (Because yes, there’s a look, and he has it.  Don’t ask me what it is, I can’t explain it, it takes one to know one maybe?  Don’t ask me why I’m thinking this right now.)

“Holy crap he looks like me.”  (I’m always surprised by how much I look like both of my parents, and in what completely different ways.  I have part of my dad’s facial structure, especially the lower face, but I especially have his same default facial expression and body posture.  And I have his eyebrows.)

“Holy crap he looks tired.”  (And unfortunately I’ve been close enough to death that I think I know how he feels right now.  Where every single little thing becomes this huge strain and struggle.  Things you don’t even normally think of as activities, become activities that you want to lie down and rest from… only you’re already lying down, you’re already resting as much as you can.  There’s only one way to do less, and that’s to weaken, and to sicken, and to die.  And that’s when only love will help you feel any better at all.)

Maybe these aren’t weird things.

I don’t know.

I’m in a lot of physical pain right now, and that matters and doesn’t matter.  I know I’m in much better shape than my father is, even though I feel like a total wreck right now.

Also there’s been a SNAFU with the anxiety meds, so I don’t have those yet, much as I desperately want them in a way that I almost never desperately want anxiety meds.  They’re supposed to be coming tonight.  The hospital’s computers crashed yesterday so the pharmacy ground to a halt.  Really bad way to run a hospital with no backup systems, holy crap.  I was at one campus of the hospital while the computer crash was happening and you could hear all the secretaries griping and you could barely get any Internet (and got weird error messages when you tried most websites) and it was weird.  They blamed solar flares or something but nobody else seemed to be having computer trouble, just the hospital.  It looked more like an internal computer problem, but what do I know?

Anyway I’ll be glad when I have PRN anxiety meds again.  I rarely need them, but when I need them, I need them.  Normally I only need them much when hospitalized, because I get really horrible panic attacks in hospitals.  But if “my father is dying of a cancer I don’t even know the name of yet” doesn’t cause anxiety, I don’t know what does.

I’m worried about my mother, too.  She could end up in the hospital, or worse, if she doesn’t take care of herself.  Both of her eyes were drooping shut (she has myasthenia or something closely related) and she kept saying “when this happens I need to take my medication” and I finally had to say THEN TAKE IT and she finally did.  I have to remember she’s more stressed out than I am.  And stress is a bad combination with myasthenia.  She actually last month stopped breathing during a myasthenia crisis and ended up with a code being called in the ICU and stuff.  So I’m legitimately worried that the stress of dealing with my father dying could kill her or put her in the hospital.  And I really hope she’s taking care of herself.  I can’t imagine what she’s going through, and going back home alone to that house with the dogs and having to function through all of this.

 And I feel utterly horrible on even a physical level right now.  Like excruciating pain – some of it’s stomach, some of it’s nerve pain, some of it I don’t know what the fuck it is, all of it’s left-sided but I think that may be coincidental (oh wait, that’s the side there’s air blowing on me from, which means it’s not coincidental, that’s a nerve pain thing..  it’s also the side of my stomach that hurts, and there’s this huge halo of nerve pain around the area that hurts, as always).

And my dad looks like an Okie, and he looks like me, and he looks tired.

And I don’t think anything makes much sense.

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