Home, and other disasters

Well, I see that the “ten most recently updated diaries” list is working again. I’m surprised there wasn’t more complaints about its absence, but then again, it disappeared sometime during my vacation, so perhaps I missed the peak bitching stage.

To continue my vacation update … we did tide pools and desert. We visited San Francisco so The Socialist could catch up with a high school friend. And we spent a fair amount of time with The Socialist’s family.

I don’t know that either of us were really prepared for the situation at his folk’s house. The Socialist was raised by his grandparents, both of whom are firmly in their seventies. His grandfather is still active, and had quite a few projects lined up for The Socialist. His grandmother, however, is in failing health, and has lost a fair amount of ground since he last saw her over Christmas.

The Socialist’s Grandmother has become victim to a senile dementia, probably Alzheimer’s disease. The effects, which were previously mild and easily disregarded, are now far more pronounced. She repeats stories she’s just told (sometimes with slight variations), she wanders the house aimlessly, and she has become increasingly dependent on The Socialist’s Grandfather. Grandfather, who does have his lesser but still significant health problems, is starting to become overwhelmed by the burden of care that is required. I know it has been his (not so secret) hope that The Socialist would return to the west coast with me in tow, and that we’d both move into his grandparent’s house to help with caring for his grandmother. This trip however, he mentioned to me the possibility of placing Grandmother into a facility for Alzheimer’s patients. He took me aside to tell me this, and I’m unsure if he did this to separate me from Grandmother to discuss this, or from The Socialist.

While I have come to like and respect The Socialist’s grandparents very much, Grandfather is very much a man with an Agenda. Ever since the Socialist moved in with me, Grandfather has been applying not-so-subtle pressure for us to move to the west coast. This is not realistically possible at this time, but is a cause of some major guilt feelings. I know The Socialist is troubledby this. He wants to help, but at the same time it’s very difficult for him to spend time with his grandmother now. The woman who raised him is no longer there, replaced by a woman who barely recognizes him because of this disease.

I’ve been through this once, with my own mother. I don’t really have any words of comfort or assurance. It was horrid to have to watch this happen to someone before, and it will be horrid to have to watch this happen to someone again. I wish I had something more useful to offer The Socialist than anectdotes of my own experience, but I don’t.

On a lighter note, the Prius did just fine on it’s round trip through the US. It collected more squished bugs on it’s hood than I would have believed on the trip out; one look at its pre-washed state and you could quite accurately have described it as an instrument for insect genocide. There was one rather embarrassing event in Tennessee with the car, but I’m not blaming the Prius for that.

The gas gauge on the Prius is electronic, with ten bars to show how much gas is left in the tank. The fewer the bars showing, the closer you are to needing to fill ‘er up again. When you get down to one bar, the display starts to blink, reminding you that you really, really, really need to think about fueling up now. A no brainer, right?

So picture this … here I am, plowing through Tennessee (which takes forever because Route 40 goes lengthwise through Tennessee at the longest angle possible). We’re nearly out of the state, with three bars showing on the gas gauge. The Socialist, who is driving at the time, mentions that we’ll probably pull off at the next exit to get gas. Makes sense to me. We drive perhaps three miles, and suddently there is only one bar showing on the gauge, and the display begins to blink. OK, right. We need gas. We push on to the next exit, hoping agains hope that at least that one remaining bar really means it, and there’s still sufficient gas in the car to get to the exit.

Of course, you know I wouldn’t be telling you this story if we’d made it to the exit and gotten gas in time. We ran out of gas, then ran out of electric. The Prius rolled to a stop on the shoulder, and there we waited for a little over an hour. I will say this … Toyota Roadside Assistance is a good deal, and I encourage anyone who is considering a Toyota to buy into that. Help eventually came in the form of a very nice guy sent by the Roadside Assistance people to bail us out. I have now learned not to trust the gas gauge, and am taking the car in this week to have it’s 7500 mile maintenance performed and the gas gauge looked into.

I returned home to three very disgruntled cats, a check-up at Big City Hospital (remind me to tell you the woes connected with getting my blood work done in Orange County and trying to get the results sent back to my docs at home), a hairdresser’s appointment, an eye exam (guess who’s joining the world of the bifocalled) and some unexpected/unwelcome news.

Tuesday I saw a hospital hepatologist, and spoke about going back to work once I had been weaned completely off Prednisone (one of the two immunosuppresants I’m taking). She agreed that, based on my line of work, that was a good idea. Friday I went into work to take care of some paperwork related to my disability, and discovered that the hospital had completed my disability paperwork saying that I was ready to go back to work. It turns out that the hospital has a policy of no more than three months disability for transplant patients who aren’t experiencing complications. It was too late in the day to call down to Big City Hospital, so the call will have to wait until Monday. However, the three month mark was on August 25th. Guess who has no income at the moment.

To be honest, I truely don’t feel up to returning to work just yet. I still get tired, I’m still not allowed to lift anything over 15 pounds, and the scar still twinges. I’m also fairly frightened of catching something from either the animals or my coworkers because of the immunosuppression. I realize that this is something I’m going to have to learn to deal with, since I’ll be immunosuppressed for the rest of my life. But psychologically, I’m just not there yet.

I’ll have to wait and see how things go at the hospital tomorrow. I’m hoping I can catch someone in the transplant unit after my cardiology appointment and talk to them about it. To quote Luke, Han, Leia and Obi Wan, though, I have a bad feeling about this.