Waiting

My mother has been having problems with her memory over the last couple of years, it's been very gradual. In the beginning, it was so slight, it was hardly noticable but last July, when she was visiting, she would ask me several times what we were doing that day or who we were having lunch with. If I repeated it enough, it would stick. I was very concerned but she absolutely refused to go to the doctor. I cannot remember the last time she went to the doctor.

My brother called me last Thursday. Mom had called him very upset and told him something had gone wrong in her head. A friend of hers finally convinced her she needed to see a doctor, so it's been a round of doctor visits over the past few days. My brother thinks she had a stroke of some kind because the type of memory problem changed drastically over night. She now cannot remember something you just told her at all. I looked at the Alzheimer's site and based on what he told me, it sounds as though she may have vascular dementia. Of course, I am not a doctor, even the doctors need to see her a couple of more times and we won't have any kind of results until next week. And I am just basing that on the few things my brother said.

Something's wrong. And we're waiting to find out just what that is.

Well!

That was refreshing. It's been a long seven months. I've been to Canada and Hawaii. My mother came for a visit. I'm currently working two jobs and will have a third job (weekends only) for the Christmas season. That starts Nov. 18th. I'll be working Monday - Friday at my full time job, Tuesday and Thursday evenings (at least) at my part-time job and Saturday and Sundays (10 - 12 hour days) every weekend from Nov. 18 thru Dec. 17. No wonder I'm tired. But so far in the past two months, both the transmission and power steering on my van had to be replaced. And I'm in dire need of new tires.

I had to drop my French class, even though I enjoyed it very much. I missed too much class and got too far behind. I'm taking no credit for this semester so that I can take it again next semester. But I've actually learned more than I thought I had and spoke French a little while I was in Montreal. That was an interesting trip. More on that in another entry.

That's all for now but now that I've found this again, maybe I can keep it up.

No French class for me last night.

I had a major melt-down. I've been so down, really in the dumps. I hated everything in my life, I wanted to feel some passion for something, I just felt dead. I called my best friend Susan, who lives in Hawaii and we started talking, I asked about her back, she hurt it clearing bamboo on her property, but she's doing better now. She asked me how I've been and I just started BAWLING! I couldn't even speak. Finally, I gained a little control, enough to gasp out "I'm sorry." to her. I told her everything that has happened and we talked for quite awhile. She said that it didn't surprise her that I was feeling so bad, that I've been under all kinds of stress for so long, starting with my dad's illness in 1997. Every year has had some major stress related something happen. Illness, death, divorce, financial problems. It's been a never ending roller coaster. I got so used to being under stress that it finally just wore me down. It's no wonder I feel like I have nothing, everyday a major portion of my brain has been going "What am I gonna do now? How am I gonna fix this?" until it left me unable to focus my attention on anything but problems, except for short fixes. Now the stressful things are slowly coming to an end. Slowly. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and no longer feel like it's a freight train speeding towards me. I am so grateful to Susan for listening and talking me through this. I am starting to feel like I might be able to have a life after all, instead of crisis after crisis.