cannonsatdawn

Nobody, boss included, wants this, but it's not impossible I will be laid off in a month's time.

My mother's mental acuity is slipping; my brother thinks he may think it's worse than I think it is because I see her every week and he, although he talks to her every day, only sees her in person every few months. Likewise the director of her assisted living facility has just returned from a short vacation and called my brother yesterday to say if they were seeing her for the first time now, they'd think memory care rather than assisted living was probably the best place for her. Put another way, the call scheduled for the three of us tomorrow afternoon is definitely going to be about how it's time to plan to move her over to memory care when a place in that wing opens up. She's not going to like that, of course, but I was surprised by how strongly I didn't like it—the wave of NO that I felt in my whole body, a physical wash of Kubler Ross denial. It was something. Rationally I know it's happening and I know keeping her safe and getting her the best care is going to involve changes and adaptations and so on, but wow, the fact that the ego and superego know that didn't stop the id going MOMMY!

On the up side, one of my favorite co-workers came in to talk about a work thing yesterday, in the course of which conversation I mentioned #1☝️, and at the very suggestion that the big boss might let me go, favorite co-worker said "Jeeesus Christ, he's lost his mind." That doesn't affect whether or not I'll keep my job, but it is good for the ego.

My brother's mother-in-law is also not well, so my sister-in-law is going out this weekend to help her (because her sister, who lives near their mom, happens to be away this weekend), meaning my brother is going to have to bail on a family wedding; he and I were both already going to leave our families behind, as the bride is our cousin's daughter and our spouses nor kids don't really know almost anyone up there, so now it looks like I'll be the sole representative of my mom's node of the family tree. (The bride's-grandmother's-sister node is often not well represented, I'm sure.) My nephew is almost 15 and would be perfectly safe in the house by himself for a couple of days, but he wouldn't be comfortable with it, and of course it's right for his father not to know that and ditch him anyway. I said "You could bring him with you?"—but a last-minute plane ticket and an extra guest the caterer hadn't known about, nah; I said "You could ship him to my house?" (because the prince would love, love having an unexpected visit from his cousin, oh my gosh)—but even as I said it I went on to say that wouldn't really be fair to spring on Himself, outside of a true emergency—I could totally say "Listen, Nephew is coming to stay with us next weekend," and Himself wouldn't say "Why wasn't I consulted about this?", he'd say "Oh my God, what's happened?!" In short: My brother is staying home with his kid this weekend, which is the right decision but a bummer all around. (The much, much bigger bummer being that my sister-in-law's mother is doing as poorly as she is.)

The other bit of up side from yesterday is that when I got home from work and told Himself that my sister-in-law has to go be with her mom so my brother can't go to the wedding because nephew, etc., almost the first words out of his mouth were "He could come stay here?" ❤️❤️❤️ He went on to have a whole text-message conversation about that with my brother while I went to pick the prince up from day camp, and the end result was the same (my brother is staying home with his kid this weekend), but the fact that Himself went directly to "I can take him" without even the merest hint of a suggestion from me made me so happy. SO happy.

Only then I went to pick the prince up from day camp, and on the way home I started feeling a sort of light-headed vertigo feeling that does happen to me sometimes—most recently on the way home from grocery shopping on Saturday—but usually just for a split second, which I don't like, especially when I'm driving, but it really is normally less than the time it takes to blink twice and I don't think an awful lot more about it. Yeah but: Yesterday it came on partway home and didn't go away. I was able to see clearly and concentrate on the road, and my reaction time was fine with respect to signaling, steering, braking, all the things you need to do to drive safely, but it was absolutely terrifying and the minute we got home I told Himself about it and insisted that he do the driving this afternoon (and maybe all the driving until I know what the fuck is happening to my head?!). He suggested maybe my blood sugar was low and asked me to eat about a teaspoon of sugar straight, which in his experience is like a shot of adrenaline, so I did, and nothing happened. I ate a little dinner, though I didn't have much appetite, and that didn't help. I drank some water and that didn't change anything either. Took my blood pressure: 128/86. No fever. I emailed my doctor to tell her this whole tale and conclude with "?!!!?!??!?", and Himself said if I wasn't planning to take an Ativan at bedtime he really thought I should.

[gestures at the world in general and at our federal government in particular]

Someone in one of my Discords mentioned that in a recent protracted panic attack of theirs, one of their main symptoms had been vertigo, which reinforced Himself's Ativan suggestion. I told my usual Tuesday evening dS-watching Discord that I was going to bail and go to bed early, and they offered to punt this week's episode to next week, and I said no need to do that because of me (the responsibility of everyone else's plans changing because my stress levels are making me crazy was also kind of stressful), and they said hey look, everyone who isn't Fox is fine with shifting to next week, decision made, off you go, feel better—and that made me cry a little, people being nice to me, which just goes to show that taking Ativan and going to bed early was the right decision.

Reader, I took the Ativan. I made up a little song to the tune of "Sodomy" from Hair, and then I slept soundly for the whole night. And this morning I feel—well, none of the stressy things have changed, but I feel like I slept well and I know I'm going to be making dinner this evening instead of driving on the freeway with my son in the middle of a dizzy spell, so that's a little better.

Here's my song:

Ativan,
Lexapro,
Gabapentin,
Buproprion,
Doctor - what pills am I even on?
Medication
Can be fun!
Join the Holy Order Pharma Sutra,
Everyone!

You're welcome.