Bad things actually come in CLUMPS OF DISASTER
First, thank you to everyone who commented on my last post. I'm sorry I haven't told you all how much I appreciate it.
I'm not consciously aware of being upset about my coworker, but I HAVE been avoiding my own journal like the plague all this week. I know I get avoidant like that when I'm upset or anxious, though. It's a bad habit I should really try to break.
(Well, that, and I've been snapping at my mother a lot. Inexplicably, every single thing she's said or done this week has irritated me. I should apologize.)
My boss is now coming in to work! She talked to everyone she could on Sunday about it. She also gave me a few of the details I was missing:
-Apparently, BD was NOT just drinking. She also had taken Ecstasy that the Edo boys gave her. (Something I gather has broken my boss's heart, as BD had ALWAYS promised her to take no other street drugs besides pot.) This, combined with the alcohol, stopped her heart. The paramedics got her heart going again, but it was stopped for too long. Hence why she was in a deep coma when they got it going again, and was never able to wake up.
-Apparently the paramedic was wrong that she was all alone. The Edo boys were apparently responsible for calling 9-1-1. And they did it when she started to say she had a HORRIBLE headache (after which one of them disappeared, but he was trying to get her a glass of water), not when she collapsed. GO THEM for realizing so quickly that it was serious, even if it didn't save her.
(Maybe they stayed back when the paramedics came, since they apparently gave her the E? Or - hell - maybe the paramedic didn't even realize that this white girl was with a bunch of Asian guys? I have no idea.)
-My boss says that BD's last words to her were, "I'm going to dance all night and go to the pancake breakfast in the morning, so you don't need to stay up for me. 'Night, love you Mom." ...That's good. It's good when last words are, "I love you," and I think you could practically count on BD for that.
My boss seems to be doing remarkably well, actually. Another of my coworkers who's been around our Taco Time about twice as long as I have (i.e. 6 years or so) asked me if I was around when her father died. I said no, and he said that she was essentially non-functional for a month. We all expected this would be even worse.
Instead, she seems to be handling things...okay. She's working again, anyway. (The memorial service was in B.C. on Saturday, so we didn't see her until Sunday, but she's been back in since she could be.) The same coworker said that she's become very...Zen...about her life in general the past year or so, and that he thinks that's REALLY helping her.
I'm just hoping this is true and she doesn't crash horribly later on. She seems calm enough to find solace in the idea that her daughter's death might be a lesson and a message to some of her hard-partying friends.
+++
One of my four cats, Callisto, has been off their kitty kibble lately. Actually, they all have; but now that it's not so hot the other three are eating just fine, so we think they were just too hot earlier.
Callisto, however, still wasn't eating by yesterday morning. And my mom and my sister observed something very alarming; our resident fatboy has a WAIST. And no tummy. He's lost THAT MUCH weight. We've had him on prescription diet food since he was a kitten, and he's never had a waist. So Mom took him to the vet's.
...Turns out, he has liver disease.
The vet told Mom he was quite jaundiced. It's hard to see in cats (Mom says the vet showed her how to check by pulling their eyes open wide or peeling the sides of their mouths open), but I still feel terrible for not noticing. At least now we know how to regularly check that in all of our cats.
Apparently though, if the vets can get him stable, this is something which is fairly common in cats and can be managed. So we're crossing our fingers. He spent the night at the vet's for treatment, and when Mom called this morning he was doing better...if not great. (At least he made it through the night!) We might go visit him later today, as the vet said we could.
I hope my kitty will be okay. I really, really don't want to lose another cat.
+++
Monday night, I was getting dressed after my shower, and my feet were tingling and burning really badly. So I hopped up on the bathroom counter. This is something that's been going on for a while, but I've been ignoring it. I mean, I KNOW this happens after I've been standing for too long, so I sat down, right?
Well, I happened to glance down at my right foot, and got a shock so bad that I nearly passed out on the spot:
I had NO ARCH.
You have to understand: I have high arches. The kind that leave almost no print between the ball of your foot and your heel when you make wet footprints on the bathmat. The kind that my long-suffering ballet teacher once enviously sighed over, "What a waste." (No, I can't dance to save my life.) It's the one thing about my feet that I actually like - otherwise, they're too long and skinny, and I'm prone to ingrown toenails.
Seeing my foot FLAT sent me into a state that I don't think I can really describe now. (It didn't help that I hadn't eaten in hours at that point and was a bit loopy from lack of sleep.) It might seem like a really extreme thing to say, but I wanted to die at that moment. It was just...one thing Too Much.
When I looked at my foot more closely, I could see that from the ankle down it was faintly purplish, and it was horrendously swollen, as if I were about 100 pounds heavier than I currently am. It was also nearly numb to the touch when I hauled it into my lap for a closer look.
I discovered what looks like a whole bunch of broken capillaries across my instep and around my ankle...I assume from the pressure of standing too long. So I'm getting blood pooling in my foot, I think.
I laid down on the bathroom floor for a good while with my foot elevated on the cold side of the tub. It seemed to help a lot within about two or three minutes (the swelling went down by about half), but I was still freaking out. I was ice cold and sweaty for a long time, and it seemed pretty touch-and-go whether I would vomit or faint at some point, but eventually I did feel better.
Last night, when I finally woke up (14 hours of sleep, wut?), my foot was back to normal - whew! - except for some remaining swelling around the problem areas at the instep and ankle. I'm thinking I should get a compressive foot support or something to wear at work until it heals? I don't know what else to do, really, except stay off it as much as I can.
(Standing stork-like on my LEFT foot seems like a bad idea. For what I'm sure are obvious reasons.)
It makes me fret that it hurts to stretch my right foot much.
ARGH. At least...it's cold and rainy right now, so my hayfever is not acting up as much today.
Yeah. JULY NEEDS TO BE OVER NOW.
I'm not consciously aware of being upset about my coworker, but I HAVE been avoiding my own journal like the plague all this week. I know I get avoidant like that when I'm upset or anxious, though. It's a bad habit I should really try to break.
(Well, that, and I've been snapping at my mother a lot. Inexplicably, every single thing she's said or done this week has irritated me. I should apologize.)
My boss is now coming in to work! She talked to everyone she could on Sunday about it. She also gave me a few of the details I was missing:
-Apparently, BD was NOT just drinking. She also had taken Ecstasy that the Edo boys gave her. (Something I gather has broken my boss's heart, as BD had ALWAYS promised her to take no other street drugs besides pot.) This, combined with the alcohol, stopped her heart. The paramedics got her heart going again, but it was stopped for too long. Hence why she was in a deep coma when they got it going again, and was never able to wake up.
-Apparently the paramedic was wrong that she was all alone. The Edo boys were apparently responsible for calling 9-1-1. And they did it when she started to say she had a HORRIBLE headache (after which one of them disappeared, but he was trying to get her a glass of water), not when she collapsed. GO THEM for realizing so quickly that it was serious, even if it didn't save her.
(Maybe they stayed back when the paramedics came, since they apparently gave her the E? Or - hell - maybe the paramedic didn't even realize that this white girl was with a bunch of Asian guys? I have no idea.)
-My boss says that BD's last words to her were, "I'm going to dance all night and go to the pancake breakfast in the morning, so you don't need to stay up for me. 'Night, love you Mom." ...That's good. It's good when last words are, "I love you," and I think you could practically count on BD for that.
My boss seems to be doing remarkably well, actually. Another of my coworkers who's been around our Taco Time about twice as long as I have (i.e. 6 years or so) asked me if I was around when her father died. I said no, and he said that she was essentially non-functional for a month. We all expected this would be even worse.
Instead, she seems to be handling things...okay. She's working again, anyway. (The memorial service was in B.C. on Saturday, so we didn't see her until Sunday, but she's been back in since she could be.) The same coworker said that she's become very...Zen...about her life in general the past year or so, and that he thinks that's REALLY helping her.
I'm just hoping this is true and she doesn't crash horribly later on. She seems calm enough to find solace in the idea that her daughter's death might be a lesson and a message to some of her hard-partying friends.
+++
One of my four cats, Callisto, has been off their kitty kibble lately. Actually, they all have; but now that it's not so hot the other three are eating just fine, so we think they were just too hot earlier.
Callisto, however, still wasn't eating by yesterday morning. And my mom and my sister observed something very alarming; our resident fatboy has a WAIST. And no tummy. He's lost THAT MUCH weight. We've had him on prescription diet food since he was a kitten, and he's never had a waist. So Mom took him to the vet's.
...Turns out, he has liver disease.
The vet told Mom he was quite jaundiced. It's hard to see in cats (Mom says the vet showed her how to check by pulling their eyes open wide or peeling the sides of their mouths open), but I still feel terrible for not noticing. At least now we know how to regularly check that in all of our cats.
Apparently though, if the vets can get him stable, this is something which is fairly common in cats and can be managed. So we're crossing our fingers. He spent the night at the vet's for treatment, and when Mom called this morning he was doing better...if not great. (At least he made it through the night!) We might go visit him later today, as the vet said we could.
I hope my kitty will be okay. I really, really don't want to lose another cat.
+++
Monday night, I was getting dressed after my shower, and my feet were tingling and burning really badly. So I hopped up on the bathroom counter. This is something that's been going on for a while, but I've been ignoring it. I mean, I KNOW this happens after I've been standing for too long, so I sat down, right?
Well, I happened to glance down at my right foot, and got a shock so bad that I nearly passed out on the spot:
I had NO ARCH.
You have to understand: I have high arches. The kind that leave almost no print between the ball of your foot and your heel when you make wet footprints on the bathmat. The kind that my long-suffering ballet teacher once enviously sighed over, "What a waste." (No, I can't dance to save my life.) It's the one thing about my feet that I actually like - otherwise, they're too long and skinny, and I'm prone to ingrown toenails.
Seeing my foot FLAT sent me into a state that I don't think I can really describe now. (It didn't help that I hadn't eaten in hours at that point and was a bit loopy from lack of sleep.) It might seem like a really extreme thing to say, but I wanted to die at that moment. It was just...one thing Too Much.
When I looked at my foot more closely, I could see that from the ankle down it was faintly purplish, and it was horrendously swollen, as if I were about 100 pounds heavier than I currently am. It was also nearly numb to the touch when I hauled it into my lap for a closer look.
I discovered what looks like a whole bunch of broken capillaries across my instep and around my ankle...I assume from the pressure of standing too long. So I'm getting blood pooling in my foot, I think.
I laid down on the bathroom floor for a good while with my foot elevated on the cold side of the tub. It seemed to help a lot within about two or three minutes (the swelling went down by about half), but I was still freaking out. I was ice cold and sweaty for a long time, and it seemed pretty touch-and-go whether I would vomit or faint at some point, but eventually I did feel better.
Last night, when I finally woke up (14 hours of sleep, wut?), my foot was back to normal - whew! - except for some remaining swelling around the problem areas at the instep and ankle. I'm thinking I should get a compressive foot support or something to wear at work until it heals? I don't know what else to do, really, except stay off it as much as I can.
(Standing stork-like on my LEFT foot seems like a bad idea. For what I'm sure are obvious reasons.)
It makes me fret that it hurts to stretch my right foot much.
ARGH. At least...it's cold and rainy right now, so my hayfever is not acting up as much today.
Yeah. JULY NEEDS TO BE OVER NOW.