Family and things
I haven't made a proper journal entry in quite a while, it seems, apart from showing off the bits and bobs of my costumes. (As it happens, the tights for my girl!five thing showed up and they're very cool - they've got a cool cable-knit pattern on them like the sweater. See?)
There's a couple things I've been wanting to mention on here but I haven't really sat down to do it, so:
There's been some business with my grandmother that came to a rather frightening moment this weekend. We learned several months ago that she has a growth on one of her ovaries. As far as they know it's not cancerous and it could have been there a very long time before they even found it. For a while they were talking about the possibility of going in and having it removed. Initially, she agreed, but then after talking with my Dad, she agreed to reschedule to this weekend. The night before last, grandma got a ride up to the hospital to go over everything and then came home. Once at home, she got a call from one of the nurses saying that she could come back to the emergency room immediately because a test had come back showing signs of renal failure. She refused because she felt fine, and called my mom and me to tell us what had happened. It's at that point that I freaked out a bit. It seemed like nobody was caring that something potentially fatal was happening to a member of our family.
However, it turns out that the readings were perfectly normal for her based on her history (she has one kidney, which skews the results) and furthermore, she's decided not to get the surgery at all. This is largely on my Dad's influence, who is extremely suspicious of hospitals. He thinks that once you walk through the doors, you lose all ability to make decisions for yourself. That part is unfounded, definitely. The other side, which I totally understand, is that my grandmother is an 89 year old woman. Surgery to deal with something that isn't causing her discomfort is definitely a risky proposition. Still, it irks me that nobody is weighing the options.
So, she'll be making an appointment to go see a geriatric doctor...who, I suppose will look over everything - and we'll see from there.
The second thing I wanted to talk about is an incident that happened at my mom's work several months ago. A man who had been fired during the holidays came in, shot one of the management, and then himself. My mother wasn't directly involved, though she was in the building when it happened. As far as these sorts of things go, I think it qualifies as "close to home". Though I have the same sort of detachment thinking about it that I get when I've heard of any other shooting. I don't know if that's good or bad, really. People do strange and terrible things that make little sense to me, and I'll never understand that sort of thing, no matter how close to home it is. But...I'm not horrified by it. Just sad for humanity.
Hm.
Anyway. I think my dad's coming down today, which should be lovely given I as good as hung up on him the other night when he was rambling on about how surgery should have never been an option at all for my grandmother. ...and I haven't had any sleep.
Despite the tone of this entry so far, I'm alright. School is going nicely and I'm learning things I'm interested in. On Monday I'm going to go see about cashing in a bond I've got lying around - I have a list of things I'd like to do and most of them require a bit of dosh.
There's a couple things I've been wanting to mention on here but I haven't really sat down to do it, so:
There's been some business with my grandmother that came to a rather frightening moment this weekend. We learned several months ago that she has a growth on one of her ovaries. As far as they know it's not cancerous and it could have been there a very long time before they even found it. For a while they were talking about the possibility of going in and having it removed. Initially, she agreed, but then after talking with my Dad, she agreed to reschedule to this weekend. The night before last, grandma got a ride up to the hospital to go over everything and then came home. Once at home, she got a call from one of the nurses saying that she could come back to the emergency room immediately because a test had come back showing signs of renal failure. She refused because she felt fine, and called my mom and me to tell us what had happened. It's at that point that I freaked out a bit. It seemed like nobody was caring that something potentially fatal was happening to a member of our family.
However, it turns out that the readings were perfectly normal for her based on her history (she has one kidney, which skews the results) and furthermore, she's decided not to get the surgery at all. This is largely on my Dad's influence, who is extremely suspicious of hospitals. He thinks that once you walk through the doors, you lose all ability to make decisions for yourself. That part is unfounded, definitely. The other side, which I totally understand, is that my grandmother is an 89 year old woman. Surgery to deal with something that isn't causing her discomfort is definitely a risky proposition. Still, it irks me that nobody is weighing the options.
So, she'll be making an appointment to go see a geriatric doctor...who, I suppose will look over everything - and we'll see from there.
The second thing I wanted to talk about is an incident that happened at my mom's work several months ago. A man who had been fired during the holidays came in, shot one of the management, and then himself. My mother wasn't directly involved, though she was in the building when it happened. As far as these sorts of things go, I think it qualifies as "close to home". Though I have the same sort of detachment thinking about it that I get when I've heard of any other shooting. I don't know if that's good or bad, really. People do strange and terrible things that make little sense to me, and I'll never understand that sort of thing, no matter how close to home it is. But...I'm not horrified by it. Just sad for humanity.
Hm.
Anyway. I think my dad's coming down today, which should be lovely given I as good as hung up on him the other night when he was rambling on about how surgery should have never been an option at all for my grandmother. ...and I haven't had any sleep.
Despite the tone of this entry so far, I'm alright. School is going nicely and I'm learning things I'm interested in. On Monday I'm going to go see about cashing in a bond I've got lying around - I have a list of things I'd like to do and most of them require a bit of dosh.