End of the year, end of the decade
My now-retired coworker used to say to us, as certain timeframes ended, on behalf of the management, take the rest of the month/year off. In honor of him, my boss said to the manager and me today, you can take the rest of the decade off.
We are ending the decade with uncertainty regarding my grandma. She had another appointment today, which we thought was one thing (a stress test) but ended up being another (a meeting with a second cardiologist). We don't know if she's getting confused about what she's supposed to be doing or what, especially since she's had a bunch of doctor's appointments in the past couple weeks, but it's a problem when she tells us one thing and something else happens. Mom really wants someone to go with her to her appointments, because then another person is hearing what the doctor is saying and can write it down. Grandma will have another appointment on Thursday--but not her original procedure; that's off. She found out today that she has an irregular heartbeat. She may have had it for a while, in part because nothing is suddenly abnormal to her. Who knows. But she wasn't cleared to have the surgery to remove the mass in her colon, so that won't happen, and instead she's having a stress test. Since mom already took the day off work, she's thinking she should go with grandma to the appointment.
In the meantime, I think my mother texted me more today than she has the rest of the year. It started this morning, with an apology, as she set off her car alarm before 6 AM. She left early because it had snowed, second day in a row (so much for our string of 50s). I did hear it, but dad slept through it despite being feet away, though there were two walls separating him from the sound. When I got off work, I checked my phone to discover 10 (!) texts waiting for me--most ever. Four of those were identical, saying mom was going to the hospital after work to see if her mom was still there. (Grandma's appointment at the professional building was at 2; mom got off work at 3.) My mother has the attention span of a goldfish, and it's not uncommon for her to say the same thing or ask the same question multiple times in a short amount of time. I replied as I would in person: So you're going to go to the hospital after work? Heh. (She would later say there was a phone glitch, and on her end it said the text was still sending. Weird.) About 2:30 or so, she snuck a phone call home; grandma had called mom's cell, didn't get her, and left a voicemail saying she'd try the other line. Dad said grandma hadn't called the house at all, so mom asked me to call and see what was going on. Grandma was still in her appointment, to the point where she answered the phone, asked me to hold, and then I could hear the doctor in the background going, your procedure on Thursday likely is off, but let me check one more thing; he then left the room. Grandma related a few things to me, so I was holding the house phone in one hand and texting mom with the other. Grandma would also say she'd tried calling mom several times and never got her; I said, she's working today and can't answer the phone if she's working. Grandma thought she'd called at mom's lunchtime, but mom said the only call she saw was from after lunch.
Grandma called back about ten after 3 and said she'd call mom later. I told her, stay there; mom's on her way, and I can't reach her while she's driving. Grandma said she'd go down to the lobby, and was walking down the hallway when mom arrived, so they did meet up shortly after that and went to Wendy's for a little bit. (The next text was to let mom know that dad was ordering Chinese around 4 PM, since that's been our dinner plan for tonight, in case she was looking to eat at Wendy's; she assured me she'd eat dinner at home. Good to know.)
I didn't really get a bead on how grandma's feeling about this turn of events. I know how I feel, and that's to not rush this. I know she's impatient and wants to get this over with, but clearly that's not what needs to happen here. I was telling dad, at least she appears to want to keep going, she has a will to live; she's disappointed that she's unable to move forward with her life, rather than thinking she has a death sentence or anything. At least, that's my take on it. Compare her to my grandfather, who basically was waiting to die for four years. She definitely has a healthier outlook overall. But this isn't something to take lightly. These are legitimate health concerns putting a pause on the procedure, in part because everyone wants her to survive the procedure. I'm not sure how well she understands that. Like, it's not that she's an imbecile and doesn't realize she could die, but more like she's not taking the time to fully think through everything and recognize the consequences of being rash. She can be impulsive and doesn't like to be held back, even when it's in her best interest. She can totally be like a little kid at times. Unfortunately, that's not to her advantage right now.
Other than that, we've had a somewhat quiet evening at home. Okay, I take that back; the game could be kind of funny. What Do You Meme? is along the lines of Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity, except you're putting captions to pictures, not words. It's meant for adults only, which became clear when one of the pictures was of this guy, shirtless and wearing a Santa hat (seasonal), grabbing his nipples; also, roughly half of my caption cards at one point were about sex. And those weren't even the cards marked "mature only"! Mom cracked those open and they're full of swear words and stuff. We were plenty fine with the regular cards, thanks. Though some of the captions made us laugh so hard we almost cried. We did have fun, though mom admitted we'll probably never play it again. Who knows. It would be way more fun with more people. Three is the bare minimum. It's totally obvious which person wins the round when only two are competing, since the third is the judge.
Well, that's it for this year. I'll see how late I end up staying up tonight; I don't think I made it last year. I do have two more posts, two of my typical year-end ones. I'd thought about doing a roundup post for some of the notes I never wrote up (Chance the Snapper, anyone?), but if I do it, it'll be next month. I spent quite some time this month going through this year's entries for my 2019 year in review post, and I also have my comments post as well. Pictures will have to wait because I'm still stuck on graduation back in June--I have yet to upload any of those, whoops. And I have a ton of pictures from after that. I'm hoping I can post those by the end of January. No promises, though.
We are ending the decade with uncertainty regarding my grandma. She had another appointment today, which we thought was one thing (a stress test) but ended up being another (a meeting with a second cardiologist). We don't know if she's getting confused about what she's supposed to be doing or what, especially since she's had a bunch of doctor's appointments in the past couple weeks, but it's a problem when she tells us one thing and something else happens. Mom really wants someone to go with her to her appointments, because then another person is hearing what the doctor is saying and can write it down. Grandma will have another appointment on Thursday--but not her original procedure; that's off. She found out today that she has an irregular heartbeat. She may have had it for a while, in part because nothing is suddenly abnormal to her. Who knows. But she wasn't cleared to have the surgery to remove the mass in her colon, so that won't happen, and instead she's having a stress test. Since mom already took the day off work, she's thinking she should go with grandma to the appointment.
In the meantime, I think my mother texted me more today than she has the rest of the year. It started this morning, with an apology, as she set off her car alarm before 6 AM. She left early because it had snowed, second day in a row (so much for our string of 50s). I did hear it, but dad slept through it despite being feet away, though there were two walls separating him from the sound. When I got off work, I checked my phone to discover 10 (!) texts waiting for me--most ever. Four of those were identical, saying mom was going to the hospital after work to see if her mom was still there. (Grandma's appointment at the professional building was at 2; mom got off work at 3.) My mother has the attention span of a goldfish, and it's not uncommon for her to say the same thing or ask the same question multiple times in a short amount of time. I replied as I would in person: So you're going to go to the hospital after work? Heh. (She would later say there was a phone glitch, and on her end it said the text was still sending. Weird.) About 2:30 or so, she snuck a phone call home; grandma had called mom's cell, didn't get her, and left a voicemail saying she'd try the other line. Dad said grandma hadn't called the house at all, so mom asked me to call and see what was going on. Grandma was still in her appointment, to the point where she answered the phone, asked me to hold, and then I could hear the doctor in the background going, your procedure on Thursday likely is off, but let me check one more thing; he then left the room. Grandma related a few things to me, so I was holding the house phone in one hand and texting mom with the other. Grandma would also say she'd tried calling mom several times and never got her; I said, she's working today and can't answer the phone if she's working. Grandma thought she'd called at mom's lunchtime, but mom said the only call she saw was from after lunch.
Grandma called back about ten after 3 and said she'd call mom later. I told her, stay there; mom's on her way, and I can't reach her while she's driving. Grandma said she'd go down to the lobby, and was walking down the hallway when mom arrived, so they did meet up shortly after that and went to Wendy's for a little bit. (The next text was to let mom know that dad was ordering Chinese around 4 PM, since that's been our dinner plan for tonight, in case she was looking to eat at Wendy's; she assured me she'd eat dinner at home. Good to know.)
I didn't really get a bead on how grandma's feeling about this turn of events. I know how I feel, and that's to not rush this. I know she's impatient and wants to get this over with, but clearly that's not what needs to happen here. I was telling dad, at least she appears to want to keep going, she has a will to live; she's disappointed that she's unable to move forward with her life, rather than thinking she has a death sentence or anything. At least, that's my take on it. Compare her to my grandfather, who basically was waiting to die for four years. She definitely has a healthier outlook overall. But this isn't something to take lightly. These are legitimate health concerns putting a pause on the procedure, in part because everyone wants her to survive the procedure. I'm not sure how well she understands that. Like, it's not that she's an imbecile and doesn't realize she could die, but more like she's not taking the time to fully think through everything and recognize the consequences of being rash. She can be impulsive and doesn't like to be held back, even when it's in her best interest. She can totally be like a little kid at times. Unfortunately, that's not to her advantage right now.
Other than that, we've had a somewhat quiet evening at home. Okay, I take that back; the game could be kind of funny. What Do You Meme? is along the lines of Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity, except you're putting captions to pictures, not words. It's meant for adults only, which became clear when one of the pictures was of this guy, shirtless and wearing a Santa hat (seasonal), grabbing his nipples; also, roughly half of my caption cards at one point were about sex. And those weren't even the cards marked "mature only"! Mom cracked those open and they're full of swear words and stuff. We were plenty fine with the regular cards, thanks. Though some of the captions made us laugh so hard we almost cried. We did have fun, though mom admitted we'll probably never play it again. Who knows. It would be way more fun with more people. Three is the bare minimum. It's totally obvious which person wins the round when only two are competing, since the third is the judge.
Well, that's it for this year. I'll see how late I end up staying up tonight; I don't think I made it last year. I do have two more posts, two of my typical year-end ones. I'd thought about doing a roundup post for some of the notes I never wrote up (Chance the Snapper, anyone?), but if I do it, it'll be next month. I spent quite some time this month going through this year's entries for my 2019 year in review post, and I also have my comments post as well. Pictures will have to wait because I'm still stuck on graduation back in June--I have yet to upload any of those, whoops. And I have a ton of pictures from after that. I'm hoping I can post those by the end of January. No promises, though.