(no subject)
I'm better today than yesterday, and right now that's a hugely positive statement.
My uncle, my dad's younger and not-at-all-little brother, went to the hospital Tuesday night because he woke up Tuesday morning unable to speak. I have yet to be told whether he was having trouble making himself speak words, or whether words weren't forming in his mind, but either way it was alarming, and isn't yet entirely gone.
The first night, we suspected stroke, which was painful but not surprising since he's a 50 year old man who smokes and drinks heavily and is morbidly obese. Last night, we began to suspect it might be something much worse: Multiple Sclerosis. My dad saw a doctors' report on the CT scan which identified my uncle as having "lesions consistent with demyelination," and demyelination is the cause of all the difficulties of MS. Basically, it means the insulation is stripped from your brain's "wires," the nerves, so that although messages are sent from the brain to various body parts, they never get anywhere because their electrical signals just disperse when they hit a patch of uninsulated wiring.
Practically, that means that since the disease continues to strip wiring from the time it starts to the time a patient dies, and since we have no way to completely stop stripping or reverse the negative effects, that MS is a seriously debilitating, degenerative disorder.
It's got genetic linkages, though no one's determined that it's directly passed down.
And my uncle probably has it.
None of that was what really threw me into an unhappy fit last night, however. What did it for me was my father who, in the course of asking me to look up facts about MS through my much faster internet connection, decided HE TOO might have the disease. My dad's a chronic self-diagnoser, he does it all the time through medical websites, but this is the first time I've been caught in the middle of it, and it really threw me for a loop. He's got a convincing argument, one I can hardly refute since only he knows his body, but by pressing it on me he forces me at least entertain the logical jump from "my uncle may have Multiple Sclerosis" to "my dad's little brother probably has Multiple Sclerosis and my dad may have it too," to "two of my family members may have Multiple Sclerosis, including my father, WHAT IF I'M NEXT???" Fucking scary conversation to have at 10 o'clock at night when one's exhausted from work anyway.
And all of that is on top of the storm I've already been brewing for myself. Now not only my direct supervisor here in California, but also my director have questioned whether I'm not "putting pressure on myself and everyone else" by trying to obtain a full-time AmeriCorps Education Award from the government. What's this enormous pressure I'm making everyone suffer under? Wanting to work 40 hours a week + 10. 50 hours a week, and that's RIDICULOUS, apparently. Y'all, I'm supposed to be in a FULL-TIME VOLUNTEER PROGRAM!! Full time, unless I'm completely insane (and please, tell me if I am), still means 40 hours a week in this country. Entry level positions where advancement is intended often require 60 to 80 hour weeks from people exactly my age with exactly my qualifications. Why is it such an ENORMOUS thing to ask to be employed at that level in volunteer work?
So what happened with these two crises, personal and familial, boiling to a head at the same time?
I talked to people.
I slept.
I talked to more people.
Mary is amazing, Heidi was both reassuring and logical, and I feel much better today. Not that I'm not still pissed off on the one hand and gut-scared on the other...but they're not overwhelming sensations anymore. They're just factors, and ones I can mix into the pot with several other factors to make a tasty tasty stew that will eventually boil down to decisions and action.
My stew still needs to simmer a bit, but it sure looks better today. Thanks guys, ye be awesome.
My uncle, my dad's younger and not-at-all-little brother, went to the hospital Tuesday night because he woke up Tuesday morning unable to speak. I have yet to be told whether he was having trouble making himself speak words, or whether words weren't forming in his mind, but either way it was alarming, and isn't yet entirely gone.
The first night, we suspected stroke, which was painful but not surprising since he's a 50 year old man who smokes and drinks heavily and is morbidly obese. Last night, we began to suspect it might be something much worse: Multiple Sclerosis. My dad saw a doctors' report on the CT scan which identified my uncle as having "lesions consistent with demyelination," and demyelination is the cause of all the difficulties of MS. Basically, it means the insulation is stripped from your brain's "wires," the nerves, so that although messages are sent from the brain to various body parts, they never get anywhere because their electrical signals just disperse when they hit a patch of uninsulated wiring.
Practically, that means that since the disease continues to strip wiring from the time it starts to the time a patient dies, and since we have no way to completely stop stripping or reverse the negative effects, that MS is a seriously debilitating, degenerative disorder.
It's got genetic linkages, though no one's determined that it's directly passed down.
And my uncle probably has it.
None of that was what really threw me into an unhappy fit last night, however. What did it for me was my father who, in the course of asking me to look up facts about MS through my much faster internet connection, decided HE TOO might have the disease. My dad's a chronic self-diagnoser, he does it all the time through medical websites, but this is the first time I've been caught in the middle of it, and it really threw me for a loop. He's got a convincing argument, one I can hardly refute since only he knows his body, but by pressing it on me he forces me at least entertain the logical jump from "my uncle may have Multiple Sclerosis" to "my dad's little brother probably has Multiple Sclerosis and my dad may have it too," to "two of my family members may have Multiple Sclerosis, including my father, WHAT IF I'M NEXT???" Fucking scary conversation to have at 10 o'clock at night when one's exhausted from work anyway.
And all of that is on top of the storm I've already been brewing for myself. Now not only my direct supervisor here in California, but also my director have questioned whether I'm not "putting pressure on myself and everyone else" by trying to obtain a full-time AmeriCorps Education Award from the government. What's this enormous pressure I'm making everyone suffer under? Wanting to work 40 hours a week + 10. 50 hours a week, and that's RIDICULOUS, apparently. Y'all, I'm supposed to be in a FULL-TIME VOLUNTEER PROGRAM!! Full time, unless I'm completely insane (and please, tell me if I am), still means 40 hours a week in this country. Entry level positions where advancement is intended often require 60 to 80 hour weeks from people exactly my age with exactly my qualifications. Why is it such an ENORMOUS thing to ask to be employed at that level in volunteer work?
So what happened with these two crises, personal and familial, boiling to a head at the same time?
I talked to people.
I slept.
I talked to more people.
Mary is amazing, Heidi was both reassuring and logical, and I feel much better today. Not that I'm not still pissed off on the one hand and gut-scared on the other...but they're not overwhelming sensations anymore. They're just factors, and ones I can mix into the pot with several other factors to make a tasty tasty stew that will eventually boil down to decisions and action.
My stew still needs to simmer a bit, but it sure looks better today. Thanks guys, ye be awesome.