Comments | roosterbear: finding emotional equilibrium

roosterbear

finding emotional equilibrium

Dec 10, 2006 23:59

Silence is the unbearable repartee.
(Charles Dickens, courtesy of my fortune cookie widget)

The rollercoaster continues.

( Read more... )

pictures, mom, backstory

Comments 8

anonymous December 11 2006, 08:53:39 UTC

I hope that all this helps you come to terms with your feelings about your Mom. But one thing about the blood sample: there is a long-term measurement that can be gotten from blood that gives a good idea of what your blood sugar level was for about 4-6 weeks before the sample was taken. They do one on me every 6 months or so, and they can tell whether my blood sugar level was dangerously high, of high normal, or low. I suspect that particular test can be done on blood after death (although I am not certain). The actual blood sugar level at the time the sample was taken isn't so important, except that it could be correlated with the time since her last meal ( ... )

roosterbear December 11 2006, 15:41:15 UTC

But one thing about the blood sample: there is a long-term measurement that can be gotten from blood that gives a good idea of what your blood sugar level was for about 4-6 weeks before the sample was taken... I suppose that overeating of sugar in a diabetic who is not taking pills or insulin to control the disease might be a way of trying to commit suicide. It wouldn't be a heart attack, though; it would be diabetic coma leading to death.

Hello anonymous person... yeah, actually this is along the lines of one of the possibilities I've suspected, and I'm surprised they were willing to put a cause of death on her death certificate without examining this very basic detail. It's not like they haven't had enough time to do that yet.

Anyway, thanks for the insight. It does help me prepare for one of the more likely scenarios.

mhw December 11 2006, 16:13:55 UTC

there is a long-term measurement that can be gotten from blood that gives a good idea of what your blood sugar level was for about 4-6 weeks before the sample was taken.

Yes, that's the HbA1c assay. Details here. You can get estimates of blood glucose up to a couple of months prior to test with that. With corrections it can be used post mortem, but you have to have fairly good estimates of time since death and other factors to make the values anything other than crudely indicative.

aesa December 11 2006, 09:24:31 UTC

roosterbear December 11 2006, 16:32:57 UTC

I actually took a class on how grief affects people once while I was in college. They told me that it usually takes around a year for the grieving process to settle itself out...more than a year actually, since key dates tend to dredge up memories and feelings related to them.

The rational part of my brain knows this, but for whatever reason I'm really impatient with the process. Partly it's ego (I'm stronger than that), partly it's insecurity (people are going to get bored of me grieving), partly it's the content itself, because it forces me to look at a painful relationship in a different way. Still, it's very helpful to get the reminder from an outside source that there's nothing wrong with me, that this is going to take a while.

those latter parts really suck because there's really no way it could ever have been any different, and you sort of have to grieve for all the potential for good and happiness that never got realized.That's it in a nutshell. If there's anything that can reduce me to tears, it's sitting with this- both ( ... )

thaaang December 11 2006, 09:58:34 UTC

The whole strong/weak thing you're talking about is interesting. I mean, hello - your mom died. That is generally considered to be license to be weepy and emotionally delicate for a while, regardless of the flavor of relationship you had with her. It's a big thing to lose a parent (even an estranged parent), because it's another big step into the world of not having anyone else to look out for you ( ... )

mhw December 11 2006, 13:05:07 UTC

*smile* You wrote pretty much what I was about to write.

Considering death, we're all weak, because it's an irrevocable. As Fitzgerald translated Omar Khayyám:

The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Grief at loss can last a long, long time. I still dream that my grandmother is still alive, 32 years after she died, that somehow she's just been away on holiday or something like that. And then, of course, it's a matter of waking and accepting the reality, over and over again.

Sorry it sounds so sappy, but I'm dead serious here. And hugs to you - this is hard shit.

Indeed. And from me, too.

roosterbear December 11 2006, 16:48:18 UTC

try to be a bit more patient with yourself and your needs, without feeling like you have to explain the emotions to yourself as they're happening - that makes it that much more stressful, feeling like you have to justify it to yourself.

Hmm. I think that figuring out the emotions is just one of my coping mechanisms, and actually helps me. For whatever reason, I need to make sense of what I'm feeling (which could easily become the subject of another entry). But...

From what I've seen in your journal, you're a very capable, emotionally intelligent person. I don't think you have to worry about going overboard with the grief thing - you aren't going to lose yourself in it.Yeah, this is my biggest fear, and that's probably the source of my impatience. And that's wrapped up in my relationship with my mom, again making it more complicated. I know there's a point where emotions just don't make sense, and you just have to feel them as a part of letting go of the pain, but that's always been scary for me. It's hard to be patient with it, but ( ... )