update

today is my grandmother’s birthday. happy birthday, Grandma. we miss you.

my grandfather is off his respirator now. he can’t talk very well. it’s a low, gutteral rasp, and extremely difficult to understand. his mouth doesn’t form specific phonemes very accurately. it’s a lot of “weh wuh uh wharh eh wuh-yih uarh” and the like, and about an octave or six lower than usual.

the general idea is that he may have had a stroke at some point during his stay. his left side is alternately not as mobile as his right or just immobile altogether. i think that sounds about right.

my dad, today, mentioned home health care; he said the response from ICCU staff was something like, “it’s going to take a lot more than that.” this is going to get more difficult, i can see.

he definitely seems to remember who we are. he even smiled when i told him of Matty (his goofysweet dog) the other day. but my dad just now reported that he asked where he lived before he came to live in the hospital. he also didn’t understand the football game that was on his room TV, and asked what they (the players) were doing, apparently thinking that they were fighting.

so, y’know. got that going for us. ugh. it doesn’t bode very well.

got a lot to do today.

one thing i’ve got to somehow make time for is getting the computer that Travis gave me fixed up. i bought a new ribbon cable to see if that might help me to connect all the internal drives up finally, but i haven’t been able to find the time, seeing how my fucking work has had me scheduled for so much stinkin’ overtime lately. luckily, i’ve been able to VTO out of a decent portion of it, but i’m still away from home the vast majority of the day.

11:00-11:30am: wake up
noon: drive to work
12:30: start work
10:00-11:00 end work, drive to GMH
11:30-12:30: come home, hyperventilate and/or weep
(drink, repeat)
(repeat all)

my car’s not doing so hot, either. my turn signals are out, and it ain’t the fuses. the brakes sound like metal scraping against concrete at the end of a deceleration from higher speeds. at least one cylinder is out, and so it shudders slightly and acts like it wants to shut down sometimes (luckily it doesn’t). this i have to drive through Deer Country, in deer season, to and from the hospital at night. i am going to die very soon.