How's your weekend going?

I went home to Stanford/Danville yesterday. My stepfather, John, came and picked me up. He brought some disks I'd backed up files on when I upgraded to XP that couldn't be read (I didn't realise you had to close the session at the time). John had managed to recover them, so I now have a lot of my documents and music that I'd lost. Yea! Then we went to Stanford (about 45 minutes away) and woke up my mom (she'd worked the night before) and went over to my grandmother's in Danville. We had a great dinner and played with my grandmother's dog (miniature Doberman pinscher and possibly Dachshund). I gave Ma her birthday present (photo album/photo frame/notebook set) and we went down to my grandfather's grave to check the flowers and visit. I left the recording of 'Amazing Grace' I'd planned to play; I'll have to bring it next time.

I'm a little worried about my mom. She wasn't feeling well yesterday at all. She was really tired, kind of like a deflated balloon. Everytime she coughed she turned really red. She felt really tight in her breathing (she's got asthma too and also early signs of emphysema--and still smokes, grrr). She was kind of clammy and just didn't feel hardly like--and this is a quote--'even having her clothes on' because they bothered her. Granted, it could be the start of a cold or just bad allergies (everybody's had awful allergies lately, and all the rain has made the mould skyrocket), and her sugar was a little high, but it's worrisome because they had a patient at her workplace who tested positive for the germ that causes meningitis. They've got two of her co-workers out right now--one sick in the hospital and one (a cousin of ours) at home in quarrantine. The nursing home has two buildings, and while my mom doesn't work in the one that he'd been in, she had been in his room when he was coughing and having trouble. Everyone at work got a one-dose prophylactic of Cipro (an antibiotic) to help ward it off. It sounds like if she's getting sick, she's coming down with a virus, and I'm pretty sure it's bacterial meningitis that's the issue, because it's more virulent (and the antibiotic wouldn't have done anything to a virus). I went ahead and checked with the CDC when I got home and sent her the symptoms so she'd know what to watch for and asked her in no uncertain terms to go to the doctor if she started getting any neck pain, etc. (Sometimes it helps to have a hypochondriac medical librarian in the family. Of course, I also have all these health care workers who tend to put off going to the doctor!) I'm going to ask our employee health nurse tomorrow if there's anything more she should be doing.

It seems that whenever I visit my mom, whether she's had some rest or not, she's having problems with her health. She's only fifty-five. I have to admit, watching her cough this weekend, I really worry I may lose her. My grandfather, who admittedly lived for two decades after his emphysema diagnosis, spent a great deal of time on oxygen and was miserable towards the end. I don't want to see my mom in that situation. It's a little scary. And my grandmother just turned 79; she's lived the longest of any of her family, and is starting to talk like she won't be much longer in the world. She's diabetic, although she's looking pretty good lately. But I've noticed people in their last years tend to know. My mom and my grandmother are the only family I have left in the world (well, not counting my father, but he's been out of my life for years). John's a much better father, really, and I've pretty much adopted him as such. But I do also have friends who are as close as family, and that's comforting.

Speaking of which, John told me an amusing story on the way down to Danville. Well, I suppose it's only amusing because no one got hurt. His mom is 81 and she has a friend the same age. They've known each other since they were about ten. They went to the cemetery last weekend and there were some steps. John's mom wasn't sure she should try to go up it, since there was no handrail. She's had knee replacements and the other lady has had a hip replacement. But they decided to hold on to each other and made it up the steps, went to the graves, etc. On the way back down the steps they both fell--one on each side of the step. They both laid there for a moment trying to decide if they'd killed themselves, then started laughing themselves senseless. John's mom didn't think she wanted to try the steps again and risk falling, so she started scooching down the steps on her butt. Her friend was, like, 'you'll tear up your pants' and his mom was just saying 'I don't care, I'm just getting down the stairs!' So then they both got down and stood up and had a chuckle about how if they'd just gone and died people would have just shaken their heads at these two dead biddies on either side of a cemetery stairway. [At their age, I guess humour's the way to get through the day.] I have to admit, if a person's going to go, having your best friend of seven decades with you might be the way to go; at at least they weren't in dresses with their bloomers hanging out so they could have a little dignity. :)

John's son Robert graduated from high school the other night. I'm not sure who worked harder to get him through (I suspect John, who's all but had to sit on him to keep him in school), but there was a collective sigh from the household. Next step: real life!

Today we played Cthulhu and had a nice one-day adventure, the type with some strange monster crushing people on an English moor and a giant dog appearing as a death omen. You've got to love those, and even though we had Deep Ones (nasty fish-like men who live in the sea), none of us got speargunned through the groin (I kid you not, that happened once--another player's character and mine just happened to be close enough in a fight to get skewered together. Try to explain that wound to an emergency room. It's a good thing it's just fiction.