Recent ramblings

Wow, its only been a week. What a week. I don’t even know where to start.
Kids: fine
Work: not fine
Family: not fine

That about sums it up.

Kids are doing good. Punkin Head actually slept through the night for the past few nights which is a nice change from waking at 1 or 2am and staying awake for 2 hours! Bubba is alright too.

Work is a mess. In October we started 10-hour shifts with alternating weekends off. It’s actually a dream (I have not had a Saturday or Sunday off in succession unless it was requested in years) but it has been quite a challenge because our workers are few. The beauty of shift work is the hours are flexible. The ugly of shift work is the hours can be flexed. My hours were flexed. Instead of going to work at 1pm and getting off at 11pm I will go in at 3pm and get off at 1am. UGH. This is only through the end of the year though. And I’ts actually better than working overtime. Plus I have alternating weekends off. Remember weekends off.

Family. I have a very sick grandma. We aren't especially close. She isn't the soft and cuddly one (that one has been gone for almost 20 years). Grandma has been in the hospital since the 16th. The Doctors have not been able to figure out exactly what is wrong. She is old (almost 80) and was in relatively good health. But she has some kind of infection where she has been unconscious since she came out of surgery on the 18th. They did surgery to check for kidney, stomach, bowel and/or liver problems. The good news was they found nothing wrong, even with her liver (the woman was a hard drinking smoker for most of her life). The bad news was they didn’t find anything wrong and she had difficulty coming out of the surgery. They had intubated her (put her on a ventilator) just prior to surgery and she hadn’t been off it until yesterday. So all of this is no big deal EXCEPT she is DNR (do not resuscitate). So the question in my mind for the past two weeks is how far is too far.

Not having talked to her myself about anything of this nature, it is totally not my place to even question what the kids (my dad, aunt and uncles) are doing, but I still have my own questions about what to do for my parents, My Honeys parents, My Honey, my kids and myself.

Granted there are a lot of issues; age, health, their wishes to name a few. But I have come to the conclusion that I could not make that decision for my immediate family. Even though I can seem to be emotionally removed from them, I don’t think I could make that choice, go through with it and live with it. Not only that, survivors would need somewhere to transfer that anger during grieving, and I don’t want to have to shoulder that. So I have told my mother-in-law and mom that they should consider someone that isn’t family to make those decisions. That’s the truth. As I watch my Dad, aunt and uncles deal with this, I feel bad for them that it’s their decision when the world is turned upside down for them anyway. Their Mother is in the hospital for goodness sake, and then asking them to decide whether she lives or dies??

Yeah, that’s my inner struggle for the past two weeks.