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tumbley
shit, i really meant to write while i was in alabama. well, time to make up for it.
FIRST OFF- dad's doing well, recovering quickly. basically everyone is ok and things are at a relatively stable point down there which is a mega relief. okay, now i can start the scary story stuff.
recap: feb 18th my dad went in for surgery to remove a colon cancer. feb 20th he went septic and was rushed into emergency surgery where they saved his life but not before some truly body horror shit was happening (like green goo pouring from mouth and nose!! i'll get into that later tho, its not mystery goo) and that lead to several weeks in the ICU before transfering to a rehab. pop spent like...one week in rehab where they gave him way too many opiates and so he was not AWARE of what had actually HAPPENED TO HIM. and being my father (stubborn, independant, DIY) he determined he had already spent too much time in the hospital and wanted to go home. so when medicare said they were done paying regardless of the drs assessment he was like 'i'm done in rehab then! TIME TO GO HOME'
he had not yet been taught to take care of his temporary ostomy bag tho, and like i said, WAS UNAWARE HE ALMOST DIED. he could not stand without assistance or even move from lying down to sitting up. but home he went!! and immediately fell over, had the bag leak everywhere, and send my long suffering (sorta, common-law) stepmom into a panic attack combined w a COPD flare. he was sent home with 200 oxys and NO ostomy supplies. and immediately fell down and spent the night on the floor in his own filth only covered with blankets.
my stepsister roxy, who is 33 with downs, did her best to keep him warm and comfortable and keep her mom's spirits up but when her elder sister & spouse rolled in that morning it was very clearly a 'oh my god this is about ten minutes from a 911 call' situation. roxy has never learned to call 911!!! i got her a kids book to help w that for the future but ANYWAY so roxy's sister cleans everything up and her husband gets my dad onto the couch and go shopping... and this is about when i'm stepping on my first flight down there.
so i rolled in abt 6 hrs later to their great relief. started running all the laundry that was being needed as we literally trial-and-error'd our way thru learning how to work w an ostomy bag. i thank my years of picking up after large dogs in the city during summer for steeling my nerves to that task tbqh. BASICALLY skin needs to be /completely/ dry and clean to lay a base plate down, the apeture in the plate must be ever so slightly larger than the stoma, and the bag must be clipped and double checked for a full seal all the way around. or it will escape. it will escape everywhere. change them every 3-5 days just for sanitation reasons regardless.
but uh the person w it must also attend to how it feels and looks or gases can and do cause it to rupture as well. and it is CAUSTIC because it is largely stomach acid and fecal matter.... listen, let's skip ahead a little.
so the next morning things are not much better. i am able to clean my dad up again because i entered my hypervigilent crisis mode, & as such my nose is sharp and i would wake up if there was a leak smelling it from down the hall. my stepbrother the rhesp technician hooked his mom up with oxygen and emergency inhalers. but my stepmom's COPD would still not stop, she could not make coffee even on o2. it is easter sunday and roxy wants to look for eggs but must wait for her sister to arrive because neither mom nor papa can make it outside, and i am tending them both. sister made the very salient choice to take roxy home w her and not leave me to care for 3 high needs vulnerable loved ones at once. sister's spouse impressed me slightly by preparing a big easter dinner/basket for roxy so the holiday magic was preserved upon her arrival. stepmom was informed if she cant breathe the next day gotta go to the ER. she is still spiraling in panic because at this point NO ONE has told them what stage the cancer is or how it might be treated, my dad is still BARELY able to sit up and has raw wounds that are being exposed to toxic goop that i am franticly keeping clean. yet the fool man still insists he wants to try to make pancakes. he has fallen 3x in the last day.
anyway skip ahead another day, shes still wheezing violently and cant even make coffee so she goes to the ER. while there she is in utter panic, suicidal ideation (LOUDLY) so they hang onto her while her kids explain the home situation. so she is treated kindly and safe and treated for pneumonia as well.
so this left just me and my very sick very deluded into thinking this was normal or fine or the doctor's foolishness father lmao. i stayed with him for several days and he really did improve very rapidly now he was in control and NOT taking oxy constantly. but he was also very, very feeble and really did need my help. i had to spot him to the bathroom. he had a surgical drain with a pump on it that kept falling out of his pocket - personal xp, those HURT when tugged on. and he was not thrilled with that. he had lost 40lbs (what is that, 36kg?) in the ICU and his body was in utter shock while trying to recover from several serious incidents. cognitively he was there, and home health came a few times to help with the ostomy bag and talk about care plans. but i quickly started to feel overwhelmed being up in the middle of the night cleaning leaks and waking up early to tend him and then also trying to figure out what medications he is supposed to take and when, and what doctor he sees when, etc. thankfully i had their 2 dogs and several barn cats to keep my sanity. i made friends with all but 2 cats ...lol anyway
so at a certain point i begged my uncle and stepmom -bc we all felt this- that we needed to get him back to rehab for a week. i was blowing my back out getting him up, and i KNEW i would not be able to push him to make himself stronger. i would instead if anything coddle my 72yo ailing father and be like aaahhh no dont get up be safe aaaa
this process, getting him to accept going back to rehab, was a long one. it was a hard one. it was not one my dad was enthused for or desired. but it did happen. professional PT was back on the menu
sooooooo my stepmom finally had her breathing normalized and felt stable emotionally now my dad wasnt dying on the floor so she came home. we hung out several days and bonded and i was also able to do other things to help my dad when he returned - ramps to doors with a lip, grab bar for the shower, organize his supplies etc. stepmom and i visited pop in rehab and while he was very sad (and it is indeed a not particularly cheery place to be) he did in fact get to learn how to care for his own bag and how to manage sitting/standing/etc. that horrible drain came out which was a relief to him. he kavetched about hospital food so we brought him usually a meal a day and hung out for a while. eventually now things were stable at home, roxy came back, and she joined us in going to rehab to visit pop.
the most important 2 things happened during this window of time when pop was back in rehab but i was still in alabama. well i guess 3 things really.
1- i found his tumor pathology report. having survived stage3 cancer myself i felt like i could muddle through the jargon and understand what it was saying. what it said was: stage 2, low risk. i looked up studies on how we treat this. this is only treated with surgery. i looked up why: chemo just seems more risk than reward here. and so i relayed this to everyone just to infuse us all with hope. we may already be working through the worst of it, i said. spoilers: i was correct??
2- i was able to explain to my father while he was lucid exactly what had happened to him. that he had lost about a month and it was just just because they doped him too much - that he really had almost died. like sir, you know how you remember it hurt when you hit the OR table the second time, like they were not gentle? yeah thats cuz they only worry about a bruise if youre alive. (to explain the green goo? your mucus/sinuses contain white blood cells which have an oxidizing componant when used. like in normal activated groups itll make your snot yellow. when its just 10000% activated and you are in danger it turns the snot green. while going septic my dads body was just freaking out and flooding with whites to kill the infection before it killed the animal. watch out for lots of green snot is the moral here!)
upon learning how the timeline had gone for the rest of us, my dad finally understood why stepmom was in such a panic and why everyone kept hassling him to take it easy and was very apologetic. if your patient dont understand whats happening to them they may not behave appropriately for what is happening to them, turns out
3 - my spouse got fired????????? from usps?????? wrongfully, its a whole thing, this postmaster has been mad at him forever and she runs the office like a donald trump enterprise. no one thought she would actually go through with this because there is no fucking way it will shake down in anything but her being ruined??? she genuinely thinks things like blocking your texts and claiming she never heard from you is a defense that works. she thinks that she can just claim she never got a paper, when two people witnessed the paper coming into the office destined for her desk and aware of its importance. shit like that. but the morale kick in the gut was significant.
so, seeing as my dad was recovering well in rehab and my stepmom's breathing back, i hopped another series of flights home to help tend this dumpster fire. i wanted to be back asap tho because i needed to know how my dad's home recovery round 2 was going to go. wouldnt you????
so after a week i headed back. pop had been home from round 2 of rehab for a few days, and was doing a hell of a lot better. he used a walker to stroll the yard a little bit, but mostly was able to stand and was able to move himself around independantly as well. he could return to cooking (he loves to do it) and driving me a lil crazy with stereo american news TV (msnbc or msnow or whatever) + algo-driven masculine boomer tiktok/insta. aaaaaaaaaaa i hate it all lmfaooooo
but i was still able to help out quite a bit. the ramps came up after a few days, the grab bar proved its worth. i kept roxy entertained and watched her when there were doctor appointments. i washed the dogs and took the trash down to the road, and kept the family/locals informed about recovery progress. washed dishes, ran laundry, swept up the wood shop, helped fix the ride-on mower and mowed... stuff like that.
friday the oncologist -finally- was able to meet w my dad (remember, this pathology was done around feb 18th. may 1st was friday.) and confirmed my reading of it was correct. no chemo, no radiation, stage 2 low risk. i had told everyone that hospital time means they take their sweet time when you're in no real danger, but it was still a relief to me to hear it from a professional. you know, someone who went to medical school. and had access to all the patient info. even roxy was relieved when pop came back from the doctor that day (i think shes gonna be worried doctors for pop mean leaving home overnight for a while tho)
by the time i left i finally felt reassured that life was returning to a calm normal for them there. i have said i want to go back when the stoma is closed and ostomy surgery reversed, if nothing else just to give my stepmom someone to worry with in the waiting room. but i really do think the worst has been finished with.
i done told my dad no matter what happened he was likely to outlive donald trump and it still looks like thats the case. yippie kai yai yay mother fucker. also told him the old saying is true: if you can survive february, you can survive anything else.
SO i'm back home, still waiting as the wheels of justice slowly turn on alph getting his JOB BACK. my body's in a little bit of a season shock bouncing back and forth between climates, but i'm glad it's still spring.
i did pick up some kind of horrible creeping crud down there, but it doesnt appear to be communicable? so i really am ok with that.
my reward for going through scary and sad times was: i found an old hard drive and sd card at my dad's that i had fun cracking open and troubleshooting to recover data from. the drive i mean, not the sd.
during this hard time i'd like to thank: catspaw by joan d vinge, cat is possibly the greatest character ive ever met its like i know him its like i -am- him, i read dreamfall while in alabama and was just like damn i love this fuckboy
i've come to the realization that i hate traveling without a proper PC, so pulled several dead machines out of a closet and started trying to cobble one together. the ideal is to have this asus eeepc netbook up and running but i will need to replace the mobo. thats ok, im ready to do that. bc the next option would be loading linux onto this extremely big and heavy gaming laptop and the charge cable for that laptop cost exactly 1$ more than a new mobo for the netbook.
i... have a great deal of artwork to catch up on, since march and april disappeared for me into a haze of family medical hell roller coaster. and with alph being out of work, however reversed it eventually will be, is really making money a Worry.
obligatory money links
paypal | cash app | kofi | patreon | comradery
i am probably going to run some kind of campaign but i want to do my owed work first!!!! and finish this painting thats been sitting here. waiting for me.
and i STILL want to get ask kyo up and running again...!!!!
really you should check out what ive done with Demon-sushi.com if you havent in a while, its lookin pretty good.
okay. i found a 90s gigapet rancor cleaning the house and i'm going to see if it still boots.
next monday i will know when my next return trip to alabama to help my family out will be
that's all i got. let us meet again soon.
FIRST OFF- dad's doing well, recovering quickly. basically everyone is ok and things are at a relatively stable point down there which is a mega relief. okay, now i can start the scary story stuff.
recap: feb 18th my dad went in for surgery to remove a colon cancer. feb 20th he went septic and was rushed into emergency surgery where they saved his life but not before some truly body horror shit was happening (like green goo pouring from mouth and nose!! i'll get into that later tho, its not mystery goo) and that lead to several weeks in the ICU before transfering to a rehab. pop spent like...one week in rehab where they gave him way too many opiates and so he was not AWARE of what had actually HAPPENED TO HIM. and being my father (stubborn, independant, DIY) he determined he had already spent too much time in the hospital and wanted to go home. so when medicare said they were done paying regardless of the drs assessment he was like 'i'm done in rehab then! TIME TO GO HOME'
he had not yet been taught to take care of his temporary ostomy bag tho, and like i said, WAS UNAWARE HE ALMOST DIED. he could not stand without assistance or even move from lying down to sitting up. but home he went!! and immediately fell over, had the bag leak everywhere, and send my long suffering (sorta, common-law) stepmom into a panic attack combined w a COPD flare. he was sent home with 200 oxys and NO ostomy supplies. and immediately fell down and spent the night on the floor in his own filth only covered with blankets.
my stepsister roxy, who is 33 with downs, did her best to keep him warm and comfortable and keep her mom's spirits up but when her elder sister & spouse rolled in that morning it was very clearly a 'oh my god this is about ten minutes from a 911 call' situation. roxy has never learned to call 911!!! i got her a kids book to help w that for the future but ANYWAY so roxy's sister cleans everything up and her husband gets my dad onto the couch and go shopping... and this is about when i'm stepping on my first flight down there.
so i rolled in abt 6 hrs later to their great relief. started running all the laundry that was being needed as we literally trial-and-error'd our way thru learning how to work w an ostomy bag. i thank my years of picking up after large dogs in the city during summer for steeling my nerves to that task tbqh. BASICALLY skin needs to be /completely/ dry and clean to lay a base plate down, the apeture in the plate must be ever so slightly larger than the stoma, and the bag must be clipped and double checked for a full seal all the way around. or it will escape. it will escape everywhere. change them every 3-5 days just for sanitation reasons regardless.
but uh the person w it must also attend to how it feels and looks or gases can and do cause it to rupture as well. and it is CAUSTIC because it is largely stomach acid and fecal matter.... listen, let's skip ahead a little.
so the next morning things are not much better. i am able to clean my dad up again because i entered my hypervigilent crisis mode, & as such my nose is sharp and i would wake up if there was a leak smelling it from down the hall. my stepbrother the rhesp technician hooked his mom up with oxygen and emergency inhalers. but my stepmom's COPD would still not stop, she could not make coffee even on o2. it is easter sunday and roxy wants to look for eggs but must wait for her sister to arrive because neither mom nor papa can make it outside, and i am tending them both. sister made the very salient choice to take roxy home w her and not leave me to care for 3 high needs vulnerable loved ones at once. sister's spouse impressed me slightly by preparing a big easter dinner/basket for roxy so the holiday magic was preserved upon her arrival. stepmom was informed if she cant breathe the next day gotta go to the ER. she is still spiraling in panic because at this point NO ONE has told them what stage the cancer is or how it might be treated, my dad is still BARELY able to sit up and has raw wounds that are being exposed to toxic goop that i am franticly keeping clean. yet the fool man still insists he wants to try to make pancakes. he has fallen 3x in the last day.
anyway skip ahead another day, shes still wheezing violently and cant even make coffee so she goes to the ER. while there she is in utter panic, suicidal ideation (LOUDLY) so they hang onto her while her kids explain the home situation. so she is treated kindly and safe and treated for pneumonia as well.
so this left just me and my very sick very deluded into thinking this was normal or fine or the doctor's foolishness father lmao. i stayed with him for several days and he really did improve very rapidly now he was in control and NOT taking oxy constantly. but he was also very, very feeble and really did need my help. i had to spot him to the bathroom. he had a surgical drain with a pump on it that kept falling out of his pocket - personal xp, those HURT when tugged on. and he was not thrilled with that. he had lost 40lbs (what is that, 36kg?) in the ICU and his body was in utter shock while trying to recover from several serious incidents. cognitively he was there, and home health came a few times to help with the ostomy bag and talk about care plans. but i quickly started to feel overwhelmed being up in the middle of the night cleaning leaks and waking up early to tend him and then also trying to figure out what medications he is supposed to take and when, and what doctor he sees when, etc. thankfully i had their 2 dogs and several barn cats to keep my sanity. i made friends with all but 2 cats ...lol anyway
so at a certain point i begged my uncle and stepmom -bc we all felt this- that we needed to get him back to rehab for a week. i was blowing my back out getting him up, and i KNEW i would not be able to push him to make himself stronger. i would instead if anything coddle my 72yo ailing father and be like aaahhh no dont get up be safe aaaa
this process, getting him to accept going back to rehab, was a long one. it was a hard one. it was not one my dad was enthused for or desired. but it did happen. professional PT was back on the menu
sooooooo my stepmom finally had her breathing normalized and felt stable emotionally now my dad wasnt dying on the floor so she came home. we hung out several days and bonded and i was also able to do other things to help my dad when he returned - ramps to doors with a lip, grab bar for the shower, organize his supplies etc. stepmom and i visited pop in rehab and while he was very sad (and it is indeed a not particularly cheery place to be) he did in fact get to learn how to care for his own bag and how to manage sitting/standing/etc. that horrible drain came out which was a relief to him. he kavetched about hospital food so we brought him usually a meal a day and hung out for a while. eventually now things were stable at home, roxy came back, and she joined us in going to rehab to visit pop.
the most important 2 things happened during this window of time when pop was back in rehab but i was still in alabama. well i guess 3 things really.
1- i found his tumor pathology report. having survived stage3 cancer myself i felt like i could muddle through the jargon and understand what it was saying. what it said was: stage 2, low risk. i looked up studies on how we treat this. this is only treated with surgery. i looked up why: chemo just seems more risk than reward here. and so i relayed this to everyone just to infuse us all with hope. we may already be working through the worst of it, i said. spoilers: i was correct??
2- i was able to explain to my father while he was lucid exactly what had happened to him. that he had lost about a month and it was just just because they doped him too much - that he really had almost died. like sir, you know how you remember it hurt when you hit the OR table the second time, like they were not gentle? yeah thats cuz they only worry about a bruise if youre alive. (to explain the green goo? your mucus/sinuses contain white blood cells which have an oxidizing componant when used. like in normal activated groups itll make your snot yellow. when its just 10000% activated and you are in danger it turns the snot green. while going septic my dads body was just freaking out and flooding with whites to kill the infection before it killed the animal. watch out for lots of green snot is the moral here!)
upon learning how the timeline had gone for the rest of us, my dad finally understood why stepmom was in such a panic and why everyone kept hassling him to take it easy and was very apologetic. if your patient dont understand whats happening to them they may not behave appropriately for what is happening to them, turns out
3 - my spouse got fired????????? from usps?????? wrongfully, its a whole thing, this postmaster has been mad at him forever and she runs the office like a donald trump enterprise. no one thought she would actually go through with this because there is no fucking way it will shake down in anything but her being ruined??? she genuinely thinks things like blocking your texts and claiming she never heard from you is a defense that works. she thinks that she can just claim she never got a paper, when two people witnessed the paper coming into the office destined for her desk and aware of its importance. shit like that. but the morale kick in the gut was significant.
so, seeing as my dad was recovering well in rehab and my stepmom's breathing back, i hopped another series of flights home to help tend this dumpster fire. i wanted to be back asap tho because i needed to know how my dad's home recovery round 2 was going to go. wouldnt you????
so after a week i headed back. pop had been home from round 2 of rehab for a few days, and was doing a hell of a lot better. he used a walker to stroll the yard a little bit, but mostly was able to stand and was able to move himself around independantly as well. he could return to cooking (he loves to do it) and driving me a lil crazy with stereo american news TV (msnbc or msnow or whatever) + algo-driven masculine boomer tiktok/insta. aaaaaaaaaaa i hate it all lmfaooooo
but i was still able to help out quite a bit. the ramps came up after a few days, the grab bar proved its worth. i kept roxy entertained and watched her when there were doctor appointments. i washed the dogs and took the trash down to the road, and kept the family/locals informed about recovery progress. washed dishes, ran laundry, swept up the wood shop, helped fix the ride-on mower and mowed... stuff like that.
friday the oncologist -finally- was able to meet w my dad (remember, this pathology was done around feb 18th. may 1st was friday.) and confirmed my reading of it was correct. no chemo, no radiation, stage 2 low risk. i had told everyone that hospital time means they take their sweet time when you're in no real danger, but it was still a relief to me to hear it from a professional. you know, someone who went to medical school. and had access to all the patient info. even roxy was relieved when pop came back from the doctor that day (i think shes gonna be worried doctors for pop mean leaving home overnight for a while tho)
by the time i left i finally felt reassured that life was returning to a calm normal for them there. i have said i want to go back when the stoma is closed and ostomy surgery reversed, if nothing else just to give my stepmom someone to worry with in the waiting room. but i really do think the worst has been finished with.
i done told my dad no matter what happened he was likely to outlive donald trump and it still looks like thats the case. yippie kai yai yay mother fucker. also told him the old saying is true: if you can survive february, you can survive anything else.
SO i'm back home, still waiting as the wheels of justice slowly turn on alph getting his JOB BACK. my body's in a little bit of a season shock bouncing back and forth between climates, but i'm glad it's still spring.
i did pick up some kind of horrible creeping crud down there, but it doesnt appear to be communicable? so i really am ok with that.
my reward for going through scary and sad times was: i found an old hard drive and sd card at my dad's that i had fun cracking open and troubleshooting to recover data from. the drive i mean, not the sd.
during this hard time i'd like to thank: catspaw by joan d vinge, cat is possibly the greatest character ive ever met its like i know him its like i -am- him, i read dreamfall while in alabama and was just like damn i love this fuckboy
i've come to the realization that i hate traveling without a proper PC, so pulled several dead machines out of a closet and started trying to cobble one together. the ideal is to have this asus eeepc netbook up and running but i will need to replace the mobo. thats ok, im ready to do that. bc the next option would be loading linux onto this extremely big and heavy gaming laptop and the charge cable for that laptop cost exactly 1$ more than a new mobo for the netbook.
i... have a great deal of artwork to catch up on, since march and april disappeared for me into a haze of family medical hell roller coaster. and with alph being out of work, however reversed it eventually will be, is really making money a Worry.
paypal | cash app | kofi | patreon | comradery
i am probably going to run some kind of campaign but i want to do my owed work first!!!! and finish this painting thats been sitting here. waiting for me.
and i STILL want to get ask kyo up and running again...!!!!
really you should check out what ive done with Demon-sushi.com if you havent in a while, its lookin pretty good.
okay. i found a 90s gigapet rancor cleaning the house and i'm going to see if it still boots.
next monday i will know when my next return trip to alabama to help my family out will be
that's all i got. let us meet again soon.