a poem for Samhain
There is a time when fall shades into winter. Leaves mostly down, fields shorn close, and at night the cold begins to bite.The canning jars and drying racks are put away, onion braids hang in shadowed...
View ArticleHolidays and coming out
"Just sent an email to my parents about us. Keep good thoughts!"Thanksgiving is coming, and of course my boyfriend's mother said, "I know you've been seeing someone. Why don't you bring her?"But of...
View ArticleBrothers And Sisters: Preparing Him Room
(I begin by apologizing for lateness; plumbing and routers are both afflicted.) Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray*...
View ArticleWe are going to get F-ed over for Christmas
I am asking all the smart people I know what I can do to avoid it.We were profoundly thrilled back in the fall when my husband Bear got a job locally driving a cab. Not a lot of money, but anything is...
View ArticleIt's just an asthma attack....
Sometimes your world gets turned upside down. And it's a good thing.Many of you are aware of the struggles with poverty that Bear and I have dealt with. We don't have utilities on, and we only receive...
View ArticleIt was a quintuple bypass...
As the title said, Bear got a quintuple bypass, not a triple, Monday afternoon. He was on the ventilator all night, and they pulled it this morning. He is himself, though feeling run over by a truck....
View ArticleVentilators and donations
Well, the update on Bear is not so great. He couldn't cough very well and his blood gases weren't good, so back on the ventilator he went, and there he'll stay all day. This was not the way I wanted...
View ArticleNot freaking out just yet....
I was awakened this morning by Stupid Junior Cat going "YOW! YOW! YOW!" with the regularity of an alarm clock behind my shoulder. I swore at him, swatted at him, finally accepted that I was awake at...
View ArticleWell, this sucks.
Bear is much less deeply asleep these days. If I speak to him, he twitches his lids a bit, or moves a hand. Still, if they let up on the sedation, they'd have to pull his tubes, and they are not there...
View ArticleA move and a plan and a plea
I walked in Friday to discover that they were moving Bear to another hospital. I was slightly annoyed, as apparently plans had been in the works for a few days and no one had bothered to let me in on...
View ArticleI want him to come home!
I came in today to some good news. They will do his tracheotomy on Tuesday, May 27, and wake him up the same day. He will have been asleep 22 days...most of the month. It's been a long month for me....
View ArticleThe sleeper awakens!
Bear is awake!They took him for his tracheotomy yesterday morning, and woke him up this morning. They will start ventilator weaning tomorrow. That's a week to two week long process.I'm very close to...
View ArticleBreathing, speaking, eating...
All things we take for granted, usually. We haven't been lately, and progress back has been achingly slow.They have weaned Bear off the ventilator. It sits in the corner of his room. If he doesn't need...
View ArticleOnly original parts, rather weak....
Well, it's been a while since the last update, but in my defense, I've been busy. And so has Bear.Currently he's sitting up watching a movie. And when I say sitting up, I mean it.
View ArticleAnd just like that, it changed
One of the features of my husband's life that neither of us was looking forward to was the routine required by insulin-dependent diabetes. He'd received the diagnosis when he went into the hospital.It...
View ArticleWe have a timeline! Whoa!
We've been drifting along with him just getting better and better, and suddenly we got a timeline from physical therapy: they think they can have him ready to go home at the end of next week, the 11th...
View ArticleA new road for us
As many of you know, this year has been an interesting one, in the Chinese curse sense.But things are better. Things will continue better.On September 29th, we got a letter from Social Security....
View ArticleSo, how would YOU handle it?
I must begin by saying that for me, Thanksgiving kicks off the Happy Month. I am a December baby, and so is my father and another cousin or two. Then I married another one. Plus, there was Christmas,...
View ArticleKosability: Symptom Diary, or how I got into the driver's seat
I have fibromyalgia and several related illnesses/syndromes; namely hypothyroidism, Raynaud's phenomenon, migraine with aura, irritable bowel syndrome, and generalized anxiety issues, along with ADHD....
View ArticleCould some of you give me a boost?
One of the problems with living on a tight budget is that you don’t have room for anything to go wrong. And something did.Money is tighter now with Girlfriend living here. Three people just eat more...
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