The United States of Me

I have had a lot of people ask me how I am since I've been home.  My honest answer, which is unsatisfactory for all parties involved, is: I don't know.  So please stop asking.  I don't mean that I don't appreciate all the love and care and support that has poured out from all of you amazing individuals, because I do.  I could not ask for better friends.  And I could not have made it through this without you.  So thank you for that.

However, I am dealing with something right now that no one ever talks about.  I have read hundreds of articles about the end of life, both religious and secular.  I've read about how far doctors would go with their own treatment, and when that treatment goes too far.  I've read about the miraculous horrors of which modern medicine is capable of.    And at the heart of the issue, I (and other family members) made the decision to not do that to my mother.  I made the choice to let her go peacefully on to whatever it is that lies beyond the veil.  And I would make the same choice again, but...

She didn't.

And for that, I am grateful.

I am now faced with the question of: What kind of person does that make me?

 

I would make a Frankenstein joke, but that would be wrong...

So Mom update, I will make this short.

After going from a 5% chance of living for another 12 hours, she is now awake.  She is understandably exhausted from her ordeal, but here and with us. She still has a massive infection that the doctors can't seem to find and she is on oxygen because she can't keep her O2 levels up on her own.  She has started physical therapy, but has a long way to go to recovery.

There is a lot more to this story, and I will share it with some of you.  Or with all of you when I am less prone to bursting into tears.

To be or not to be in a Cosmic Hamlet by the Sea

This is supposed to be a blog about life.  At some points that inevitably means that it will be about death.  At this moment it is going to be about my mom's potential expiration date.

I have read enough white, suburban, privileged womans' lit to know that watching one of your loved ones die is supposed to be a profound, tragic, heart-rending and life changing event.  So far, the only thing profound about it, is how profoundly fucking boring it is.  Don't take this to mean that I don't love my mom.  I do.  However, sitting in a hospital room watching as she does nothing, and slips in and out of not-actual-consciousness is really, really, really dull.

There has only been one moment of "excitement" since I've been here.   I use the word excitement, loosely.  It wasn't exciting. It was terrible and oddly cathartic.  Yesterday morning at 330 in the morning (because you know these things never happen at a reasonable hour like noon, when you've had your coffee and breakfast and are ready to face the day.  Nope they only happen when you are bleary-eyed and fuzzy from sleep deprivation and at times of day that only really dedicated fisherman and colic-y infants will admit actually exists.) we got called into the hospital.  My mom's kidneys has stopped working and her heart was ready to give out on her.  This was it, this was the end.  We were asked if we wanted to do any "heroic" potential life-saving techniques for her.  Our answer was eventually no.  I know that if I ever reached the condition she was in yesterday morning I wouldn't want to be saved.  Load me up with morphine and let me go.  However, it seems that we were to slow to make our choice, because by the time we had our answer, they already had her intubated and on a ventilator.  To be fair to her doctor's and nurses, this was in no way actually supposed to save her life, but rather give me and the rest of my family enough time to say good-bye.  Even with a machine to breathe for her, the doctors gave her a 5% chance and predicted that her heart would stop by mid-afternoon.

And so I said good-bye and made my peace.  That conversation will remain between me and the universe, so don't ask.

Around 6 am, the priest came in to give my mom her last rites.  She chose this moment to get stubborn.  I know that she can hear what is going on around her, even if she isn't "awake".  I guess being told that this is it made her decide that she was "just joking".  Or more likely, knowing how damnably stubborn my mom is, jump started that little piece of crazy in her head that always declare "YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!"  Her kidneys started working again (really she has pushed off about 10 lbs of the fluid that were pressing against her lungs and heart in the last 24 hours), her heart returned to a normal rhythm, she started fighting the ventilator (she is still on it though), and her blood pressure improved.

And so here we sit.  My moment of catharsis is gone. Mom is holding steady, with no further improvements (although she is off the dopamine which was helping her heart pump).  She hasn't declined either.  We are waiting for a blood transfusion (she is a special snowflake who has a weird blood thing going on and no one in Alaska can type her accurately).

She isn't doing well enough to be hopeful, but isn't doing bad enough to not be.  I'm stuck in the middle and it's really really boring.

Petersburg Adventures

Back in June I got to spend a week in Petersburg for work.  In celebration of still not having received my per diem for the trip, I thought I would finally update my blog a bit (that and I'm going to Wrangell next week).


So first and foremost Petersburg has a sick obsession (cue Kesha music), with Hewscrafts.  There entire middle dock is like a floating advertisment for the company.  Seriously, what do you all have against Bayliners?

A friend of mine warned me before I went to Petersburg that nothing good ever happens between Wrangell and Petersburg.  While I have never been on a boat between those areas, I have to respectfully disagree.  It's absolutely beautiful!  On my one day off I had while I was there I drove to the end of the road and took a ton of poor quality iphone pictures along the way.

I should also point out that I did a bunch of touristy stuff along the way, including stopping by the swan observatory (there weren't any there, but it was still neat).

Can I just say how nice it was to see a bunch of Pushki?

I also did some hiking along the way.  I did three trails actually. The first one is a nice little boardwalk loop to Blind River Rapids.  I'm told it has some great fishing.

 The second one is a nice little nature hike called Ohmer Creek Trail.  It does have one section where it comes to a road (turn left).  I may or may not of went right the first time and walked about a mile before I realized I went the wrong way.  Oh well, that is what adventures are all about.

I also went out to Three Lakes/ Ideal Cove trail.  It's on a one way dirt road.  It kind of reminded me of going ptarmigan hunting with my dad when I was a kid.  Complete with a bunch of swearing when I got my truck stuck.  So thank you kind stranger for pulling me out, it would have been interesting to have to explain to my boss how I got my work truck stuck on my day off.

I took the Crane Lake section

I feel there should be ptarmigan here.

It's good (?) to know there are assholes everywhere.

I didn't bring any food with me, thankfully nature can provide.

Ideal Cove and Frederick's Sound

tThey have a public paddle boat you can use.  An older couple were using it, and the little old guy was paddling is little wife around the lake.

Overall, I would have to say Petersburg is a pretty cool place.  After all they do have a Viking ship sitting right in the middle of town.