Annui

I woke up this morning from dreaming about gnarly vampires, and being screwed "in the back of a Volkswagen" (per the cult flick Mall Rats). Wearing black and white Chuck Taylors no less. Literally interpreted, someone or something is draining my energy and I'm taking it in the ass. I don't know what the Chucks had to do with any of it. But they were spanking new, so there's gotta be some up-side here...

I'm depressed and all I want to do is shop. I buy things that would give me something to do at home so I won't go out and shop--like a strip of moulding for the bathroom along with a saw, miter tool, and adhesive--but I can't seem to finish anything I start so I just keep shopping. Just to give you an idea, we've been living in this apartment since August, and I still have almost nothing on the walls, the bookshelves are empty, and the place is about half furnished.

So I guess I'm depressed. So I went to a nearby bakery for some breakfast (at one in the afternoon), and wouldn't you know it, I ran into a couple I used to be friends with. I was genuinely friendly because I like them, but I was getting a really heavy fuck-off-and-die-bitch vibe from the female half so I excused myself.... Real nice. Just what I needed, a little evil-eyed rejection to start my day.

It's amazing how long people can hold a grudge. This is something I'm not so good at.

*Sigh* I think I'm going to drive to the mall and buy something.

Hallucinating Geriatric

Gram's able to talk again, but this good news is tempered by the fact that she's talking nonstop about stuff that has never happened. She keeps telling stories about what she did during the day, like that she went to Walgreens with her sister and there was a bar in there so they sat down. Some of the things she's saying are so funny I can't help but laugh even though I know this is not funny at all.

For instance, according to Gram, while she and her sister were at the bar in Walgreens, a guy came and sat down next to her. He made her SO mad, and she just let him have it. She blew up at him because he was laughing at her. He had slipped her a $20 bill, so she said, "I'm not a WHORE." Holy foul language Gram! My mom and I looked agape at each other and laughed in spite of ourselves.

It's been a long two and a half weeks, and I'm sure there's plenty more drama coming down the pike. Like I told my mom, at least we'll hear some funny stories along the way.

As of Sunday, post-surgery recovery wasn't going so well for Gram. She was miserable and convinced she's going to die there in the hospital so she wouldn't comply with any of their efforts. She was refusing to get up out of the bed, refusing to eat, and refusing visitors. I don't get it, why does she think she's going to die NOW after having eliminated her risk of dying by removing her aneurism?? Jesus Grama, get you bony ass out of bed, eat your food, do what they say and you can go home.

I read a book last year where the main character's grandma decided when husband died that she had nothing to live for and stopped getting out of bed, fully expecting to die. But all that happened was she layed around for twenty-some years being depressed and bored. I don't want to see my grandma depressed and bored, but she's stubborn, and she's convinced that all this effort is for nothing. Argh. She told me she doesn't feel like she's got any dignity anymore, and nothing is working right.

Then things got so much worse. It seems that Gram knew something we didn't. On Monday afternoon she had a stroke. A bad one. When all the scans finally came back and were analyzed, we were told it was probably a clot that caused it, and that it damaged her frontal lobe, something at the back of the brain, and something at the top, too. If that weren't bad enough, she started becoming really agitated and having seizures so they knocked her out with Ativan. This is just awful. My whole family is a wreck.

What's weird is that Monday morning my mom was down at the hospital visiting and Gram was really happy, euphoric actually. So my mom was really encouraged, but then right after she left, my Gram had her stroke. Later mom remembers that Gram was also kind of confused, she thought it was nine at night instead of nine in the morning, although they keep those ICU rooms so dark and gloomy and no one can maintain any set sleep schedule in a hospital, so I'd get confused too. She also told mom she thought she might be hallucinating--she thought she was peeling layers of paper with her hands, but when she looked down she was just playing with her blanket. Mom though it was a little weird, but not serious.

Yesterday was a really scary day, and I hope she starts to get better. She has at least stopped having seizures, and is finally waking up, but doesn't seem to know anyone. The doctors have no prognosis, no course of action, they're just waiting for the swelling in her brain to go down before they can evaluate anything at all. So now we have to do some more waiting.