Long day, weird evening, don't think I'll sleep yet...

So, at some point after 10pm the phone at my parents' house rings - it's my mother. She's calling from her hospital room to ask me to call the nurses' station, because her iv is occluded and needs to be reset, and the nurse call button isn't in reach and without the iv she can't get her pain meds.

I call the nurses' station, and am gratified to hear the woman say "Oh, no! I'll go down there right away!" Try to call mom back - and realize that the hospital blocks calls to patient rooms that late. Call the nurses' station back, and tell a new person what just happened, and that I tried to call mom back to tell her I'd talked to you guys, but of course couldn't get through, and could she please pass the message along to mom for her to call me if she felt like it or needed anything? Am less reassured by the tone of voice this response is given to me in.

About 30 minutes later, my cellphone rings - it's a family friend, who says "Is your mom okay? She just called me, and said 'Did I wake you up?' and when I said no, she asked if I could come to the hospital for a little while, and I said um, well, yeah... and your mom said "Are you sick?" and I say well, yeah, have been on & off for several days - then your mom says 'okay, nevermind, don't worry about it' and hangs up! Do you know what's going on?" Told her about call re: iv, say I'll call hospital & talk to nurses & mom and make sure everything is okay.

Call nurses' station; say "my mother just tried to call me but I missed the call, and of course I can't return the call to her - how can I get in touch with her to find out what she needed?" Nurse says "Well, would you like me to unblock her line?" I said yes, please! Nurse says okay, hold on - comes back a few moments later and says okay, let me transfer you. Couple seconds later she picks back up and says well, it's busy - let me go and make sure; maybe she's left it off the hook.... comes back in a little while, and says okay, here you go, and transfers me through.

Mom, love her though I do, is a rotten patient. I think part of it is because she's a bit of a control freak, and part of it is because she never got babied much (by either her parents or my father) so she likes to be taken care of. Admittedly, this was pretty major surgery, and she has 10 holes in her (one really big, rest small), and she has every right in the world to feel like crap. She's also in the post-anesthesia haze, and called the friend because she said she couldn't remember any other numbers. (I think at that point she'd already forgotten that she called me.) She's freaking out a little, and I think is a little confused, and is alone, and feels like shit (poor woman, she's had a nasogastric tube in since yesterday at 8pm, I can't imagine). I'd forgotten what she was like right after surgery; I was hoping she'd be mostly out of it and very groggy.

So I'm at my parents' house, because dad just got out of the rehab hospital a week or so ago, and isn't strong enough to be left alone; my kids are here with me, and as I can't be in two places at once, I am now in the very interesting mental place: feeling guilty that I can't be there to help mom out, and feeling relieved that I can't be there to help mom out.

How did it get to be 2:30am? I wonder if I'm going to be able to sleep on the loveseat, or if I should just go ahead and move to the recliner now...


This morning was entertaining. 6:30ish - little boy wakes up, climbs onto loveseat with me. Not really enough room, I eventually get off and move to recliner. Ten after 7, my cellphone rings - it's my aunt's caretaker; her car has broken down and she's not going to be there today. A little after 8 I give my husband a wake-up call, and dad is already out in the living room - he tells me to lie back down, he's in no hurry for breakfast. I can't go back to sleep anyway, so I get up and start making breakfast. While I'm making breakfast, I call my doctor's office to see if I could drop by today - I've evidently torn something in my calf (probably the soleus muscle) and while the hand-sized bruise has started to go away, stairs suck and by the end of the day even walking is difficult. It almost feels like I'm re-ripping something with every step at that point. They say sure, can you be here at 8:30? I look at clock, it's a little after 8, and say sure. I run out the door in an effing deluge; the sky is falling - go to doc's office (with no history of blood clots, he doesn't think it's a blood clot - if it's the soleus muscle, it could take 6-8 weeks to heal; if it doesn't start feeling at least a little better in the next two weeks though, come back and we'll take a closer look with an MRI. I say thanks, pay, run out, get my aunt breakfast & run by her apartment - give her food & meds and run back to parents' house. Stay there working on stupid grant (that I should have finished last week) until friend comes for dad, J takes the kids and I throw on clean underwear and a clean shirt that luckily are at my parents' house and run like hell to the hospital to see mom before she's taken down for surgery.

I missed her by less than 5 minutes.

Why am I avoiding sleep?

This is nuts. Am going to try to sleep. Wish me luck.