#idr how but my ent i had to go to said something about it and possibly needing surgery | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hologramblue · 4 months ago

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companion. v....ent....not so much a vent as just saying out loud what happened. for the hell of it. for the hell of not dancing around it. some ugly details abt what happened to her medically. mostly ugly in like. a things that are existentially frightening to go through way not a gory way. neuro shit.

when i showed up at the hospital it was wildly obvious she was going to die bc so many things had happened at once there was no reasonable way to treat her. but there was a desperate need for care bc the cancer (colon -> liver) caused hypercoagulation which caused, like, a whole series of strokes. plus i think also clots in her lungs, which happened first? when my uncle called the ambulance she was just very confused and rather weak, then she got less confused, then her vision got fucked up and things just got worse by the day from there

and anyways by the time i got there she couldn't, like, fend for herself at all. she couldn't see, she couldn't move one arm at all and her dexterity elsewhere was scrambled, she couldn't get out of bed due to the neurological shit on top of the rapidly-worsening liver problem. and then the day i got there was when her speech fell off a cliff. people kept coming in and out of the room and talking and i could see her reacting to everything they said in her expressions, but she couldn't make them understand her. someone would ask a question and she'd try to formulate a response but they'd assume she didn't hear them because of the delay. or because she'd fucking...get upset about the whole situation, and she was an aggressively proud person so "getting upset" looked like turning her head away and staring really hard at nothing, or grimacing and laughing between her teeth, or some other atypical thing that i would look at and go "oh fuck mom's pissed" but the nurse would just, like, start kinda babytalking her bc they took it to mean she didn't understand what they said. which made it worse! she hated it so much and clammed up harder!

so that was mainly what i did there. interpretation. mediation. someone would babytalk and she'd tense up and i'd, like, add some snark or dark humor in and she'd snort and untense. guy came in for a neuro test and asked left/right questions and she didn't respond and i went hey uh it's not that she can't hear you it's that she's always had left-right confusion, tap her knee on the side you want. i broke things down into questions she could answer yes/no to bc she could get those out faster than most other words.

idr where i was going with this, there was something specific that i wanted to get to. what the fuck was it.

maybe it was just elaborating on what i meant about how it took her capabilities. like fuck if she had her vision then maybe she could have read and pointed to words. or if she'd lost vision but been able to hold a conversation, or even had enough manual dexterity to press buttons for AAC and pick radio stations to listen to or something. but no, vision and speech and mobility gone.

i'm very glad actually that i don't believe in any afterlife because i was terrified the whole time of leaving her completely helpless, and i did not at any point know for certain what her cognitive state actually was and if i was - okay well a few things i know for certain made it better for her bc she made some expression of approval/relief, but for all the worst things, there wasn't any certainty. so it's very comforting to know that if there was a point at which she was helpless and i didn't make it better or made it worse, that that experience is scrubbed, gone, unrecoverable and moot. probably a bit fucked up but i have to sleep at night.

vent thing about mom death in all its wretched glory. or some of it idk

it came out of fucking nowhere and it was as if someone came up with, like, the most hurtful possible way for her to go. laser fucking targeted timing, right when she had cleared out old obligations and had room to start making plans and chasing ambitions. all over the course of two months, short enough to not be able to jam in any bucket list shit but long enough to drag out the suffering. and it like. it took her out piece by piece and went after her capabilities and made her watch it all vanish. her strength then her mobility then her vision then her speech. and she was fully conscious or not far from it for the whole fucking thing.

i keep thinking about all that periodically and freaking out a bit but like. at least it's over and she doesn't exist anymore to be able to remember how bad it was. rip.

so i'm still here and the fucked up part on my end is that it was also, like, within a year of when i expect to have a stable job with a living wage that will let me make long-term decisions, and i was hoping to start talking to her more once i felt more independent? maybe come up here more often, help out with some of her big plans for her house, get to know the people she hadn't pissed off. idefk. she got a million times nicer once we all split up and it turns out she's actually pretty interesting to talk to and learn things from when she's not mad all the time.

but nah. she's gone and i can try to fucking. archeologically uncover who the hell she was if i have the time to dig through all the stuff she wrote and made and dragon-hoarded. and i could probably try to learn more home DIY and gardening and crafting and cooking and all the other fucktillion things she did but it'll be a hell of a lot slower than asking her. and like theoretically i could aim for a reassignment somewhere around here and try to live around here but with her gone it wouldn't be much different than moving to any other random corner of the country bc i don't know jack about this place actually.

i could also stop being a big baby and talk to her brother more. in spite of us both being emotionally constipated headasses. and it kind of sounds like he might want to move out anyways. but idk. i should still talk to him more

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