The book club is just a few girls that get together every other month. The girls who started it like female authors so this will be perfect!! Most of us are in the medical profession, OB nurses, OB nurse practioners, BH nurses, an interior designer, It's fun, interesting. I joined the group after my H left, to try to GAL.
I just want you to know, I think you are amazing with everything going on in your life and you still ahve time to respond about your book, and to the dream thread. Take care of yourself too. Julie
That book club sounds like fun. I presume an OB nurse is the same as a midwife? We don't have OB nurses at births in the UK, we have midwives. Usually doctors aren't present unless there is an emergency (or in my case, I did it myself, LOL).
I usually answer my posts on here first thing in the morning when I'm having my wake up coffee, sometimes I catch a few moments if DD4 is watching a DVD, but most I answer after she has gone to bed.
I have no TV channels (only watch videos and DVD's) so the internet IS my TV, and funnily enough, even though this is a DB site, it sometimes takes my mind off it, or if I'm really upset, can help to write it down.
An OB nurse here is a nurse that specilaizes in OB. We do not deliver babies, unless the DR. doens't make it. I don't do any L&D. I see antepartum pt. in a triage area, kind of like an ER for pregnant women. It's very interesting. Mostly happy, but we are a large hosp, so we have alot of high risk prenancies as well.
My day has been horrible, and after a stressful morning and worrying about these fines I have to pay and how I am going to cover it, I got in after trekking miles and my milk spliting all over the road outside (well, I saved some of it), to find a message on my answer machine from Andy, sounding very tired and upset.
He said
'It looks like your dream was right again. The prognosis isn't good. He's not going to make it, I'm at the hospital now. I'll try to call you later. Don't ring my house as the girls are there and they don't know yet, I'll talk to you later.'
To give you some background detail, at the beginning of October, before Andy's dad got sick, I had a dream of 2 goldfish swimming in a goldfish bowl - now normally when I dream of fish, someone dies (it is my symbol of death), so I said to Andy that day 'I sure hope it isn't me who is going next' and he laughed and said it probably meant something else this time, then 2 days later his dad was rushed to hospital.
So ever since then, the 2 of us have been worrying whether or not the 'fish' dream will materialize and that's what he meant on his answer machine message when he said 'it looks like your dream was right again.'
Sometimes I hate having this ability because you see all the bad stuff, too and I feel guilty that I said 'I hope it isn't me'.
I can't believe I was out when he phoned Talk about rubbish XW So he's at the hospital 50 miles away, watching his dad die, and I'm stuck here unable to help.
I just heard from Andy and he says his dad is still alive but the machines are doing all the work for him and he won't die until they switch it off. Andy said that if he lived, the opening in his neck would have to be kept like that to help him breathe and he'd have to be cared for all the time by nurses and stuff. Basically his lungs are like old paper bags and they're so damaged that there's not much they can do about it.
I asked when they were going to switch it off. He said they're not at this time.
I reminded him that his father would hate to be that way and that it's not life, it's just keeping his body alive by machines. He said I know, it's just existing. He said the plan is to just 'go with the flow' for the time being and if he has a cardiac arrest they will not resusitate him. Apparently the doctors think it will be a miracle if he hasn't died within the next 24 to 48 hours or so. Andy said I could go down on the train and see him but not with Alicia, and I have no babysitter for tomorrow so that's out. He is refusing to let our other girls see him and he said to me he didn't recommend I did because it's 'very upsetting and he didn't look like himself'.
I'm not going to go, aside from no babysitter, I would be in the way.
I asked how Andy was - he sounds earily calm, unlike when his grandmother (his dad's mother) died. He said it was because he believes in life after death now, and he wasn't so sure with his grandmother (we both developed mediumistic ability since then). We talked a bit about how the family is coping and how his aunty is (dad's sister). She is apparently coping okay, it's the aunty by marriage who is reacting badly (his dad's brother's wife - his brother died years ago).
Then Andy started saying my mother is 'sad' because we don't see each other and that she's the same age as his dad and that he never thought his dad would die at 60, so how do I know she's not going to die too? He said how would I feel if she died and we hadn't made up beforehand? I told him that she had no feeling for me, that there was no love there and to do what she did to her own daughter - no mother in the world would do that to their flesh and blood, and that even if I did contact her and she wanted an R with me, how do I know she wouldn't start up her emotional abuse again? I said, Andy, all people I love hurt me.
He said they can only love you as far as you let them in.
I said whenever I have let her near me, she has punished me or caused a scene for me giving her too much information, and private stuff that I confided in you during our M got used in court, so I can't do intimacy with people; they just use me.
He said I would get back more if I give more. I said, Andy, I've been giving continously to this family for years and I get nothing back. When you give and give and give, eventually there is burn out. I am burnt out with her.
He said he understood, but still thought I should think about it, that I should want an R with her. I said she would carry on with her mind games if I tried to get near her. He said I should set down ground rules and boundaries with her.
I said even if I did, and she followed them, she would slip up eventually. She gave birth to me so she thinks she can control me and has that right, and even if she didn't - what could I possibily offer her as a daughter now?
There's my elder sister who is married to a middle class engineering worker, has 2 sons and a daughter, and is a primary school teacher, living in a nice house in a very posh village - she of course, is mummy's favourite because she does all the 'right' things.
Then there's my baby brother who is an aviation engineer and pilot for the RAF, earns a fortune, lives in married quarters with his nice wife who can speak Russian, trained in Law and is now also a teacher. That's all up to her standard, too.
Then of course, there is me. Disabled, teenage mother, separated at 24, now divorced, had my kids taken off me in court, write a number of controversial books, run a charity she doesn't agree with because doctors are always God and earn peanuts doing something that might be unusual but that I happen to love. I of course, am a failure in her eyes. The weird one of the family, the one she is ashamed of, the one she thinks is mental, sexually divient and a liar (her words on paper exactly).
Andy said yes, I understand that, I just don't want her to die and you to regret it.
I said I knew, and appreciated the thought.
Then he said he wanted me to go to his dad's funeral. That shocked me; in all honesty, I didn't think I would even be invited. I mean, it's not as if I am family now we are divorced, so I just hadn't psyhed myself up for the eventuality that I would be asked to go.
He said 'At least you can have closure with him (his dad) by going to the funeral; I know you didn't get to go to your dad's funeral and it has always bothered you.'
That was a sweet thought, but hell, I don't want to go as a divorced person. I am so ashamed of this whole divorce thing and the fact that we wouldn't be walking into that church together, and then all his relatives that haven't seen me since pre-D days. I can't imagine anything worse. Of course, he won't need me there as he's got his mother (and she won't let me near him anyway, she has such an overbearing personality).
I really don't want to go and I don't know how to tell him.
'm okay today (apart from a heavy cold). PMA is reasonable. I don't feel as negative as I did the other day. I took Alicia to dance class this morning. She did really well at it! Next week is a school holiday so it's open for the bigger kids too and I was half toying with the idea of asking to take my other DD's to the class, too, but what with Andy's dad, I can't guarantee he will be in this town next week, and also, every time I have contact it goes wrong and I end up upset so I reckon I'll just wait till I see Andy before I decide whether I ask to take them.
Then I took her to nursery school and got chatting to a mother who runs a cloth diaper company from home (all of my kids had cloth diapers) and I told her about selling books etc. Came home, answered my phone calls on the helpline, and then had to go and fetch her again and now we're home and she's asleep (from so much fun, lol) and I've got my cup of tea and am catching up on all my emails. That has been my day so far.
Got a text message from Andy, asking how the pregnancy was. I text back that I think I will lose it/am losing it but we'll see.
He said he didn't want it last Sunday - he's probably just stressed over his dad.
Andy phoned this morning just as I was going to go out and said 'hello'. His 'hello' sounded so flat that my stomach dropped into my shoes, I thought his dad had died. He said 'No, not yet.' Apparently on the 19th when the dr's told him there was no hope and was dying, they didn't expect him to live more than a few hours but he got through the 20th and is still here now, abeit on machines. They won't switch off yet as there are still brain waves. Andy came back from the hospital yesterday when he realised that death would not happen then, and now he is back at home, just waiting. He asked me to carry my cell phone at all times (I don't usually) and asked if he could drop the girls off with me at a moment's notice in case he has to rush back to his father. I agreed.
He's supposed to be having DD4 this weekend but I don't think that will happen, considering. I told him he was welcome to visit her here, tomorrow, for the afternoon, if he wanted. He is going to.
I asked him how he was and we talked for ages about his feelings and about his dreams and I told him one I'd had of him planting new trees and I said how positive that was and it's all about fresh starts and new beginnings, not the end. He said I should sell that dream book I wrote and I told him that some people were already interested and it's not published yet.
Then - considering his dad is just about to die - he came up with this really great idea, he said 'Why don't you do it as an e-book? Put it on your website, charge people a small fee to download it, and hey presto, e-book before it's even printed!'
You know, that's really smart. Why didn't I think of that? I thanked him for the idea.
He started complaining of a headache so I told him to go and drink 3 cups of peppermint tea (takes headaches away) and go to bed. He said he would.
Right after I got off the phone from him, I got this awful stomach pain and then flooded everywhere
I called the dr and have an appointment to get checked tomorrow morning, so I'll have to put Andy off till the afternoon. This is the 'early miscarriage' the GP told me I was having, and the clinic already told me that there was no hope as the HCG was too low etc, so I knew it would happen, but heck, it was still horrible to see blood
I had a quick 5 minute cry and then pulled myself together. I refuse to get upset when Andy is losing his dad - he's more important.
I've had awful cramps all day but went out and got some shopping in for the girls and some more coffee and biscuits for Andy to cheer myself up.
A cheque arrived in the post after all the above, from IPC Media, paying me for this article I wrote for a magazine. It's not in the shops till January, so I wasn't expecting the money till then, but they've paid me now, which is great considering those fines. I smiled when I saw the cheque, then felt like a bitch for smiling when all this is going on.
and I feel guilty that I said 'I hope it isn't me'.