Month: April 2025

The last full week of April

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It’s hard to believe April is almost over already. The whole month seemed to go by in a blur. This was my first full week working in the ER shadowing other employees. So far so good, I haven’t been squeamish at all.

Paul and I spent my day off walking around the NFL draft area. Too bad I am not a sports fan, otherwise I would go all out. Paul loves football but he doesn’t get all decked out. I mainly wanted to check it out to people watch. We wanted to get some food from the food trucks but the line was a mile long and there was nowhere to sit.

The last two days have been cold and windy. Yesterday was downright miserable with highs in the upper 40’s with strong winds and rain at times. My son’s band was set up outside to play last night and we were absolutely freezing. I could see my breath it was so cold. Today it will get up to 60 and it will be sunny, so it should be a better afternoon and evening being outside to watch my son play in both the bands he is in. I am not driving so that is even better.

Absolutely everyone is sick, but somehow I managed to keep my head above water. For once my body has not failed me being around sick people at home and work. Arabella and I are the only ones who managed to stay healthy. Ever since Arabella got her tonsils out, she has not been getting sick every time a cold wind blows.

Angel and Dan made their way down to Georgia with their camper where Dan will be working the next week. They made the trek on Easter day. Dan drove the camper down in his truck while Angel followed him in her car. On the way, Dan’s truck broke down. He is driving a truck from the 1980’s. Dan’s dad is a mechanic who taught Dan everything about fixing vehicles. Thankfully they were able to make it to the campsite they are staying at. My daughter and her husband live a very frugal life which I am very proud of. But sometimes I just have to roll my eyes and laugh a little as they don’t have to live that way. Some of it is because I know we are the same way.

A couple things happened this past week that are worth noting. One day was particularly rough as I had an 8 hour day of reading policies for work. Over my lunch, I had a dentist appointment. They took my blood pressure before the cleaning and it was high. I have been checking it at home and it is still higher than it should be. I’ve also started getting headaches every day. Nothing major, but I never had headaches before. I am keeping an eye on things but I don’t have time for another problem. I’m too busy worrying about other things, like my mom’s blood pressure. Her doctor wanted her to come in and get tested as it has been running high lately.

Next week my mom has two doctor appointments. One is for a PET scan over two hours away from her house. My sister-in-law was going to take her but she backed out. Since it is on my day off next week, my husband and I will be taking her. I am not looking to 5+ hours of driving. I am really hoping to get some answers with this test as her MRI results were inconclusive. I still haven’t found anyone to take her to her other appointment yet.

The other notable thing that happened was that I got asked to be one of the comedians for a comedy show on Mother’s Day weekend. Patrons will need to pay to get in and I will be getting paid to be in the show. Not too bad for someone who just started doing stand up comedy a couple of months ago. Who would’ve guessed?

This weekend I am looking forward to my son playing in his bands. The biggest challenge will be finding a work/life balance trying to take care of my mom’s health without neglecting my own. I do have some fun things planned during the week such as trivia night and stand up comedy. I will plan on making time to do another update next week.

Middle of April update

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I am getting into the swing of things with my new job. Last week I had the online orientation. This week I took two classes, yesterday and today. Monday I shadowed an employee doing registration in the ER. It was a hectic day as one of the employee’s called in. The person who was training me said it’s always busy there and they can barely keep up with the work. The company I work for manages two ER’s, one is always busy the other is not. Most people want to work at the ER that is not quite as busy. But I, along with the trainer, would rather be too busy than not busy enough.

Next week I will start training with the ability to login as an employee instead of just watching. I will be working full-time next week which is going to be super crazy busy with the NFL draft in the area. I am going to be seeing a lot of things. It seems like in the one day I already have.

All is well in the home front. My mom made it to her MRI appointment without me having to take off work. I had a marvelous weekend, although once again I stayed up way too late. This weekend is going to be a lot more low key. We are planning on having people over for Easter, but nothing too big. I have to work all day Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow night I am planning on doing stand up comedy.

This week I washed the windows and put on the screens as it might get into the 60’s.

We found out yesterday that my daughter Angel and her husband will not be home for another month. We thought they would be home by the end of this month. This weekend Dan will be done with his job in Virginia and they will be moving their camper to another job site in Georgia. Dan hasn’t been home since Christmas. Angel stayed home through January which was a bit of a problem as her next door neighbor wrote her a love note in January. She wasn’t comfortable there by herself because of that. She recently got footage on her Ring camera that her neighbor was looking into her windows. Thankfully when she comes home, Dan will be with her to have a conversation with the creepy neighbor.

That’s all for this week. So far the new job seems interesting and I think I will really like it.

Happy Easter!

Spring’s new start

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I started my new job yesterday. For the rest of the week I will be working remotely doing a new employee orientation. There are 60 some other people in the class with me. This will be the biggest company I worked for. I never thought at 50 I would be starting a new job in the healthcare industry, but here I am.

Since I last wrote, I took my mom to two of her appointments. At the appointment with the psychiatric nurse, I requested my mom to be taken off a medication that is hard on the brain as requested by the neuropsychiatrist. The next appointment was the first appointment with the neurologist. The neurologist seemed very concerned about the condition my mother is in. She only answered 11 out of 30 questions correctly. She was unable to think of any current events. She told the doctor we were going out to eat afterwards as the current event. The appointment lasted close to two hours. It was stressful to see how poorly my mom answered most of the questions. The doctor also said my mom had a movement disorder typically seen in the later stages of Alzheimer’s. Then the doctor ordered another slew of tests starting with a MRI.

Afterwards, my mom took us out to eat. Paul picked the restaurant as a reward for helping her keep track of Matt’s financial records. I felt bittersweet in the moment. I tried to enjoy the time with my mom but the doctor’s words rang in my head to start looking at care options soon. Her condition is not going to improve. In fact, quite the opposite is true. After going out to eat, we visited Alex at work in the music store.

The doctor said I should make sure my mom is taking her medication correctly when we got back to her house. Her pills were a mess. She had only one pill container where she put both AM and PM pills into it. I tried to help her straighten everything out but this only made her angry. She yelled at me to just leave her alone, but later apologized. I called her doctor as well because she was taking a lot of supplements and I was concerned. The whole experience resulted in another trip over with a new pill sorter with AM and PM slots and the removal of some supplements she was taking way too much of.

The trips to the doctors and bad news really took an emotional toll on me. I felt more empathy towards my mom than usual once I realized how sick she was. At the same time I felt conflicted in my mind over how toxic and difficult our relationship has been. Not everyone has close relationships with family they need to caretake. Something to be mindful of when I work in the ER.

By Friday I was ready to get out of town and make the drive to Milwaukee to see Alex’s band perform at a brewery. The venue was packed, and not just with people. There were a lot of dogs inside, kids running around, and someone even brought their pet pig. A younger man even brought his puppy over to me to hold. They said animals were allowed in the brewery because they didn’t sell food inside. However, they had food trucks set up outside and you could bring food in.

Paul and I stayed in a German Inn. The building was a hundred years old. We ate German food there and each had a flight of German beer. Everything was excellent. Then we took an Uber to see our son’s band play. I am so blessed to have two children who are very talented musicians. It’s amazing to see an audience adore them. We had a great time watching the band. Then afterwards we went to the bar with the band. We didn’t get to bed until 2 AM. I felt bad in the morning because we were probably really loud coming back to our room as I could hear the other residents awake early in the morning. It was a nice little getaway before work started though.

This weekend we will be seeing Alex’s band again and going to a film festival. I only work half a day on Friday and then I am going to get my 7th tattoo. I am getting outrunning my demons tattooed on my leg. This is something I was planning on doing once I finished my memoir. (Although, at this point, I can’t guarantee it is 100% done). However, this Friday would’ve been my grandma’s 100th birthday. As the most positive influence in my childhood, and the reason why I am here today (both literally and figuratively) I am also getting a tattoo on her birthday in remembrance of her.

My grandma passed away 16 years ago already. I am going to throw her a party by lighting every candle in my house surrounding her pictures, watching old family videos, and just sharing stories and remembering the good times with her. I am going to make cookies using her recipe because every time anyone would visit a jar of cookies would be waiting for them to take home. I want to say I will be making her favorite foods, but I really don’t know what they were because she would always make my favorite foods.

This past week I experienced a lot of ups and downs. The sadness of my mom’s deteriorating health. The joy of watching my son play in the band. A small getaway. Starting a new job in a new career. Not having the time to care for others as much with the start of a full-time job. I’m not sure if this is good or bad yet. Arabella had her doctor appointment today. This was the first appointment I didn’t go with her to in over a year. The doctor switched up her meds a bit. He also put her on a weight loss drug as her anti-psychotic meds are making her gain a lot of weight. But guess what? She managed going without me. It’s going to be a lot harder with my mom. But maybe other people need to step up and worry about it, not just me.

April begins…

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I am scheduled to start working in less than a week and I still haven’t gotten my schedule yet. As a planner, it’s been driving me crazy. My mom and Arabella have doctor appointments the next couple weeks and I don’t know if I can take them. Tomorrow my mom has her appointment with the psychiatric nurse and the following day she has her first appointment with the neurologist. Thankfully, I will be around to take her to those appointments. Unfortunately, my mom doesn’t live all that close so just the driving to appointments takes 2 1/2 hours of my time. Hopefully we will be closer to answers on the type of dementia my mom has and closer to options for treatment.

My follow up appointment with the doctor went well to check on my thumb where a chunk of nail down to the base was removed to get out a sliver. No signs of infection. However, it is going to take months to heal if it ever does heal properly. I will still need to wear a Bandaid as there is a thin portion that remains which tends to get snagged on clothing.

I got the sliver while vacuuming against a wood railing. Last week after cleaning the house the switch on our well pump went out. Mind you this happened at 5 PM on Friday while I was rinsing veggies to make supper. We ended up without water for the weekend. It would work briefly if someone tapped on the switch. So just enough to hand wash the dishes but not enough to run the dishwasher. Ironically, after the water turned off inside it started pouring outside. We had heavy rains, thunderstorms, sleet, some snow, and an ice storm before the system left late Sunday night. Monday morning service people came out to do their magic and we have water. Today I cleaned the house again. Hopefully nothing bad happens. I’m starting to doubt a little cleanliness never hurt anyone.

Despite the lack of running water, the weekend went well. I finished writing my memoir. I know I’ve said that several times and then a lot of things happened. But I think this time I am really done.

This week I am looking forward to doing stand up comedy again. Then Paul and I are going out of town for the night to see Alex perform with his band. It’s one little last hurrah before I start working next week…if I start working next week. Hopefully I’ll get my schedule soon!!

Hopefully the next time you hear from me I’ll be complaining about my new job. Just kidding. I used to really get into April Fool’s Day jokes. But it really doesn’t interest me too much anymore. Maybe that’s a part of being a ‘mature’ woman.