[124/366] the happiest Skype

[cosmolinguist]

I actually got to talk to my mom! She's home for a day in the middle of her friend's stay in the care home kind of place. It's because her friend is having a planned overnight stay in the hospital, but it still seems really stressful. My mom is worried about how her friend is doing but I don't have any idea of how to expect someone is doing after bone marrow transfusion. And neither does my mom, but that never stops her from being pessimistic.

She's also really struggling with all the work expected of her: 24/7 care for her friend, grocery shopping, cooking meals, having to clean and sterilize everything all the time, and then the added covid precautions and restrictions. She hasn't been sleeping much and she looked like it, poor thing.

But my parents were sitting outside on the patio with a beer each and they seemed pretty happy and the normality of the scene was really good for me. I'll still have to talk to only my dad next weekend, but I'm feeling a lot better for having been able to do this. I was just thinking this afternoon, as I was trying to nap, about how restless it made me feel to not be able to talk to my mom when I know she's having such a tough time. I'm still surprised how much more settled it made me feel.

Comments

[steorra]

Yay!

[barakta]

I think I'd missed that your mum was away from home for a while. I hope she can get less work and more rest soon. Sounds very tiring indeed.

[cosmolinguist]

I thought I talked more about it here but I guess I didn't! Here's an explanation I did in a comment below.

[miss_newham]

I feel like I've missed a chapter in your book! What's your mum up to?

[cosmolinguist]

I don't really understand it myself but basically it seems like she's doing unpaid skilled care-work because the U.S. is a country with nightmarish healthcare!

Her best friend needed a bone marrow transplant and with the different procedures/observation and I guess needing to be close by for a while in case of complications or whatever, she needed to stay in...a place? lie a care home I guess but without many nurses or whatever? maybe more like supported living because there is some clinical staff there I guess? that's sorta connected to the hospital. And since the patient won't be in any state to cook or look after themselves on their own, they're supposed to have a family member or something there with them. My mom says if you don't have anyone who can take care of you they just won't let you get your bone marrow or whatever there, which is hoffiying but, as I said, nightmarish! I really don't understand how this isn't someone's literal paid job but instead my mom is doing it for this woman who's been her best friend since they were twelve.

My mom will be away for three weeks, and since she and my dad are so technologically useless, as far as I'm con cerned she's completely incommunicado despite having her iPhone there with her. Like she doesn't even believe that email or Skype are things she can have on her phone. So I didn't think I'd get to talk to her for a long time while she went through all this stressful stuff more or leass by herself (she is able to talk to my dad at least! but still, she likes to talk to me every weeka nd I've never understood why but want her to have that if it makes her happy). And that's why I was so glad I did, and that she got a little break to go home and rest too.

[miss_newham]

Blimey! That all sounds pretty difficult; I hope she and your dad are coping as well as possible. After reading about them for so many years I kind of feel like I vaguely know them now!

[otter]

That's hard work she's doing. Glad she got a break.

[sfred]

<3