WHAT THE HELL, 2018, YOU SUCKED!

WHAT THE HELL, 2018, YOU SUCKED! 

Last Saturday I went to visit my mother like any other day. Check if the bills are paid, teach her how to use technology and give her directions to whatever social gathering she would be going to with friends. Well, this time it was different.

I found her on the floor and unresponsive, carpet with her blood and her face with a good amount of it dried on. It took a moment of shaking and calling her name before she groggily responded, though still didn't make too much sense and I had no clue what had happened.

I called the paramedics and while she knew her name, birthday and who I was, had no clue what exactly happened. They got her up and took her to the local hospital and there began this week long process that, given the fortune that I have been given throughout the past year, I honestly shouldn't have been surprised one bit as to how we would be getting through to the finish line of 2018.

After what seemed like eternity in white walled, no window rooms and transported from medical ICU room to ICU to tackle heart and head issues, throughout which she would often just flat line for a brief second or two. Not enough to have the medical staff grab the defibrillators, hell, some of those moments she had her eyes wide awake looking at me, but enough to crash the machine before the heart beat came back like nothing happened.

They put in a temporary pacemaker and then the waiting continued. In that period I had plenty of time to just reflect on how this year was just really really rough. From dealing with a foreclosure battle on her home that lasted several months and felt like a plot out of one of those 80's movies where the kids are trying to save the local rec center, to the conclusion of that coming down to a very uncomfortable wire a few days before the auction.

Then there was all the animals I lost in this past year. When you feed stray cats, you get used to the turnstile sort of life some will have. I've been doing this for more than ten years and I thought I was toughened up throughout that time to handle loss. Add in the balance of being able to find plenty good homes, but man, between September and November, in what felt like a weekly situation, I found myself dealing with still mourning a death of the previous one and then getting lumped with having to dig a new grave. Some of the cats that passed away this year weren't even from the stray colony I handle. The ones I owned, who were up there in age like 11+ years, were starting to die off in an alarming and tragic way.

Those... yeah, those really affected me in a rough way.

All this on a backdrop of, well, I'm not one to really talk about what I'm going through. I usually keep that stuff in. Bartenders hold those secrets.. or something, but this year... man. This year a lot of friends that I have known for many years suddenly got me not shutting up about how utterly confused and how I was working though a lot through the beginning and middle of this year.

Back to my mother. After stabilizing her with the use of a temp pacemaker and coming to the conclusion that while she had internal bleeding in her head from the fall, that it wasn't progressing to the point where they had to intervene, they got her ready for a transport to her primary hospital. Kaiser Sunset.

Having so much of my time taken up at Kaiser Sunset this week was strange. That hospital has played a major role in the story of my life. For one, I was born there. I've almost died there several times now. The scars I carry all had Kaiser Sunset's seal stamped on them somehow. Honestly, at this point it would only be poetically fitting that when my time to ride into the Sunset comes, that Kaiser Sunset would take its part. Anything short of that and I'd be giving a stern talking to ol' Peter at the Pearly Gates.

Sitting bedside in the ccu center was just more time passing by. I'm not sure if its the detective comics i read growing up or the true crime podcasts I listen to, but I basically pieced out exactly how the situation went down based on clues. I mean, none of that really mattered now. They got her heart to stabilize and while she was still very much out of it, due to being on the floor for at least 8 hours before I found her and not taking her normal medication for other issues as well as her insulin, the next stage of this staggering week of shit I wasn't prepared for kicked in.

For one thing, for being the one who is power of attorney and decision maker from her living will, it basically fell on me to have a lot of choices I was not ready to make be made. Getting, for example, a paper on Christmas Eve about financial responsibility and signing away freely wasn't exactly what I asked for from Santa. Then it was a situation where they took my number wrong and so even contacting me and updating me felt like I was a few steps behind every next move and desperately playing catch up.

I wouldn't know when suddenly she was moved to another room and felt like I kept on having to play reactionary to the whole situation. One day it was heavily being told that she wouldn't need the pacemaker and that medication could be the option in helping her heart valves pump in the blood more consistently and then the next thing I'm told is that they're prepping her for surgery the next day to install a permanent one.

I'll chalk it up to just being shell shocked by the entire year and limping my way towards the end of it. But man, this has been a very rough week that will end a very rough year and I couldn't be more happy about it being done. Not that it's to say that "new year, new me" or whatever bullshit. But one thing is certain, I wouldn't have made it to this point now if I didn't keep that hope and bright spirit inside that tomorrow is another day and, well.. who knows what the tide will bring in.

Sitting with her in the latest of this series of tours of hospitals having her eat on her own, be it with some strain and able to talk to me in a voice that doesn't sound so force. It felt good.

All year when some really troubling shit was tossed at me, I did what I could to come out the other end. Yeah, I'm not giving the good times their proper dues. Career wise, it was great. I got to travel for work.. Hell, representing the company at Great American Beer Fest was amazing. On top of having a great year in terms of personal hobbies and finding that enjoyment both in writing and food creating again... 2018 wasn't able to touch that.

And sure, the Tardis and Harris-Holloway rooms were suppose to be ready to rent out in May, but that's construction. Delays are certain. Besides, both of which are getting those final touch ups and I start the new year with this determination that if 2018 didn't kill me, I could survive just about anything.

TL;DR = New Year, New ME!!!!1 W000000000000OOooooo