My sabbatical is over. (Cue weeping.)
It actually feels good to be back in the office, at least at the moment -- not quite eight a.m., drinking coffee and planning the work for the week.
I'm teaching two Comp II classes, one on-line and one in person; one intro to Creative writing, in person; and one Fiction workshop, also in person. All the in-person classes are what's called alt.hybrid, which means we split the class in half and each half comes to school once a week and works online the rest of the time. This is to allow for social distancing.
We'll see how it works out in real time.
Meanwhile, my parents have been having trouble. My mother has been living with myelofibrosis (a kind of slow blood cancer) for years, but last week it kicked up into an acute phase, and now she's in the hospital. The medical team says she'll need to stay in nursing care for at least two or three weeks. Because her blood isn't making sufficient red blood cells, her O2 levels are down (85-90%) and she's not able to think clearly or communicate.
This is a problem for her, obviously, but also for my father, who has been sliding into dementia for a couple years. He can't live alone, because he can't remember anything for more than a few minutes, and will forget to eat or take his meds without constant supervision. My mother has been taking care of him over the past years, but with her in the hospital, well.
One of my brothers and his family, and one of my nephews still live in New Orleans; and my other surviving brother lives a few hours away. They've been coping so far, but it's fairly clear that my parents are going to have to go into assisted living.
So that's been happening.
And, of course, 40% of the country has lost its damn mind. The ability of conservatives to blame what happened at the Capitol on anyone except their own poisonous selves is...not surprising, I guess, since that's their M.O. Disgusting, I guess is the word.
How's your week going?
2 comments:
Ooof. That sounds really rough. Something very similar happened recently with a friend's parents- the mom had dementia, the dad was hospitalized with cancer, it was very not good. I wish our country had much, much better home health assistance so people didn't have to go into nursing homes.
I'm at work, realizing that the lab (which starts in one week) is not even close to ready and I have the wrong kind of bacteria. AAAAAAH!
My poor father was so smart and so sharp, and he understands (sort of) what's happening to him. My mother has been stressed about what will happen to him if she dies. It's been rough.
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