Curiouser and Curiouser!

Back to Blogging!

The time has come for me to start blogging regularly – actually it’s past time, and I am determined to keep the blogging up, especially since I’ve just moved to San Francisco and I want to record all of the adventures I encounter in my new life here with my husband! Packing up my home was bittersweet – happy to be newly married to Chris, but also leaving my family and dearest friends in and near the city that I have always lived in.

In the process of packing things up, sorting through belongings to decide what to give to charity was the hardest part, but the farther into the process I was, the easier it became.

Anything that was not used within the last year or two was given away and it felt so freeing to see all of those stored things go away! It’s also a nice feeling to know that my donations help to keep people employed, too.

In all, I donated 3/4 of my possessions and I don’t miss any of it!

It was a little stressful to prepare to leave Portland, but little did I know what would happen just before I was scheduled to leave town.

Monday the 7th was spent loading my section of a UPak trailer from ABF Freight. Chris (Sacco) and Daniel came over to help, as did my Dad so things were loaded very quickly. In fact, we had it loaded within 3 hours, so ABF was able to pick up the trailer that same afternoon! ABF was courteous and the whole process went smoothly.

As it turns out, packing things up would be the easy part.

That night was spent at my best friend’s house, even though he wasn’t home from Hawaii yet.

Tuesday the 9th I woke and began to get ready to go back to my place to get the odds and ends still left in my townhouse packed up and taken to Goodwill. While I was in the middle of eating a bite for breakfast, my Dad called to say that he was calling an ambulance for Mom to go to the hospital.

She would not fully wake up and could not talk – she had been sick for a week with some sort of “stomach flu” and at the time we wondered if the illness was getting worse.

Mom was in the hospital from last Tuesday (the 9th) until Sunday afternoon. She had been vomiting for almost a week, and that morning woke up un-able to communicate with my Dad.

They took her to the ER, and admitted her to the hospital. She had become dehydrated, and because of the stomach bug she had, her sugar levels had risen quite dangerously (over 300 points). That, coupled with infection that had spread into her bloodstream affected her brain function severely. There were several of us there in the room with her for several hours that night, but she didn’t remember that at all.

The next day, she would slip in and out of being coherent and cognizant of her surroundings. At one point, I talked to her for an hour and a half straight, but later she didn’t remember anything we had talked about… just some minor details. It was so bad that she even had some hallucinations… she thought that she was being moved from hospital to hospital and then finally stayed at the one she really was in. This continued for a few days – you never knew if she was going to be clear headed or completely foggy.
The doctors told my Dad that she’s dying, but we already knew that – interestingly, they didn’t communicate that to Mom, but perhaps that was because she was always cognizant of what was going on . They said that they cannot put a time frame on it though, that it was impossible to guess when we might expect her to pass on. Mom has known for quite a while that she’s been slowly dying, and she’s okay with it – that helps me deal with it better. She and I have been discussing this for a long time, so while it won’t be easy, and I certainly don’t want her to pass on, I am prepared as much as I can be, I suppose.
They pushed her hard to be put in a nursing home, right down to making the arrangements for a specific place WITHOUT talking to my Dad or Mom or any other family member. There were a few arguments between Dad and the main doctor, and then an argument between my Mom and the doctor. I hate how they try to push things on you. They know that she’s dying, and she specifically said that she wants to pass on at her own home, where she is comfortable and happy, yet they still tried to push it on her.
She’s doing much better than she was at the hospital. Just after one day of her being home, I can see a huge difference in the quality of her communication and her retention of conversations that we have. Her mood is much lighter too, and I suspect that this upswing in mood contributes greatly to the increased memory retention.
On a lighter note, the move to San Francisco has gone well! My things were delivered here on Monday – we used a local day labor service that was recommended by Pinterest to hire two men to help us unload and carry my things up to our apartment.

All of that took about an hour with the four of us unloading (the two hired men and Chris and I). It would not have taken that long if we had not had such a long walk through the parking garage! They made it sound like we could unload everything onto the dock and then right up an elevator… well, the dock was taken up by large trash bins and recycling bins, so it didn’t leave us much room to unload things directly ponto the garage floor behind the trailer. We would take some things out, stack it up, and then start carrying or wheeling things through the garage, up a short ramp to the next garage level, walk several yards then turn a corner and go into the elevator area. Phew! We were all very sweaty and tired after all of that, but at least it went quickly.

I have spent the past two days un-packing and finding homes for things. I discovered that a couple of boxes that I had intended to take to Goodwill got packed in the trailer, I suspect by one of my two friends that was helping me load the trailer back at my old place. Oh well! I may have more things here that I could part with as well, so I see a run to Goodwill using our new ZipCar membership in our future. 🙂 (I sold my car to my Parents since I won’t need to use a car here very often)
I still have many things to write about from the past few weeks, and I’m not sure where to start! I should have a bit of time later this evening to sort out a few pics from my first weekend living in San Francisco, and then I’ll work backward to the wedding.

Off I go to run some errands!

 

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