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Uh, another update I guess

It’s January 18 already. My goodness. I think my previous post was pre-January 6. A simpler time? No. A complicated time. Now it’s just _more_ complicated.
Our neighbors used to have a blue line flag on their porch, and on January 8 I noticed it wasn’t up anymore. I originally thought they took it down because they realized it was potentially a hate symbol, or at least carried by people full of hate. But now I wonder if they took it down because they needed it for the rally!

If something happens to me suddenly, I need David to know I loved him deeply. Even though we’ve had several arguments these past couple weeks, I’m so lucky to have him. I still listen to love song lyrics and think of David. “Oh, this is love, love, love, love, precious love,” or “You want me, I want you, baby, My sugarboo, I’m levitating.”

Edit: I wrote this on January 18 and never published it, because it was incomplete. Publishing now.

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New Year Resolution: PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER

This year has been an interesting one, because it started bad and then got worse. I don’t want to list how we were fortunate this year, however, because the last time I wrote about being happy, my dad had a stroke. Am I saying I jinxed us? YES. YES I AM.
Did I cause the worldwide pandemic with that post? No. I’m not a crazy person.

It’s been over a year since my dad had his stroke, and I have learned some things that I want people to know:

1) Get Power of Attorney over your parents while they’re still of sound mind. It’ll make things a lot easier.
2) Find out your parents’s email passwords and phone passwords. When people are in a hospital, and you need to log in to check on the payment status of a bill, double authentication is going to be a nightmare without these things.
3) Medicare is fine, but Medicare Supplemental is necessary and you should get a quality plan while still healthy.
4) Doctors are just guessing a lot of time.

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Her First Word

Her first word was really “no.” She says “Na na na na” and waves you off to reject whatever you have offered her that she does not care for. She started this around 10-11 months.

Her second word is “duck.” She whispers it once and does not repeat it. We only know this because we have independently experienced this phenomenon at 14 months and one week.

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It’s November 2020

Hello! It’s November 2020. On October 31st, I did not reach my goal of biking 150 miles in October. I was 15.3 miles short of 150 or something. I was so mad at myself. I vowed to make November better. I vowed to make progress toward an improved me, in November. I also thought, “You don’t care about biking. Who cares if you did not bike 150 miles? But you know what you care about? Writing. You care so much about writing. So you know what your November goal needs to be? To write EVERY DAY. EVERY SINGLE DAY.” These are the thoughts I had on October 31st.

Today is November 2nd, I did not write yesterday. I also did not exercise yesterday.

But I’m here now. Writing.

Writing is a little tricky, because the last time I wrote about being happy, things took a turn for the worse the next day.

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A Real Cookie Monster

I just ate 5 giant spoons of Nutella, and I don’t really know why.

Actually I think I know why. A new bakery opened, and I want to go there, but I can’t because of Covid and work. This bakery has consumed all my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about how much I want cookies from the bakery. My belly, which when I fold the fat can have a full blown conversation with me, wants these cookies.

I need for the following to happen:

1) Baby sleeps in (this is never going to happen).
2) For me to get up early and be front of line for the cookies, to minimize exposure to people.
3) For the cookies to be ABSOLUTELY AWFUL SO I NEVER CRAVE THEM AGAIN. I need them to be straight up cardboard.

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Emissions Inspection Letter

My car failed emissions inspection today. I had given the car to my parents because we leased another car when we were expecting. The person doing the inspection asked if I had used the car recently, and I shared it had been pretty much un-driven for the past eight months. He said the scanners could not pick up the information, and I need to drive the car 100-200 miles.
“What? Where am I supposed to go?!” I asked, because it’s Covid time. “I’m not planning to go anywhere,” I said. They shrugged and said I had to drive the car.

My dad knows the father of the person who did the inspection, so when I told him about this, he asked me to bring him a pen and paper, so he could write him a letter. He wrote one line in Farsi with some of the best penmanship I’ve seen from him in a very long time. Then I asked him to read to me what he wrote. He shook his head and said that he could not read it. He put the pen down and said he has Alzheimer’s.

He can still remember things, he just can’t remember letters and words. This is aphasia. So I told him he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, he just has a problem with words. Then I held back tears so he wouldn’t see me cry, because telling stories and writing emails was something my dad did all the time. I did tell him Alzheimer’s would be worse, because if he didn’t remember us or other people or events, things would be even harder.

I got to see my parents today though, so that was good.

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Covid Update from Me

I ate my weight in croissants (morning) and pizza (dinner and second dinner) yesterday, and now I hate myself.

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Update

It’s 2:40am. I just emptied the dishwasher and specifically put the cups back in incorrect spots in the cupboard because David didn’t wash my breast pump flange when doing the dishes. Tomorrow/later today we will have this discussion:

David: Hey, thanks for emptying the dishwasher! But this is not where the tea cups go. And the wine glasses go up here. You put two of them next to the tea cups.

Me: mhmm. Hey thanks for doing the dishes last night. Why didn’t you wash my pump?

Then we will stare at each other.

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To Do

Things I need to do:

1) Write down memories of my dad, pre-stroke. Also write down anecdotes and poems he shared.
2) Find a way for him to communicate his recipes to me and my mom. That’s pretty advanced for right now, but we should figure out something.
3) Eat again. My dad wanted me to lose the baby weight, but not like this, I’m pretty sure.
4) Get Power of Attorney.
5) Find a way to consolidate updates for friends and family. Updating people individually is a waste of time.

Edit: This blog is not the solution to #5. His friends and family do not need to know one daughter is insane.

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Not a Happy New Year

It occurred to me yesterday I may need therapy, but I don’t have the bandwidth for it. Any time I spend talking to a stranger is time and money spent away from family and child, so I will not bother. I will write things here at random times that suit my schedule. That will help.

My dad had a hemorrhagic stroke on December 27. And we’ve been at the hospital since then. So far he has survived the stroke, which is good. We were assigned a general practitioner group to coordinate recovery, and in our first meeting with them they made it sound like he would be on a surgically inserted feeding tube and we had to think through whether we wanted to end the whole thing. I quickly decided he was an idiot and was relieved when his rotation ended and we were assigned a different doctor. My dad is not on a feeding tube. He can’t feed himself or eat solids, but he’s not on a tube.

He can’t speak or understand words, they say. His intelligence is still there, but the communication portion of the brain is impaired. I think he understands and he communicates with me through expressions. But the therapists and doctors can’t read his expressions, plus they speak to him in English, which is unlikely to be the language he understands when he’s under duress. Initially he was still laughing at appropriate moments. Now he doesn’t laugh at all, and on Sunday he slept all day because he was so exhausted. His blood pressure is either high or low. He’s going to be discharged from the hospital today, which is good. I tried to get him discharged into a rehab facility instead of a nursing home, but we couldn’t. That was disappointing, especially because I had such
high hopes. Everyone we have talked to so far and the internet has shared recovery stories. People say you need to wait to see what his new baseline is. I need to remind myself that.

David shared on Day 4 he was exhausted from child care all day and we should look into getting help, which is fair. And he was wondering if we really had to cancel an upcoming trip, which is fair. I got really mad at him for both of these things though. I didn’t say I was mad. I think I just said, “That’s fair, I’m so sorry,” but in a tone that conveyed I was livid, it’s not fair, and I was not sorry. Then I apologized. It’s a lot, I know. He’s doing a great job. She has her vaccines today, so we’re both staying home.

I think I fluctuate between tears, optimism, and anger. I accused our new general practitioner today of not knowing anything about strokes. “How many stroke patients have you worked with? You’re not an expert in strokes,” I said in response to something he said that sounded condescending and demonstrated that he was not actually familiar with my dad’s file. He was a jerk. He looked taken aback and shot back “that’s medicare fraud” in reference to discharging someone to a rehab facility to see if they can make it and then if they can’t, to a nursing home. This is incorrect. When we toured the nursing facilities, who actually know about medicare, they explained that is a route people take, and medicare covers it. So I KNOW he was just saying that because his ego was bruised and he didn’t have the bedside manner to explain things to me well. This doctor had someone there he was training too, and I wanted to tell him right there his mentor was not good. The general practitioner last week had better bedside manner. Anyway, I was super upset Monday because my dad had been showing such progress Saturday. I hope seeing the skilled nursing facility today does not depress him. I hope my mom gets through this. I can’t lose them both. I wanted my daughter to get to know them.

I also hope my milk supply isn’t diminishing.

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