December 14, 2005

Grattitude

I'm happy to report that my father is doing well today. Though they're still not certain what actually caused his "cardiac incidents" they have inserted a permanent pacemaker / defribulator to address the symptom - his heart stopping. Thank you all for the kind words through this. I was really taken aback from all of the comments my last post received - it's been my most popuplar post yet! I'll likely be bringing my parents home today or tomorrow.

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December 11, 2005

What really matters

I got out of my Thursday night Men's Big Book Study meeting in St. Paul and checked my cell phone. 4 missed calls. All from my mother. Mom's a little OCD, but this was a little out of the ordinary, even for her. Something had to be wrong.

I checked my voicemail. Mom calling. Sounds frazzled. "Call me right away." Next message is more of the same. The third one I can hear that she's in a car. "Get to Abbot Northwestern Hospital. It's your father. Hurry."

Two months ago my father celebrated his 70th birthday. Something my mother has since told me that he never thought he'd be able to do. He's had heart problems since he was in his mid fifties. Triple bypass, artery replacements, valve replacement, etc., etc., etc. Thing is, he hasn't had anything act up in years. In hindsight, we should have been paying closer attention.

Heading west-bound on I-94, driving as fast as safely possible, my mother calls. She's sobbing, can barely speak, but she manages to convey that Dad had gone under but they'd been able to revive him.

We meet in the emergency room. I arrive shortly before my mother and uncle do. She comes in as fast as she can, looking for anyone with answers. We're instructed that he's doing okay and that we can see him shortly.

Calming down, my mother tells me the details of what happened. How they were sitting down to watch Survivor. Dad was tired and sat in his chair, tipped his head back, and momentarily fell asleep - something he's been known to do now and then. My mother tried to wake him, but he didn't respond. She went over to him and he was stiff. And not breathing. With no pulse.

She called 911. They instructed her to lay him on the floor. She rubbed his chest and opened his mouth, trying to ensure his airway was opened. He suddenly begun breathing again. Frightened, not knowing what happened, he pushed her away. The paramedics arrived, put him on the stretcher and carted him out.

In the ER, ironically at the same time ER was airing on NBC, the doctor explained to us the results of the tests. The EKG showed that his heart had been somewhat strained. They transferred him up to the Intensive Care Unit.

We arrived up on the second floor ICU five minutes later, standing in my father's room. He was conscious and alert. Though he still didn't remember what happened in the living room, he remembered eating dinner and everything leading up to that.

The doctor came in and asked us a few questions. The nurse got him situated, feeding various bottles up into his IV.

We left the room to head down to the family lounge. A monitor began to beep erratically. I didn't pay any attention to it, because there are beeps coming from any number of machines from any number of rooms - how can you tell where they're coming from? Unfortunately, this one happened to be my father's heart monitor - it had stopped again. They pulled out the paddles, positioned them on his chest, and shocked him back to life.

This happened five or six times before I fell asleep. I found out later that it continued to happen - roughly 10 - 12 times throughout the night.

I awoke in the morning and they were transferring him up to surgery to do an angiogram and insert a temporary pacemaker and defribulator, after which he was transferred again upstairs to the Cardiac-ICU.

He's still there. Rarely awake, recuperating. He hasn't had any more incidents, but there have been a few spikes in the monitor. Every time I hear one of those beeps go wild I get a little nervous. Tomorrow he is going into surgery to have a permanent pacemaker / defribulator inserted. This is supposed to be the cure-all for him.

I am grateful I have been sober through this. People contacted me when they found out what had happened. They offerred help. They wanted to make sure that I was okay. It was truly wonderful.

I'm grateful I was able to make amends with my parents. Because of that, I felt no shame with my father. I didn't know what would happen, but I knew that I had made my peace. At one point my father looked up at me, grabbed my hand and told me he was glad I was there. That meant a lot to me. It was as if he was trying to comfort me instead of the other way around. Still providing, still being the parent.

I'm grateful I've been able to be there to comfort my mother. To make sure she's not alone during this.

And most of all, I'm glad I haven't lost it yet. Sobriety has allowed me to be present.

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May 09, 2005

BMW SUVs and serenity in the north

Jim told his story tonight at Hazelden. He did a great job. He's an awesome speaker, getting both laughs and applauses. It's quite an honor to be asked to speak at the treatment center that's pretty much invented the current 28 day treatment program prescribed to most sufferring alcoholics and addicts.

I'd never been up there before, but it's an awesome place. It makes the place I went to treatment look like a Hollywood Video in a stripmall off a two-lane highway in a 4th ring suburb. Hazelden on the otherhand, resembles a prestigous private university campus:

Check out the photo tour page of the facilities on their website.

It's up in Center City, MN - about an hour north of the Sin Cities, a.k.a., Minneapolis - St. Paul. On the way there you drive through a couple of really small towns that are purley Scandanavian and German. The small town culture up there is cute and endearing, but I can just imagine some of the folks going into treatment, just off the plane from LA or New York, driving through these towns. What must be going through their heads when they see the sign the nicest restaurant in town - Trappers. The only hint of civilization is a Hardeez that you have to drive down a pot-hole infested frontage road that may as well have been gravel.

But once you take that right turn on Pleasant Valley Rd., and another right on the curvacious and hilly private drive, you enter a world of walking paths through dense forests. A half mile into the adventure you come upon the campus - hidden from the rest of the world. It's what I imagine is a great place to come and find yourself.

On the way up there I spoke with my Grandma on the phone. She talked about staying at Hazelden for a week with my Grandfather for part of his treatment program for alcoholism. I have a hard time judging just how much of it she understood, or cares to lead-on to knowing. I think that she's more comfortable playing dumb and not talking about the real reasons he was there. He passed on about 10 years ago now and I believe she prefers to remember him as the perfect husband and father. He was a great grandfather to me, but I can imagine he had room for improvement in the father/husband role, being a practicing alcoholic. Who knows if I should even have these thoughts? Who am I to think and write these things?

My grandfather died of Alcoholism and Tuberculosis. He always appeared happy to me and made me laugh. However all the time I knew him he didn't appear physically well. By the time he finally passed his liver had all but shriveled up and he had 80% of his lungs removed. He required an oxygen machine to live and was barely mobile. I never knew him any different and I loved him anyway. I'm rambling now, but it was nice to think back on the memories I have of him.

Jim and I drove back into town and as I merged from one freeway to another, I noticed the most interesting sight. A BMW X5 SUV was towing a UHaul trailer. It occurred to me that I'd never actually seen one of those luxury brand SUVs ever tow anything. Sure, I've seen Chevy's and Fords towing around boats, trailers, and the like ... but a UHaul truck being toted along by an X5? It was utterly absurd. What would the other X5 drivers think if they saw that?

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March 26, 2005

Life is F.I.N.E.

I'm fine lately.

Fucked up
Insecure
Neurotic
Emotional

Hah! No seriously, things are okay. Nothing really new going on. Just the usual work, the program, and still working on getting the website back up to par after the incident.

Actually, I take that back. There is something new. I started my ninth step. I was about to begin it when my server got hacked, and then I was in a rush to get things back online, so on Wednesday I got back to the steps.

I did something that's not recommended - I started my ninth step with my parents. I did it because I wanted to get it over with. I have an enormous amount of shame over the way I've abused my relationship with them. Basically, they'd do anything for me, and I've always known that. When I was using I would spend all of my money on booze and never had money left over to pay my bills, so I'd go calling them looking for a handout. I'd always make up some excuse about why I was broke, and they'd always write me a check. I don't think I would have felt as bad if my parents actually had some money, but they don't. They're on a fixed income and they were writing checks against their house so that I could continue my insanity.

What have I done about it now? Well, I've apologized, fessed up to my wrong-doings, and I'm paying them back now. It feels so nice to actually write them checks instead of cashing theirs. I also bought them a new computer - something they've needed for a while now, but in my selfishness, never realized.

The jist of all of this - I feel better about our relationship now. Granted, since I've been sober, they've been nothing but supportive and proud of me, but now I feel like we're on the same level again - a level where we can each respect each other.

And yes, it's so frick'n sunny out right now I could just die!

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October 31, 2004

Cleaning house

I was somewhat spontaneous yesterday and decided to give my mom a call in the morning to see if she wanted to come over and help me clean. She said yes.

A little bit of background, in case you're wondering, or if not, that's fine, I'm going to type it anyhow ;-) ... Being around my mom has always been a stressor for me. Not always, but since about 6 - 7 years ago when she had her nervous breakdown. She went from being a strong, sometimes intimidating woman, to the nervous, always-trying-to-fix-other-people-instead-of-herself, scared-to-leave-the-house lady she is today.

Now I love her, but she can drive me nuts, too. It's hard to see somebody who you've always looked to for care become crippled with mental illness. I usually feel like our mother-son relationship roles have been reversed - she comes to me looking for support, and honestly, I'm oftentimes hard-pressed to provide that kind of help.

Anyhow, my roommate and I bought our condo over a year ago and my mother still hadn't seen it. I decided that yesterday was as good a time as any, so I went down to the burbs, picked her up, and brought her back to the big city. She helped me fold laundry, provided companionship, and finally met my roommate face-to-face. It was a surprisingly good experience. She wasn't her normal jittery-self - she actually behaved quite normally. It was a pleasant surprise.

I think it's my involvement in the program that's allowed me to try and better our relationship. Up until very recently I've been hesitant to try to grow our relationship. I'm still going to be cautious, because I am worried what may become of her dependency on me, but I'm willing to give it a try.

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June 17, 2004

Drama

So I made some of my own target=_blank>drama last night.

Had a great dinner with my parents and brother. Though my Dad and brother both had a couple of beers, which I thought was strange. I guess I only thought it was strange because I thought they would try to be considerate and not drink around me. I probably would have thought it was weird had they not drank, because I don't want people to treat me any differently just because I'm no longer drinking ... oh well. I don't care that they did.

My mom is super-nervous all the time. Being with her in public, or even at home, is a little nerve-wracking because she's got such high anxiety. Surprisingly she was pretty well behaved at dinner - no nervous outbreaks, so I thought things went well.

Then an hour later she calls up and leaves me this voicemail, near tears, that she's sorry for what she said tonight and that she didn't intend for it to 'come out that way.' I had no idea what she was referring to. So I called her back. It was really nothing - just something we had joked about during dinner, that she thought I had taken offense to - which I hadn't. We worked it all out and things are fine now, but it's stuff like this that really makes me sad for my mom. She can't behave normally. She's always worked up about
something, or anxious, or nervous, or depressed, or crying. She's never happy, which is so sad. It's too bad I can't do more than try to be there for her, except that being there for her drives me crazy sometimes. She's another one who naturally creates drama but I don't think she ever realizes it... she is so deep in her href="http://www.knotslanding.net/" target=_blank>drama that she doesn't seem to know where reality is anymore.

Back to work now.

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June 05, 2004

expecting brother

Okay, so turns out that maybe my brother's ex girlfriend isn't actually expecting. Sounds like the href="http://www.andiamsomebody.com/2004/06/and-once-again.html">incident
was more of a tactic to get him back than anything. I'm praying that's the case.

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June 02, 2004

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Today started out busy. Busy is good when you don't want to think, and I didn't care for thinking today. I spoke with my mom for about 45 minutes. She's continuing to dramatize. It's almost like she watched too many episodes of Rescue 911 with William Shatner, where every segment contains a 'dramatization' disclaimer, only she chose to ignore that and thought they were filming events in real life. Funny coincidence - she used to work with a guy who was featured on Rescue 911 - he was a cop who, while in pursuit of an assailant, was shot in the family jewels... uh, I mean jewel.

Anyhow, I continued with the 'uh-huh's' and listened. For a short while today I was agonizing over the thought of speaking with her. She's been very dependant on me lately - much more so than usual, and when I try to end the phone conversations, she suddenly says, "why?" ... like I should have hours to spend on the phone all day. Really, I think she's just paranoid, deluding that I don't want to talk to her.

But I digress. I was not looking forward talking to her today as I was afraid she would still be losing it. And when she loses it, I tend to lose it. Luckily, she seemed to be somewhat normal (i.e., not crying) so things went okay. I called my sponsor and we went for a walk around Lake Calhoun today. We had about 3 weeks of rain and today was the first sunny day. TONS of eye candy, and I don't mind candy. The day ended up alright, and I'm still here :-)

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June 01, 2004

And once again

... I am going to be an uncle.

I've got 2 older half brothers, 2 older half sisters and 1 younger (full) brother. All older siblings are married and have children - 6 nieces and nephews total. I just found out this evening from my mentally ill mother that my younger brother got his ex-girlfriend pregnant. It's the same story with every girlfriend he has. My mother becomes embedded in the relationship and will speak praise on high of the girlfriend, always commenting that she, "hopes he holds onto this one." As soon as they break up she changes her attitude to, "well she
wasn't quite perfect and she wasn't helping to promote a healthy lifestyle by doing all of his cleaning and laundry for him."

Well, this last one, who was 'studying to be an orthodontist,' and who my mother was desperately trying to convince my brother to marry (presumably for some financial stability) has planted a firm grip on my brother's life, and my mother's, and my family's.

Apparently they broke up. Then the girlfriend informed my brother that she was pregnant with his child. My brother wanted her to have an abortion. She wouldn't hear of it.

A few days later my brother had some friends over to watch a movie, when she walked in. She saw another girl in attendance and proceeded to the kitchen, where she found the largest knife available. She returned to the living room and attempted to attack the other girl. My brother wrestled the knife away from her. She returned to the kitchen, found another knife, and locked herself in the bathroom, threatening suicide. My brother had to kick the door in to keep her
from hurting herself.

Talk about a cry for attention.

No wonder my mother identified with her so well.

Anyhow, she spent three days in the psych ward and my brother is now planning to sue for full custody once the child is born. Funny enough, the ex-girlfriend called my mother to talk. My mother has continued conversations with this girl under the premise that she is 'taking notes.'

What a frick'n mess. I'm trying not to be dramatic about this; I'm trying not to let it affect my well-being. But it's got me down. It's more drama, more turbulence, more unhappiness, and more for my
mother to feel victimized about.

Oh well - just another day in sobriety.

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