All is well so far…

My mom is doing fine again. Tests have shown that it’s not a cardiac problem (like arrhythmias or blocked arteries again), but that her blood pressure sometimes is too high and sometimes too low and that it either spikes or drops without much warning or without obvious reason. She most probably has to change some of the meds she is already taking and the right medication and dosage still has to be determined. Nothing much is happening in a hospital on the weekend, so she most probably has to stay there for a couple of days. But all in all, she is doing fine. Thank God.

And once again…

I was just starting to read about Hai_di’s new “firebolt” :-), when my mom called me on the phone. She wasn’t feeling well (nausea, cardiac arrhythmia) and didn’t know what to do and asked me  to come over. Oh well… I went over there, talked to her, called the ambulance, all things my brothers who still (or momentarily again) live in the same house could have done. If she had let them, which she didn’t, because she wasn’t sure and…

On the phone with the emergency hotline the I was told not to be alarmed, if the ambulance came with siren and flashing beacons, because that’s just what they are supposed to. When I told that to my mom, she was slightly panicky, not because she was feeling worse, but because someone would make such a fuss about her. ARGH! Sometimes I really want to shake some sense into her.

Anyway, the doctors came, did some exams and her heart was still beaten irregularily, her blood pressure was up, so there wasn’t much else they could do then to get her admitted to a hospital to check things out. Unfortunately as a patient (or family of a patient) in an emergency you can’t choose which hospital you are taken to. Well, we could choose between the two nearest, but the one where my mom already had been before (heart attack, bypass) was not an option, because it’s farther away.

Bro2 and I drove to the hopsital later to get her some clothes and all and to see how she was doing. At the hospital she was doing fine again. Just like she did when she was admitted as an emergency in July. But she obviously was not doing well at home, I saw the state she was in, so it was a good thing she got to the hospital and they can do some more tests. It doesn’t seem to be anything serious, it might be something off with her elektrolytes, maybe some meds have to be changed a bit… So I don’t worry too much right now. I’ll still won’t turn off my cell phone at night. Just in case… Ugh, that’s the thing I hate most about this kind of medical emergencies. I don’t want to worry and I don’t really worry, but subconsiously of course I DO worry. At least a tiny bit

Lunch At The Lake…

Growing up I dreamed of moving away and living some place else. In a big city like Cologne or Hamburg or Berlin. Or in a different country. Anywhere but here. I never followed through with it for several reasons. I lived in Stockholm for 6 months once, but moved back to my small home town and continued to my college education at a university in the huge Ruhr metropolitan area (“Ruhrgebiet”), to which my small home town belongs.
And even though I still could very well imagine to live somewhere else some day, I actually grew to like it here a lot. Maybe not the small town per se, but definitely the location of it. Big city life is just a 30 minutes car-ride away, but so are also the outdoors in the opposite direction. Actually it takes less than 30 minutes to the forests and lakes and rivers. It’s the small town on the edge of the big cities after all. Anyway, it’s not the worst place to live.

There are a couple of water reservoirs south of were I live and due to my job I knew that the restaurant at one of them had re-opened and was pretty good and had a nice patio with a beautiful view of the lake. So today I took my mom there for lunch (well, I drove, she paid *g*) and we had a lovely time. They didn’t serve lunch on Sundays but a brunch buffet from 10 AM till 2 PM, which we didn’t know in advance. It didn’t matter, because the brunch was really good and served as a perfect lunch as well.

We went for a short walk after lunch, because it was just such a wonderful day to be outside today. It’s about time though, because it’s almost June! Only 18 more days until my Scotland trip. And there are still so many things un-planned or un-organized. I better stop thinking about that for now, because otherwise I’d go crazy and spend the rest of the night in front of the computer looking up stuff on the internet and making plans. I will do that tomorrow. Tomorrow is a public holiday in Germany so I’ve got the day off work and can spend it on vacation planning (and a few other wonderful relaxing things).

Here are a couple of pictures I took today at the lake…

All The Things I Have To Deal With…

Let’s see what’s keeping me busy at the moment.

Work. Two jobs and in both there is a lot going on right. There is a lot to organize and deadlines to keep and just a lot of things to get done.

Local Politics / Green Party: Besides the usual town council work, the municipal budget debate started last week in all committees and the town council. Which means a lot more preperation and discussion among us Greens. We will be spending the whole weekend away, discussing the budget and working on additional proposals and stuff.
We’re also in the midst of preparing the election campaign, because there is supposed to be local election in early June. We are way behind with our preparation, and haven’t even finished putting together our electional programme. That’s one of the reasons I keep my fingers crossed for the State Constitutional Court tomorrow to rule in favour of postponing the election date till September. Well, there are a lot of other reasons why local elections in June were a stupid idea. Reasons based on my comprehension of democracy and all, but I have to admit, our lack of prepration definitely calls for voting later in the year :-)
We are also planning a special “Carbondioxide Lent” campaign with a few smaller events. It sounded like a great idea at first and I still think it is. We just haven’t really managed to organize that many events yet, not to mention we haven’t prepared any press and PR stuff yet.
I think the major problem with all this is, that our local Green Party consists of just a few people and even of those there are just 4-5 who are actively actually doing anything. Sometime I feel like I am the only person who is doing anything. Well or at least I think I’m the only person who is aware of how many things are not done, although they should be.

Somebody Make It Stop, Please!

“It” meaning my life at the moment. Because it sucks. Too many things to do, too many things on my mind and whenever I think I can take a breather, something comes crashing down and everything is put on hold. At least it feels like this at the moment. I’m not even in the mood to post more than this totally cryptic post at the moment. Maybe I’ll decode it tomorrow night. If I will ever find the time to do it.

Merry Christmas…

Is there anyone still around (online) to read this after all :-)? It looked like most of you are heading home to spend the holidays with parents/families. So will I, but my mom and Bro3 lives just a short walk away. Bro2 still lives in our small city and Bro1 in the neighbouring one, just a short drive away. So we see each other regularly every week anyway and don’t have to use the holidays to make up for the lack of family time throughout the year.
I will probably be heading over there soon though and take some grad school stuff with me to work on, in case my help to prepare something for tonight isn’t needed. I might be able to get some work on my assignments done over there, because my apartement is much too distracting. Well, not the apartement itself, but the things in it. Computer and internet and especially the West Wing :-). I watched two more episodes last night and ended with their first christmas in the White House, which was a nice coincidence. I know I repeat myself, but this is such an awesome show and I really have to thank tinaskywalker for recommending it to me. Thank you, Tina!

I didn’t / couldn’t work on the school assignments yesterday, because I spend hours at the hospital with my mom waiting for her discharge papers and then I helped her get settled back into her home and we all had some late late lunch together and my mom needed help with some more stuff. So it was around 6 pm before I got home and I really didn’t feel in the mood to study at that time of the day. I will have to make up for that today. At least I will try.
My mom will have to be admitted to the cardio rehab clinic on the 30th, which means she won’t be home for New Year’s Eve which also means I have to make new plans. I have no idea where to go or with whom… I should have made up my mind ages ago, but as long as I didn’t know what’s up with my mom I didn’t really feel like planning anything.

Anyway I should gather all my things I want to take with me to my mom’s place and head over there soon. If you’re still reading this before Christmas: Have a merry one and enjoy it…

My Mom Is Coming Home Tomorrow…

Yay! That was unexpected, but of course I’m happy about it. When she called me around lunch to tell me that she still hasn’t been taken from her room to the cardio unit, she was really down, because she was so sure that she wasn’t going to be released from the hospital for christmas. And she was so sure that something would be going wrong during the procedure and so on…
When Bro3 and I visited her at 5.30 p.m. she was doing fine. The catheder ablation went well, and even though the docs didn’t find any tissue to destroy, they at least managed to get her heart beating at the right rhythm :-) Her heart doesn’t need to be monitored via ECG (finally after almost 7 weeks) and she was told that she will be released tomorrow. Wow! She still has to go to a special cardio rehabilitation clinic in the new year, but at least she can spend some time – the holidays! – at home.

Compared to this news there almost isn’t anything else worth writing about. I am spending way too much time on the West Wing :-). I finally managed to sort and file stacks of green party / local politics documents, files and such. I am determined to spend my free time tomorrow starting to work on the two grad school assignments. Before this vacation I thought I’d work on all sorts of things everyday (politics, grad school, some more stuff I wanted to get done), but I already realized that I should use one day for politics (today), one day for studying (tomorrow), one day for various other things, and then another day for politics…

I still feel like I have already forgotten some of the stuff I actually wanted to get done during this vacation. But maybe it will come back to me over the next few days. Anyway, now I’m off to todays first (and only) visit to the White House…

I’m Still Alive…

Today is the first day of my christmas vacation and I actually had planned to write a list with all the things I want/have/plan to do during the next two weeks. I didn’t get around to do that and now I think I probably won’t do it after all. Compile all that into a list, that is. I’ll just do the things and check items of as I go along during the next 16 days. School things, hockey things, entertainment things (a lot of those, as the West Wing Box was delivered this afternoon *g*) , running a fan site things (which I am soo behind in keeping it up to date) and a couple of other things. At least I slept in this morning and will continue to do so for the next couple of days. Tonight there was the last political / representative thing I had to go to. Well, I didn’t have to, but as the leader of the green party on the town council it can’t hurt to go to these kind of events and be seen. Yes, it sounds superficial and it is, but what can I do… ?

I still haven’t figured out what to do on New Year’s Eve. My mom might be home between christmas and the new year. But at the moment it’s really just a possible possiblity and neither her nor me want to get our hopes up. She is doing really well for a post-bypass-op patient, but she stll has got arrhythmias. Not the ones which were caused by the blocked arteries but the ones she used to have for over 15 years. The doctors want to fix those with something called catheter ablation on Monday. It’s a procedure in which they will destroy the sick tissue in her heart which causes these arrhythmias.
According to one of the doctors she could be release on or after christmas if everything goes well. She still has to go to a rehabilitation clinic in the new year for physical and other therapy. But it’s a clinic in the neighbouring city so she might be able to do that as an outbound patient. We’ll see. Anyway, my mom doesn’t want to get her hopes up that she will get home in the next week, and I probably shouldn’t either. But I can’t help it.
So if she really really might be home before the new year I’d probably spent New Year’s Eve over at her place. If she’s still in the hospital I still have no idea where to go or what to do for New Year’s Eve. Maybe I’ll stay at home and just go to bed early :-)?

Throughout the day I thought of a million things I wanted to write about, about now I can’t remember what these  things were. I guess they weren’t so noteworthy after all. I will do my best to fill this blog with some more real content over the next two weeks though. At least I will try… When I will find the time between all the things I want to do and especially all the TV movies and shows I want to watch…

Surprise present from Bro3

When I talked with Bro3 on the phone this morning he said “I’ve got a present for you”. I hate it, when people say that and don’t tell me right away what kind of present that is. Yes, I know it would ruin the surprise and I don’t really hate it, but it makes me edgy anyway. Especially as my brothers and I usually don’t give each other presents. For christmas or birthdays or any other ocassion. Which probably sounds like we’re estranged or something, but we’re not. We actually spend quite some time with each other or in each others presence at my mom’s home, where Bro3 is still living and Bro2 is building his house right next door. We are just not that close on an emotional level. If I had serious problems of any kind I most probably wouldn’t talk to one of my brothers about it. It probably sounds like we’re an emotional retarded family :-), but actually we’re doing just fine. The way we managed to get through the hard times a year ago was proof of that. To me at least and anyway I didn’t want to turn this post into some sort of family therapy thing. Maybe I should scrap that whole paragraph?

Good News…

My mother’s heart bypass surgery went well this afternoon. Yay! I had quite a few restless hours today, because actually her surgery was scheduled for this morning. But when I called around 1.30 PM I was told that my mother had in fact just been wheeled to the OR a few minutes ago, as she was scheduled for the second surgery of the day. Great, I had to spend another four hours hoping my cellphone won’t ring with any sort of bad news. Thank God it didn’t. I don’t know anything more yet, but I’m happy and relieved all went well so far.
Some time during the evening I thought I could write a “Yay, I’m oh so happy” post, but then the Sharks lost the game after all (due to the stupid stupid referee, yes in this case it really was the referee’s fault). So I’m not happy at all about the games outcome. But of course it doesn’t really matter anyway. It just would have been nice to write about two sources of happiness. But of course I also settle with just one :-)