One day is running into another at the moment.  I’m getting confused as to where I am in the week and my appointment calendar is saving me from thinking every day is Sunday.  How lovely would it be if every day was Sunday…not so much for the churchgoers though, you’d REALLY have to like church.  I’m not sure why my internal calendar is all fucked up…it just is.  I’m feeling off, not sick really, just off.  I’m kinda crabby, my knees are achy and I haven’t been sleeping.  Hmm, maybe it’s PMS.  I really need to start tracking these bad days to see if there is a pattern.  It might have something to do with our current (constant?) state of limbo.  We haven’t heard anything about the job yet, I’m guessing he didn’t get it.  Now we have to decide whether or not we want to keep trying to find something in the city or if we should stick it out here.  Speaking of sticking out, I have a sore thumb, it’s swollen and feels bruised at the knuckle.  Not sure what I did to it but it hurts like a motherfucker and of course it would have to be my right thumb…the important one…the wrestling/hitchhiking digit.  I may need a splint…and crutches…and drugs.

About the time I think things are seriously sucking for me something worse happens to someone else.  Last Saturday at 8pm Cousin Trixie’s husband Harry got a phone call.  His eldest sister Caren had gone in to emergency twice only to be told she simply had the flu and be sent home, untested and untreated both times.  When she started seizing they finally took her seriously.  After a lot of tests they discovered that she has spinal meningitis.  Scary shit.  Apparently she had a cold sore, a herpe, that instead of bursting outward ruptured inward making its way to her spinal column and settling in her brain.  By the time she was admitted they feared it was already too late.  Her headache had become excruciating, the pressure in her brain increasing to the point that it drove her eyeballs nearly out of her head.  At one point they found her trying to push her eyes back into their sockets, screaming that the pain was unbearable and she wanted to die.  They suggested calling the family.  

Harry left home at 3am to catch a flight at 7am, his mom left at roughly the same time from Nova Scotia and the two of them met in Toronto.  They rented a car and drove up to where the two sisters live, hoping and praying that Caren would still be alive when they arrived.  As they donned the sterile gowns Peggy warned them that Caren was not looking herself and that they should brace themselves.  Peg said that despite the warning the shocked expressions on their faces were right out of a horror movie.  Harry held tightly to his mother as she nearly collapsed at the sight of her eldest daughter.  As if the nine tubes running in and out of her were not enough her face was nearly unrecognizably swollen and misshapen.  Her left eye and the left side of her mouth were drooping as though she had had a stroke and her normally peachy complexion was now grey.  

“Hey sis, your little bun is here.” Harry tried to coax her awake at the urging of the nurse.

“Harry.” she mumbled, her eyes fluttering.

He thought she was in pain as her hands flailed toward her face.  As she fell back asleep he realized that she had been trying to wipe away her tears.  It was the first time she had been awake in two days.  

Caren is only 49 years old.  Her husband, children, siblings and mother have been taking round the clock shifts sitting with her.  Hoping.  They say that it will be another three or four days before they know if she’ll live.  Even if she does survive she is looking at at least three more weeks in the hospital and depending on the damage to her brain she may never recover fully.

My shit feels pretty small right now.

I’m not one for prayer but as long as there is anything positive in me I will be sending that energy her way.