Endless

Yesterday sucked. So did much of Sunday. If I were to plot my psychoemotional trajectory for the last several days, it would've peaked some time Saturday night (probably watching the moonlight dance on the waters at Berger Park after a lively meal at Sabri Nehari). The low point is harder to pinpoint; maybe leaving the care facility on the verge of tears yesterday evening?

How did I reach that point? Saturday's evening meal was much spicier than expected--everything seemed to be spiked with chiles except the lassi and the naan--so I got to sleep late and didn't sleep well, leaving me strung out on Sunday. The original plan was to come by in the morning and get the Old Man out in the open air for a while. (Sunday is the one day he isn't scheduled for therapy.) But all he wanted to do was sleep. That's all I wanted to do either, but I didn't have a bed to do it in. (I found a couch in an unoccupied meeting room on the ground floor, but no sooner had a lay myself down before a stray jet fighter from the Annual MilPorn Extravaganza flew over.)

In all, I was there for five hours, during which monshu and I hardly interacted, he never got up, and he hardly ate a thing. I left in a state of exhaustion and annoyance. My plans for the afternoon--I'd hoped I might be able to spend an hour or two at the Glenwood Arts Festival seeing my friends--got scrapped, since all I had the energy for was coming back home and crashing. Besides, I had still had chores to finish. That gave me a certain sense of satisfaction and I felt better by bedtime (balanced out, however, by a phone call from the nurse that monshu was running a slight fever).

Next morning was a different story--achy, stuffed-up, bowels acting up, etc. It felt like the onset of a severe cold, so I called in. I didn't want to sleep too much, lest I throw off my schedule, but I didn't accomplish much beyond paying a few bills (including the insurance on our, which I ran over to the office for, since it was due that day), and picking up a prescription on my way in to see the Old Man. Not much change: still a slight fever, still not interesting in eating anything but a few pieces of watermelon. Nonetheless, I stayed for nearly three hours, waiting for my chance to coax some broth into him, before I gave up.

Before I even got there, though, I got a call from the administrator saying that our insurer had denied our request to stay through until Thursday morning and the next two days would out of pocket. So the beginning of my visit was spent in his office trying to get an estimate for our pharmaceutical expenses in order to head off nasty surprises. (Thank the gods he got the shot at the oncologist's or there'd be no way we could afford this.) While waiting for the elevator, I had an unpleasant run-in with the companion of another resident, one that left me shook up for hours. I left, as I already mentioned, on the verge of tears. All I wanted was to be home and the bus stubbornly refused to come while some jerk sat in the bus shelter and smoked so I had no place to sit down.

We're trying to make arrangements to get monshu home, so there's an awfully good chance yesterday won't be the worst day I'll have this week. So nerve-wracking, relying on people you hardly know to do what they should so you and yours aren't suffering in the days ahead. And so hard to plan expenses, with no real idea what the timeframe is and what will and won't be covered. I've found myself saying, "When this is all over..." and then catching myself, because this won't ever be over. At some point, it will be for monshu, of course, but then I'll be left with a crushing load of grief on top of the responsibility for managing all the finances and hospital affairs. How do people deal with that? Guess I'm soon to find out.

How not to make my day

So, the run-in:

I was waiting for the elevator. There was an older man in an electric geri chair and a younger woman with him. She was wearing plastic gloves, so I thought she was a nurse or CNA despite not wearing scrubs. I greeted them and the man engaged me in conversation. "I'm on four. Where are you staying?" I explained that it was my husband who was in residence; he took that in stride, like most people do.

In any case, the elevator arrived (after I showed them how you sometimes have to push the button again to get it to open) and the man manœuvred the chair into it. I started to step in, but the woman said, "Is there going to be enough room? I need a certain amount of room to do things." This kicked off a confusing exchange between the two--the man encouraging her to come in, the woman protesting, until finally I muttered, "This is ridiculous. I'll take the next one" and walked out.

She stepped in, turned to me, and said, "It's interesting that you call it 'ridiculous' when you're gay." It took me a moment to realise what had even happened. I stepped forward and held the door. "Did you just make a thing of me being gay? Why would you even do that?" Turns out she felt personally attacked by my comment (even though it was directed at the situation, not any particular person) and felt--she explained--fully justified in attacking me in return. "I have OCD!" she screamed. Fine, okay, but then maybe have a plan for the utterly foreseeable event of having to share an elevator? And maybe communicate that to the people around you so they have some idea what the hell's going on? If she had simply said, "I'm sorry, I don't feel comfortable sharing an elevator," I would've been like, whatever, and waited.

Instead, she created a situation where she felt she had to say, "I'm not homophobic!" because she'd just demonstrated the opposite. I get that she was feeling embarrassed and uncomfortable. But when you've spent all of a minute with somebody and your mind goes right to, "How can I use the one thing I know about this person against them?" that doesn't say much for your character, does it? The poor guy in the chair was trying to calm things, but neither of us was listening. I could see that nothing I might say would make things better for anyone, released the door, and then stood there fuming, hoping that would be the last I would ever see of her in my life.