(Not So) Brief Update
Nov. 28th, 2003 04:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cassy_gI'm in Columbus, and as usual, I can't sleep. I tried off and on for a while, but eventually, it was just easier to get up.
As most of you will remember a few weeks ago, I was presented with the dilemma of whether to write to my biological mother, J-, or not. I eventually did write to her, but what I never really told any of you was that the letter I sent was returned unopened with a stamp that said "unable to forward" on it.
It took me a couple of days after that, but I called my attorney/PI to let them know it had been returned, seems like the ones they had sent back in September came back to them the same day as mine came back to me. She said she would try to find the new address and that if I hadn't heard back from her in a couple of weeks to please give her a call.
I waited longer than two weeks, I suppose I figured if she'd heard anything she would call, but on Monday I decided to call and let her know I was going out of town for the holidays. She had gone to lunch so I just left a message and left it at that.
While I was running around Wednesday trying to get everything ready for our trip to my parents house my Mom calls to tell me my Dad isn't feeling well. He's been sleeping (too) much, lethargic, he has some blood (alot of blood) in his stool, he's having chest pains, and all this has been going on since Monday! I tell her she needs to take him to the doctor, and she says he won't go because his regular doctor is out of town. Ok, talk to Dad.
Me: "Daddy, you need to go to see a doctor."
Dad: "Oh, I am feeling alright now. I am just going to cut back on my plavix, and not take my aspirins tomorrow, since they thin out your blood."
Me: "Daddy, you are going to get, if you aren't already, anemic, then you are really going to have some serious problems and be in some serious pain."
Dad: "I'm alright, just really tired."
Me: "Yea, Daddy, that's cause you're bleeding, you need to go to the doctor or the hospital and get some blood."
This goes back and forth for a while, me explaining all the things that can go wrong if he doesn't go to the doctor and him telling me all the reasons he'll be ok. Eventually he got too tired to talk to me and I talked to Mom again. I told her she needed to just take him to the hospital and she said she would call the doctor's office and get their advice, see if they could fit him in. *insert sound of my head hitting a brick wall*
Get off the phone with them, go back to trying to get everything ready for the trip, in case I have to go down Wednesday night instead of Thursday. Phone rings, it's my attorney/PI, who starts the conversation with "Cassy, I am about to make you a very happy person". Great cause after talking with Mom and Dad, I needed some good news.
I, of course, am thinking she's going to tell me she has a new address for J- and she's sending out a letter, or something like that, but no, she shocks me with, "I just got off the phone with your sister, your full blooded sister."
Me: "Uh... what? I have a sister with the same Dad?"
Ms. S-: "Not just one sister, three sisters."
Me: "Uh... what?"
Ok, admittedly, not my most shining example of intellect, or even a basic grasp of the English language. Try to understand where I was coming from though. I have solid information that told me I was the product of an affair between my biological mother and my biological father, why would I think that I had any siblings that were full-blooded?
In any case, R-, was apparently very happy to ehar about me, that I was looking for them, but she wasn't sure that J- should be told. She left her phone number and email address with Ms. S- and said she would be home at 10pm-ish my time. She tells me this around 10 am, and for someone that thinks instant gratification takes too long, that was almost cruel! :)
To make a long story shorter, I got several phone calls during the day from Ms. S- with R-'s number, general information, and eventually with J-'s as well. They both wanted to speak to me.
I spent much of the day just kind of in shock. A million and two questions running thru my head, trying to piece together what I had been told and reconcile it with all that we now knew, only to resign myself to the fact that I would find out when I found out and there was no sense thinking too deeply about it.
Of course, it didn't help that all my friends were either out of town, working on going out of town, or just plain working! :P Actually, maybe it was a good thing I had to just sort things out myself.
Called my parents house to let Mom know I had decided to come down on Thursday and not Wednesday night because the hubby had to work late, and we didn't want to fight traffic. Daddy answers and admittedly he was sounding better, but I find out he hadn't gone to the doctor and Mom's at the grocery store. I talked to him a while and practiced toughening up my forehead on brick some more.
Mom called when she got home from the grocery store, I told her briefly about R- and J-, but mostly we talked about my Dad. She had left a message at the doctor's office apparently, but the nurse had never called her back. More brick implanted in my forehead as I tried to convince her to take him to the hospital while she goes on about how worried she is about him.
Once I got off the phone with her, my brother called, and I explain to him about Dad, sometimes he can get him to listen and I asked him to call our sister since I don't have her phone number (something I really should correct now that I am thinking about it), because maybe he will listen to her.
Meanwhile, it is quickly getting closer and closer to 10pm. Around 9 or 9:30 pm my Mom calls me, obviously distraught and something close to paniced telling me Dad's having really severe chest pains and his nitroglycerin isn't helping much. I am what, 250-300 miles away? What am I suppose to be able to do from here? I tell her what I had been saying all day, he needs to go to the hospital, if he's having chest pains, call 911, now - stop talking to me. I get the "oh he doesn't want to go, you know how your Daddy is" crap that just about pisses me off. Of course he doesn't WANT to go, did I ask if he wanted to go? No - he NEEDS to go, get off the phone and call 911! In case you have missed it somehow, this really pisses me off. Mom then puts Daddy on the phone who proceeds to tell me he's feeling better. I don't care if he's feeling better now, I tell him, he needs to go to the hospital. He says he will go in the morning. No, now, I say. Eventually, I get him to promise if he has another attack he will go to the hospital. Mom gets back on the phone, call 911 I tell her, round and round, she promises to take him to the ER if he has another attack.
I call my brother, he practices imbedding brick into his forehead a while as well. I told Dad I would rather have him in the hospital knowing he was being taken care of than trying to stay home just because it was a holiday. Our sister tries, same results "I will go if I have another attack".
I know this may seem incompassionate of me, but it's really not, you just don't realize how many years I have played this song and dance, but I figure, I have done everything I can short of calling an ambulance myself, and I decided if Mom called me again saying he wouldn't go well then I would just call the ambulance myself.
It's now almost 10 pm, as if I weren't already kind of stressed with the what do I say to R- thing, I am worried about my Dad, and I was honestly kind of scared to talk to R-. Yea, I procrastinated a bit, called a few people, mostly got voice mails, eventually talked to Eugie's husband Matt. He and Eugie just have such a calming effect on me. I can't explain and I will sound like a complete geek if I try, so just accept that talking to Matt even briefly made me feel better.
Not sure I want to get into what I have learned about my biological family in great detail yet, and really, I didn't ask that many questions of R- or J-, though I did answer a few. I think I am still in a bit of shock, and after dealing with my parents all day, I didn't think I could handle having a lot thrown at me, so mostly, I just chatted with R- and J- both.
I will say, R- and I are almost frighteningly similar, according to J- we sound alike too. They both asked me if I grew up in the South, and I told them I had, neither of them could believe I grew up here and didn't have a drawl.
I really like them both, and they were both very kind, vebry pleasant, and I can't express enough how much I appreciate that they are willing to speak to me and maybe help me piece together some things.
It's kind of funny, I think alot of adoptees want to believe that someone in their biological family will speak to them, but most of them have the "worst case scenario" in their heads. It just makes it easier in case it happens if you tell yourself "well I always knew they might not want anything to do with me". But when they don't go that route, and they do talk to you, it throws you a little. And honestly, I think I am still in a bit of shock, and wee overwhelmed still.
By the time I got off the phone with them both it was around 2 am. My phone rang, it was my brother, he couldn't reach Mom or Dad on the phone, either at the house or the cell. I told him they were probably just really wiped out from a stressful day, to try them in the morning and I would call the hospital and see if Daddy was there.
Unfortunately, I was tired and my brain was still running around in circles from the whirlwind, so when I called the hospital and asked about Daddy, I asked if there was a "Gene Morrison" there or in the ER, no they tell me. Ok, great, call my brother back and tell him Dad's not in the hospital, they probably just turned the ringers off so they could sleep. Well, Thursday morning after a wee! 2.5 hours of sleep, I wake up and realize that I asked for "Gene Morrison" not "Euel Gene Morrison", d'uh.
I tried to call the house around 7 am, no answer, call the hospital, ask for Euel Gene Morrison, yep, damnit (but yay!) he's in the hospital. Called my brother and left him a message so he wouldn't worry.
I talked to Mom around 9 am, told her David was doing the last thing to the car and we should be able to pack up the vehicle and head out soon.
She said they didn't know what was wrong with Dad but they were giving him blood, and doing some tests and would be moving him to the CCU shortly, then she promised me she would go home and get some sleep.
Then my day went to pot. Long story short, we got to Columbus around 2:30 in the afternoon.
I talked to Mom some about the conversation with R- and J- because she asked about it. I didn't get to see my Dad until 8:30 pm because the CCU has set times (10:00am, 2:00pm, 5:00pm, and 8:30pm). Mom thought the 5pm time slot was 6pm, so we missed the 5pm one. They also only let you visit for 30 min and only 2 people at a time.
From talking to Dad and Mom, and seeing Dad and his monitors while I was there, it looks like he has a bleeding ulcer. They will be doing a test this morning around 11am to find out for sure.
This might not sound really serious to most, but my Dad's heart is in really bad shape, so most surgeries are out for him. He'd gotten 2 pints of blood by the time I saw him last night and he was still looking severely anemic. His lips were white and so were his fingernails and he was definately cold to the touch.
Since Daniel had leukemia, I really do know when someone is severely anemic and he's it. Unfortunately, it also sends a cold chill down my spine seeing Daddy that way. Going to the hospital to see him again at 10am, and I will hopefully get to talk to the doctor.
For those of you that know me all too well, I promise not to let myself get sucked into the full-time caretaker role here, but someone needs to talk to the doctor and understand what's going on, and so far, no one has stepped up to do that.
Whew.
Whirlwind.
As most of you will remember a few weeks ago, I was presented with the dilemma of whether to write to my biological mother, J-, or not. I eventually did write to her, but what I never really told any of you was that the letter I sent was returned unopened with a stamp that said "unable to forward" on it.
It took me a couple of days after that, but I called my attorney/PI to let them know it had been returned, seems like the ones they had sent back in September came back to them the same day as mine came back to me. She said she would try to find the new address and that if I hadn't heard back from her in a couple of weeks to please give her a call.
I waited longer than two weeks, I suppose I figured if she'd heard anything she would call, but on Monday I decided to call and let her know I was going out of town for the holidays. She had gone to lunch so I just left a message and left it at that.
While I was running around Wednesday trying to get everything ready for our trip to my parents house my Mom calls to tell me my Dad isn't feeling well. He's been sleeping (too) much, lethargic, he has some blood (alot of blood) in his stool, he's having chest pains, and all this has been going on since Monday! I tell her she needs to take him to the doctor, and she says he won't go because his regular doctor is out of town. Ok, talk to Dad.
Me: "Daddy, you need to go to see a doctor."
Dad: "Oh, I am feeling alright now. I am just going to cut back on my plavix, and not take my aspirins tomorrow, since they thin out your blood."
Me: "Daddy, you are going to get, if you aren't already, anemic, then you are really going to have some serious problems and be in some serious pain."
Dad: "I'm alright, just really tired."
Me: "Yea, Daddy, that's cause you're bleeding, you need to go to the doctor or the hospital and get some blood."
This goes back and forth for a while, me explaining all the things that can go wrong if he doesn't go to the doctor and him telling me all the reasons he'll be ok. Eventually he got too tired to talk to me and I talked to Mom again. I told her she needed to just take him to the hospital and she said she would call the doctor's office and get their advice, see if they could fit him in. *insert sound of my head hitting a brick wall*
Get off the phone with them, go back to trying to get everything ready for the trip, in case I have to go down Wednesday night instead of Thursday. Phone rings, it's my attorney/PI, who starts the conversation with "Cassy, I am about to make you a very happy person". Great cause after talking with Mom and Dad, I needed some good news.
I, of course, am thinking she's going to tell me she has a new address for J- and she's sending out a letter, or something like that, but no, she shocks me with, "I just got off the phone with your sister, your full blooded sister."
Me: "Uh... what? I have a sister with the same Dad?"
Ms. S-: "Not just one sister, three sisters."
Me: "Uh... what?"
Ok, admittedly, not my most shining example of intellect, or even a basic grasp of the English language. Try to understand where I was coming from though. I have solid information that told me I was the product of an affair between my biological mother and my biological father, why would I think that I had any siblings that were full-blooded?
In any case, R-, was apparently very happy to ehar about me, that I was looking for them, but she wasn't sure that J- should be told. She left her phone number and email address with Ms. S- and said she would be home at 10pm-ish my time. She tells me this around 10 am, and for someone that thinks instant gratification takes too long, that was almost cruel! :)
To make a long story shorter, I got several phone calls during the day from Ms. S- with R-'s number, general information, and eventually with J-'s as well. They both wanted to speak to me.
I spent much of the day just kind of in shock. A million and two questions running thru my head, trying to piece together what I had been told and reconcile it with all that we now knew, only to resign myself to the fact that I would find out when I found out and there was no sense thinking too deeply about it.
Of course, it didn't help that all my friends were either out of town, working on going out of town, or just plain working! :P Actually, maybe it was a good thing I had to just sort things out myself.
Called my parents house to let Mom know I had decided to come down on Thursday and not Wednesday night because the hubby had to work late, and we didn't want to fight traffic. Daddy answers and admittedly he was sounding better, but I find out he hadn't gone to the doctor and Mom's at the grocery store. I talked to him a while and practiced toughening up my forehead on brick some more.
Mom called when she got home from the grocery store, I told her briefly about R- and J-, but mostly we talked about my Dad. She had left a message at the doctor's office apparently, but the nurse had never called her back. More brick implanted in my forehead as I tried to convince her to take him to the hospital while she goes on about how worried she is about him.
Once I got off the phone with her, my brother called, and I explain to him about Dad, sometimes he can get him to listen and I asked him to call our sister since I don't have her phone number (something I really should correct now that I am thinking about it), because maybe he will listen to her.
Meanwhile, it is quickly getting closer and closer to 10pm. Around 9 or 9:30 pm my Mom calls me, obviously distraught and something close to paniced telling me Dad's having really severe chest pains and his nitroglycerin isn't helping much. I am what, 250-300 miles away? What am I suppose to be able to do from here? I tell her what I had been saying all day, he needs to go to the hospital, if he's having chest pains, call 911, now - stop talking to me. I get the "oh he doesn't want to go, you know how your Daddy is" crap that just about pisses me off. Of course he doesn't WANT to go, did I ask if he wanted to go? No - he NEEDS to go, get off the phone and call 911! In case you have missed it somehow, this really pisses me off. Mom then puts Daddy on the phone who proceeds to tell me he's feeling better. I don't care if he's feeling better now, I tell him, he needs to go to the hospital. He says he will go in the morning. No, now, I say. Eventually, I get him to promise if he has another attack he will go to the hospital. Mom gets back on the phone, call 911 I tell her, round and round, she promises to take him to the ER if he has another attack.
I call my brother, he practices imbedding brick into his forehead a while as well. I told Dad I would rather have him in the hospital knowing he was being taken care of than trying to stay home just because it was a holiday. Our sister tries, same results "I will go if I have another attack".
I know this may seem incompassionate of me, but it's really not, you just don't realize how many years I have played this song and dance, but I figure, I have done everything I can short of calling an ambulance myself, and I decided if Mom called me again saying he wouldn't go well then I would just call the ambulance myself.
It's now almost 10 pm, as if I weren't already kind of stressed with the what do I say to R- thing, I am worried about my Dad, and I was honestly kind of scared to talk to R-. Yea, I procrastinated a bit, called a few people, mostly got voice mails, eventually talked to Eugie's husband Matt. He and Eugie just have such a calming effect on me. I can't explain and I will sound like a complete geek if I try, so just accept that talking to Matt even briefly made me feel better.
Not sure I want to get into what I have learned about my biological family in great detail yet, and really, I didn't ask that many questions of R- or J-, though I did answer a few. I think I am still in a bit of shock, and after dealing with my parents all day, I didn't think I could handle having a lot thrown at me, so mostly, I just chatted with R- and J- both.
I will say, R- and I are almost frighteningly similar, according to J- we sound alike too. They both asked me if I grew up in the South, and I told them I had, neither of them could believe I grew up here and didn't have a drawl.
I really like them both, and they were both very kind, vebry pleasant, and I can't express enough how much I appreciate that they are willing to speak to me and maybe help me piece together some things.
It's kind of funny, I think alot of adoptees want to believe that someone in their biological family will speak to them, but most of them have the "worst case scenario" in their heads. It just makes it easier in case it happens if you tell yourself "well I always knew they might not want anything to do with me". But when they don't go that route, and they do talk to you, it throws you a little. And honestly, I think I am still in a bit of shock, and wee overwhelmed still.
By the time I got off the phone with them both it was around 2 am. My phone rang, it was my brother, he couldn't reach Mom or Dad on the phone, either at the house or the cell. I told him they were probably just really wiped out from a stressful day, to try them in the morning and I would call the hospital and see if Daddy was there.
Unfortunately, I was tired and my brain was still running around in circles from the whirlwind, so when I called the hospital and asked about Daddy, I asked if there was a "Gene Morrison" there or in the ER, no they tell me. Ok, great, call my brother back and tell him Dad's not in the hospital, they probably just turned the ringers off so they could sleep. Well, Thursday morning after a wee! 2.5 hours of sleep, I wake up and realize that I asked for "Gene Morrison" not "Euel Gene Morrison", d'uh.
I tried to call the house around 7 am, no answer, call the hospital, ask for Euel Gene Morrison, yep, damnit (but yay!) he's in the hospital. Called my brother and left him a message so he wouldn't worry.
I talked to Mom around 9 am, told her David was doing the last thing to the car and we should be able to pack up the vehicle and head out soon.
She said they didn't know what was wrong with Dad but they were giving him blood, and doing some tests and would be moving him to the CCU shortly, then she promised me she would go home and get some sleep.
Then my day went to pot. Long story short, we got to Columbus around 2:30 in the afternoon.
I talked to Mom some about the conversation with R- and J- because she asked about it. I didn't get to see my Dad until 8:30 pm because the CCU has set times (10:00am, 2:00pm, 5:00pm, and 8:30pm). Mom thought the 5pm time slot was 6pm, so we missed the 5pm one. They also only let you visit for 30 min and only 2 people at a time.
From talking to Dad and Mom, and seeing Dad and his monitors while I was there, it looks like he has a bleeding ulcer. They will be doing a test this morning around 11am to find out for sure.
This might not sound really serious to most, but my Dad's heart is in really bad shape, so most surgeries are out for him. He'd gotten 2 pints of blood by the time I saw him last night and he was still looking severely anemic. His lips were white and so were his fingernails and he was definately cold to the touch.
Since Daniel had leukemia, I really do know when someone is severely anemic and he's it. Unfortunately, it also sends a cold chill down my spine seeing Daddy that way. Going to the hospital to see him again at 10am, and I will hopefully get to talk to the doctor.
For those of you that know me all too well, I promise not to let myself get sucked into the full-time caretaker role here, but someone needs to talk to the doctor and understand what's going on, and so far, no one has stepped up to do that.
Whew.
Whirlwind.
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-28 12:37 pm (UTC)1. I hope your father gets better soon. I know how frustrating it is having a loved one who refuses to do the proper thing when their health is in danger. Both Matthew and his father have a real stubborn streak when it comes to taking care of themselves. Men.
2. You talked to your biological sister and mother? Squee!! That's terribly exciting, and oh-so-wonderful! Hurray!
3. I'm so glad Matthew was able to give whatever morale support he did when you called! You know you're always welcome to call at any time, day or night. Don't hesistate if you ever feel the need to gab.
Take care of yourself. I'm sending "get better, you stubborn fool" vibes at your dad.
Wow!
Date: 2003-11-28 01:05 pm (UTC)Take care of yourself. Remember, working to get everyone else to take care of themselves doesn't mean you can stop taking care of yourself.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-28 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-28 04:08 pm (UTC)I hope your father gets feeling better ASAP, too bad you had to deal with it over the holiday, though.
But on the good news front, I'm happy you have gotten in touch with members of your biological family, and I can only imagine how topsy turvy this is for you!
So far so good it seems, I will be keeping you in my prayers.
And like Cat said, please please do take care of *yourself* in the meantime.