I guess it is time for another update. It has been a while.
Dad: same. ups and downs, never very good. He continues to have a ton of medical appointments every week, even on non-chemo weeks. He is basically kept alive by constant checks, pain medications, med changes and IV drips, and my mom and sister taking care of every one of his human needs.
Mom: still cannot see very well, and caught...something which is always bad as even a cold could kill my dad, and we were worried it was something more serious. Her eye surgery is in 3 weeks as they had to postpone it due to her cold/whatever. They required her to get a covid test before they would allow it to go forward. Bad as she has to live without good sight in either eye (she has a hole in her vision in one eye, and her other eye has a cataract). This means that she is driving herself, my sister, and my dad around to medical appointments up to 1 hour away each way without anything resembling proper vision. Scary.
I worry. I feel like I'm playing the odds, it is just a crap shoot until something bad happens. I should be home. Guilt. She keeps telling me to stay in NZ. I keep asking and wondering if I should ignore her.
Sis: She has started having seizures. We don't know why--she is off to the doctor soon. We suspect it is diabetes/insulin related. When she is living in a group home, she is on a strict, restricted diet with limited food at mealtimes only, but at home-home, she eats whenever and whatever she wants, whatever she makes from the food on hand, always carbs + sugar + fat. When I was home I'd try to entice her with delicious salads and fruits and veggies but she would put them on her plate and not touch them, or do things like only eat the cheese off of the salad. She has gained a lot of weight and constantly drinks sugary drinks and eats things she is not supposed to as a diabetic. She's also vaping + smoking + randomly goes on the nicotine patch (which you are not supposed to use when you are smoking, only when you have stopped smoking). Who knows. Her physical health needs a lot of work, but her main focus, rightly, is her mental health. That takes up all of her energy, plus caring for my dad. She doesn't exercise or go walking because she is afraid of the dogs in our neighborhood. She also can't drive, and Mom can't drive her elsewhere to go walking or exercise, like we did when I was home, because they cannot leave my dad at home alone anymore. He could have an emergency/need an ambulance at a second's notice, as we have learned this year.
The one bright spot is the NZ election--it went about as well as it could, even in my fantasy-world. The Good Leader won another term, and I got to vote for the Green Party with both of my votes (in NZ you get a party vote and an MP/representative vote--they do not have to be for the same party). That was pretty thrilling as I am not used to being able to vote my conscience/with my heart.
We are pretty much covid-free again here, with one community case several days ago that seems to have been immediately contained because the person who tested positive immediately isolated and got tested as soon as they were symptomatic. That, combined with an excellent tracing program by NZ health boards to figure out who he interacted with in the 2 day pre-symptomatic infectious period, and quick testing and isolation of everyone that was the person's close contact (30 in all), means things feel under control, with 0 cases each of the past two days since that one positive case. They've also gotten genome testing of the virus strain to ID where it came from, and found out it is new to NZ, so it had to have come across the border at the port he works at, most likely. NZ feels like a miracle country right now. I watch in dumbstruck horror as the Dumpster Fire that has become the US continues to rage. My US ballot has been received at my registrar's. I might donate some money to a campaign soon--figuring out where/to whom/what at the moment. My heart is 100% with all of my fellow US Americans. Even if I am not there, I feel every bit of your pain and fear.
That leaves me. I'm a wreck. My sleep schedule is all off, I just stay at home and work from my home office when I have a Zoom meeting, or when I have the motivation. Last Friday evening, I worked til 5 am. I had the whole weekend off--went for a long walk outside, cleaned house, did errands, grocery shopped, made meals for the week, did laundry, planned my week, called home. Then, on Monday, I took a 2 hour zoom call, of which I was the meeting chair, and was so exhausted afterward, I just lay in bed listlessly. I couldn't even make myself check and respond to emails, my go-to procrastination "I'm working but not really getting anything done" task. I didn't even want to read a book or watch a tv show, which was really weird. Instead, I put on a guided meditation, and that always puts me to sleep, so ended up sleeping til midnight. After sleeping til noon that day. Ridiculous! I can't imagine why I needed that much sleep, but I was out like a light. Luckily some motivation came back today/Tuesday (likely because I have a check in meeting tomorrow--Weds!) and I've worked again til 4 am. I'm either fully in and focused, or ...not at all. And I need really long breaks between those hyper-focused periods. Unfortunately, those all in days are about once a week or every other week at most, which means I'm falling further and further behind.
Of course, I cannot afford the time to wallow in bed and sleep and be listless. My to do list for my PhD is never ending and daunting. I have a major major deadline in 2 weeks and I'm not up to the task. I have a talk I have to give and none of the results are even close to being complete. It is for a large meeting--our big annual meeting that I organise and chair every year. I'm also giving a talk at it this year. I feel like I'm going to humiliate myself--I can see it coming--but I can't seem to do anything about it. Something is wrong.
I've been reading about ADHD and everything they describe is exactly me. This isn't a new thing, so I've likely had a mild case of it my whole life, but managed to scrape by because I've somehow been able to mask all my issues and throw a ton of time at making myself look "normal" and capable and organised from the outside. I'm not, though. And right now, I'm failing at the masking bit of it too--probably because my symptoms are WAY worse at the moment. I've reached out to a therapist who specialises in ADHD to get evaluated. We'll see.
I can't muster up a good sign off or ending, but I hope everyone is OK out there. Hugs to you all.
