You Might Be a Redneck

Mom got us great little LED flashlights for Christmas.

So far, my brother has used his to gut a couple of deer and last night I used mine to check for damage and residual guts. 'Cause a ginormous raccoon committed suicide under my van.

Scary as hell. Ran right into us, no chance to spare him without us getting hurt, he hit my van three times.

But on the bright side, my alignment improved and the missing backlight on my car clock came back on.

In other news...

Whole reason I'm down here in redneck land is that my mom went and had herself a little stroke over the weekend. We'd come down to finally have our family's Christmas and it happened sitting around the table chatting after dinner. Thankfully we actually saw it happen and called 911 instantly.

Had she been home alone watching TV like a normal Saturday night, she'd have most likely just laid down and possibly died. Know how I know? Turns out she's had an "episode" before AND NOT FUCKING TOLD ANYONE. Just went to bed. This time was much worse than the other one, though. She was confused and arguing about stuff like what her doctor's name was, so - in addition to her general attitude of "I'll just go lay down until I feel better" - she probably would not have been thinking clearly enough to call for help.

She recovered miraculously well. The technical term for what happened is a TIA, but it really happened for the fantastically brilliantly fucking reasonable cause of Not Taking Her Medication.

Subclassification: Because I Don't Want To.

So I'm down here in redneck land to drive her to some of the follow up tests. Because there's every chance she wouldn't do them.

Know how I know?

Cause she had another "episode" Monday night. But I'm not supposed to know, because she's keeping it from me. She told Dad (her ex husband) the next morning, and she thought I was sleeping and she's a little hard of hearing and I heard every word she said. He called me to let me know because he suspected she wasn't going to tell me and wanted me to make sure someone told her doctor.

Ugh.

So I'm doing what I can - I drove her to her carotid doppler yesterday and took her over to my lawyer friend's place to sign powers of attorney. Now it's time to throw on some clothes and take her to the MRI/MRA.

Then I have to figure out how to gracefully navigate 250 miles of Illinois interstate through an ice storm to get home. Because I miss my Bear so much it hurts and it was hard enough to make arrangements for his care for just 3 days. I need to get back to him.

We don't have anyone scheduled to stay with Mom tonight, but at this point my attitude is that if she's not going to tell the person staying with her in case she has another attack that she's having an attack then WTF are we staying for?