Update/Ramble/Most boring blog ever-
So it's been a while, no? I think the last blog I posted was about Spike [my biological father] getting sick, being hospitalized and in an induced coma.
I left for California about a day after finding out what was going on with him [and at that point he'd already been in the ICU for about a week], and it was horrible. He lives in a town called Mammoth Lakes, but was hospitalized in Reno, which is about two hours away. I stayed in Mammoth for about a week to work in his store and help out his fiance Debbie with a bunch of stuff.
As far as working the store, it was fun. I've worked there on and off since I was about 13 so it was nothing new and I easily slipped back into the old routine of things. I also became really good friends with Spike's right hand man Turtle [his real name is Jason, but everyone calls him Turtle], in a short amount of time, which was sort of weird because I don't really go out of my way to make new friends or trust people very easily, but Turtle and I were like besties by the time I left.
So that was pretty great. The support that the entire town of Mammoth [plus the next town over, Bishop] showed was amazing. Huge donations to help with medical bills, at least 10 people coming in every shift just for updates on his condition, and the local micro brewery did a cool promotion with their pint glasses that had their logo on one side and the store logo on the other which were sold for 20 bucks each, and all of the proceeds went to Spike. Pretty amazing.
So after working for about a week, Debbie and I decided to head out to Reno for the weekend to see Spike. With my experience in the medical field I sort of knew what to expect and figured he was going to look pretty gnarly, but actually getting there and seeing him was hard. Spike has always managed to be somehow big and little at the same time as he stands around 5'1 but is in really good shape and fairly muscular and just sort of..I don't know, big without being tall. Burly, I guess.
And when I saw him he looked so...Small. Just frail and wasted away. It was hard. Really hard.
So we got in Friday night and Spike's brothers Bob and Randy were there as well as Spike's Dad, step mom, sister and cousin. He was still in the coma, so we were just doing what we could to spend time with him, support each other and send all the good vibes we could muster his way. They had him hooked up to an EEG machine to monitor his brain waves and make sure he was sufficiently 'snowed under', so it was pretty intense the first time I went in, held his hand and started talking to him and his brain waves spiked. They went nuts, really. To the point that an alarm went off and a nurse asked me to talk less because too much of that sort of stimulation could bring him out of it, and that was the exact opposite of what his team wanted and he needed.
But despite the encouraging sign[s] from the EEG, he was still on a slippery slope and seemed to be slowly declining. On Sunday we were told that if he didn't show significant progress within the next 24 hours we'd have to talk about taking him off of life support because there simply wasn't anything else that could be done.
Luckily he bounced back in a big way. By that night he was making steady progress, and so much and so quickly that his Doctor was not only surprised, but encouraged and genuinely happy.
Debbie and I left and went back to Mammoth on monday, but we were back the next weekend, and Spike had continued to improve, which was great.
By this point Dorian's birthday was only a few days away, and Christmas a few after that, and as bad as I felt leaving Debb alone for the holidays, I missed my wife and would feel even worse if she had to spend them alone. So I came back to Washington.
Before I move onto other things, Spike has made a full recovery and has been back at home for the past couple of months. He was still on oxygen at night until about two weeks ago, but he told me that his strength has come back so much that he was actually able to get out and shovel snow the other day. He's still really frail and sort of looks like a cancer patient though:
So, yeah...He beat the odds and lived. And despite the shitty situation, the silver lining was that I was able to really get to know Spike's/my family that I had really only spent time with when I was around 14, and again at my wedding. His Dad is god damned hysterical, and I really liked his brother Randy, his sister Linda, and his cousin Gus. It was sort of amazing how quickly I bonded with these virtual strangers, but I'm glad I had the chance.
In other news, I've decided to put off my schooling that was going towards becoming a nurse practitioner because pretty much everyone is getting wait-listed for 1-2 years at this point, and I'm getting too old to make ass wipe money while I sit around and wait to get in. So Dorian and I are saving our money for the next few months and will hopefully be back in California by September, at which point I'll be enrolling in the Psychiatric Technician program and hopefully working at a state facility. For any of you non-americans, state jobs are where it's at. Great pay, long term stability, and great vacation and benefit packages. These things are all important since Dorian and I are going to try to have another baby.
Although if we accomplish what we're setting out to do, we would see her pregnancy out here in Wa, because we really loved her doctor and the hospital the first time she got pregnant.
So...Yeah. Spike lived, hopefully Dorian will be knocked up, and we'll be back in California soon enough. That pretty much sums up my life as of late.
Like I said, boring.
