A Poor Situation

My sister is in the hospital with Spinal Meningitis.  She is extremely weak, heavily medicated, and in a lot of pain.  Wednesday she underwent surgery to reroute her intestines so her fecal matter would deposit into pouches instead of going through her colon and into her anal cavity.  The reason she needed this surgery was because some time ago she broke her tailbone and bacteria from her bowels was seeping into the wound and infecting it.  Eventually, the caused an infection so severe it made a sore that went all the way to her spine and that's how she contracted Spinal Meningitis.

Last Sunday and Monday, it looked very bad.  My mother even thought that she could die.  It was touch and go.  The infection had already spread to her brain.  Our local hospital wasn't sure they could treat the Meningitis.  She was transported to a bigger hospital in another city.  This was a touch move since bouncing around in the ambulance caused her agonizing pain.  At the new hospital they plied her with antibiotics and did a thousand tests.

Then they formulated a plan to treat the Meningitis, then do this surgery she had, then continue treating the Meningitis, then figure out where to go from there to start curing the wound surrounding her tailbone.

Right now, my mother goes down almost daily to see her.  The thing is, we don't really have the money to drive to the city every day.  It's about a forty minute drive and we can't afford it daily.  We also have to take care of her daughters, we have to go to work, etc.  So sometimes, we can't go every day.  I know it seems harsh, but she sleeps for most of the time we're there and is disoriented due to pain, pain medication, and the infection in her brain.

The problem with this is when I tell people that I'm going to see her, say, Monday, they ask me, "Well, aren't you going today?"  When I answer with "no" they stare at me as though I'm an awful human being.  The worst culprit for this is Janet, aforementioned in a previous post.  I say something like, "We don't have the money to go there every day.  If we went there every day we'd already have spent hundreds in gas and we just can't afford that right now."  Then she just glares at me.  I mean, usually someone goes every day.  Either my nieces (her daughters), my mother, my sister, me, my father, my brother.  But we can't all go every day.

I also try to explain that when she's having surgery, the last thing the doctors and nurses need is fifteen people in their way.  I also don't really want to go with my older sister because she's an angry person and all she does is yell at the doctors and nurses for not preventing this from happening.  (For the record, my sister, the one who's sick, was told about a year ago that something like this would happen if she didn't get the intestine surgery.)  Well, anyway, when I say we don't ALL need to be there EVERY DAY Janet launches into a story about how when her mother was dying, she forced the nurses to let her stay with her mother past visiting hours, for as long as she wanted, and forced them to let every person in regardless of time, relationship, or how many people were already there.  When I reply that I think it's better for my sister to get some rest, and, besides, we can't afford to take three cars to another city every day, Janet just rolls her eyes and says, "Whatever, honey.  So you're not going today?  Whatever."

You know what, FUCK YOU JANET.  First of all, I've tried to tell everyone at work:  we are not trying to treat this like she's dying.  A)  We've been through several situations like this throughout the years since my sister was paralyzed in an accident twenty-six years ago.  B)  We can't believe she won't get better because if we break, particularly in front of her daughters, it will just be too much.  C)  We don't have any evidence it won't get better.  We don't have any that it won't get worse, but we're hanging on to the threads we can reach right now.  D)  This isn't about you, JANET.  What I need right now is if I say, "I can go see her on Monday," people try to help me arrange my schedule so I can go see her on Monday.

The other worry is when I say, "We can't afford to go to the city every day," Janet might think I'm trying to manipulate her into giving me money.  This has happened before.  She told our manager once that because I was trying to decide on whether I had the money to buy this vest I wanted, Janet just KNEW I was actually hinting I wanted her to buy it for me.  I'm sorry, but, WHAT?  Then my boss wrote ME up.  Because actually thinking about your budget out loud is automatically a manipulation technique.  I'm sorry that Janet has infinite money and, like, ten credit cards, but I don't.  I was just thinking out loud.  But after that, I wasn't allowed to even try on a piece of clothing unless I knew I could buy it, because if I had to put it back and Janet found out I put it back because I couldn't afford it, I'd get written up again for manipulation.  YEAH.

But what I NEED is for the people who are around me to say, "Whatever you need, let us know."  And then I will.  And then they will accommodate that.  I can't just take every day off from work.  I can't afford to work half-shifts for the next few weeks.  I can't fill up the gas tank every single day.  I can't succumb to the stress of both worrying about my sister and worrying about how people are judging my choices in this situation.  I'm trying to handle it all and if I don't have support, the kind of support I NEED, then I'm going lose my handle on it all.