After five pints of blood, four days in the hosptial and her 23rd(?) endocopy in the past three years they are releasing my Mom from the hospital today. I guess I'm taking her down to a Kaiser facility in Hollywood to get evaluated for the heart procedure sometime later in the week.

I really thought I was going to have to bury her after this one. We came home from work on Thursday and it appeared that she had spent the day stuck on the loveseat, without her oxygen. She was still in her nightgown, hadn't put her support hose on. I found her glasses inside her water glass about 6 feet away(?). All I can figure is that she got confused and couldn't find the telephone. She was hyperventilating when we walked in the door at 6 p.m. Called the ambulance.

She can't remember how long she was on the love seat. But she said she started having difficulty breathing in the middle of the night (I HAVE NO IDEA WHY SHE DIDN'T WAKE ME UP. WE HAVE A BABY MONITOR ON IN HER BEDROOM FOR A REASON, FOR CHRI'SAKES!) She's usually not up when we leave for work, so nothing was out of the ordinary when we left for work/daycare.

She has gastrointestinal bleeds that can drop her hemoglobin levels (anemia) from normal to super low in a day. She also has moderate mitral and severe aortic stenosis, but she's an incredibly bad surgery risk, so they've has not wanted to put in new valves.

I'm glad she's partially out of the woods on this one. But now is time for my post-Mom-scare binge. Can't do that anymore!!

So, we had two meetings. At the first, my manager told everyone what was going on. At the second, the guy in charge of our contract told everyone a happywashed version. Both told everyone to update their resumes.

Apparently, the 90 figure I heard was close. My manager said 92. At the happywash meeting, someone asked how many positions there were going to be and they deflected the question.

The government has one person writing up 92 job requisitions. Then they're going to post them on the government job site piecemeal as she finishes and we get to compete with current displaced government workers, veterans and the general public for our jobs. Our advantage over the others is that we actually want to work in this God-forsaken place -- we know what the climate is like. So many people come out here for interviews and drive away thinking "hell, no!" Their goal is to have everyone they need by the end of the fiscal year in September.

But it gets better -- my manager seems to think the technical jobs will be higher priority. (The group she manages is all nontechnical.)

If they cut our group down to just one position, I am more qualified than anyone else I work with. I've been here a long time. I can do, and have done, everyone else's jobs in the past. The only reason I'm not in charge now is that I asked to step down from my supervisory position when my mother's illnesses were causing me to miss a lot of work.

I'm older and cranky so I asked if we could work on our resumes at work (when the contract changed in 2002 they let us). The big boss said yes. The manager two levels above me audibly groaned. I've had six people come up and thank me for that. (I feel like Norma Rae!)

I also figured out that, worse case scenario and I can't get a job, my employer will be cutting me a big severance check in September 2010.  I'll deposit it in the bank on my way to Carl's Jr. to apply for a job there.

Change is stressful, but not knowing what is going on is 5,000 times more stressful.

For those of you who don't know, my husband and I are $600 toilet seats. I mean to say that we are government contractors at a military base (can't go into a lot of details). We are a little different, because rather than sitting in some nifty office building in the city or in an industrial park, we work on base with our customer. Right now, I'm sitting in a 20-year-old building made up of 36 trailers stacked on one another. My 20-year-old cube walls are a hideous shade of orange (they  had to be on super duper ultra closeout when they bought them). My desk is probably close to 30 years old. The civil service folks I support live upstairs.

I don't get paid a ton of money for what I do -- if I worked in Los Angeles, I'd probably be making at least $30K more. But I don't want to live, work/commute 2 hours to Los Angeles, so I'm fine with what I do get paid to work here.

Last week the government hosted a job fair that seven different people bugged me about going to. There are two others coming up – I’m going on Wednesday. I figured something was up because government job fairs are basically targeted at military getting out. They have riveting seminars on how to dress like a professional civilian, what’s a resume?, stuff like that – which are a joke for people like me. And most open government jobs are restricted to current government people and former military. It’s like they go into the bathroom at their office and change from their fatigues into shirts and ties. (Don't want to bag on the military -- they are tremendously underappreciated for what they do for all of us. But a lot of them are also 24 years old. I'm 40 and I've been working on this base for 18 years.)

 

Today I heard a rumor from two people in the know who said the government is converting 90 of the 130 contractor jobs here at my office to government positions. The remaining 40 jobs will just go away. We don’t have enough contractor dead wood to make keeping all the good people possible. 

 

I’m not sure how they’re going to do it – functionally, I am not an technical person like my husband. I’m more of a public affairs type. And that office continually gets lots of extra work, no new bodies, mostly positions cuts and crap for funding. The good news is that the people I know in Public Affairs who work there now that I know have good opinions of me. And the Government chief here at my office values me. But in hiring priority, I’m still below a 24-year-old military person who worked in Public Affairs for two weeks before they got out. 

 

This is sort of weird for me because I have applied for almost every open public affairs position since 1996. It has been a goal to become a government person. Their benefits are a lot better than what I have now (a Mom concern), they pay better, and they have a retirement plan that’s pretty cool. I just didn’t want to do it this way -- with unemployment looming if it doesn't work out. There are just NO JOBS for what I do in the area.

 

I am trying to expand my bailiwick a little to cover more technical work. Thank GOD/BUDDHA/THE FORCE I had my surgery, because trying to find a job as a 388-pound person is impossible. (I was 297 yesterday – and I think the loosing is picking up a bit.) With this economy, I don’t think I can get a transfer with my present company.

 

 

The technical work DH does needs to get done, but they could easily contract it out to contractors who don’t have desks on the base.  I guess for him, there’s always the banking industry. (He was there for 18 years before he got this job -- he does have a science degree.) 

 

However, another thing I know is that no one really knows what’s going on right now. The “plan” will change 37 times before the end of this October. The changeover won't happen until next October.

I do know that the young and mobile will start running from the building, like the proverbial rats from a sinking ship. Which will dump work on those of us who are not as mobile. I saw this when my former employer lost their contract in 2002.

 

 

Anyway, I would appreciate warm vibes in our general direction. Needless to say, “fun spending” is going to be cut dramatically. I can’t eat my weight in chocolate to cope, so I've told my fam to expect super mega bitchiness.

P.S. -- Just got an e-mail invite to a mandatory meeting this afternoon. Yikes!

FALL IS HERE! FALL IS HERE!! FALL IS HERE!!!

I am so sick of hot. It was 95 degrees the other day. It was 39 when I walked out my front door this morning! It's gonna be about 70 today. I am wearing a cardigan right now. Although we don't get a big color change in the landscape here -- some of the plants get a little more red or brown, but most are dead from the blast furnace heat and lack of water already -- this is my favorite season here in the desert.

Course, now I'm like a mother hen clucking over all the baby cacti and desert plants I planted in the heat of the summer.  I gotta get some stone mulch in pronto! I know some of them won't make it through the winter.

Small NSV: I can zip up my coat now. When I was down to 260 about 5 years ago I bought a 3X (24-26) coat from Land's End. It fit perfect then. Then I regained a bunch. I refused to buy a new coat. I'd just wear it unzipped with a muffler on really cold days. I had a lot of padding and didn't spend a lot of time outside.

When I could get it zipped, I looked like an enormous magenta bumblebee. Now it almost fits. It's not swinging freely, but I don't look like a purple Michelin man anymore either.

From my post last Sunday:

Yesterday I had a truly delightful experience that I'm blaming on sorbitol. You know sorbitol -- that sweetener that the food industry puts in lots of sugar free stuff. Personally, my limit is about 1 tablespoon of sorbitol-based sugar free pancake syrup or one sugar free candy. Anymore than that and I can't be far from a bathroom. I have now decided my non-WLS mother's limit is zero. She can't even be in the same room with the stuff.

Anyway, this story will probably be TMI for some.

Mom is diabetic. Yesterday morning I had to take her in for fasting labs that she has to do before she sees her doctor quarterly. After the labs, she is usually ready to eat the seats out of my car.

So, after her labs I ask her where she wants to eat. She says IHOP.  Other than maybe Baskin Robbins, it is probably the worst chain restaurant in the world for a postop to visit. I didn't like it much even when I was preop. But I know better than to argue with her when her blood sugar is low.

From my postop-protein-needin'-carb-avoidin' perspective, looking at the menu was painful. How can they sell this crap to people? Why do people eat it?

They do list the calories in everything. They put pancake batter in everything -- it's even in most of the omelettes. The fruity stuff is loaded with sugar. Unbelievably, the chocolate chip pancakes were lower cal compared to most of the others (still don't want to think about the carbs). And the healthy grains pancakes have walnuts in them. I'm allergic to walnuts.

We ordered (she ordered a seniors item for me, and I ordered her sampler platter because I've heard they can be nazis about who can order senior stuff). I figured I'd eat the egg and ham and limit myself to one bite of pancakes (my doctor does not forbid carbs, they just have you eat protein first).

[I did see the 'diet' foods on the back of the menu about 1.5 seconds after we were done ordering.]

Food comes. She starts pouring sugar free syrup all over her sausage and pancakes. She also put some butter pecan syrup on her pancakes -- she is a total sugar addict, after all. I'm not the food police.

When we're done, we went to Lowe's. She picked out a new toaster. Before we left the appliance dept, I asked her if she needed to use the restroom because we were close -- no.

I had to pick up a couple more things, so I asked her to go up to the front of the store and wait for me. She uses a walker, doesn't move fast, and gets tired out quickly.

When I found her about 10 minutes later she was sitting on her walker by the main entrance. She stands up, something shifts internally and and she sez: "where's the bathroom?" Moving a lot quicker than normal, we go to the back of the store and she goes in. I wait. And wait. And wait. Something is wrong -- it shouldn't be taking this long. I go in.

She's in the handicapped stall with her pants off. Her Depends is folded up on her walker's seat, but it's loaded. There is poop all over her legs, her support stockings, her shoes, her pants (in a ball on the floor), the walker's seat, the toilet seat, the outside of the bowl, the floor. It's one of those times where I'm totally screaming inside --- NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo! My pouch that was iffy from the crap IHOP food just sort of flipped over and went bleeeehhhhh. I'm surprised I didn't throw up.

I pitch the Depends in the trash. I try to wash some of it out of her pants, but there's just too much -- and they're light blue!

I asked her to stay inside the handicapped stall. I scrub my hands. I walk out of the bathroom mortified. I see a female Lowe's employee in the floor covering section. I told her what had happened and that I was going to go get her a new pair of pants at Target. She said she'd tell the Customer Service Desk. 

I walk across the parking lot to Target and they don't have carry women's larger sizes. Mom is a 20, but I don't have any idea what that equals in the unnumbered regular women's clothing. I finally dig out a regular women's 2X pair of sweats (it is 95 degrees outside) out of a stack. Please, God, let these fit her.

I stopped at my car on the way back and grabbed a bag of baby wipes.

Back to Lowe's.

Mom is sitting on her walker right next to the sinks wearing her spare Depends. Her pants are in a ball on the floor. Two little girls went in right before me -- they didn't know what was going on. I'm just thankful that they went in about 10 seconds before me so I could take over the situation. Otherwise, who knows what they would have done. ("Maaaaaahhhm!! There's a creepy old lady sitting in the bathroom in her underwear!")

I took Mom back into the stall. Cleaned her up. Cleaned up the stall as much as I could. Cleaned her Crocs. Got her into the sweats (actually a bit big). And out the door.

Needless to say, we won't be going back to that Lowe's ever. Maybe this experience exorcised IHOP from Mom's consciousness (hopefully).

I looked up the Smucker's sugar free pancake syrup. Number two ingredient-- sorbitol. It's basically sorbitol and artificial flavoring.